Restructure- on your own terms

Thank you guys...

is what I would say to the guys who are fast exiting from my life, all except my ever loving harbour, DL of course.

They are all not doing anything about me now and their presence are fast becoming non-existent in my day-to-day life.

I take it as a sign and my fate.

Debris, these guys in your life are debris. You don't need them when DL is always there for you. Haven't things pretty much resolved itself last weekend? V cautioned.

She too has decided to dump her amorality and is now going exclusive. It's ok to say no, she stresses.

Then there was the caution from the first cab driver/fortune teller to guard these external influences that could threaten to ruin my relationship with DL...

The Manila tycoon beau has not replied to my text last night. He is not that into me, I gather. Rather to have a weekend of romping, he seemed to be more interested in organising and supporting political campaigns for his mates. It is not as if his non appaearance for one weekend away will result in his friends' defeats comes election time in May. Ok, I figured I'll just have to strike him out of the list.

Then there is Dr. Jekyll & Hyde that I cannot stop thinking about. But what of it? He never texts me back. I really fancy him and I realised I have exhausted my three goes and I wouldn't be made the fool, ever ever again. It is a cold and empty place there so I better hang on to this resilience of doing nothing about it. I quietly wonder if I would see him in less than a month's time when I head home for the weekend....

Oh and the next is Big Boy whom we played romantic electronic tennis for the past year or so. Funny how everything just crumbled after we met. Then there was the fiasco obligatory lunch (he decided to schedule for us) where I reckoned he was more interested in his props and settings and what I should wear (thought it was a blatantly and socially inappropriate request of him but I guess my social magnamity did not allow me to put him in his place for his shallowness and social self-consciousness to cause him further embarrassment- V and Ad says I am too nice that way to people), between looking at his blackberry every 5 seconds and running a tight schedule that made an ignition of any romantic possibilities really quite impossible. What is his actual purpose or proposed agenda for that lunch, I wonder? I detected some mixed signals there...

Then there is the news that he is getting married. So I guess I am really quite thankful that nothing carnal came out of our interaction. I guessed if I had known it as a fact there and then during our lunch, I would have served him back the question of "what if your fiancee finds out too?" when he asked me what I would do if DL finds out about us should we proceed in a grey relationship. I mean he had more control over the relationship. After all, he was the proposer to his impending marriage- at the eleventh hour when you have made up your mind to spend the rest of your life with just the one, why did you, a man with good practical sense still come to rock your own boat? It wouldn't do his reputation any good. I reckon a man like him, together with his social self-consiousness would have more to lose in a narrow minded society at home than a girl like me who is always living between social transitions with a very mobile identity. I would fold and take whatever is left of my bargaining chips in this case if I had decided to go down that path...

I consider that chapter closed. But I truly wonder (as I do and I do have enough friendly affection for the Big Boy) if he would be happy in the marriage. The crux of the problem lies with his inability to master his own emotions and thus, he continues to be looking for THE girl but being conscious of time and his own shelf-life, he settles for the one who could compliment his life. How does it work, I wonder? An emotional man trying to let his practical mind dictate his fate but his emotions keeps barring him to stay on his designated path? My solution for him is to go all out for the ONE girl he ever loves and take the it's her or nobody else mentality. But then he likes the idea of being loved, desired and wanted too so therein lies his paradox and inability to hatch all his eggs in one basket and love boldly. Maybe he needs to go in search of that one true love. Deep inside him, he is really a hopeless romantic but turned cynical (and really afraid) by this big bad world...

His proposed wife to be, a damsel-like character it seems must be basking in the blissfulness of being a Mrs. of a reputed professional where she would finally be his legalised arm accessory to chic social events. Her docility and blind love for him must appeal to his emotional insecurity and makes him more a man. She is the harbour of his life, someone who could always forgive his fallacies and welcome him home with open arms. She is good to him that way. I don't envy being his Mrs. here but a girl basking in a self-congratulatory sense of ignorant bliss must feel that she is one hell of a lucky girl. Still, there are times where I wish I lack so much awareness, maybe my soul would be lighter and I'll be happy too... what one cannot see or know, cannot hurt.

Oh my M is next on the de-tox list. I love M. I truly do and there are times I feel he loves me too in his own way. I know he quietly thinks of me at the other part of the world but what of it, he would reckon. I will never leave DL and be truthful to my feelings as he is wont to think. He is monogamous that way- being with one person at one time. That was why when he slept with Julie, he couldn't faced me and never went back with me in Paris because he had cheated on me, he said. But I guess we never sum up enough courage to do something way out of the way for each other. Or at least, I didn't even try. I had the entire year to save up and visit him in Hong Kong 2006 but I didn't. Instead, I spent all my money on myself and the rest towards putting away for the first home that I am committed to buy with DL. I needed something concrete for me since I have been left cold and empty too many times before. Then I wrote to tell him I'll fly to Hong Kong for work next month, only to find out that he will leave for London ten days before I touched down. He made no effort to stay and finally for us to come together. London's another twenty hours away and my existence being dependent on doing time for others will make jumping onto a flight at short notice to see him even more impossible. I figured it is for the best. We have the fate but not the destiny. He runs his life governed by the there and then emotions while I run mine with loyalty. It's never about me first.

