Dear K,

I was in a shop today with Th (Th, the one who shouted at you from across the street in Sydney, a long, long time ago - do you remember telling me about her?) and I saw a hair-clip thingie, the type one puts in the back of her hair, and it reminded me of a certain night once upon a time in Sydney, when we both probably felt like our worlds were turned inside out - I guess I had a bit more time to prepare for that than you did, but it still felt pretty weird for me. It wasn't even the same clip, so I had no right to go missing you - I remember yours was longer, and black with brown streaks, and this one was called (strangely enough) "the Crab" (why would anyone put a crab on her head? Only in England...) but it made me miss you anyway.

I miss you, K, KMC. I didn't think I would, two years down the line, but I do. You'll never hear all this, you'll never read this page. It hurts me so much to write these words to you, to walk home and mouth the words "I miss you" and know I still mean it, and to know that I can't SAY these things to you, I can't even hear your voice anymore because I put myself in self-exile and I don't know how to undo it, I don't even know if you'll want me to. I don't for an instant imagine that you miss me, although I confess at times I do wish you did, once in a long while. I don't miss you constantly, and I put this in that distressed letter I sent to you - which you probably got, and didn't see fit to reply to, although yeah I said not to reply. I miss you once in a while, out of the blue, when silly things trigger memories of you. And like you, I've become good at blocking things out, and the moments are fleeting but bad, painful. I'm writing now because I need to seize this moment to put my thoughts to paper, or net-paper as it may be, before I manage to stop thinking about it. I don't even know why it feels important that I do this, but, well I've shoved it out of the way so many times now and it's not changing anything. I still miss you, without having heard anything from you for two years. Does that make me a nutcase? Do I belong in a hospital bed with a big red button behind it for a nervous but beautiful medical student to pound on desperately when I start confessing the way I feel to her? The moment's beginning to fade, Th just called me to wish me goodnight and I'm beginning to feel slightly less upset, slightly less muddled, slightly dulled.

Do you remember asking me why you, why I felt for you? (Do you remember telling me bizarre things about how you felt for me? Or am I imagining those, or have you forgotten, or have you pushed those clean out of your mind now.) I've had two years to think about it, and I suppose I can do better now than "I don't know, it's just you". It's not just you K, it's not just someone like you, you don't have any assurance that if things had worked I wouldn't have run off with the first person who resembled you, I don't even know that myself - I just know that I haven't, and that's probably because I haven't met anyone yet who even comes remotely close to who you are. I tell myself that constantly, that someday perhaps someone else will walk into my life who makes me feel as strongly for her as I did, and do, for you. I hope to God that I'm right, and I don't think about it. But it feels this way for me - that it really was you. Your thoughts, your mind, your insecurities, your hopes, your humour, your sharpness, your frustrations. It was you, you stupid woman. I hurt to remember you now because I've lost you so completely from my life, and I feel like I need that little something you used to be to me. You represented something good and clean in my life, something simple (but oh so complicated) and straightforward that I don't imagine I'll ever see again. I felt for you in a way I can't explain but I know was real - not all these maybes or do I feel for so-and-so or do I just want something from her that I do now, not all this grown up mutualism crap, not this mutual dependency symbiotic semi saprophitic garbage that proliferates in the world around me. I wanted to give to you, if you had needed, I would have tried, if you were hurting, I'd want to be there, if you were under threat, I would defend you. I've seen other people since, well not really "seen", just met and perhaps dated fleetingly, nothing quite as real - or surreal - as you, and they're all wrong for me.. I don't feel for them because I want to stand by them, I feel for them because I want to better myself. Half of them have been loonies, and the other half just lookers but nothing substantial, nothing Real and three dimensional to me. I never told you this, but I wouldn't have cared I don't think if you'd looked any other way than the way you do - it's never been about looks with you. When you asked me why you and I said "I don't know" that was the simple truth - I've never known, with you. With other girls I can pin it down, and that somehow cheapens it, makes it less significant, less real. It's her face, it's her body, or it's her smile. With you, I've never known - what I'll be doing next, what you'll be doing next, how I'll respond to you, whether you'd respond to me, whether I meant anything to you at all, whether I'd miss you years down the line - and I've always erred on the side of disbelief. And for that fleeting year I dared to believe, and it was good.

I hope you don't mind this, but I still miss you, and I still remember you, and it's good in my mind, but painful.

