Needless

Just spent what was probably the best two nights of this year, probably deserving the "best" title for having come back-to-back. Am currently exhausted from severe lack of sleep, but still riding on the feel-good factor of (almost) carefree fun.

Amidst tango-music, sensory rapture and puns about wood, lesser-known truths and the re-education of Royal Wee, I realised something else.

All this was experienced and thoroughly enjoyed without needing anyone.

Don't get me wrong. I need my friends and I love them, and since they make me laugh so much, they're good for my heart in more ways than one (did you know laughing stimulates your cardiovascular system?).

What I mean is there was no feeling of needing a Someone to have times like those. That there is no need for any Someone, period.

Finally, I feel the cold, hard walls of my defences coming up once again, secure and strong. Not impenetrable (whose are anyway?), but strong and cold nonetheless. Having control over my heart again is empowering, if lonely. But one has to stay lonely to be strong enough.

I let people in, especially my closer friends, but only to an extent. I can't expose too much of myself, because the exposure of too much vulnerability is a precarious thing. I lose a bit of myself each time I open up too much, especially to someone who won't hold me when I do. And there's no one to hold me now anyway. I don't want them to, and yet I want them to, all at the same time. That's the duel that one must constantly have between their hearts and their minds, and this is the delicious duality of human nature. But it stays delicious only when it's in a Hollywood movie when the heart wins in the end.

I've always followed my heart, and it puzzles me when people call me too practical when it comes to people and relationships. There's no doubt about me following my passions work-wise, and I've been envied for it (well, for possessing the passion, not for the material gains). But strangely, even some of my friends fail to see my passion when it comes to the ones I love. Each time I take a risk, it's a triumph of passion over sensibility. My recently-dead relationship should be testimony enough for that, for all the uncertainty and difficulties that were ploughed through with sheer strength of passion and commitment, through the foolish belief that such risks are worth taking. Why do I believe it each time? Why the triumph of hope over experience each time? I'm always passionate about the ones I love. But perhaps it's not worth it. Protecting myself is becoming more important with each disappointment.

But there's that duel - the cold walls and battlements, securing a warm, beating heart within, fragile and dreadfully vulnerable on its own, dying to burst out of the walls but allowing the walls to do their job, knowing it's a dangerous world out there.