I was just sitting here feeling so happy for someone. And then I started crying.
I’m lucky.
I’m so lucky, and I want to tell people that. I have a roof above my damn head. I have access to the internet. My parents have money to pay for my education. Heck, I have parents. I am attending university. I have a part-time job. I earn money. It’s unfortunate that I have physical and mental health problems. But I’m not dying. I don’t have a terminal illness or something that affects me every day.
I listen to music, and a lot of it makes me cry. Stupid songs about heartbreak that remind me of the past. Angry songs that remind me of angry times in the past. Songs about breaking up with friends and people betraying you. Songs with this kind of passion that make me feel. That make me look back on everything that hurt back in high school.
I’m lucky I can play music. I have a piano and I took piano lessons. I took dance lessons. I can dance. Other people are confined to a wheelchair and can’t even move.
I feel for those people. Why can’t they have a life like mine? It’s sad. I can’t give my talent to people. I can’t give health to people. I can’t donate blood because I’m too thin. I can’t donate my organs while I’m alive. I’ve given to charity. I’ve donated money for a good cause or helped by buying items created for fund-raising – little things, like pens, badges, keyrings. Things manufactured on a large scale, sold at an affordable price for normal people to be able to buy, knowing that their money is going to a good cause.
I can be a mean person, but I promise, that whenever I help someone in even the smallest way, it makes me feel good. It makes me smile knowing that I was able to help someone out. It makes me smile when someone is… heck, inspired by what I do. Anything. By what I write or sing or create or say.
I’ve cried out of happiness so many times. It’s a strange feeling. I used to wonder if it was actually possible to cry out of happiness. Now I can often feel that overwhelming feeling that comes with it, and some kind of warm feeling in my chest.
One of the main reasons I’ve cried out of happiness is because I realise how lucky I am to have James. Someone who accepts me for who I am, and who doesn’t judge me. We’re such different people with different interests but small things, like cooking, or going on bushwalks, are things we enjoy doing together. And he’s out of the country now, but I realise how lucky I am to still be able to talk to him online, and that he isn’t away all the time like many girls whose husbands are in the army or are away for work for long periods of time.
And then there’s Lilian. Never did I imagine that I’d have a best friend for eight or so years, and not have a single fight or blown-up argument. In the past, I had “best friends” who just drifted away, who I fell out with because they were temperamental, who didn’t keep in touch because we moved schools… and then there’s Lilian, who is still my best friend even though I’ve only seen her about four times in the past two years.
It just makes me cry. After being used and having stupid ex-boyfriends take and never give… I’m really glad I have James. I dunno, what they call them these days. Partners in crime. Now I laugh about it. I only recently learned that the phrase “partner in crime” colloquially means “significant other” or someone who is your close friend.
I was debating on the current title and The Game of Love for this post, but I guess the former won. (I don’t believe that time should ultimately define a relationship, but I like the number three.1)
I don’t think that love is a game. There are infinite ways… I guess you could see it as a game, but it’s a game that people all win in the end, because you’re loved, and you find love – it doesn’t have to be romantic. You could have family, or friends. My last post was about my ex-boyfriend whom I thought I wasted time on, and despite that, I know I’ve learned from that failed love. I have learned my lesson and I believe everyone goes by learning different lessons.
Tiffany wrote a post some time ago titled 5 Things I’ve Learned From Dating A Non-Romantic. Her post sort of inspired me to write this. I’ve decided not to write about my failed loves but to write about my current one, James. There are many things I’ve learned from him.
Never, ever judge people. First impressions are always wrong. And we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover because of that. When I first met James, we were probably 13 (or around that age) and he’d tried to fool me with a fake map as we had gotten lost at sport. I thought he was a bit of an idiot. To be a hundred and fifty percent honest, I thought he was weird and a bit ugly. That’s about as far as I let myself judge.
Needless to say, and obviously – I was completely and utterly wrong. If I kept that distorted first impression in my mind, we wouldn’t have become friends. I wouldn’t have found his sense of humour appealing. I might not have given him a chance. As my best friend, Lilian tells me that I seem to give everyone a chance. And James has told me that I always see the good in people, especially people he doesn’t like.
Having James (and Lilian!) say that about me really touched me. A lot of people dislike compliments, but having had a hard childhood, these things mean the world to me. Some people feel uncomfortable about compliments, but I appreciate them – I feel more uncomfortable that I can’t find a way of expressing gratitude.
This leads me to the next… Do not ever change. Maybe once in the past, I would have thought that no one would like the geeky and quiet ballerina that I was. I thought that people would go on thinking I was timid and boring. But James has accepted me for who I am. Even though I’m bitchy, moody and sometimes horribly cunning. Even though I’m short, hyperactive and ridiculously creative and mushily romantic. :’)
It has made me realise that there are people who love me for me. You should never change for other people. Never. There are going to be people who accept you for you.
