#ThrowbackThursday: From my personal archive

It has been almost a month since I am back in Sydney post that brief break in Jakarta. I can't help feeling that it is so ironic that I have not been back for like 4 years and only manage to spend 4 days there. So much for tasting and sampling the local cuisine. I still have craving for those long clams and giant prawns. And of course, fried chicken.

I haven't been writing much in this space because I don't have the time. I know that it is so ironic that I say this almost every time I write something here, but I do feel the need to tell you that it is hard to keep this up. The options are between living life or writing about life, and my choice is a no brainer.

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I don't know what it is about Valentine's day, but there seems to be two trends that I saw: (1) people getting engaged and (2) people going through break-ups. I guess it sort of makes sense, that you would pick the day of love to declare your intention to love your significant other forever; and for the rest of the mere mortals who are coupled up and not on the same wavelength, well, they start evaluating their relationships and decide whether it is something they want or something they don't want, and in the latter case, they break up.

Break-ups are never easy. I have been through a few and they never get easier. And no, yours truly is still very much coupled up and was spoilt rotten with Valentine's gifts. I kind of like my current relationship the best out of any other relationship that I had. It is not so much that the men I was with weren't up to scratch, it was just that we were terrible matches. Most of them have moved on to be with other people, married with a child or two. Some have difficulties letting go and are still contacting me randomly. Go figure. No wonder we broke up.

One thing I learn though from all these break ups is that the true character of a man emerges after a break up, irrespective of whether he is the dumper or the dumpee. In fact, this goes on for both man and woman. The true character of a person emerges during a difficult circumstance, like a break up. Break ups tend to be emotionally stressful and they are, for lack of a better description, totally shit, so it is consequential that we get to see how someone handles this stress. Some withdraw, some lash out, some focus on letting go, some focus on making their exes' lives hell.

Eventually, we all need to let go of something that is not meant to be. I get that it is hard to let go of something you love so terribly and you could not comprehend how something so beautiful is not a meant to be, but things happen for a reason. Let it go and move on. Eventually we all have to move on, so we may as well focus our efforts on moving on. The sooner it happens, the better, right? At least we think that to make ourselves feel better. In reality, it is more likely that it is something that we can't rush, we need to make the mistake, learn from it and then move on, with the hope of not making the same mistake again.

Recently, I have been talking to a friend who's been through a break up, whereby he effectively dumped his then girlfriend. The hard truth about his decision is that it was a hard decision and it was emotionally taxing on him. The decision was honest, he stayed true to himself and what he wanted from life and these desires do not coincide with his then girlfriend's and obviously neither of them were willing to compromise, so the union had to end. He was devastated. I am pretty sure she was devastated too. Sometimes the truth can be difficult to face and live with, but it just so happened that at that point in time, they were not a good match. Of course there is always that hope that they can be a good match in the future, but who knows what the future brings.

That gets me wondering, at what point do you make that decision to break up and pursue something else? At what point do you assert and insist on the things that you want in your life? At the point that you are extremely unhappy and miserable? What if you don't know how miserable you really are because ... you don't know that you can be this happy?

I might sound some what dramatically melancholy right now, but I can't stop thinking about how much our decision affects our lives, and at the same time, there is this thing that we call fate and destiny and that no matter which path we choose, we would always come back to that one thing, no matter how hard we try to run. And the sooner we accept this, the more at peace we would be with the life that we are in and the destination we are going towards, and our efforts can be focused on getting there, not necessarily sooner, but just getting there, you know.