Why the blazes

If I don't really feel anything for him, why am I unable to sleep thinking about him? WTF is going on with me here?

Do I need to start protecting myself?

So asks the cynical optimist who is almost afraid.

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I wrote another part of this entry, unrelated to the topic above, then realised it is way too personal to put here.

How apt.

Matching grins

I'm in cutesy lala land, thanks to these two very energetic, very vocal, very damned tenacious kids.

Sis just landed with hubby and kids on Monday morning - and so begins my month-long dedication to all things family and loads of babysitting. Hopefully somewhere along the way, someone in the family will realise that hey, what I'm doing really is work and let me have time for that.

Quote of the day: "That's not work!" in response to me saying that I needed to spend time some time with work today and, when asked what that work was, explaining that I had to memorise and analyse scenes from a script I'm rehearsing. Real nice.

The kids are completely irresistible though, especially the girl. Gosh, I hadn't seen her in half a year, and she's now this fascinating little person who does all these amazing new things. I'm so not a kid person, but these two always charm me to pieces. They had me cooing. Me, COOING!!

Dance with me

Someone slow dance with me. Anyone.

Well, almost anyone.

"Strike up the band, let it play
Whatever it chooses and I will say
Play me a waltz if you will
I'll sit here and listen, waiting until..."

~The Waltz, Silje Nergaard~

Losing

Watched La Môme (La Vie En Rose) on Tuesday - wonderful movie, horribly depressing, utterly incomparable performance by Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf.

But that night, after post-movie drinks, chat, supper, when I eventually found myself in the welcome silence of solitude, I found myself thinking about something I hadn't thought of in over a year: a fear of loving so as to lose. Piaf had loved and lost so many, and so tragically presented in the movie, I couldn't help but be reminded of my own losses, however paltry in comparison.

That's a risk of swinging free. I not only forget how it is to love, I stop thinking how it is to lose...but I never forget how it is to lose.

First times and last times are always the most crimson fresh in the memory.

A lone figure slouching away down an empty tree- and car-lined street, orange under the street lamps, while I climb up on the fence to watch him walk away for the last time.

Pressing my face onto a broad, warm chest and weeping hard against it, and then letting go to let him walk past me to leave.

I realise I've never stopped loving anyone before the relationship ended. So every one that ended was an acute loss. Each one of them upon exit left a gash and a gap that filled with silent screams till they eventually filled up and healed.

So yes, I'm still deathly afraid of losing people I love or come to love.

Told a friend recently that being a cynical optimist where human relations is concerned allows one to know and understand all the risks and inevitable hurts that will come with opening your heart to someone, and yet still do so with an incredible amount of hope that the journey will be worth all of the hurt.

I guess some of the paths I took were almost worth it for the lessons learnt and their formative effect - I am who I am because of each one of them.

The fear of losing will never go away. It's just a matter of not letting it cripple me.

Letting you go

"Maybe I'll shine, finally free
Letting you go away from me."

Letting You Go - Jason Robert Brown

I didn't think I'd say this back then, but I am shining now, free, having let you go almost one and a half years ago.

It's good flying free.

I still think about you once in a while. But I don't miss you.