Do you remember when you asked me if I remembered that day you came for lunch late, and some other friend had woken you up and you thought oh no and rushed to the club? I remember your asking me; I never quite got the significance of that one but I remember it anyway. I remember other things too, and I wish I'd said all these to you before I put myself into this stupid long cold exile that I have done - why, I don't know, but I've always wanted to tell my life to you, to share it with you (and that's the crux of it all, I just want to share with you, not to dominate, not to be dominated, not to give selflessly like a martyr, not to take selfishly like a prick, but just to share) words, thoughts, moments in time. Laughter, smiles and jokes. Time. Lives. (and not being able to share now cuts me up, it does.) The other things? I remember that lunch we had for instance; I remember your right thumb in a bandage thingie cos you'd had a haematoma removed from it (and I remember wondering how you closed a door on your thumb, and thinking she must have had her back to the door, she must have been kissing a guy goodnight - it just sprang to mind, and I'm probably wrong, but maybe I'm right?) And I remember that you were having Chicken rice. I remember that forensic science mentorship, and your tie and the little notebook and pen you had in your right skirt pocket (how that blue skirt had pockets used to intrigue me) and I remember the alcohol labs joke you ad-libbed. I remember you directing mahjong, I remember telling you it'd better be good, cos I'm missing german for this and really trying to say I'd have come to see it simply because you were directing it. I remember that morning in RJC when you came back to visit and that silly moment with my foil that I wanted to give you a kneeling salute - which I never got to show you. And instead I couldn't embarrass you in front of everyone and just lamely stood there and took your line about owing you money, mutely. I remember you leaning back against the rails, cool as can be. I remember outside Country Manna, Limin was there and we were waiting for you, and you walked up behind me and tapped me on my "blind" shoulder, and I fell for it. I remember you laughing, I remember the waitor explaining everything on the menu to us in gory detail, I remember your "left is right and right is wrong" quip about gay men, I remember your frustration afterwards at our inability to choose a place to go, after.

I remember having dinner with you and comparing hand sizes, like it was yesterday. That was me doing it I know not you, but I remember the feel of your palm against mine. And I swear you cheated and your hands can't possibly be that much larger than mine. I remember that night in Australia so clearly, that restaurant (I threw away the bill which I'd meant to keep as a reminder, but it was hurting me to remember, and I junked it in a fit of emotion, and its gone forever now) we were at, the jokes about credit cards, and bombs, and bottle-tops, and my stupid story about the Irish blokes I was living with, and I remember you. I remember you telling me to go on! It's funny, don't stop - do you know how few girls I've met who really appreciate humour the way you do? Everyone I know is just out for something, something selfish, something material, something un-funny. I remember your anger and bewilderment, and I remember you showing me the uni afterwards, (and I remember your far-out reaction to Paddington bear and that brings a smile to my face still) and I remember sitting on the steps of the uni with you staring out into the night, until your mom came to pick us up. I remember you in the car taking off that hair-clip - the brown-streaked one - and shaking out your hair into a mess, and looking back to say goodnight, and I remember how beautiful you looked, how sad, but simply wonderful, and I remember hurting hard that night.

I remember you bringing Jonathan to meet me, I remember how that cut to the bone and I remember resenting him and wishing it could have been some other way - and I remember thinking he doesn't look right with you, he's not funny. I remember him trying to play territorial lions with me, trying to mark you quietly as his, and I remember your reaction to him, and I remember the resentment rising in me, but I knew all I could do was hold my head up and pretend to like him, to hold back the anger and selfish heartbreak and chat with him about coming back to Singapore (!) to do his national service, or not, and about working - and yadda yadda, left unsaid, spending the rest of his life with you. I remember your chiding me subtly about not being direct enough, and it hurt so much, especially since he was there, in the flesh. And it still hurts me to remember.

I remember that night in the toystore, that silly ball and sticks game we played and those disengaging hoops that I could do and you couldn't, and I remember the way you looked, your fascination with the toys, that instant when we were both "young" again, and it felt good and clean again. I still go out with people now, I meet D and Anna and Th often for shows and stuff, but it's not as wonderful, not as good, not as... incredible. I remember the teenager I hung with for a while who had the looks - and I remember thinking maybe I could fall for this person - but with you it was more like "am I in love with her? I can't be, I mustn't be. It can't be. Why her." but knowing at heart, that I already was so. There was no "could I?" element about it.... just an inexorable "damn! I am dammit" thing.

