Chasing dreams...

Three. That is the total number of shooting stars I found in the past week, including the one tonight. On TV, shooting stars appear to move across the sky much slower and longer, giving you enough time to acknowledge its existence and its ability to make wishes come true so that you could gather your thoughts and come up with a wish that is worth wishing for. The three shooting stars I witnessed were quick, sharp and unforgiving. You miss it then that was it. There was no time to acknowledge nor react to its graceful yet short-lived presence on the starry skies. Unless you were actively looking for them, and that I wasn't. I just happened to come across them whilst I was taking my daily smoke in the garden (which is incidentally the time I let my head swim with thoughts freely and without restrictions). Still, I try. I try very hard to gather myself together and to think of something I would want to wish for.

Each time, I wish for the same thing. I wish for her happiness. I wish that she will find happiness where ever she is. I wish that no matter what happens, she will discover true happiness and hope she will never have to suffer hardships in life. That is my wish.

I arrived at my 'home home' yesterday. I'll be spending my Christmas with my family and then I will probably go on the 30th to pick her up from Heathrow airport. I want to stay in London with her for a few days and to watch the New Year countdown in Trafalgar Square. She didn't seem too keen on the idea though, also, the hotel prices are insane at the moment. It's been hard to find a nice place that is under £250 for three nights. Still, I really want to spend some time with her in London. We've never spent time away together so this could be our first time. I know it sounds quite sad, we were going out for 8 months and I never took her away for a weekend anywhere. This might be the last chance for us to spend time together away from university life. ...ever. So I really want to take her to London...even if it is only for one day.

I found a new style of hotel (Yotel) inside the Heathrow airport, terminal 4, that isn't too expensive and it looks pretty nice. I think it will be okay to stay there for one or two days and travel to London on train (about 30 mins). I don't know what she will think of the idea though... she doesn't even seem too bothered to go. -sigh-

Yesterday, she arrived back at her home home for Christmas vacation. Right now, I am all alone in a four bedroom house (rented) as everyone else has gone (two of them have gone home including her and the other has gone to London with her boyfriend). It has been an all painful experience so far without her. I miss her. When she's around me I don't seem to take much notice but now that she's gone I feel lonely. I guess this is how humans are by nature. You never really notice the person until their are really gone... I wish that one day she too would take notice of me.

She had gone home for many reasons and she was actually quite reluctant to go back but the fact is she's gone. By going back, one other fact that will happen during her three weeks stay... it will occur many times: she will be seeing the other guy. I don't know why I can't get over this fact. It might be because she has hurt me so deeply these past couple of months and because the other guy had 'stolen' her from me.

She rang me yesterday at the airport through Skype at 4am, my time, to tell me that she arrived safely. I instantly felt a barrier between us... obviously by being so far away but we also changed the way we spoke to each other... more friendly and more fake. It felt profoundly weird; how it can all change by distance......

Making dinner alone felt so strange and uncomfortable after the months and months of cooking together with her all the time. Maybe I've simply not yet adjusted to this kind of singular lifestyle yet. The annoying thing is, I keep thinking about her and what it would be like with her around. I hate myself, really.......

During our Skype-to-mobile conversation she said she would ring me again today... I feel she won't really, to be honest. There are many more interesting things there to keep her busy... she will probably forget about me, if not already forgotten. I keep wondering what she is doing right now. Is she having food with her family? Is she with the other guy right now? Is she going to forget about all the work she needs to do over Christmas and simply enjoy it all? Will she ever text me and ring me like she does for the other guy when she was here? Will I feel some care and love from her at all? I notice that now that she's back at home she no longer logs in to her online chat programs...

This will be the best opportunity for me to forget about her. If there is no conversation between us for three weeks, I am pretty sure I can do it. I have lots of work to keep me busy too. I need to find ways to keep my mind off her...

