I may never fully understand, but every time it rains the skies clear. We never see God's hands when it rains, only when he pulls the clouds apart.
Watching my beloved sleep, I'm thinking of a love I once had. You may think I'm ungrateful, for even remembering a loss, seeing that I'm one of the few lucky girls in our society. I am not, ungrateful.
I do realise than when J and I were together, we were never happy. Not only were we never happy, we fought, big time. He was lighting I was thunder. I held on to the belief for so long that he was the one, that there could only be him and no other. The belief of perfection. Maybe we were, there was nothing wrong, no loopholes, no instability.
Yet neither were we a gift, to each other or to people around. Friends were telling me if this guy was serious, he'd be serious, he'd be worth the wait. Two months before Gabriel and I got together, he himself told me if J was worth everything then I was to wait. So I waited, shunned, pushed away, abused, scolded, I waited. Stupid, yes. But love is seldom smart, and when it is, it's extremely subjectively biased. There is never a right or wrong in love.
When a chance for a Prince Charming opened, Gabriel slid right in, only because he was standing behind the slot in the first place, ready to pick up the slack where others put off. He wasn't perfect, he isn't perfect, and he may never be perfect, but he makes imperfection work for him. I've learnt from him, that imperfection is our individual perfection. That no one can point out our imperfections simply because our imperfections are different from theirs.
Looking back at this loss who recently contacted me, I am upset. Not because I lost a chance for perfection, but because there was a chance for perfection, and to chance someone else's perfection I was put aside. Flattered much as I am that he would seek me in time of need, after a strong verbal bash down a year ago, it puts into perspective what I clearly see now.
We all have our weaknesses, our holes in the wall, that confusion. It's how shallow we choose to be to show people, how strong we pretend to be, how we deal with it.
Some people, with their inadequacies of dealing with insecurities, hence the word insecurities, trash and show the world their patheticism.
Others have what we call best friends. One outlet/channel of weakness, where this one friend knows your deepest darkest secret. The one friend who always knows your secret crush before you know it. The kind where oops and sorry don't go together. The one where you go to when you are weak, where people see that you have actually have a sense of vulnerability.
Either that or we have a basketful of friends. One from primary school who knows you like the back of their palm, the one from secondary school who knows what you did last summer, two summers ago and three winters ago on that rainy night. Then we all have that tertiary school friend. The friend/fiend/frenemy. No points for elaboration.
Then there are the perfectionists. They are poised, perfect, polite, every P that's good. They are your people persons, the personality, the one everyone wants to be. Strong, picture perfect, never a hair out of place. These are the people who will never even show that they have a problem. They solve it themselves. They get it done. They do it, and better than anyone! And at the end of the day, they sit at the edge of the road and wonder who their friends are, for they have none. Wondering what life could have been more, had they had more friends and less work, if they were less selfish with the world and more selfish with their self-worth and image.
I should know. I am a perfectionist. I want things done, and I want things done my way, and if you don't do it my way, I may as well do it myself. But through my five months with my beloved, I have moved from being the fourth person on my list, to being closer to the third on my list. I do still have my moments, my idiosyncrasies that didn’t leave just because I fell in love.
Looking back now at that failed relationship, I realised that the image for him to upkeep was more important than mine. I was willing to let go of my entire life, to put my life on track, to give up everything I'd worked for, for him, he wasn't. We were both perfectionists, that image was so important, that weakness is prohibited. Only how important is that image to us, is the stronghold. I let go of that perfection, and he wouldn't. It broke my heart damnit. He told me to go away, and I did, eventually. And now to see him asking me for help, is scary.
The one who'd put me down previously, the one everyone deemed was the better man, the hero. To see how far I've come, how much better I turned out within a year or less, while seeing him, hanging in the same position I saw him two three years ago. In our two years minus minus minus, he was my idol. I realise now, I WAS better, a better perfectionist, and a clearer one. Perfectionists want to either be seen, or be hidden. I wanted to be seen, he wanted to be hidden. Our relationship was confined to the four walls around us, and the lock on the grate of the door. I am flattered that he came to me, the one outlet of cringe and helplessness, I am also at the same time aware, why we never worked out. That I wanted to be shown to the world, given a chance for it to work. And him, even in his susceptibility, wanted to be hidden, the image had to be left untarnished. That the emergency given was one to be hidden.
I may have been the only one to see that he had one weakness, but unlike the case of the best friend, I was never seen. I was the background best friend, never even treated as a girlfriend. Looking at his plea for help today, and turning to see my beloved in bed with me, I am thankful, that I had 1, experience and 2, a love who loves me. One who gave me a shove for me to realise what I wanted with my life, the other who accepted me as I was, just the way I am. The latter being Gabriel, haha, the one who took my heart and matched it with his.
Do I still think of him? Yes I do. Wonder if we would get back together? Wonder. We always want what we cannot have, and when we have it, we hop around like kids for a while, and that adrenaline dies down, and you realise what was, was nothing much in the first place.
I am, idiosyncratic, stubborn, irritating, noisy, direct, vindictive, manipulative, selfish, giggly, strange, weird, abnormal, I am also, in love, generous, NICE*, kind, strong, beautiful, talented and courageous. I am Aggie, I am also Agnetta. I am the princess as well as the maid. There lives all of us, in every single one of us, why do we choose to define who we are by what people deem we are?
*For those of you who doubt my niceness, YES I AM NICE. Until you see why I am, at the end of the conversation. I am always able to be nice to get what I want, or to get you to do what I want. I never do anything for nothing, and it is always a better choice when I am direct because there is no “end-game” for you.
`Strong gets you life. All of it.