Crème de le crème of Love

I would always just be The Other Woman.

He told me he isn’t happy with her.

But when he made his choice, his reason was that he could not bear to let go of a relationship of two years.

Choice… as if he was only reading a menu in a restaurant, deciding whether to eat fried kueh tway or steak with cheese.

With a girl who can’t make him happy.

But then again, what is the definition of happy?

And please, who am I to judge what is happy?

I saw this coming. Afterall, it is the crème de le crème of a love triangle.

… and all the times when you said you love me, I kept quiet and thought

“You have a girlfriend”

I deserve this. I am in spite of everything, the other woman.

As Rachel said in Friends and I quote

“Closure! That’s what it is. That’s what I need!”

The other woman.

Whatever it takes to say I am over him, that is the best closure I could ever hope for.

“And THAT, my friend is what they call closure!”

Thinking back…

The only significant relationship I’ve ever had was my two years with I*.

When it first ended, it took all the strength left in me, most got lost during the course of deciding whether to break up, to pick up my life’s pieces again.

Suddenly for the first time in two years, I was lonely.

Sure. There were times when I felt extremely forlorn when I was with him. But the bed was never empty.

And knowing that the bed was never empty was enough.

We fed each other’s desires and fantasies of a relationship as much as we could, with as much dignity as we could muster.

Ironically, it was that that halved the lifespan of our relationship.

I realised my dignity was slowly fading and I no longer felt respected as a person, as his girlfriend, as his other half.

Knowing that a break up was inevitable for months in my head was horrible.

Knowing that he probably thought it too, was like a knife searing through my heart.

And knowing someone else would make it less painful for him right away…

And when…
I was finally single again.
Pre-break up, I was more enthusiastic about finally.
Post-break up, I was like a cat dragged through the bumpy streets of Miri.

Worse yet, I was NEWLY single.

If there is anything I hate more about being single, it is being newly single.

While the singles are optimistically embracing their status, newly singles are hurting and gloomily pessimistic about the future lying ahead of them.

While the singles flit and skip, the newly singles take some downtime to grieve.

While the singles trot on happily with their single marital status, I sobbed like crazy when I checked the box from In a Relationship to Single in Friendster.com.

And there was the breaking of the news…

Yes, ma, we broke up. Yes, pa, we broke up. And then the whole explaining…

Oh and there were the friends… our friends…

Join us for dinner tonight.
*pause* we broke up…
Then came the predictable gasps and whys!?

Whom would they lend their shoulders to?

My heart still scarred and bleeding… I now have to get used to being without him.

I had to stop using ‘we’ whenever I made plans with my friends. No more…

“We plan to stay in tonight!”

The most used pronoun in my vocabulary over the last two years is now almost obsolete to me.

Two years.

All that my past relationships had taught me is that it gets harder and harder to say I love you each time.

I am now wary of relationships. Yet I am still careless.
I am now cynical of love. Yet I still fall in love over and over again.
I am now angry at men. Though there is hope yet…
I am now hurting. Yet I know I am willing to be hurt again and again until I find the right person.

The astonishing thing is…

I harbour all these cynicisms and emotional baggage.
And yet…
I will want nothing else but the right person in my life.