There are times when I said I would break off my entire relationship with her. I also said in my last post that it was my final hurdle. Maybe I was wrong...somewhat. Actually, I don't think I can't live without her, but the thing is... it's really hard to forget about her or not interact with her. She's living in the same house as me, in fact directly above my room, maintaining a distant and cold attitude towards her would be unbecoming of me. There are two ways I could have resolved this: keep a distance and maintain a friendly relationship or go and have a complicated relationship with her. I chose the latter for many reasons. One of the reasons would be that I would enjoy our 'complicatedness' and if anything ugly happens between us I would be able to break off the relationship unscathed. In fact, I feel like I am able to treat her as badly or as nice as I want to. I no longer feel the burden of her commands and orders... I would simply ignore them. I no longer have the urge to sacrifice time or effort for her. Yet, I want to maintain this kind of relationship with her, why? I think partly because I feel like I am using this to MY advantage and partly because I don't really want to 'enter' into another relationship until I graduate in 7 months time. To be honest, I just want to stay with her as long as possible before I make my transition to move on after graduation, and honestly, I believe 100% that this transition period will be extremely smooth without any problems. I don't really feel like I truly love her. I feel like I just want to take this relationship was far as possible without really thinking about maintaining a relationship with her at all once we part ways. I probably never loved her that much...

It seems it wasn't completely over. We somehow mended our weird relationship and it's been a few weeks since then. However, this time I want to end it. It has gone completely out of hand. For me, of course; I am nothing to her. I think this obsession with her is not healthy at all and funnily enough my heart and brain, for the first time, are both thinking the same thing. This means... I finally no longer want her! I no longer love her... I no longer need her. Finally my heart has caught up to speed. My brain has been wanting to give up a long time ago... (how can someone with such ambitious dreams stumble at such a stupid little hurdle in life? and in such a pathetic way... I felt like a complete and total loser)

This is the last hurdle... I am about to put the final nail in this idiotic chapter of my life. I will come out of this stronger and cleverer. I am sure of it. No longer will I be naive and stupid. The final hurdle will be over soon...

So that was how I started out this blog... it was after I secretly viewed her online blog and its spectacular contents that I decided it was time to start my own so I could keep a record of this story for all eternity (well, until this blog decides to close shop).

After we broke up, our friendship and relationship in general has been very complicated and unclear. There were times when we would fight and argue and act like we never knew each and there were times when we would hold each other and kiss and make love. Our status was unknown and what happened simply happened. She was the river and I was the fish.

When she rings the other guy (every other day) my heart still aches slightly... with each passing day the aches get weaker and weaker. I don't know it I was finally losing all my love for her or if I simply accepted the calls as part of our complicated relationship. That said, even if the other guy decides to break up with her and she was single again and willing to go out with me, I would not be able accept her. I would only accept someone who was actually in love with me, not someone to catch her on the rebound.

Then today, it was the end for us. Yesterday, we had a fight... it wasn't really serious looking back but at the time... any normal person would have reacted similarly. A fly was flying near my head and she decided to use her hand to swot it... only she aimed to use her hand and my head as the death trap for the fly. I was reading something on my laptop at the time, oblivious to the situation. What followed was obvious. I got extremely furious... least that a dead fly was in my hair... but the way she acted and what she had done. She laughed and proceeded to get some tissue to pick up the fly and show it to me. All I could think about at the time was why and how could she do something like that. She had literally used me as an object... just like the other times she orders me to do mundane chores for her... at which moment all the feelings could flooding back... she was not the one for me; she did not love me at all; she liked me as a friend; she liked me because I was useful and obedient.

One of the big issues we had when we were going out was cultural differences as well. According to her I was too much of a miser and in general I cared too much about money and she didn't like that about me. At the time, I didn't disagree because we were culturally different and she wasn't use to the idea of going dutch with shopping and dinners. Over time I tried to improve this issue by trying to pay for all the food we consumed. This was not a viable solution for me. I am not made of cash and my financial background is quite poor. How does she expect me to pay for all the shopping bills? In her country, the men paid for everything, which is fair enough if we were married but we're not. We're students... I for one am living on student loans and pocket money. Even so, I tried this term to pay upfront as much as possible whenever food was involved. We had a fight some days ago and we calculated how much I paid for our supermarket shopping... it came to £190. Therefore she should technically owe me £95. I already resisted from asking to be reimbursed until she decided it would be funny to ask me for money that I apparently owed her for something, a couple of pounds. What I conclude from this is: 1. She doesn't keep count about money unless it is her money that is in jeopardy. 2. She doesn't notice that I am trying to be more open about money and she is actually less open herself. 3. She doesn't feel its wrong to be spending my money... the money of the guy who she betrayed... the guy who is no longer her boyfriend... the person who is no longer in a position of 'responsibility' for her. Let's face it, in UK we don't really pay everything for the other half/good friend. Even married couples sometimes keeps tabs... and we are not even officially couples anymore! To me, it seemed like she was simply using me... not that she was poor... she had money lots of it... but she was simply using me because she could, it didn't have to be money... it could be anything from making food (I have been cooking mostly this term for us) to going into town to get her a refund for a top she didn't want.

