State of Mind

This post speaks of the state of mind on 3/16/2009.

It has been 3 months since I left New York after a grueling and meaningless one and a half years there. When friends asked me what would I be doing back home, I gave a shrug. It was an honest answer. I had nothing in mind except to rest, spare my mind from thousand-lines code and early morning phone calls and relieve my body from a reckless diet. I was not too sure whether I'd like to find a job or return to graduate school.

The past month was off the expectations on what life would be post USA. It did not occur to me that I would be reconnecting with D with this much frequency and enthusiasm. I first saw her after many years at church one Sunday morning. She was back in town for that Chinese New Year weekend. We briefly exchanged greetings when we met in the middle of the church. She looked very much as she was when we parted ways 5 years ago - as pretty as ever. As she entered her car, I asked myself why must it be now.

I got her number and we slowly exchanged messages. It's been 2 years since I last met her in KL so many details our lives had to shared. We barely kept in touch over those years. She gave me a scarf which I carelessly lost in the student union during my first winter. I sent her a postcard from a restaurant in Napa Valley and sent her two Lizz Wright CDs for her 21st birthday in Glasgow. Both of us agreed that breaking up before I headed off to college was a sensible idea in the sense that it freed us from any commitments that could be severely strained by geographic barriers. We were literally oceans and time zones apart. Night was her day and my day was her night.

We've been texting each other so regularly these days. Not as often as we had when we were little kids in secondary school but frequent enough. We would bid each other good night just before we sleep every night these days. Sometimes she'll text me midday which I receive with much joy and happiness needed to fuel my day. We regularly reminisc our days together, reminding of things that we had to said to each other and of trips that we had taken together (i.e. Asap and Bundu Tuhan). We were pretty serious each other then.

We agree on being friends for now so I contantly try my best to be as 'friendly' as possible. Over the years, I have trained myself to supress my emotions (That's why my resignation caught my former colleagues and friends by surprise!). Part of me right now really wants to tell her how much she brightened up gloomy days at home. I would like to tell her how much I miss her too despite an impetuous 2-hour drive out of town would be a healing to my desperation. I am trying my best to conceal all these despite occasional leaks that I hope were subtle.

..

Life is absolutely unfair. I have friends from college days who have been going out and stayed together until this very day.

For example, my roommate K and E have been seeing each other since that fateful thanksgiving during Sophomore year. Someday I'll share the dramatic story on they became an item. They were lab partners in almost every class they took. Once, they experimented with not being partners where K and I paired up to work on coding projects for a algorithmns class. They discussed homework answers together. When exams were around the corner, they were next to each other in the library studying effectively. Today, K and E work in the same software company in the Bay Area. Despite being in different groups, they would meet up for lunch and drive back home together to their two-room apartment.

Unfortunately, it is not the case for D and I. I wish that time stands still for us right now and there is an Easy button like the one CircuitCity has which we can conveniently press and poof!, transports us to a parallel universe where such heartbreaking inconveniences do not exist.