I tried to call you the other day, when I broke for a while. First I couldn't find your number, and that drove me to distraction. Then I did, and I called your mobile and the number wasn't in service, and I panicked - so much. Then I tried your land line, and I got your answering machine (and in it you say "We're not home right now..." and I thought we? Are you married then? Are you living with someone? Or is it just a scare tactic? I wish I knew.) and I knew I didn't know what to say to you, and I wasn't going to say it to a machine, and anyhow if you really were living with someone it would put you on the spot having some strange guy calling up to say sorry and all sorts of shit, so I hung up. I hung up. It felt good to hear your voice again, but I hung up, my courage gone. And I don't know that I'll call again in a hurry, and I don't even know if you want to hear from me, or whether it'll just be a tired old game from long ago, or whether you'll be angry with me, or what. I can't decide if I'm more afraid I'll be greeted with apathy, or anger.

I'm not ranting here, I'm not. I don't feel deeply passionate or anything, I just feel sad, old and tired. Resigned, worn out. I miss you in a tired way, and I wish I didn't. Kenneth told me to forget you, that to move on I must want to move on, I should try someone new (pah, even if I don't love her) and I must want to forget you - and that's completely it. I want to stop hurting - but I don't want to forget you. I'll be damned if I block all those memories from my mind, because they still represent to me something good and wonderful. I'll be damned if I forget you.

So this little I know - I miss you. And all I can do is mouth the words quietly, on a frosty night, on the way home from an inane show about teenaged American cheerleaders in short skirts with lots of leg and panty showing. And wonder to myself that I really do mean them, after all this time.

These are my truths.

The moment's passed.

20th November, 2000.

Dear K,

another moment, another letter, another empty silence.

I watched Grosse Point Blank today and the girl reminded me of you - which was stupid because she didn't look anything like you, and was one loaf short of a bread basket.

Sitting in the cab on the way back from Th's place I watched London drive gently by - it's so empty and deserted and frigidly perfect at night, so bright and beautiful, and if I wasn't in the cab it would have felt so empty and eerie.

The whole scenario, guy loves girl loves guy runs away, was so ludicrous, and I guess so far from the reality that is what once was, and great, I'm getting garbled again. But I knew why he bolted - and I know your life certainly isn't on hold, and your books are still being written whilst mine are closed, and burnt.

So the guy goes back to his home town and the girl's put her whole life on hold waiting for him and everything's the same and she's pissed off with him but everything works out ok in the end - and it's so not the same. For one, we don't come from a home town, for another, neither of us is going back in a hurry, for yet another, even if we went back to pseudocity-home we'll never meet, the way it is. They leaned on the rails upstairs and watched the party below at their 10 year reunion - it was very much the kinda thing I do, and would like to do, with you, just sit, watch and talk. But I knew somewhere in here, that if ever something like that did happen, and if there really was an isolated upstairs spot to watch from, which in truth happen to appear so rarely - I'd be the one upstairs, alone, thinking, mulling, contemplating. And missing.

Do you remember calling up and getting my mom and disguising who you were cos you didn't think she'd be happy to know it was you? Do you remember giggling about it, and me giggling with you? I do :)

I can't do that for real anymore, or maybe it's just because I'm not in love with anyone. Similar situations arise and I can't giggle. I guess that's why I won't go out with anyone else, because it wouldn't be real, it wouldn't have any significance, I wouldn't be real. I'd just be making the right noises, just playing the right parts, and inside, just be... empty. and tired. And someday, I'd have to tell her we weren't right, and that she deserved more - someone who really loved her, someone who felt as strongly for her, as I (still do?) did for you.

I've lost a lot since putting myself into self-exile from you. I've lost my will to fight. I've lost heart. I plod aimlessly through medical school and wish I could find it in me to pick up those textbooks, to pick up my symbolic sword and face my battles grimly, but I've turned hedonistic. I need a quick breath of happiness to get through the day, I need a distraction - I need to stop thinking. To stop wondering where and what you are now. To stop remembering who you were. To clear my frigging mixed up head.

I don't remember what I wanted to put down here that was driving me in the cab, I know there was something important but it seems I've blocked it out now. I guess it's just along the lines that I hurt, and I wish some miracle would happen that would get me back in touch with you again. That my fantasies will come true, and that somehow, with God's grace, I'll speak to you again in this lifetime - soon. Not when I'm 60, not when you're dead and I try to get back in touch too late, not when I'm dead, sometime soon. Sometime in this life.

I so wish I could call.