All these feelings came at me in force when she laughed and showed me the fly she had killed using my head (of course after grabbing a tissue to pick up its dead body)... its insides probably all over my hair... I ignored her for the rest of the night, and the next day I decided I would do something to hurt her back. I asked for my money back for all the shopping... she tried to offset the amount by talking about the money I owed her and I decided that if she wanted to play this game I would join her. I pointed out the money she owed me for a calender and some textbooks that she didn't pay for. It made her mad... she said it disgusted her that I did that. (I feel disgusted about her as well so I guess we're even.) I don't know what I am obliged to sacrifice for her... who was she? She was someone I loved dearly... but who was I to her? I was someone she felt comfortable with and ready to be used. She didn't love me... she even said that herself... so I am sitting her wondering what it is that she is expecting of me. Her princess attitude is always just hiding around the corner ready to emerge when you least expect it. After this, she and I completely broke down our friendship. She informed me that she was no longer interested in being even a normal friend with me. She gave me back the present I bought her for her birthday and a ring I gave her back when we were still going out. I could feel the conclusive and final decision from her... it was definitely real. She really doesn't want to have anything to do with me again.

As I am unable to completely give up my love for her and move on, I wanted to do something to her that would make her hate me so that she would not want me to be anywhere near her again. I guess I have succeeded now. In some ways, I feel lighter... no longer stressed... no longer stupid... no longer pathetically around her all the time... I had finally done something to break off our relationship completely, in other ways I feel stronger and feel ready to move onto my next chapter of my life, and in no ways do I feel painful or sad... well maybe slightly.

To be honest, I don't see how, in the long run, she and the other guy could have a future together. The other guy is poorer than me and his future prospects in earning money isn't looking good according to her. His personality and attitude is also something to be desired for her. So why does she like him so much? It was as I had mentioned before... because they were school mates during middle school... they never really had the chance to go out then because of pressures from study and family. To her she was given a second chance to re-live her dream... the dream she missed once before. She is chasing dreams... just like me... we're both chasing dreams that are moving increasing away from us.

We have broken up many times before and each one feels like it would be the end for us... but each time we somehow manage to get back together again... will this time be different? Will this time be the end of our ending game? I don't know... I am still a fish... except the world is my river now....

About a week after we started university, she asked me for help with her blog page. It was her secret blog that no one knows about. It was there simply for her to record down moments and feelings she had at the time and she rarely used it because she was a lazy person. She wanted to personalise it with some scripts to make it pretty and stuff... you know... the way girls like them: pink and full of crap little animations. To be honest I was quite surprised she was using her blog at all and this time I decided I would note down the url and her username so I could do some searching and viewing later. I know it is probably wrong to do something like this but, hey, its a blog, people can see it anyway and it should contain some moments of our past in there somewhere...

It turns out... it turns out that this will be my most important realisation. The blog would be useful to gauge her love for me since it could contain her real and honest feelings. I read it... I read it again... and once more just to make sure... there was no me. Me was not there at all. What it contained were a few logs of her ex-boyfriend (ex-ex boyfriend to be precise) and many about her current boyfriend. It was like I never existed... it was like I never part of her life at any point in time... why?

She posted about how she felt sorry about her ex-ex-boyfriend and how badly she had treated him... this was dated after she and I had already been going out for a couple of months.

What was even more painful... (like adding vinegar to a fly whose wings have been freshly plucked) was the date she first posted about the other guy. It was July 10th and the post described she met the guy on July 7th. That meant she saw the guy 2 weeks after summer vacation started... she broke up with me sometime in mid August... wow. In the post, she described how she feel in love with him again and how incredible true love was. In contrast, I would guess to our love...

The blog continued with posts of her moments with the other guy... about 8 posts in their 2 month relationship. 0 posts for our nearly year long relationship and before she met the guy the last post dated 6 months back... there was obviously something else here. This is the stark difference between what she feels about me and what she feels about him in full technicolor glory. I gave up.

After my realisation on the river bank, my heart had shattered and ripped into a million pieces at the same time. Of course, on the outside I was as calm as a docile mouse... a sedated docile mouse, whose cheese it had in its tiny paws suddenly vaporised into thin air. I even told her to stick by him and that he would change for her like I did for her... if he truly loved her. I was trying to support her and make her feel better as she was crying at the time. What she and anyone else on the river bank didn't know was that my sorrow was the loudest. It was internal and came from deep within me. The outside could not even comprehend the feelings... my facial expression had been a display of faux euphoria before actual and real sadness set in a few hours later.

