I finally mustered up enough courage to unpack the last box of my things. It has been quite a while since I got back, yet as soon as I opened it, the smell of home gushed out and before I even knew it, I was fighting back tears. Feelings and memories came rushing back like a tidal wave, washing over me and pulling me under, back to the place where you were mine, and I was yours alone.
Someone greeted me today with a “How are you,” and, absentmindedly, I replied “Dandy.” As soon as the word left my mouth, I regretted it immediately because I could feel my chest tightened as tears welled up in my eyes.
As I hauled myself into bed last night and dropped down on the pillow, I thought I caught a whiff of your scent and started sniffing around frantically to see where it was coming from, even when I knew that it couldn’t have been because the sheet and pillowcases have been washed ever since. I think that when you miss a person, the thing that always pulls you down is the way they smell – not their perfume or body spray or the soap they use, but just the simple, genuine scent of their skin that no one else has – and I was missing you.
It was the first time that I made acquaintance with the term “Passive Suicidal Ideation.” What this means is that I’m not actively trying to kill myself, but if death comes, I would have been very happy to die.
Even though I said that things are getting easier, songs that speak our story like this one still tug violently at my heart and bring tears to my eyes. Despite my effort to keep my mind busy during the day so that it won’t wander into the rooms that I’ve carefully sealed away, I still dream about you every night. Brains are stupid.
Now that I think about it, a lot of the things you said post-break didn’t make sense. It was as if your words and actions were trying to prove two different, opposite points, and it got me thinking: Perhaps you were just looking for a way out. We loved, but I’m starting to realize that we couldn’t deny the fact that I wasn’t enough for you, so you made up all of these excuses to make yourself feel better about dropping the ball on me, about walking away from everything we had, about crushing the woman who set you free, who shared your plate, your bed, your bathtub, your life, your dreams; the only woman who had ever loved you the way you should be loved.
To which you said, “The problem is: there’s no one like you, and there’s no one like me.”
And to which I replied, “Good, because I’d hate to have my heart broken in the same way twice.”
Which was true, to a certain degree.
Today is a day to celebrate and appreciate fathers all around the world. However, since the one who’s been carrying both roles in my life is my mother, I’ll spend the day to give thanks to her.
I still remember my early elementary school days. We were still living in Vietnam back then. Every morning my mom would take me to school on her old bicycle. We didn’t have enough money to be able to afford a motorcycle like most people in the city did. One time, Continue reading
This is a question that not a lot of people ask themselves when their relationship ends. Naturally, the person who breaks it off feels liberated, and the person who gets broken off with feels abandoned.
At the beginning of the end, Continue reading
“The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know whether they will miss you or forget you.”
– Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
So here’s the thing: Up until this point, I have gone through two long-distance relationships. You might say “Two isn’t a lot,” but hey, loving from afar is way more draining and challenging than you can imagine. If you’ve been in the same shoes, you understand. The bittersweet feeling of knowing someone is there for you, but isn’t actually “there.” You can’t touch them or hold them or smell their hair or taste their kiss. It’s exhausting: yearning and longing for someone. Don’t feed into any of this “your bodies are apart, but your hearts are always together” bullshit. That’s not how it works. When you love someone, you would want to be close to them, to have physical interactions, to feel them right there next to you. Intimacy is just as an important part of a relationship as feelings are.
Helena Chou 