I really love M. I really do. But seeing and being with him always brings out so much tears and pain in me. I wonder if it hurts so much, perhaps it's not meant to be? My resolution has been no more tears- not for anyone who is ever so capable of breaking my heart and me apart. I take care of me first.

One last guy-Dope. I don't know where to start with this one. He leaves me dry and empty. I am a person with too much passion but he is a closed book. Then he isn't too emotional. I truly adore him once with much finesse and gusto but his vagueness with me after so long simply dispel the mysterious appeal he had on me. Then he also lack the spontaneity that I need in a lover, I don't need another dull moment and I certainly do not want to be left second-guessing what he is thinking. My patience has thus run out. I guess the final straw was the incident of the economics assignment. I don't think he gets it with me.

Also, I know he still holds a torch for B, my best friend. Every so often, he texts her and see what she is up to. Last year, he even wished her a Happy Valentine's Day and he didn't even wished me. It appeals to him to be liked by B (I know because he once asked me what if she does; I told him seriously that it would break my heart because he meant the world to me if he also reciprocates but I'll do nothing because B is my best friend and if the 2 people I cared for like each other, what am I do but to give them their best blessings and I'll bow out as graciously as I could. He detected my tone and being someone who is too afraid to hurt someone else, which perhaps explains why he is still with X, he was quick to assure me that he was just asking and don't I worry because it was not going to happen. But I knew there and then that he too was capable of straying from me so he could never be my designated harbour) since she is equally as mysterious as he is. They are so alike in physical statue (the tall and lean types) and demeanour. I think it had something to do with the night where the three of us got so pissed drunk. Everyone was getting all hot and heavy. After that night, his affections for me did turned up a notch when I thought it was all dying but still I know there was the B factor. On the other hand, B just wanted to do all the wrong things at the wrong age and I opened up the carnal possibilities for her. The next morning, she left us to sleep in her big bed without her and pulled the sliding doors to block her own view. She slept on the couch because my smothering kisses for Dope was tormenting her sex, she admitted later. Like a voyeur, her mind masturbated to the noise of my smothering kisses and my physical indulgence with Dope. For Dope, he was blown away with what one could do in bed, having only had limited intimate experiences.

He is not a lover and you need a lover, B has told me several times when I used to be frustrated with his lacklustre behaviour. She explained that people like Dope and her kind are naturally not passionate and do not have the carnal rush that people my type do. They make good loyal friends though and she is right on that. But like B, Dope would never do anything that was out of his way for me as a lover and it was always at a time at his convenience. They look for people who would give them the least headaches so that they could get on with their lives. So B explained to me that while I bore over something that people like them deem silly or non-existent, I should better spend my time elsewhere because people like themselves wouldn't have cared or realise that they have caused someone else like me much grief. Dope will always be a very good friend to me though. I do love him as a friend but I guess this must be what both of us could give each other now. He lacked the momentum and passion while I had persevered and know that it is time to exit a lost cause.

Can you go find someone else to play with? she would say. She was sick and tired of knowing that I haven't had a new man back then. Somehow , she still lived her alter ego life vicariously through my adventures. Funny isn't it? Maybe Dope thought I could inspire him but it takes two hand to clap and no matter how hard I stoke the fire for us, he has a way of fanning it down to mass of smothering ash. Even my spirit has died with it.

B reckoned Big Boy was like me and someone like me would suit my disposition better. But then again, post the fiasco, again I think he is better off as a friend as well.

In fact, most of them are better off as friends.

So you see, I feel that they are doing me favour even before I could fully comprehend it, mainly because my Ego is always in the way. But it happened for a good reason because if they did reciprocate my latest advances, then again I am taking a detour from my destiny... that is , back to my designated harbour.

I am a fool, I tell myself. The phrase "fool's gold" has been flashing up in my head a lot of late. DL's the gold. I always have it there in front of me. But why did my eyes fail to see what is presented before me?

Fool's gold...

Wherein lies the point for these men to once exist as part of my life?

****

"Perhaps the human soul needs excursions, and must not be denied them. But the point of an excursion is that you come home again."

- "Lady Chatterley's Lover", D.H. Lawrence


*****
Anyways, thank you guys for the journey, bitter sweet memories and finally paving the way for me (known or unbeknownst to yourselves) to let go...

Maybe one day, I'll be relieved of my dukkha...