I was able to push this 'sick' expression back into its shadows and continue to display faux happiness for the last few days of my stay. I was glad to return home... it gave me such relief when I landed. The hardest fourteen weeks of my life were finally over. I was ready to move on. I had finished another chapter of my life... and anxiously waiting to start my next.

I wanted to fly home early but unfortunately for me the return flight was not due for another week and a half and I still had some 'stupid' feelings for her...

She came back early one day, early being she came back from staying with the other guy earlier than she said she would. I knew something was wrong.

We sat by the river bank and she slowly opened up to me about what had happened that day. She was tired... she was tired of having to actively think of what to say and do when she was around the other guy. She loved him a lot and didn't want to mess up anything or show her more natural side. She wanted to give the guy the impression that she was the perfect girlfriend and that she was willing to sacrifice a lot for him. In an instant, I recognised something. I recognised that she never truly loved me. I can't recall a time when she had done something like that for me. In that instant, I also recognised how much she truly loved the other guy. The feeling was quite painful and instantaneous. All of a sudden it felt like all these months with her were just worth a single day and that compared to the other guy I was already way behind... there was no chance to ever catch up. All of a sudden my love dissolved and ran down the river bank and turned into sand... the water came in and then out and took my heart along with it...

We are back at university studying for our final years. It's already been 2 weeks now...

She's currently sitting opposite me typing to the other guy and using the webcam to see each other. The other guy doesn't know I'm living in the same house as her and definitely doesn't know that I'm right next to her. I wonder what would happen if I just move myself into the view of the webcamera...whatever would happen I'm not going to do it. It would obviously lead to a radical change in our relationships... it's such a simple action yet it could have such extraordinary implications on our lives...all three of ours. I don't know how long she is going to be sitting there but at least she's in the corner of the room and not facing kitchen or the door to upstairs or my room.

My relationship with her is quite strange. We kiss, we do foreplay (until we reach '...') but no 'sex'. We hold hands or I put my arm around her when we walk but no 'sex'. We slept in the same bed and we take showers together but no 'sex'... that is our relationship. If there was a song to sum up our relationship it would have to be 'Daft Punk - Something About Us'. Go and google the short and simple lyrics..

I've decided to become the fish and go where ever the river takes me. I've decided to forget about titles and such stuff because maybe I don't really love her that much anymore. Maybe I just want to have some awkward relationship that will set me straight for the real world when I graduate where I am determined to make a name and become rich. Maybe that didn't make much sense... what I'm saying is that my time with her is actually quite limited. Once she graduates (in 8 months time) she will have two choices: 1. Further study to obtain a masters degree 2. find a job. Now if she chooses to find a job it is more likely she will be doing so thousands of miles away from me. Therefore, whatever relationship we have now... it would be highly unlikely to continue if she chooses the path I have just described.

As for me, what about my future? Although I am also considering studying for a masters before making my 'big name' I don't really have any idea what subject or if I really have the budget or the 'I can be bothered to spend another year studying' attitude. What am I going to do? Nothing... I am the fish going with the flow...

I was at her hometown. I had met her whole family and most of her relatives by the end of my visit. Her parents had separated when she was young and she grew up going backwards and forward to see her parents though she stayed mainly at her father’s. Her mother was the type of person who oozed love for her daughter from every pore in her body. Her mother was willing to give everything and receive nothing; only for her child to be happy. This was probably how a lot of her princess attitude developed. Her mother didn’t ever start up another family because she was afraid that would affect her relationship with her daughter. That was how much she loved her.

Her father on the other hand had started a new family, in fact, that was the reason of the divorce in the first place. Some woman had stolen her husband from her. Her father has two children, twins, both daughters, both extremely spoilt. It was not entirely sure if the adults ruled the home or the children. They got exactly what they wanted otherwise they would cry until they could barely breathe... they were only three years old. Her father was a successful businessman and had the money to support her studies abroad and her shopping habits to further spoil her.

She spent most of her time shopping and meeting with friends, especially the other guy. Even with the addition of me, it didn’t stop her dropping me off with one of her friends while she spent time with the other guy. The day after I arrived at her home city she was off to see the guy, handing me over to her two friends to show me around the city. I tried my best to push all these feelings to the back of my head and tried to enjoy her friends’ company as much as possible. The city had a lot of culture and history that I could lose myself in. Still, my heart was broken into a million pieces on that first day. She came back late, about nine hours since I last saw her. Why did she go? What did she do? How far into their relationship were they? It should be none of my business. Yet, these thoughts were constantly running through my head...

