It's not right, but it's not wrong either to stay away

Courtesy of the event organizer for one of the volunteering events 

Maybe it’s true, alright.

If I wasn’t sure what I was thinking or whether I was mentally stable back then, the same might be applicable to him. We were both deers lost in the woods, unable to find the exit route and drowning in our own pain and sufferings yet wearing the facade of happiness in front of others.

Now that I’m in a foreign land, I can finally understand from his perspective. We wanted to push people away because we felt that they won’t be able to understand our implications from our eyes. We work so hard to the point of mental exhaustion yet we don’t get what we want.

Maybe it’s my fault, possibly.

I should’ve stayed my distance from the beginning.

If I had played my cards right, we wouldn’t have arrived at such a terrible ending. We could have maintained the little contact that we had and enjoyed the occasional sarcasm and jokes that we threw at each other. Neither one of us would be suffering in silence - you would not be able to trace any form of hurt or pain on this cheery face of mine unless I let it show. Neither one of us would have been each other’s sacrificial lambs. It had to be done if we wanted to move on in search of a better life without remnants of each other floating in the familiar places. You know my favorite haunts; I know yours. If I had played my cards right, I wouldn’t have sacrificed my friendship with you and let myself be guilt-tripped into a web of lies.

It took an acquaintance’s simple question in sophomore year to shake my core inside out: It sounds like you still like him. Why did you deny the obvious? A simple question that left me speechless for that split second because I never imagined the possibility. I only remembered treating him slightly different from the rest of my friends and him pushing me to my wits’ end.

Yet I might’ve subconsciously pushed him to his limit.

That staircase incident marked the freefall in our friendship - nothing that I did would have been enough to mitigate the effects for him and for me.

In hindsight, it all made sense: the teasing, the weird way of showing he cared, the coffee (even though he never remembered the way I like my drink from San Francisco Coffee), and the awkward action of exercising possession on almost all of my belongings. Yet I made the mistake that would lead to the biggest regret of my college life.

They say that time heals all wounds, but I don’t think the emotional scars that we both have will ever be healed. Maybe it will fade into the background with the right person, but it would always be somewhere in the depths of our abyss. Time has given me the luxury of analyzing the situation from his point of view and understand the drastic actions that he took. He made himself scarce in the weeks leading up to our graduation. He kept a distance whenever we were in the same room - he wasn’t his usual self, it was obvious to me. He was the first person I thought of when I realized that I left behind my folder for one of the subjects, but I don’t know what stopped me from texting him for help. Six weeks before the graduation, he gave me the cold shoulder and refused to even bat an eyelid at me. It was as if I was invisible to him. Although we spoke, it was brief and terse. And official.

It’s not that he chose to do it; he wasn’t left with much of a choice. It was either he dragged me down with him or he pushed me away. I guess he chose the latter because it would have made it unbearable to maintain the friendship. He didn’t want to be confronted with the fact that we would never be together.

I chose to leave. I chose to pursue my undergraduate studies abroad (and am now tossing up between staying back for a postgraduate in another field or doing it in my hometown). The college memories threatened to burden my heart with an anchor. I knew if I didn’t leave, I’d be searching the streets for that one familiar face. I know he wants me to be happy and content with the decisions I’ve made and I want the same for him too. Inasmuch as it’d be lovely to connect again, it would serve a contrary purpose. At least for me. Instead of making me relieved, I know that it’ll bring back all of the memories - the good, the bad, and the ugly - the moment I lay my eyes on him as I enter the agreed cafe.

The only way we are able to move on is to forget. Forget us. Forget our friendship. Forget the teases, growls, and fights. Some things are best left as it is. Looking for answers would merely bleed my heart, deeper this time. It took me a full year after college to mentally stabilize myself. I can’t let it derail me again when I’m rather close to the finishing line in a fragile state.

Coffee from a nearby cafe before an appointment with my lecturer

I’m not sure why I only think of him when it is closer towards the dreaded winter season. Maybe she’s right; a part of me loved him once before it found its way to hate for what he had done. I don’t mean hate in its literal interpretation, but more along the lines of leaving all of us out in the cold without an explanation or justification behind his departure. Maybe she’s right; I could’ve been happier if we didn’t push each other away and things would have taken a 360.

You might think that something bad must’ve happened for me to feel more down than I’m used to, but the truth is that it’s the time of the year. Furthermore, my sister and I caught up with the crim friend for a quick round of drinks after our oral presentation (which pretty much explained our not-so-formal-yet-formal-wear). Part of our conversation somehow went into the heart of this matter and how I seem to be surrounded by drama.

5/13/2018

I dreamt that I brought the sister and another female friend to visit the building that once housed my college. This had been years in the making and they were interested to put a place to the wonderful stories that I have shared. After what seemed like an eternity, we were able to nail down a mutual time to fly in together.

When we walked past the location, there was a competition going on. Students were seated in rows of three. Beside the last person on each row was a bucket full of water. My heart turned sour at this sight because it reminded me of a particular event that was held during my year. Observing from a safe distance was the events management team. I didn’t give them much of a notice because most of the college alumnus knew that the campus was in another place and there was an overhaul of the administrative structure. I found my attention drawn to a particular person who resembled a college mate. We shared most of the classes for my first semester and I remembered him as someone who was sarcastically humorous and sharp-tongued. He looked older than I expected, even though he was younger than me by two years. Something must have had happened in the years that we lost touch.

