The Pull Factor

It started out as this..

And then it went to this..

And now.. it's this...

I'm psyched like hell cos my cafe - my baby - from conceptual paper to actual outlet - is finally coming to live Friday!

Oh god... I have no idea how this is all going to come out. Add on to that - I have 3 drink recipes on the menu - without any alcohol in them, mind you!

Good Lord... please let tomorrow be Friday cos I can't wait to pop my cafe cherry!

The Wise Woman Said..

I had a surprise email this morning. In the midst of all the madness at work, trying to finish up what I could so I could go deliver good on my promise to my kids to see them, in the madness in my life of trying to help my lil girl cope with her daddy's new station in life, in the madness in my head trying to keep the demons at bay.

It was not the mail I had expected. But then again, it's always the unexpected that makes the most sense. And it said this...

"After reading your blog .. I realised how harsh i was in talking to you yesterday ... about asking you not to be true to yourself .. in emotions .. in feelings ... of course you have a right to be true to yourself .. and you should never hide it .. what I fail to understand is - why are you saying you need to be true to yourself now when sad, when you've lived a life of not wanting to be true to yourself when you're happy? Everytime you're happy, everytime you find someone, you go on a roll of receeding into your shell .. hence .. making yourself and the other person confused .. i know you don't want to be hurt ... but if you don't try, how would you know??"

In life, one can only take so much from another person. Sometimes we swallow the bitter pill of harshness cos we're paid to do so, like I had to. This morning. Bright and early at 8. Going with my pride in my back pocket to my Director, apologising for something that's not my fault. However, it had to be done cos I am ultimately accountable for it.

But most of the time, when I'm not paid to, I fight back in fierce rage when my friends say harsh realities to me. Thing which I know rings a thousand times in truth but which I am not wanting to hear said out loud. It frustrates the people who say it. Especially when I show a look that says I do not want to hear this.

Yet, I find myself re-reading this particular email again, in the quiet of tonight. Simply cos this person who said it, knows me best and has been thru half my life with me. She's been there for the good, she's been there for the bad. She's also been there for the ugly. And as such, she's earned the right to say these things to me above anyone else.

Plus the fact that she's the only who honestly have said this to me and for me to believe it, "Hurts me to see you like this and i wish i could give you the magical someone who would just sweep you off your feet. But then i think even if i did hand him over to you on a silver platter .. you would just reject-receive it."

It takes years of friendship, email exchanges, phone hours, tea-times and hugging the other while they cried to get to where we are. In a way, tonight, I am grateful for her being my friend. And these days, I am hardly appreciative of my friends.

If not for anything else, I know at least someone out there sees me as a diamond and cherishes me like one.

Thank you Mandy!

In the cold light of morning

I sat and have my first fag at work, pondering over my actions last night. Didn't do very much except drink vodka, chain smoked and ranted on my blog.

And when the vodka didn't help in putting me to sleep, i ramaged the whole refrigerator for medication left over that would have traces of sleep-inducing drugs in them.

A bottle of of my kids' cough syrup and 7 hours of sleep later, I am sitting at my desk wondering what am I doing with my life.

And I guess all I can say is this - I'm trying. Try my level best to keep my head above water, despite it all. Trying my best to stand my ground and fight to breathe and live another day, cos I have a lot to live for. If not for anyone else, it has to be for Lydia and Luke.

So this is me trying. And sometimes, I fail at it and that's how you get Defining Sadness, vodka at 5 and cough syrups at 10.

Eventually, I know I'll be fine. You just have to give me the leeway that I do not always land on my feet. And that when I fall down, it's usually in a really bad way.

So this is me. Trying.

Defining Sadness

Never listen to anyone but yourself. Always go with your gut feel. That way, the only one who could kill you would be yourself.

Never depend on anyone for anything. Always live with what your own two hands and feet could provide. That way, you know if you fell,it's only cos of your own clumsiness.

Never trust anyone. Always live with the belief that everybody lies, big or small. That way when it really happens, you knew it was coming.

Never reach out. Always be by yourself for every moment in life. That way when you need someone, you're already there for yourself.

Never let anyone else be the cause of your smile. Always find the reason within yourself to bring out the smile. That way when it happens, you'll know that it wasn't the cause of someone else's kind act.

Never go to bed, looking forward to the next sunrise. Always expect that it'll be raining when you open your eyes next. That way, when it is raining, you won't feel sorry you missed the sunrise.

Never fall in love. Always believe that good magic like that happens only on the telly or to everyone else. That way you won't go around stabbing yourself in the back with a fork.

My blog is not sad.

I am sad. My life is sad.

Just go away and leave me alone to wallow with my fags and my vodka.

Saving you...

I wanna rock-n-roll
I wanna give my soul
I’m wanting to believe
I’m not too old

I’m online with my best girlfriend. She who is trying to talk me out of putting my mobile phone on while we talk about why magic doesn’t happen to me, and the reason why I’ve gone and cut my hair short.

Don’t wanna make it up
Don’t wanna letcha down
I wanna fly away
I’m stuck on the ground

And for once, I am listening to her, in as far as putting my phone off goes. Cos I cannot stand it that people who tell me I am important to them can sideline me just that easily.

Watched all go by
Was it really true?
Is that what it was?

Was that really you?