She saw the other guy, on average, once every two to three days. During these times I would stay with her friends or relatives or alone. I preferred staying with her friends than staying alone because it stopped me from thinking about her and kept me preoccupied me with other things to do.

The other guy was the one she truly loved. Possibly the only person she ever loved. Too bad for me, I didn’t work it out until very recently...

There was a journey. It proved to be the longest and hardest journey in my life. I was to meet her. It was decided before she wanted to break up with me that I was to go and visit her home. I had already booked the tickets and I wasn’t ready to cancel the flight or to back out from this relationship yet. I still loved her a lot. I wanted to talk to her in person, and I wasn’t willing to wait until she returned for the next academic year. I had another four or so weeks before my internship ended, the days were long and enduring. I kept calling her and we kept on good terms. This caused me to regain hope that she would once again be mine. Of course, when the crunch came and I finally realized it was not going to be easy or near impossible, it made it all the worse.

I anxiously waited for her in the hotel. She was to arrive three days after I had. I spent the days mostly around my hotel not knowing anyone and unable to communicate effectively with the locals. I looked through the vision porthole of my hotel door and saw four girls walking past, the one leading looked a lot like her. I opened the door and called her name. She turned around and looked at me. She was surprised. I looked different... she did too, we both did. Three of the four girls were to be staying in my double room. It wasn’t really a problem the room was big enough. One of them was to start an internship soon and the other two just happened to want to travel to this city to do some serious shopping.

Her three friends decided to do some shopping straight away and she stayed behind in the hotel because she was tired from travelling. We made love on the bed. The experience was different than before. It felt like we missed each other a lot. I felt like I still had a chance to be with her. I felt that she still loved me. Oh, how wrong could I get...?

There was no love for me. She was simply doing her duty to make me feel better. She knew she was wrong and she wasn’t the type who wanted to hurt others intentionally. She was an extremely selfish person but wanted to be a good person at heart, she just didn’t know what the right thing to do was. For each of the next five remaining days at the hotel, we made love on the bed...

Did it feel wrong to be doing these kinds of things when we were officially over and she had someone else now? Did I care? All I knew was that I loved her and she was stolen from me and it felt like maybe, just maybe our relationship could be fixed and she would come back to me if I put some effort into it... I was wrong, yet again. I was chasing a runaway dream...

So she was seeing another guy and ringing to break up with me on his phone which probably meant that he was right next to her. I shouldn’t be hurt by this, should I? How was I to react to all this? I calmly said goodbye and hung up the phone. The world crashed around me... cars and people all seemed to roar past me all of a sudden. My senses were alive and kicking. What was this feeling?

I was mad. Of course, I was. There was no other way about it. Coming around the bend at exhilarating speed to join anger was sadness. The two of them, battling it out, were trying to surpass the other on the final bend when suddenly, oh dear, it seems anger and sadness have collided with each other and became a gigantic mess of burning rubber and metal as they fireball through the finish line. It was a tie, folks...

Strangely, I felt nothing on the surface. I carried on working as normal on my desk, interacted with colleagues as I had done... no change it seemed. Tomorrow I was to clear my head by taking a four hour walk through London. I’m glad she chose to call me on a Friday. It was the calm before the storm, it would appear. Three days after, the world came crashing around again, this time on the surface. After holding and maintaining what could have been said to be an acceptable appearance during work, I cried hard when I got back to my accommodation. Tears appeared and subsided as they wanted. I didn’t cry like this since the night I reminisced about my grandfathers and how I felt that I had not made the most of my time with them when they were alive.

I called her. I wanted to hear her voice. She sounded happy, not happy to hear from me, but just generally in a happy mood. We talked about our relationship and she told me she was sorry that it had to end this way, but the guy... the other guy... he had a long history with her. The other guy was what could be called her first love. He was in the same school as her during GCSEs and although they were unofficially going out, because of the pressures of study and getting the important grades needed to be admitted into the top schools of the country through coercion by her parents and teachers she forced herself to break up with him. I knew a lot about this guy, even seen his pictures, because before we were going out and even after we were going out, she mentioned him a lot, almost religiously. Sometimes she would talk about him and compare him to me when I had a fight with her. To her, he was the right guy at the wrong time. Her ex was the wrong guy at the right time. As for me... I don’t think I was the right guy or at the right time...

