Broken Hearts and Torn Up Letters, Girl You Can't Just Dance Forever

This year seems to be the year of reconciliation and closure. I felt as if it would never come, I hate being on bad terms with people I would otherwise be very fond of.

In December, I managed to make things right with someone who used to be one of my best friends three years ago, and after some issues ceased talking to in an attempt to not make things worse. I saw him for the first time since, and it was so surreal to be sitting and having the much needed conversation with him, that it left me out of sorts for a quite a few days.
The feeling of things being okay with him was quite overwhelming.

Last week, I had lunch with someone who is also very dear to me, but who found it hard to pick up our friendship again after crossing relationship territory. We finally had a conversation that was absent of awkwardness after two years. Two years. The relief of that defining moment - I can't even explain. He may not have known it, but I worried about him alot. I always wanted to know how he was doing. To finally know that he was okay...the fact that he could even laugh about it, heh, I almost couldn't believe it.

I often wonder what kind of person I come across as. I know that I'm a bit bipolar sometimes: either marshmallows and sprinkles or a bitter lemon. Under whatever facade I choose to project, underneath I care about people a lot. Anyone who has ever meant anything to me means something to me always. People rarely get forgotten.

[edit]I know not everyone's up to date on my soap opera, but I would just like to add that I'm not talking about the Irish one. I'm not talking to him still. [/edit]

The Truth About Forever

There are people who appear in my life, who I will love with all my soul for one shining moment. They don't tend to know it, because it is usually something that remains unsaid. It never makes any sense at the time, it never listens to any reason. With every person who means something to me there is one moment where I feel absolute and uncompromisable love. It's at that moment that their presence will forever be seared into my memory; it's at that moment they become immortal to me.

For any of you who are reading this, I may have once loved you in this way. I may not have said it, because it would have not made sense. Or I didn't need to. People think that all such happiness is ephemeral; that it does not deserve dwelling upon. I think it lasts a lot longer than that.

As long as that moment is committed to memory, its existence will be truth, and that truth will last forever.

Inside Out

So, I'm sitting at work, feeling a bit fat. Before you throw confectionery at me to shut me up, let me assure you that this is not a post looking to fish for self-assurance.

It is strange that some days I feel like the hottest thing since...I can't affiliate with the current Hollywood ideal so I'm just gonna say, Hepburn, and other days I feel ugly and misshapen and bleurgh. And yet, nothing much will have changed on the outside, except for maybe my frown not being upside down. It also feels as if the whole world has cottoned on that you feel ugly today, and they seem to agree. Do you give off some sort of ugly vibe when you feel that way?

Maybe you do. Because, similarly, when you feel happy or good you automatically seem ten times more pleasant-looking than you did when you felt ugly. And when people take notice it makes you even happier.

Why does it also make you feel miserable? (I'm not feeling particulary miserable today don't worry.) There's a difference between being ugly and feeling ugly. What makes us feel ugly? What it is about one's level of attractiveness that makes one comfortable or uncomfortable about oneself? No matter what vessel God decided to put you in, you're still the same person underneath it all aren't you?

Or are you? Everyone couldn't have been born grumpy and uncomfortable with the way they are. Everyone didn't have an instinct for when things were ugly or beautiful, what looked right, what looked wrong. You could never tell if you were cute kid until someone told you that you were. It never occurred to you that the fat kid shouldn't be fat until an adult made a comment on it. The only thing to guide you as to whether you were remotely pleasant to look at would be people's perception of you.

Is that what it is, people's perception of you? Well, of course it is. It's the only reason why you bother to dress nicely, bother to brush your hair in the morning. Equally, the same reason why you'll purposely wear a controversial outfit, dye your hair unnatural colours, make yourself look different from the crowd. Speaking of which, I never realised until now, that everyone in London tries so hard to look different, that they all end up looking exactly the same. Don't say it's not for other people. Other people's reactions, or even non-reactions, are exactly why we do those things. For some strange reason being happy with how we look validates and liberates us.

Your outward personality and appearance are the only things you have for showing the world what you're made of. Your exterior suggests how you want people to perceive you. How then, do you show the world that you feel beautiful, if you can't meet the standard of today's physical beauty? Most people try to match up with a thorough beauty regimen, others simply have their own way of showing how beautiful and powerful they are inside, but I am sure even the most comfortable of souls aren't completely appeased by their appearance all the time. What are they to do then?

Everyone feels that pang now and again. The world is just nicer to beautiful people.

Then you wish you were a little more thinner, a little more curvier, a little more built, a little more fair, a little more tanned, a little more flaw-free. All these 'flaws', and all these solutions available to fix them. Why do people need fixing? Poor soul who's got so many 'flaws' that he/she can't fix them all. How must they feel.


There's such a big ugly western pressure to strive for physical perfection. People telling you you've gained a pound, lost a pound, you know I've heard of a really good product to solve that problem of yours right away. It is thoroughly depressing. Personally, I never start up a conversation about the way someone looks or changed their looks. It never even occurs to me to tell someone I like what they're wearing that day. Maybe I'm just stingy with compliments. Or maybe I don't think it matters. But I do find that every now and again someone will have changed something, something so small like even plucking their eyebrows, and if someone notices they just seem the world happier that it's been said. Or if nobody says anything, they'll bring it up themselves to get a reaction of 'oh yes it really suits you', 'really makes a difference','it's lovely'. Let's not get started on the reverse. Exam time or some other stressful time comes along, and you stop preening yourself. So what, you look a little bit paler without some makeup, okay the stress has gotten you to accumulate some blemishes/ weight/ no thought as to dress sense - 'oh gosh did you see so-and-so, looks so awful, really letting herself go'. Argh.

