i have always understood that these things upset people only if they were still in love, or hoping secretly to be reunited, or out of spite. i don't feel spiteful and i don't still love him and our lives have developped in such different ways these past 5 years that i never imagined going back - i don't even really have nostalgia for such happiness as we once had - only in snatches of moments - in the way i do with one or two other relationships - but this sudden pit-of-stomach sickly feeling i've got indicates otherwise.

joel wrote last night, "you're a wonderful girl, my dear. intelligent, caring, passionate. the last part is probably the one that makes life tempestuous for you emotionally, but it's also what makes you live. at the end of the day, you're surrounded by friends, sometimes wonderful (like addy, yen, etc), sometimes not-so wonderful (like me, the lousy friend.. but trying to be better =p), and we all love you lots. some day you'll find someone great who loves you even much more than we do."

i don't think that's it though. i do feel loved, all the time. i've known this even more in these past three years - from the family - at both 54 and 52, and from friends - not only what darryl calls "your set" but also close friendships formed with so many other individuals. i never feel short of love - because i've always found that if you are willing to love people unreservedly - to really care about them and embrace them - they love you back. that's all there is to it. and i shouldn't want someone who loved me more than all of them - how could anyone?

of course i do miss, these last two and a half years, not being in a romantic relationship. and i have felt scarred these past years - but less from that relationship than from others - the real damage came much later, elsewhere. and whenever i mourn for my lost loves - it is not for him, but for others.

and of course we're all sometimes tempted by that vision of the traditional model of a perfect singapore family - and i think we are all having quarter life crises because we don't fit it - government scholar at an ivy college, marry at 25, first kids at 29, hdb flat in a newer estate like sengkang, primary one registration, local elections, visiting your parents on weekends, drive your children to their violin or swimming or xin suan lesson, later your son back to his army camp to book in, see them get psc scholarships and become morally upright civil servants. but that is a model that doesn't at all fit most of the humanz types - empirically-speaking, it's mostly the engineers and business types who have gone to places like cornell and michigan and penn, schools with large singaporean and govt scholars communities. we're far too why oh why, far too demanding of intellectual passions, too quick to create filters of principle (often absurd ones too)

to be continued...