The scent of your hair on my pillow...
On a dreamy Saturday morning, with hazy memory of the night before and a semi stranger in my bed, I felt at ease and at peace as I put everything else on hold. I knew how fcked up I'll be for my exams but I just didn't want to care. For the past few weeks, it's as though I reverted back to September 2008, when I coped with what life threw at me by partying it all out and forgetting all my troubles, forgetting why I left loved ones behind on a lonely adventure, and forgetting how she ripped my heart out. Except that I'm not 23 anymore.
All the moving, exams, interviews and stress from September to February have worn me out. I don't want to remember how lonely it was to have to deal with everything on my own, how ridiculously stressed I was that even making plans to catch up with friends was a stress factor I avoided. I rushed through everything so that I could give her my full attention when she came to see me, and rushed through everything before I hopped on that plane in December.
It has been almost five years since I lived with someone, and she could not have been more wrong for me, but somehow I put up with it for almost a year. I remember getting sucked in by her inertia, frustrated with boredom attributable to her unwillingness to do anything apart from sitting at home watching crappy TV shows, and her emotional immaturity that drove me insane. It suffocated me.
Fast forward four years, I rushed to the airport after work every few weeks, went straight to clubs with her in another country while smelling like the flight cabin and spent the whole weekend rolling around in bed until one of us complained of being hungry and we'd drag our lazy asses out of the flat for food, more partying and then back for more sleep until I had to get to the airport again. One Friday night, I was alone in a hotel room in the southern part of the country waiting for her, except that she missed her train, but she showed up in the morning bringing the best and funniest surprise that a lover could bring. But now, all this sounds very tiring, and I don't know how we did it.
The night before I left Hong Kong, we had dinner with my parents and she passed with flying colours. It was still dark in the morning as I got up the following day and got ready to leave for the airport. She stood up in my bed and whispered "hey, I'm gonna miss you". A month later, I went through all the emotions that come with break ups in the span of a week, put everything on hold and got on with life. Some people said that we didn't love each other enough to compromise on where we want to live. I never agreed with that. We're not that young anymore but I think we are too young to give up our personal goals just to be near each other.
The trip to Poland started out as a solitary exercise, but it turned amazing because of her. I barely knew her, and I still have trouble pronouncing her name, but she looked at me with such fascination that I was amused beyond words. She was kind, attentive and fun. When she walked me out of the hotel reception and stopped at a spot without surveillance camera, she kissed me and said she'd miss me. It was very sweet and I was very smitten, but I probably won't see her again.
It won't be long until my pillow case will smell like laundry powder, and who knows how long it'll stay that way. When some people walk into your life, you just know they won't be around forever, or even long enough to matter. But others, they stick around for longer than you ever anticipated in the first place.