You cannot change people. People have flaws for a reason. We will never know the good characteristics about people if they don’t have flaws. We will never know the good without the bad. Everyone is their own person, you cannot expect things out of them. Girls – you cannot expect to find a man who has everything you want: blue eyes, brown hair, buys you things, good at sport – what have you. In the beginning, maybe I didn’t like that James made snide jokes or that he slept early every night. But now it’s something I’ve come to accept. And to like. You can’t change a person. Change is inevitable and you cannot force it. People will change over time, naturally, and you must let it run its natural course.
Honesty is the best policy. You have to be honest. It’s as simple as that. You can’t go on hiding things from someone, anyone, not just your significant other. Some shit happened last year that I kept from James for several months.
It killed me inside. I felt terrible about it. I was worried that I’d lose my head if he found out. But I told him the truth, as I knew I had to eventually. And he was more okay with it than I could have ever imagined.
If someone loves you they will truly understand. I think it mattered to him the most that I was honest – even though I could have told him sooner.
Love = friendship. You cannot have love without friendship. You just can’t. Your lover should also be your friend, someone who you confide in. You do love your friends. But how can you love someone without having the foundations of something precious – things needed in any relationship, but built up in friendship? Trust, loyalty, just to mention a few.
There are only too many things I’ve learned from him, though those are perhaps the main few. We don’t always have to learn from current relationships. We might have learned through friends. We might have learned through past loves. Or failed loves. Please, share what you have learned from and about love.
James, I love you.
James and I have been together for nearly three years. ↩
It’s actually a rare occurrence that I write in such detail about my day. I usually find one solid topic to blog about, and manage to write a good five hundred words on it. Another funny thing is when I just write something, and feel in my heart that I wrote without thinking (more like a stream of consciousness)… yet people seem to like what I ramble on about.
Today I was thinking about the past, which I hate doing. I was going to university to get some help with changing my subjects (let’s face it, Georgina’s probably gonna do much better and enjoy Photography better than Illustration – not to mention, yesterday, as I tried drawing with a tablet, I realised that my drawing sucked), and as I sat on the train I just thought about what happened in the past. It’s something I hate looking back on as a lot of it was filled with self-harm and depression. It’s like a dark hole.
I thought about one of my ex-boyfriends, and after a bit of thought, I realised that I was completely a fool to have hung on. I know it’s hard to let go. Now I realise that he was such a douche.
Why I come to this realisation about six years later I have no idea, but it’s always worth blogging about, isn’t it?
Well, he’s a douche. We got along after the break-up, as friends. But I realised just how much I sacrificed for him. It wasn’t my life or my heart or my eyes. It was my time. Time wasted. Time. Something I consider so, so important now. Something I treasure a lot now.
A lot of people said that 2010 went by so fast. It did for me too. I feel that as I get older the years trickle by a lot faster. Even now, I see a good life ahead of me, and I have many goals, but thinking about how far it is – it’s not far at all. The future is so close. And to be honest, I actually wish it was here. I used to dread the future. As a child I used to dread growing up. It scared me so much. I didn’t want to get older. I just wanted to stay a kid. I believe that the reason a lot of us are kids at heart is because we get physically older, we even get mentally older, but we still hold onto the fragments of our childhood and yearn for times long gone.
As I thought about my ex, sitting on the train – I thought about the time I spent going to see him at music rehearsals, spending lunchtimes with him, spending time chatting to him. When really, I believe that I gave more than I took, and he gave so little. These days, I feel a bit stingy with my time. I feel like I want to spend my time doing things I find important. I’m a bit selfish too. I want time to do things for myself too.
On the train, I stopped thinking. I got out my notebook and pen and wrote a poem to use my time wisely. I love writing poems. I wrote poems to empty my thoughts. To look ahead.
I saw James today, and we dismantled my laptop and put him back together after giving him a good vacuum (and getting a bit confused with the screws). We chatted as we munched on chicken, salmon, buns and wraps. We lay with the windows open and caught the cool breeze.
Sometimes I wish I had a TARDIS so I could move through time and space. But as handy as that may be, I’d never know how precious time is. The same way we wouldn’t know happiness without sadness; joy without anger; love without hate.
Today involved time spent with someone who was worth my time and effort.
I don’t know where to begin and I guess I don’t really want to detail it. I never really like expressing problems on my blog… I’ve told people I generally like to keep my blog a happy place and a place for happy thoughts, but sometimes I have the occasional blog where things just go bloody downhill. Yeah… I’m sorry to say this is one of them.
Stuff is going on at home. I hate talking about it. I don’t like talking about it to people. I feel that if I blog about it, people are just going to ignore how I feel and what I wrote, and when it’s something personal, sometimes I feel offended when people ignore what I write.
Yeah, basically, stuff is going on at home, and it clashes with what’s going on in real life. I haven’t been able to talk to my friends properly. I was supposed to go out tomorrow, and see James again, and see Lilian, my best friend who I haven’t seen in a long time, and Dylan, another amazing friend of mine, who I haven’t seen in a year. It’s his birthday on Christmas, and we were supposed to celebrate tomorrow with a picnic, but because of what’s going on at home, I can’t. It’s made me not only upset and disappointed, but pretty angry.
