Friday, 10 August 2007

I am going away today.

In a few hours I will be making the trip to Heathrow yet again, alone again. Two years ago today, or thereabouts, was the last time I'd feel like I had back-up when I went back to Singapore. Emotional back-up like in the, About A Boy when Marcus says,

"Suddenly I realized - two people isn't enough. You need backup. If you're only two people, and someone drops off the edge, then you're on your own. Two isn't a large enough number. You need three at least."

He's talking about a mother and a father-figure as he goes home one day to find his mother's tried to kill herself. I guess it's a little different for me. Figuratively speaking, the two people I have now are myself and my family, broadly speaking, and the latter is liable to just 'drop off' and Jon was the third person, the back-up, the emotional support to help me face what I had to face, accept what I could not change, continue in spite of whatever past memories I had to learn to live with, somehow or other yet remind me that there was a world outside of the one I'd known and been born into. He was the back-up that would allay my fears and give me strength to know that the past cannot be changed but I had the present and the future to mould and shape.

And then when the third person, the back-up, drops off you realise the importance of the "at least" bit in Marcus' comments. That's when you need a group of close friends, who come round and pull you up when you fall down, who walk with you but then I guess everyone has their own problems and busy schedules and after a few months it's expected that you get up and start walking. Not being able to come unstuck after two years is edging into sad and pathetic. But then there are always exceptions.

When you come from a dysfunctional family, you always feel like you should fix things, you're always looking for the missing pieces to make the dreams you never had. Yet if you never knew how a proper relationship looked like, perhaps it is impossible to find something you've never known. People tell you to think about a time before when you were whole but what if you never were whole and were always missing something?

I guess we just keep going on. We hurt until we hurt no longer. Life can still go on in the most hostile environments, just look at the weeds. Here's to Jewelweed.

I will return on the 6th, that's the plan at least and that would be two years and a day marking the last time I would have someone to count on, the last time I'd have someone waiting for me to come back. Someone whose life would actually be markedly affected if I didn't come back. Someone I'd loved and who loved me back. What is that they said in Moulin Rouge?

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

It's funny how time changes the way you see good times and bad times in the past. The good things jump forward while the bad things recede. I suppose it's good to remember the good things and gloss over the bad in time. The opposite would make one rather disagreeable. However, in doing so, it also gives a somewhat warped view. Good and bad are relative things however and the passing of time erodes the trivialities and reveals the essences of things. The persistence of memory only exists because of shortcomings in the present. The essence survives and refuse to be drowned only because the present falls short of the past.

Oh gosh the spirit of George Eliot comes back from the ashes of A Levels to haunt me! Haha ... Speaking of books, I've just finished George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London". It's a good book, short and concise, yet able to convey his thoughts and observations with such clarity with a dash of humour cutting through the unpleasant issues of poverty without being patronising or belittling the seriousness of it all.

"And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs --- and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety."

I'm going to read 1984 again when I get back.