Rendezvous
15 October 08 : 11.23 AM
I went to bed last night feeling okay. The whole of yesterday, my mom kept asking me if I'd called or texted Helme or Dani, and I lied. She kept telling me if Helme doesn't want you, so be it. That I need to be just like her, I needed to be strong. But this morning, I felt unutterably hurt all over again. Sometimes I wish I weren't so weak.
I never talk about Helme here because of so many reasons. Firstly, I knew that Dani reads this so I was inclined towards self-censorship. On my end, it was a matter of not hurting him.
Secondly, we were never the romantic type together so it was difficult to write (you know how I like colouring my words). I can find magic in everything, but there was no magic with Helme. It was candid and grounded. No poetic imagery, no out of the world sweetness and no fervency. But there was something else, something else that drew me in anyway.
The pockets of sweetness laid not in its explicitness, but in my ability to find them and see every little thing like icing on the cake. Helme always liked (in his words) keeping it real. He would never be the type to look at me lovingly and say, you're beautiful. On the other hand, once when I asked if I looked good today, his "yes" had that defining tone of: "Duh? Did you even need to ask? What a dumb question!"
The first time we had an argument, he didn't appease me by apologising profusely or by promising the world. Without a word, he bought me 3 or 4 bars of chocolate and passed them to me in its plastic bag as though asking me to hold it. It was then that I realised, I wasn't going to get all the grand gestures but it pleased me anyway.
For Helme, when I say "the little things", I really mean the little things. The little things got me really happy. The way he'd never let my hand go when we're out, alone or with friends. Him hugging me a little longer than I thought he would. Him sending me home in a cab even when we're near his place. Once we were at his place, with the bunch getting ready to go out, I had this excruciating pain at my abdomen and he took a cab with me home and then went home again. He did things that inconvenienced him without me asking. This is special to me, because this is a guy who can be so nonchalant towards girls and I've seen it. Towards me, he was a perfect gentleman.
Little things told me that I was always on his mind. When at Coach picking a bag for his mom, he got me a keychain too because he said I was always forgetting my key. He can be out with his friends at 3am and my phone will ring with a message that tells me he misses me. How often he'd call me when he's not in Singapore. Like I said, no grand gestures, but sweetness all the same.
This by no means encapsulates the way he was to me, and I don't think anyone would understand except me, and perhaps his friends, who see the change. He too, was a person to love, because he's really such an amazing person. Ours was never one-sided, because I was good to him too in my own ways. Better to him than I was to anyone else. And for this, I think no one would understand except him.
But this is all so self-indulgent. What's the point in looking back and harping on what will never be again? I kill myself this way, because while everyone's trying to move on, I'm pulling on threads of the past hoping to go back there. What do I do now?