Oh, I remember now. It came back for an instant, when I was about to upload this - when I let my guard down. Several times this week situations have arisen that have made me remember you. And you know, now I don't say anything. I just keep it inside me, just sit quietly and give good advice to my broken-hearted friends about forgetting and moving on, and I hold my thoughts within me. I wouldn't say it's because you're fading away or don't matter as much to me anymore - it still hurts as much to remember you, and I still have flashes of memory of you like it was yesterday that I first met you, and I remember that horrible moment I figured out how I felt about you - drowning, time stopping for eternity, that horrid, horrid plunge at the pits of my being, that "I must protect her" garbage - but I just don't talk about it anymore. Isn't that weird? At one point in my life I babbled to almost anyone about you (without naming names of course) whether they knew you or not, I wrote essays about you in Chinese class (what a laugh) and then I moped about you to people, and then much later, when I'd freshly inflicted this pain on myself I hurt to my friends about you, and now I just keep silent. This page too, nobody knows about... nobody at all. Not my best friend, not Anna, nobody. Nobody needs to know anymore, and I don't need to tell anyone anymore. And I can't. It's just for you I guess, even if you never, ever do read this.

25 November 2000, 4.32 am

Dear K,

it seems I'm writing you yet another virtual letter.

I've just read everything I wrote to you above; I haven't read this page in quite a while now. I still stand by the words I wrote - all those memories are still in my head, in the same excruciating detail; and they do make up an integral part of who I am today. They're good memories of a time long past. Ironically they hurt to remember, because of all the emotion I once poured into them, and because of the way they remind me that there's no way back to the days to which they refer; the younger, purer, good-old days; it hurts to re-read my pain, in a sense. And I do still - or a part of me does still miss you - for the you you once were. (You're probably recoiling now and thinking I'm still the same me... but that's not the point. I don't know who you are, now... I just remember who you were, then.)

And yet I write these words neither to let you know how I'm still feeling, (nor to lay a "guilt trip" on you --- which I swear I never, ever intended to do at any point during the time I knew you - for the record, even if you don't remember it anymore, it really hurt me when you called me manipulative that last night we spoke) nor to flog a horse that died, decomposed and decorporealised eons ago, but to let you know that I'm doing okay. More than okay, in fact.

Miraculously I've met someone else who affects me as much as you once did... someone completely unlike you and yet - as blatently Right. Someone I feel for as intensely, and yet... doesn't burn to touch, doesn't hurt to know. Who burns back as fiercely as I do, and yet... completes me. And makes me feel, through no effort of her own, cleansed, renewed, and alive again...

I don't know why you haven't been replying to my emails, since the time I called you to let you know I wasn't hung up over the past anymore... perhaps an up-and-coming, big-city A&E SHO (or is that registrar, now?) simply doesn't have the time or energy to go replying to emails that don't matter, or perhaps you don't check your two accounts anymore, and have a new email address of which I'm not aware. Or perhaps you're just playing it safe and pretending you never got my emails... what a nasty thing to write, no?
I don't know whether you'll ever read these letters, either, whether I'll ever give you the link to this page. I don't even know why I'm writing on this page one last time, maybe it's just to "complete the circle" and close off that last link; perhaps this is simply symbolic, or perhaps I will someday email you one last time, if you don't reply to my latest email, with this URL.

I do know this - I do still miss the friendship we once shared... but I'd never, ever ask for more. I have so much now that I wouldn't give up for the world... and yesterday simply doesn't seem to matter in the same way, anymore... except perhaps to recall, nostalgically, once in a blue moon.

I can't even write that I love you still - as a friend - because we've become such complete strangers...

So it seems you were right, after all. I did finally fall for someone else - do you remember saying that would happen, in Orchard MRT station, half a decade ago (was it only 5 years back?) just before you set me on the wrong train on a fast-track to nowhere - or rather, I was lucky enough to meet someone else I could fall for, for real, this lifetime. And it only took three years...
I hope that wherever you are now, you're as happy as I am today, with someone you love as much as I love her, now, and, who loves you back in return as much as she does, me. I hope that you're feeling as lucky as I do today. Someone who keeps you as warm at heart, as she does, me.
I hope you never lost your faith in God, either... I don't expect you to have, but so many of the people I once knew, have done now. And that would be such a shame...

I wish I could have said these all things to you in person, because, as someone once put it, "letter's never do justice"... but then again, sometimes certain things, rarely it seems... are less appropriately said directly.

(And I really do hope you send me a copy of my Foolish Games score, back...please?)

Be well always,
Grace and Peace

XZ

12 July, 2001, 20:30 pm