Looking back over the last few years, so so much has happened. My first post was dated 26th September 2004, and in true naivete I tried to maintain a degree of anonymity, hiding my name behind a pseudonym I thought was cool, and posting a pretentious piece trying to deceive the reader on who or what I am.. I suppose it lent me an air of power to believe that I could say what ever I want without worrying whoever read it wouldn't know who I am, when in all actuality, I didn't really have anything to say... Well today I feel that I do have something to say.. Nothing earth shattering, nothing world changing and certainly nothing that would echo throughout the ages... I only have my story to tell, and to me I suppose, its the most important one I have...
Since my first post so much has happened to me in my personal and professional life that a little post like this wouldn't do me any justice but then again, its up to the reader to decide that. I've loved and I've lost, I've worked and I've skived, I've lied and I've cheated at the same time I've been brutally honest. I've been happy, I've been sad, I've peeked over the abyss of pure depression and happily skipped back to normality. My adventures truly though have been based on my more primal urges, to be loved, to feel safe, to feel fed, to feel lust. Yes I suppose that's my one driving force, lust. A strong urgency to satisfy myself with all the physical and cerebral passions that I can handle, guiding my decisions and contaminating my resolve. In my great pleasure, I tasted great pain. Lust was my one vice, lust for everything that could stimulate my senses and excite my emotions, my greatest failure was being weak to resist.
Maybe it was my masochistic side that drove to love people who couldn't love me, and to allow people I couldn't love to fall with me. I don't know, all pleasure for the ride. That beautiful ride down a meaningless road, that fell beneath my feet one wonderful step after another. A journey to nowhere, yet it led me here. A verse from Crucify Your Mind by Sixto Rodriguez quite clearly describe my mental journey over the last four years:
"Was it a huntsman or a playerThat made you pay the costThat now assumes relaxed positionsAnd prostitutes your loss?Were you tortured by your own thirstIn those pleasures that you seekThat made you Tom the curiousThat makes you James the weak?"
Four and half years ago I came back from the UK. I came off the plane lost and confused. A failure in my own eyes, I just lost my job and all my money and had to resort to one more "Get Out Of Jail Free" card courtesy of my dad. Prior to that, I was in a good job, nice pay, great perks, I add to be crazy to quit, but I did. I joined up on a course promising me the endless wealth and wonders bequeathed to those lucky enough to obtain an MBA. It was tied to a meaningless job in of all things, a chocolate factory. I went along to enjoy the ride but unfortunately there was a ticket that needed buying; a job to do and classes to attend. Obviously, I tried to do both and like a juggler being tosses to many eggs, it all landed on my face. Scarred and bruised, with my tail tucked neatly between my legs I went home to mum and dad, with nothing to my name except one last wad of money amounting to nothing much and a filial promise to reinvent myself; which to my credit I eventually did.
Finding myself in my native land: Malaysia, I looked at a many nooks and crannies to find my niche and to forget the past. The past, yes the past. Within it lay the next biggest mistake my life, leaving the one woman who until now, and I suppose ever since who truly did love me for all my mistakes and misgivings for another who never really could. Reinvention means to smash what was in the past and build what is left into something new. I left the one woman who loved me who I wasn't related too. She pretty in her ordinary way, and more intelligent a woman than I could handle. Yet for all my misadventures she had stayed true to me when I was so obviously wasn't in return. It all does seem clear in hindsight. Try as I may to put as many girls in front her and push her firmly into the past, she does occasionally resurface in my psyche and I still love her for it for I suppose that's all that I have of her left.
The next two years saw me playing the banker in a job I didn't really care for but was fortunate to be surrounded by people who I cared for and whom, I hope care for me. Within those two years I found my next great love. A love who I thought I loved, and who loved me for all that I wasn't and all I couldn't hope to be but took that as a promise for me to break. So my next leap of faith, jump into the unknown was of course to propose to this woman when my heart wasn't truly hers. As the embers of my past relationship glowed and slowly died, the next great adventure was through pain and sorrow nicely which nicely tied us together with a gold wedding ring.
The only thing we had in common was that we liked crab, a particular type of spicy curry crab of which we ate copious amounts as we had nothing else we both felt passionate about, together. I know she'd kill me for saying this, but seriously she has other reasons to want my head, but I think I preferred the crab over her in bed. This was a relationship that surely wouldn't last, as many a problems can be solved in the bedroom, many disagreements can be unwound and untangled, nothing more gets you eye to eye than if you're lying side by side. We didn't even have that as an outlet in common.
So our love dried up just as I was making the next big leap into the next chapter of my life, a reattempt at a MBA, different country same degree. By this time it was a year in to our marriage and the string that attached us had but severed. One final argument, one of many I may ad sealed our fate as unfortunately being a muslim in a muslim country one word from the man and all deals are off. About our arguments, a friend once told me in the strictest of confidence so I won't name him, he said "Brother, every time I see you two together, your either in an argument, going to get into one, or just got out of one." That about summed up our version of marital bliss. I can't blame her, she was looking for a version of happiness that I was more than incapable of doling out but somehow insinuated that I could. She couldn't handle my version of how the universe ticks and how happy couples should be. I on the other hand couldn't handle the constant suspicion she poured onto me as she feared I would do the one thing I've never been capable of doing, namely picking up some strange girl in a bar. I never managed to do it when I was single, and I didn't bother trying when I wasn't but the suspicion of my cheating ways which wasn't caused us to be just that, "wasn't". My fault was me being me, hers was believing that I was something other than me.
By our 14th month of nuptial heaven we separated on unforgiving terms, well at least she was unforgiving. At this time, the cakerawala made another turn and I was left by myself once again attempting for my MBA in a foreign land. It's been seven months into our complete separation and I still shed a tear for the both of us as I know she sheds none. I stand now on yet another precipice knowing not which way I'll fall but hoping desperately that I'll topple into a new job in this new land and another piece of paper to hang on my wall. Wondering if I will yet again, be un-alone but scared to give in fearing I'll give out. My face firmly to the future, its winds tantalizingly nipping at my clothes, an older slightly more wrinkled man. Another roller-coaster promises to carry me down a new triple-looper in my life. Hopefully this time, things will be different but I know oh to well how they usually stay the same.