As we were heading to another destination via a brightly-lit tunnel, I suddenly stopped in my tracks, which caught the sister by surprise. He was ahead of us, reprimanding our female friend. I reckoned that she did not divulge the fact that she knew him - either as a subordinate or colleague - because she felt that it was unnecessary to do so. The sister’s jaw slammed to the floor whereas I merely shook my head when we saw this. His temper hadn’t mellowed down even after all these years. He was still sharp-tongued. He must have felt that someone was looking at him because he suddenly turned in our direction and met our glances. That was when I noticed the full extent of time’s evil hand on him. His hair had a twinge of silver and he had crow’s feet. A sign of the pain and struggles he must have endured to be who he now is. He still had that look in eyes which warned people not to muck around with him. If he recognized me, he did a good job of hiding it. I held his gaze to see what he was going to do next: was he going to continue raining lectures on our female friend or do something else?

In another scene, I dreamt that we were on the move when we received a phone call from someone informing us about a death. We were both surprised because it came out of no blue. It wasn’t as if the person was on his deathbed or something like that. Another person in the queue next to us growled to the person serving him that he needed things to be done soonest possible as he needed to attend a wake service.

We found ourselves in the midst of a busy street when people started running helter-skelter in search of shelter before a loud bang and police sirens. I heard someone cursing as I dashed across the road, suddenly remembering a particular spot that would be safe for us. When the coast was clear, we continued to tour the area in our car. We could not find the exit sign even though the driver’s friend drew a map for her, no matter how hard we tried or how observant we were.

My head swirled with questions when I forced my eyes open after the dream. Certain elements of it did not make sense, especially after 4 - 5 years. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was him that I dreamt of because he did not age well, but it was the glimmer in his eyes and the way he held his gaze that gave his identity away. In essence, he had a resting bitch face and looked like he was angry with the whole world whenever he didn’t smile. He even barely laughed. Knowing the theme of my dreams, I shouldn’t be surprised because I have found myself reliving the college memories in reality and wishing that university life could be as good as that.

Don’t even get me started on the cliques and groups.

And yes, I do want to know whether the chap is living well.

For the scene where we walked past the college, the online dream interpretation suggested that I am about to learn something new or even the fact that I lost/retained friendships/relationships.

For the scene where he was reprimanding someone, I am going to assume that this occurred some ten years into the future. If he kept to his original plans, his job designation in the dream is synonymous with his career plan in real life. It might have also been a manifestation of him airing his frustrations on me in an attempt to get his side of the story out there.

For the second part of the dream, I don’t know where to even start the interpretation, but let’s start with the obvious. The theme of it is definitely death. If I am honest, I actually want to groan because the elective that I am enrolled in - Legal Theory - touches upon death and atrocious sufferings in most of its contents. But this raises the question of what death we are talking about. Is the death of a friendship? A death of someone? Or the death of a personality? I couldn’t remember much about the content, so I’ll assume that it is the latter - where there is a longing for a reinvention.

05/09/2018

I’m sure that something is off with my psyche. I’m either mentally or physically drowning from the stress that I’m living in. Otherwise, it doesn’t explain why things are as they are now.

The dreams have been weird for the past week, let me tell you that. It all started from that scene where I waited with the sister at the bus station when we saw someone familiar before i had a Taiwanese yumcha with Papa Carrie. The familiar person does exist in real life and he doesn’t know about this as I don’t intend on telling him about it - ever.

The next one was visiting a family-owned Japanese restaurant on the same row as my favorite haunt in real life.

The succeeding one was the one that left me shaking my head. It involved the good friend in the form of shared tutorials and accommodation.

Next came a negotiation with a tradesman over a job done to the house.

The last one was more … physical. I vented my frustrations over the vet’s lackadaisical attitude towards the animals by laying blows on someone named Jack. It left his female companion - his wife, I assumed - worried as she whispered his name. He nodded that everything was okay and held me closer to his chest to stop me from hurting him. Hurting myself. Based on the aura of the dream, this person was not a stranger to me. Now that I’m writing about this days later, I’ve a different theory to the dream than what I originally wrote.

Maybe the dreams are a manifestation of what the subconscious wants. The subconscious wants to be freed from its figurative cage and all the negative emotions I experienced. It is only within the four walls that I allow my truest emotions to emerge from its hiding place. And unless I take the initiative to burn your ears about it, you will not have an idea on the extent of it. Even though it may be splashed on my facial expressions, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

One thing’s for sure; I’m now at a stage where I’m numb towards certain things. Not everything excites me anymore. Not everything makes me hyped up and enthusiastic. I want to tear myself away from old acquaintances/friends and bid them adieu after what I’ve seen. I want to be left alone with my own mind for most of the time (which I can tell you is a dangerous thing in itself). I guess what has kept me going for the time being is the desire to complete final year on a slightly better level, if not for my job prospects but for my mental health. A wave of annoyance and self-blame would always engulf me whenever I think about my grades and how low it is. To you, it might seem okay. To me, it is not. I have such high expectations of myself that I’m slowly losing grasp of what led me to enrol in law.

I’m also at a stage where I’m retreating into my shell and pushing people a tad bit further than I should. I don’t want them to see my emotional scars because we are all silently fighting our own battles. Plus, what use is there even if they are made aware of it? It’s not like they are able to wipe the permanent blemishes and allow me to have a clean slate.