homerun

i am really a voracious reader. i read everything! from newspapers to tabloids, magazines, digests, paperbacks, hardbound novels, you name it...and most of the time i read on things that touched me, things that repulsed me, stuff that made me happy & sad, stories that i want to happen to me or some that i dont, stories that changed my outlook in life, things that happened to me or the similarity of it. but nothing has ever really hit home more than this book..."CAUSE CELEB" by helen fielding. when i read it, it was like she was writing about me. it may sound corny but i felt like i was reading about myself, like all the heartbreak that came from a relationship gone bad flashed before me.

well here are some excerpts...

...for the first time since i had met him, i began to believe life was possible without him; that it might be nicer even. previously i had begun to fear that there was something secret & horrible about me which i didnt understand. that would explain why sometimes he was nice to me & loved me & sometimes he didnt want me at all & was vile & distant.

...it was stop, go, stop, go. i'd just start to get my teeth into the pain of really breaking up & he'd turn up & offer to stop the pain. i should have just walked away but i couldnt release myself.

if only your mind was washable. there have been so many times since then when i have wanted to lift off the top of my head, like the top of a boiled egg, take out my brain & rinse it under the tap like a dirty sponge, squeezing it over & over again until the water ran clear. then i would take the hosepipe & flush out my empty head with it, getting out all the gunge, pop the nice clean brain back in, give the top of the head a bit of a hose around & pop that back into. then i would not be sad anymore, not hurt, not disillusioned but clean, naive & jolly again.

...it was a mad familiar dance where he would duck & dive & twirl, hold his fluctuating feelings above my head, drop them near my hand & whisk them out of reach. what was i doing? trying to pass or fail? as if the way he felt had anything to do with what i was worth. as if love was something you earned like a merit star & if i followed every single instruction in every single magazine that month..., never crowded him, always supported him yet was a self-sufficient person in my own right, he might decide he was inlove with me rather than just having fallen for me even if he didnt exactly altogether love me.

...i disengaged myself from him as coldly as he had disengaged himself from me so many times. "you think you can turn me on & off like a tap. when you need me, im there. when you dont want me thats fine. i'll still be there the next time."

...the relationship limped on for awhile, but it was no good. once the scales had fallen from my eyes, it couldnt work. the whole thing had been based on my desire to win him, which made all his inconsistencies & cruelties seem like obstacles to be overcome rather than the unappealing flaws which now stared me in the face. i was horrified at my own coldness of heart. had i been in a less extreme mood perhaps then i would have thought harder about love, about how it means taking the whole package, good & bad. how it had been my fault too, for letting our peculiar dance begin & continue as it had without standing up to him before. but everything looked black & white to me now.

...what was i to do? i felt as though the whole platform on which i had been building my life was crumbling away. i had thought that finding the sort of consuming passion i had found with him was the answer to everything...but instead, i was swimming around in air & nothingness. i couldnt find anything to put my foot on.

...he explained about the weakness of my character, how i had made him feel trapped, pressured because i loved him too much. how i was superficial, silly, looked at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, how i had ruined his life with my unwanted presence, how it had been my fault for not being stronger. then there were the others, extolling my virtues, telling me of all the things i had awoken in him..eventually he stopped.

the relief was overwhelming at first. it was wonderful to be quiet & alone, to get on with my life. but still, i was very sad because i had lost my belief in love & in myself. the fact that i had eventually swung the seesaw with him didnt help. what was the point of love if it was a game of see-who-cares-less, if it was such a ridiculous carry-on? what was the point of me, if i allowed my whole life to center on it then mucked it up?

at times, i got relief by turning him into a monster in my head. maybe there are just men like that in the world, i thought. men who have to be in charge, men who have to punish those who awaken feelings in them which they cannot control. men who will lure you with tenderness till you believe you are safe, then slap you down. men whom it is impossible for anyone to love without losing their dignities. men who have to damage those who love them most. but then i had fallen inlove with one, so what did that make me?