Being in Tanzania, it's so much more easier to appreciate how beautiful people really are. There's no pressure to look perfect all of the time. You can look better than you usually do, but people just accept the default you, without any of the extra paraphernalia we choose to pile on top to make ourselves flawless. That lack of pressure just makes you so much more at ease with yourself. With no make-up, an oily face, and the stupidest combination of dusty clothes, one or two people still managed to find me attractive. I even got a couple of dowry offers, more than I get here, thank you very much. How's that for an ego-boost.

But again, someone needed to react to me for me to realise that I'm fine the way I am. People need to be told they look lovely. I have to admit, however, that my quavering about how I look has reached a minimum. There was a time where that wasn't the case. I am lucky, in that I have someone to tell me I am perfect. I never believed him at first but later on down the line, I realised that no matter where you stand on that ranking of 1 to 10 (be thoroughly depressed girls if you haven't heard how brutal the ranking system is already), all you really need to know is that one person thinks you are perfect. Absolutely and completely perfect, exactly as you are. Is that not validation enough? You may be picky about who this person is, you may not think certain opinions are valid. Which makes perfect sense of course, I mean a person who just said you looked nice today can't possibly say you are perfect, they haven't seen all your horrible bits, what do they know. So what. I don't care. Because today I am going to tell you that you are perfect.

You are perfect. You don't look like your idol of perfection, you don't even come close. But you know what, you look pretty amazing. Have you looked at yourself lately? You have a million little things that make you different from everyone else, there are parts of your anatomy that you have never dared to show the world, but I can guarantee there will be a hidden bit of you that someone is going to love. Gosh I'm falling in love with you already just thinking about it.

But seriously. I may not know who you are, I may not know all those hidden parts of you that you are too afraid to show, I may not know all those flaws you hate so much. It doesn't make it any less true. I think you are perfect. You. I really do.

Lovefool

We do the lamest things when we are in love.

Or should I say "in love".

I can think of too many. When I was fourteen, I had a crush on my friend's older brother. I thought nobody knew except me. One day he got back home from somewhere, and I was hanging out in my friend's room. He said his hellos etc and then left. "You're soooo obvious, Aimi!", she said. "What...?", I said, very innocently. It was then revealed to me that every time he walked into the room, I would get really nervous and talk really fast, sometimes really different, sometimes even in a different pitch. I had been none the wiser.

When I was fifteen there was this guy I chatted to a lot on the internet. It was late one night and I was listening to the radio. I had a flash of inspiration and called up the radio station and requested a song. It was Nelly and Kelly Rowland (don't laugh at me!) and since there weren't a lot of callers she wanted to put my call on air. I had already texted the dude to listen out for it. But being put on air totally caught me by surprise, because I was already in bed, and had to keep really quiet because I was supposed to be asleep. Oh it came out so awful on the radio! She kept mishearing me and kept asking me to repeat myself. All I wanted her to do was to play the fricking song! She ended up saying "alright, this is for boy," in the end. The guy probably thought I was a total loser after that, couldn't even get his name right. Oh well.

There was another guy who I really liked, although I hadn't admitted it to myself yet, who I used to hang out with an awful lot. We used to have really lame arguments with each other over tiny things, not angry ones, just silly ones. It was MUCH to the chagrin of anyone who were dumb enough to sit with us and witness this. So much so, that one of my friends who had only sat down with us for 10 mins did what everyone else hadn't and said, "Right, stop acting like children!"
We paused for a second, and continued fighting. Frustrated, she finally snapped, "Stop flirting!"
And we immediately fell silent and looked away.

[edit] But of course such things have long since passed.

I find it very strange that those little moments are just as random and cute as movies make them out to be.

I also find it very funny thinking about why the hell I liked someone in the first place. There was this other guy (not mentioned above) who I don't think about often, but the other day I saw a picture of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story and realised he looked exactly like him! HA!

Given a conscious decision I would have picked Aladdin instead.

[end of edit]

P.S Scroll down for the missing Watchmen photos!

Cleaning Out My Notebooks.

I wasn't looking for reasons why, but I was wondering.

Behind my chemistry notes.
3rd April 2005.

Despite it all, I'm still the one who wanted to leave.

And The World Carries On

Something strange happened today. I looked at all those photos from last year, and nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

It's just another story. It happened with someone else, to someone else. It doesn't change who I am.

I can close the book now.

Such Is Life

I sigh a lot these days.

- "*Hhhum*"
- "Aibi why you *hum*-ing?"
- "I got a lot of things to *hum* about."

I just cannot foresee the future. It's very misty out there. I don't even know where I'll be in 3 years. Let alone 5. I just don't know what I'll be doing, who I'll be meeting, where the wind will take me. How many more mistakes I'll make, how many times I'll win, how many hearts I'll break, how many things I'll lose.

I'll graduate (please God) and I'll be 22. Woohoo. I'll work for some company, decide that it's crap, get married and have babies.

ARGH. BABIES.

I saw my friend's baby last week, and I decided that it would be impossible for me to have a baby now. She was having a go at us, coz her daughter will be 10 by the time any of us have kids. I mean there's so much to do with my life before I can have a baby. Things that I didn't really think of doing until my eyes were opened to all the possibilities. Things that you can't do when there is another little person in the world who's really depending on you to stay in one place and be there.

So no babies yet.

Besides, I still need to find someone to make babies with.

Of all the words..

My heart breaks every time I leave you with a bad feeling. Like when I've bumped into you and we part having not spoken a word. It's like someone's holding a hand over my mouth, and I'm screaming against asphyxiation.