Day 3: Love as Addiction

Love is an addiction. Once you stop the connection with the person you love, your body will create a chemical reaction asking you to supply the substance. During my younger days, I was attracted with how opium influences the body. Strangely, some of my mentors tried it, so yeah, my attraction was totally justified based on my network. The interesting part of opium is the philosophy behind it that relates to Morpheus, the god of dream and sleep. I think love also works in that illusion, you dream about something ideal and you don't want to detach from that idealization, whereas in real life, love always has flaws. But as a substance, it gives you high where reality become blurry.

So I have been clean from the substance for more than 37 hours. A record that I want to add up until I manage to free from the longing to return to it. Yesterday, I was still a mess, my appetite was not returning, I left my room like a mess, could not work and at night, I was super tempted to break my 24 hours clean condition without him, but my dad texted me, so I was safe from repeating the cycle. 

The meaning of his name is Knight, an irony since he was the one who shattered me into pieces. I thought Knight should be able to protect the one he loves. Well, this is another wake up call that all of my imagination is an illusion, an imagination from the world of the Morpheus. 

Hopefully, I will get better soon. Cleaning my body from the substance completely.

Day 2: Allowing Myself to Grieve

Yesterday, I tried to do the no contact but failed miserably. I went to the supermarket and saw the salad he liked and I took a picture and sent it to him. I texted "I miss you" and tempted to do our regular video call before bed. Alhamdulillah, I managed to avoid the latter. My brain is broken, why do I want to be someone who does not want me? Irrational. But somehow, I can really imagine we live together. I think that's the worst thing about move on, you have to beat your own imagination and not the reality. The reality had given you all the information to convince you that he's not the one but your mind keeps on playing tricks on you. 

According to Mark, one YouTuber's love coach, to be able to break up, I have to list 10 things that I don't like about him. When I tried to do this exercise, what crossed my mind is that I hate that I love him. I hope this love thing can turn into past tense soon. 

The good thing is I managed to sleep although woke up several times. I lost my appetite as well, although I managed to force myself to eat. 

I tried to do rebound as well. Bad idea. I compared everyone with him and hate the whole process. 

I hope day 2 is more successful than day 1. 

Day 1: He's Getting Married With Someone Else

First day of breakup. I kept on repeating the mantra: 'he's getting married with someone else' over and over until my head could not think anymore. There was a constant urge to ask him to reconsider but I knew at the end, he would never pick me, it's never been it's never will be, so why prolong the pain. But giving up a routine was hard. I could not talk to him first thing in the morning, I could not share the little things I found during my days and I could not see him before I went to bed anymore. There was this hole in my days without him and the worst part was I could really imagine us being together. 

He had a strange way to make me laugh, with his witty jokes and weird sense of humor. Probably, that's the first thing that attract me to him. And even I knew that there was a chance of 60 percent to not be able to have him, I was willing to take the 40 percent chance because I had a strong feeling for him. I still love him. At some time, it's going to be a past tense but on the first day of break up, I still want him pretty bad. I know he is not going to fight for me, so this is for the best. But I still want him.

I hope I can be better soon. This morning I talked with friend for two hours. It helped, but living alone kind of making things more difficult.

I wish nothing bad for him. But I just want him to be mine and not with someone else.

I will be better. 

Hopefully soon.

Picture: sometimes the canal force water to follow a certain path that you hate. You have no way out.

Happy Birthday!

This time of the year where you reconnect with people you barely contact on daily basis. Sometimes, it feels nice but as a person who like to keep everything private, can be overwhelmed as well. But having a special day might be nice to reflect on many things, including many plans in life that seem far from target. As people say, c'est la vie, this is life, you just need to make the best of it, being grateful for having family, work with a nice atmosphere and the feeling of being in love.   

Be Kind

Sometimes, emotions get the best of you even if you try to be nice. Somehow, I always have this idea of the back of mind, guilty feeling for everything. I think being kind to yourself is one the hardest thing to do. You can reflect on people's reactions towards you, on whether you have been good or not, but you are not able to do it for yourself. Probably, that's why I have the tendency to fall for the broken one. Their selfness attracted me, although it will also be the one that ends the relationship. But that's how a nice love story always ends, right? Tragic. You need a good portion of sadness to make it memorable. 

This is not how I want my love to be, but sometimes, you don't have an option. Maybe, what has written is that both of your lives need to intersect for something else instead of colliding into one another. Maybe, it's the illusion that makes it hard. Reflecting on another case, I wouldn't fall for someone who cut his ties with sibling due to an illusion. I just don't have respect to that type of person. But again, people have their own stories and I always try my best to not judge, as long it doesn't interfere my life. 

Falling in love is everyone's right. What matter is how we deal with it, how to turn that feeling into a positive energy that can make us a better person.  

Hurt

"Hey darling, what time are you going home?"

"I will come a bit late, but will drop by on the shop to buy your favorite cheesecake."

"Thanks honey, miss you."

"See you soon my love."