Speaking of Christmas, it is not the most wonderful time of the year as that song states. It’s not. Maybe I only realised that today. I know it’s a great time for families to be together, and maybe friends, but I hardly get that. I’ve said this to a lot of people – growing up, my family was never big on presents. On my birthday and when it was Christmas I learned not to expect anything. I guess that’s why I’m a bit of a sentimental person and value even small pieces of time with others.
There are two things on my wishlist.
Time.
A better relationship with my mother.
The second thing is the reason why I’m in a horrible, upset mood. It’s all I’ve wanted. For ten years, I’ve never really gotten along with my mother. She doesn’t know that it really tears me up inside that the way I am is not a person she likes. I can be stubborn, obstinate, selfish, careless. Sometimes I wish more people would accept me for who I am. I sometimes don’t give a fuck what people think about me, but deep down, somewhere, I sometimes care.
There have never really been material things on my wishlist. No one can buy me what I want now. I guess I’ve been hoping for more of both. Hope. That’s all.
I had a friend who was Buddhist so he did not celebrate Christmas. I was a bit surprised. I was only about thirteen, so I was naive. I didn’t know. Earlier this week my mum was serving a customer and said, “Merry Christmas” as a farewell. The customer scoffed and said, “Don’t you mean happy holidays?”
Yeah, maybe you don’t celebrate Christmas. But what the fuck are you doing shopping in a store that is having a Christmas sale, then having the nerve to make a comment like that?
I really wish the world would spin in the other direction so that all the stupid people would fall off.
My friends can stay. I’ll superglue their feet to the earth to make sure that they don’t. They’re sneaking to my house to bring the picnic here.
I’m wearing a dress that says, “If friends were flowers, I’d pick a whole bunch like you.”
Bad/shitty news first. James is going to Hong Kong in the summer1, and Lilian is going to Malaysia. Sad, sad times when I shall be home alone without my two closest friends! And I can’t travel with either of them – mostly because of extremely worried and concerned parents, and a bit of a lack of money. You see, we’ve got a huge family trip planned for 2012, and we’re going to Indonesia – my cousin’s getting married and it’ll be five years since the last time we went there. It’s hard to believe that we’re planning so soon, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to be a bit organised.
But yes, I’ll be extremely sad when James and Lilian go; James misses out on our third anniversary. Which is very sad, since I don’t think we even celebrated the last few years. Or not that I remember! But he returns on Valentine’s Day, and hopefully I can see him at the airport.
You know, be one of those people holding a sign with someone’s name on it. A sign that says “JAMES“. Ahh. Then maybe we can go and have a nice quiet lunch for Valentine’s. I know the day is overrated, but it’s not like I’ve celebrated for it ever, really. :B
Other than the mention of such sad news, I have had a really stressful week. I really need to finish the last two reviews I’ve got. After this I don’t think I’ll be writing reviews anymore. They take up too much of my time – often five hours or more. I like helping people, but I don’t want to spend time on that anymore. I know I enjoyed them but after two years it got… it just got too much. I really enjoy doing a lot of “site stuff” but sadly, that doesn’t sit in reviewing anymore. It got bland and boring and tedious. And I know a lot of people can learn from the reviews I’ve written, anyway.
I had to choose subjects for next year, which was a pain in the butt. It made me so frustrated because I had to keep choosing and changing subjects. My subjects kept clashing with each other, and all the classes I wanted to take were held on Monday. So I had to choose a lot of other classes and sift through the list of subjects, choosing subjects they didn’t have requisites or didn’t clash with my other classes. All the times are planned – I just had to go right through it. I should be okay now. Some of my subjects don’t have classes open for choosing yet but I do hope I get the ones I want.
While it’s sad that James and Lilian are going to be away, especially because I wanted them to come to see Ben Jorgensen with me – that’s the whole blob of excitement. Ben Jorgensen, my idol and favourite musician – is coming to Australia. I cannot wait. And I’m actually going. Yes, I’m going. Sebby said he wouldn’t mind coming along, and Ryan said he might come along too. This will be the first show/concert I’m going to – yeah, not down the rock or metal road of music that I love, but still, a show nonetheless!
As I said, I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. The tickets are less than $20 per person, and he’s playing in January. I can hardy wait!
Aye. Well, James and I are talking about how many people hated us in high school. A lot. It seemed he copped most of the flak from some rather nasty people. Man, high school was bitchy.
Sigh, I’ve got a long weekend coming in. I’ve gotta hand in a lot of stuff and complete a lot of stuff. I don’t know how I’ll cope, but anything site-related probably won’t come until the holidays, just as Kat said. We’re both so busy with university, that’s just first priority now.
Or not that I remember! But he returns on Valentine’s Day, and hopefully I can see him at the airport.