And that’s something I have been struggling to understand off-late. I mean, do I ask too much? Am I what one would call high-maintenance? I don’t blackmail, I don’t threaten. I just stay silent and keep my thoughts as contained in my head as possible.

Is not talking all that bad? Besides, there never is a right time to talk anyways, even though it is always said, that when I’m ready to discuss something, the time never comes up. And so it stays in my head.

I’m looking back again
Tracing back the threads
You said it was a mess
Or was it just in my head?

Just last week, someone told me to not think so much. Give my head and myself a rest. I wish I could learn to do that. Trust me on this one. It is the one thing I would pay serious dollars to learn how to do. How to switch my head off so that I don’t get haunted in my every waking moment of the day!

Somethings gotta break
You gotta swing the bat
Too many years of dying
Why is that?

My best girlfriend says that I need to make myself more unavailable. More inaccessible. More busy. More not willing to do anything just to put a smile on someone else's face. But girl – wouldn’t that be living a life of lie? Not being true to myself, even though being true to me is like sticking a knife over and over and over again to my own back?

I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish I could be normal like everyone else and patiently wait for magic to happen. The thing is, I have gone and isolated myself for quite a long time, not letting anyone in. And now that I’ve come undone, it’s all done.

So, help me decide
Help me to make up
Make up my mind
Wouldn’t that save you?

I have taken big great strides from a life past. I gave up smoking for a short bit, until I needed it to get me thru the day. I gave up drinking for a longer bit until I needed it to get me thru the night.

And so I’m done.

Tell me now, would that save you? Would that make you feel better about yourself? Would that make your world more normal?

Or would you feel as empty as I am feeling?

For a 6 year old girl

I’m having a day off from work. And so, it’s a luxury to be at home at 5 pm, drinking my first glass of vodka red bull. Yes – there is a fresh bottle on top of the fridge and another one in the car. Have yet to decide if that one goes to the office or not. But that’s a decision for another day.

But anyways, what have I been doing on my afternoon off? Well, I went and spent some time with my children and my family – keeping them updated on what’s been happening at work and all.

In the process, I found that my lil girl is growing up and growing up fast. And she has to deal with emotions that I wish she had long forgotten; that of one person going away and never coming back.

Her latest run in with this would be of me working odd hours and thus having to leave her at my mum’s for the work week. Plus the fact that her daddy has got a girlfriend.

The former, it will end sometime soon. The latter – it’s something she’s gotta learn to live with if she wants this daddy to stick around, and not disappear like the last.

If there is one thing I want more than anything else this evening on the first evening star I’ll see, is for Lydia not to grow up and have a fate like mine. To have a life full of men who come and go, always saying they’ll be around but always breaking that same promise as well for someone else.

If there is one thing I want more than anything else for Lydia is for her not to feel ever that she is only at best – 2nd best in someone else’s life. Cos we’re people who should not settle for anything less than being the best in everything we do, anyone we placed as best in our lives.

As much as I want all these things not to happen to my lil girl, I see her history repeating itself. And while I can do something within my power to make it stop, I cannot deprive her of whatever short-lived happiness and memories she can build upon.

I know. I shouldn’t mould my lil girl into another me. All boxed up and caged in that when I do step out, I find that there is no real reason for me not to be boxed up and caged in like I was before.

And I so want to teach her a very important lesson in life that I’d wish my mother taught me. To never depend on anyone else but yourself. Cos everyone else is just gonna let you down someday and nothing would ever prepare you for it.

And I want to teach her that no matter how important they say you are to them, and never for you to leave them, they will eventually leave you in the end.

But they say that a mother can only teach so much. Everything else, she has to learn on her own. And unfortunately, this lesson that I want to teach her, falls under the second.

And so, I can only watch helplessly as her lil 6 year old heart will get broken once again. Simply because she wants to be the centre of his world but his world is owned by another.

Hauntings

Somebody said to me yesterday this “I did read your blog last night and found it particularly sad on some of the things that you have written. You really need to get on with your life barbs, and stop dwelling on the 'house with possibilities', as it seems to be something that is hanging over your head. He obviously has moved on and maybe you should too.”

The truth is, I don't know anyone
who isn't haunted by something,
or someone.

My blog has been described as witty, mind-boggling, eye-opener to new perspectives, dark and twisty, funny but never once as sad. And for this statement to come from a very dear friend, it does somehow make me look at Chemical Shooter in a different light.

It was the one place I went to, to unload everything that as in my head. It was the one place I went to, to say the things that never quite made it out of my mouth. It was the one place that everyone who knows me and care about me go to, to see what’s up with me cos they too have come to realize the real purpose of the Shooter.

And whether we try to slice the pain away
with a scalpel or shove it in the back of a closet,
our efforts usually fail.

Maybe I’ve done too good a job at keeping my true thoughts hidden away from sight and light, that it has become a part of me. Maybe my intent of decoying the state of life has become a way of life itself.

And it's sad cos the same person who made the statement, is also one of the very rare few who can actually see thru the smokescreen that travels in my lil bag of happies. It's sad, not because he read me wrong on this account, but rather, I realise that he has been nothing less than honest, yet I have probably been everything but.

So, the only way

we can clear out the cobwebs
is to turn a new page,
or put an old story to rest,
finally, finally, to rest.

And I probably wouldn't be able to, for a while to come.

~ All the characters have changed. Only the story remains the same ~