Life is surely interesting. You find love when you least expected it but when you meet the one, you just know. Both of your quirkiness start to make sense. If sometimes you felt out of place, suddenly you understand how the strangeness is made to complement a missing piece. Perfection is not about you but how both of enable a beautiful symphony. And when your fingers meet for the first time, you forget how to walk alone. There is something strange about sharing warmth through the tip of your hand and how wrapping each other hand can create a different level of closeness. 

Somebody told me that when you fall in love, your world starts to gravitate into the other person. You feel a sense of completeness when he is around either by sharing the same couch or watching him eating next to you. You will surprise that watching somebody brushing his teeth can make you happy. Well, you still like presents but you start to find peace with mundane details of being together. A complete trust to share your deepest fear.

Conscious Detachment

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” Dr. Seuss

How to stop everything when things feel right? A synchronized weirdness that somehow ticks all the right boxes. At the same time, you know that there are a boundary you could not cross and the relationship will end anyway, sooner or later. Probably, I should turn the whole experience into a fiction, a version where two persons have to face a tragic ending. Maybe, by doing that, I can imagine a better ending for the two of us. Or maybe a version where they constantly fighting due to cultural differences and by having that imagination, I will be happier to be able to dodge a bullet.

I know I did stupid things. Trying to create a distraction that made me even miss him more. Probably, instead of doing stupid things, reducing the dose? It feels like drinking a sea water when you are thirsty, you want to get rid off the thirst but you even make it worst. 

My brain breaks ... I don't know what to do or what I want when the ending is clear.

Obsession

In a relationship, there are three elements involved: man, woman and the relationship. You can be a perfect person for yourself and the same goes for the woman as well, but if both of you are not compatible with each other, your perfections won't really matter. In imagination, you are perfect for each other since you portray the other as what you always have been looking. The absence of reality makes imagination more detached with the reality and thus, perfect. 

Obsession works in this way, you feed your brain with imagination that become less and less true. When you start to create a path to reality, you start to realize that your imagination has no resonance with what you have imagined. Maybe, for people with obsession, it is better to be hated than not to be remembered. And me with a short term memory could not even pin point what I have done to get this kind of obsession. Probably, I should stop responding text or email from strangers. The plurality of the whole thing made them nameless for me but probably not for them. 

"What makes you attract to me?" he asked. For me, it's really about space. People who confess their love tend to make everything about them. I love you, you made me happy, I spent hours thinking about you, the way your smile made me out of my mind, I could not work thinking about you. All of these reasons are about them, not me. They never asked what I want or how our life should be. Everything is about them and their minds. 

Sober

It's quite difficult to be sober when you are on a love struck period. You talk until early in the morning without really remembering the conversation. You know you are happy but could not pin point the activities that trigger the happiness. So yesterday we had a talk on how to take control of our lives again. We made a table on the positive and negative sides of what we did and tried not to pass a certain bed time limit. I think that's why people call it as falling in love, you don't really have control of what happen to yourself. And yeah, sometimes, the world becomes a blurry since what exist only your feeling towards him, nothing else matter.

Probably, the biggest downfall of being love struck is that you become vulnerable, you don't have too much control of your emotion anymore. The way he behaves influence how your emotions going to be. So currently we also try to detach ourselves, to give ourselves a sense of identity again, not got too entangled to one another. 

I never imagine having a self-control of being sober and just follow the flow can be hard. I always believe I am a human of logic, but yeah, my past has shown that logic failed when heart interfere.  

Sense of Deja Vu

"What did you do to me? Why time flies when I am with you? You are a time eater."

"Did you hack my system? Why can't I think straight when I am with you?"

Somehow these conversations gave me a sense of deja vu, a taste of familiarity to the new experience. We just talked or looked at each other in silence until he wasn't able to look at me and I lost my words, did not know how to react. I lost count on what rules we made and later on, what we dropped since it could not contain our emotions. We talk, we tease and we drive each other crazy. 

We like to make a story together. Hah, another deja vu. 

Are You Happy?

Well, that's a one million dollar question, isn't it? This article about success and happiness argues why success and happiness don't go together. I thought one of the possibles negotiation between the two is placing success as an indicator for happiness since I see many people obsess with success. After reading the article, I realize that both of them are built on opposite values. Their incompatibility is like arguing ~N is similar to N. It's impossible since when you chasing success, you always want to compete and your sense of achievement is built on how you can be special compare to other, whereas happiness is something that you achieve from inside, a sense of ignorance of other people's achievements. 

Does it mean happiness cannot go with success? For me, the question is not matter of whether it can be achieved or not but rather a question of means and ends. For people who are chasing success, a sense of 'happiness' is achieved when they get recognition of what they achieve, whereas for people who practice happiness, success is the result of being happy. If you manage to find peace from what you are doing, you are successful. I think this argument is kind of fall into an extrovert versus introvert thing 😅 Extrovert tends to find justification from outside, whereas introvert from inside. As an introvert, I find the extrovert exhausting, so this is my personal bias.

Do I hate success? I mean sure, I like to have my paper being published or able to get the first place for something. But the satisfaction does not come for the achievement but rather as a form of responsibility that come from inside. Well, at this point, I think I am walking on a thin ice since I don't like to disappoint anyone so I kind of seek justification from outside as well.

Well, I think at the end, we cannot escape from being a social creature. We somehow constantly being confronted by the social.