Growing Apart

The moments before I fall asleep are usually filled with the most clarity. It's the time I stare into the darkness and reflect on the day that's past. Sometimes it's when I'm most emo, the way I've been feeling prematurely homesick some nights.

I have a deep fear of changing. Of forgetting, and of loving people less once I'm apart from them. The first time I went away, I cried over the phone because I was afraid I'd grow distant from my family. I always remember Mom's reassurance, 'If you drift away, don't you think I'd pull you back?'

I think it comes from experience. We've all had friends we were once close to, and do not really regret losing today. My theory is that we have a certain limit to our capacity for immediate love , care and attention for others. And usually this extends to the people you are surrounded with and are in close proximity to daily.

There is simply no time to keep up all relationships you hold dear, at least not equally and indiscriminately. That is why, when I'm in Malaysia, I inevitably grow distant from loved ones overseas, and vice versa. To worry about this matter seems a ridiculous waste of time and peace of mind, whereas to let it be seems to let relationships erode naturally.

Which is why I am afraid whenever I have to move. I hate how I'll grow accustomed to life elsewhere and I hate how everyone I leave behind will grow less important to me.

But I must always remember that feelings of distance is only a temporary condition of the heart. Again and again, I've proven to myself that it only takes a little time spent together with a person for things to feel the same as before. We should never be fooled by the pretense of feeling changed. Love is an action, not just a feeling, and sometimes we need to exercise this fact to get past the initial 'awkwardness' when we reunite with someone we've left behind.

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I've been abusing my stomach these holidays. I've spent at least 50% of the time eating out (wasting money, too) and lots of times, eating unhealthily. So, after last night's tom yum steam boat, where I mercilessly drank bowl after bowl of spicy soup, I woke up with indigestion. Worse, I stuffed myself with bak kut teh during lunch with Pei San at Klang today. Couldn't let the huge meal go to waste, after all. Now, I've to skip dinner because I can't get anything down. And maybe lunch tomorrow. Eat in haste, repent in leisure.

I've started rereading L. M. Montgomery's series of Anne of Green Gables.
It's so easy to get all excited about love and romance again, when the writing is so sweet. But I admit to blazing through some of the long winded passages.