This other guy was her dream. This was the dream she was chasing... waiting for the right moment to be reunited with him. Could it be finally the right time for her? I never did pay too much attention to this other guy during our relationship. For me, he was irrelevant and an unrealistic threat. Name? Labelled unimportant... deleted... trashed... gone. How wrong I was... this threat was very real. This guy lived in the same city as her and even though they hadn’t talked to each other for more an a year or so... meeting up with each other during the summer would and was a devastating proposition for me. This guy’s name has been firmly ingrained into my head to say the least...

Yet I was still holding on... hoping that she would realize her mistake... she would come back to me. Again, a fool I was, I was the mistake and she had already gone back to him...

After eight rocky, yet happy months, we would have to separate for summer once again. She would go home, thousands of miles away from me, whilst I would go and do a ten-week banking internship in London. That summer was to be the hardest three months of my life.

It is not the time you spend with each other that tests the love or the relationship, it is the time you spend apart. I missed her a lot... It's only when something is gone, something that you may not have given too much thought about, that is thousands of miles away from you do your feelings come crashing out of the bubble...

It was during this period that I really started to understand... to understand that life was more than just getting a good rate of return for investment/effort. Suddenly, I was thinking about her all the time. .. may it be when I’m having breakfast, lunch, dinner, or having a walk, doing work, surfing the net, playing computer games, drinking with friends, sleeping... my brain would find a way to include her into whatever I was doing at the time and forced me to dedicate minutes or hours of my life thinking about her... I was obsessed. It probably didn’t feel dissimilar to a cocaine addict except my fix involved only one method: pressing buttons on a phone and talking to her while my coke junkie friend would be sticking needles or snorting or smoking stuff. Probably just as expensive as making long distance calls but he, at least, had variety...

I was ready to give up everything and sacrifice my entire life for her... with her central to my every action. I made a mistake... a very big one. Recall the ex-boyfriend. I described him to be very much in love with her... you could probably replace the words ‘in love’ with ‘completely obsessed’. Looking back at it now, it occurred to me that it was because I became addicted that she was finally slipping further away from me. She was a princess that normally got what she wanted. It probably bored her that I would do the same, and give her exactly what she wanted.

Our relationship can be described through the stock market charts of the dot com crash. It reached new heights before it finally plummeted downwards in a sharp and distinctive fall.

She broke the news to me in early-mid August. She wanted to break up with me... she was seeing another guy. Between July and August our relationship slumped, we didn’t have much to say to one another, I was busy with working ten hours a day, and she always seemed very busy and preoccupied when I called her. Now I know why. I calmly asked who the guy was. His name was very familiar, in fact I saw his surname just seconds again. Wait a minute, who’s phone is she calling from again? I looked down at my display. Yes, it was the same surname (she had often used her sim card in my phone before... it auto-copied her numbers onto memory). Whose phone was she calling from, I asked. She didn’t reply. The bubble had finally burst. A sharp decline in the heart markets with strong indicators that it was only the beginning... expert analysts are saying the markets may never recover...

So she became my girlfriend. In fact, my first real girlfriend. I was determined to see how far I would get with this relationship. I mentioned I asked her out because it was my mission rather than out of the intensity of my feelings for her. My actual love for her at the time was pretty low. All I knew was that I felt comfortable around her and it felt right to be with her.

Our rollercoaster ride began. Within days, we had our first fight: I decided it was fine to go and have fun with another girl (friend) whilst neglecting her. Looking back, I think I had made many mistakes a boyfriend shouldn't have to make. We fought a lot. We broke up many times but within days we always got back together. Signs of weariness of our relationship was starting to show.

Oh, I left out a lot of detail. Maybe I should go back a bit. My first shock was that we both couldn't remember what night it was that I kissed her (our beginning). It showed that we didn't really care that much... it wasn't special. This relationship wasn't going to last was it? What followed was not a transition from friends to couples relationship, at least it didn't feel like it. Our relationship seemed more like an extended friendship with kissing and hugging than a real boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. It took significant arguments and fights before my feelings for her heightened. It was the fights that felt like I was about to lose her that caused me to change and treat her better. Each fight caused my position in the relationship to drop. Let me explain. I believe love can be weighed and measured. Maybe at first both our love for each other were equal (equally low). With each fight, her love for me dropped slightly or was left unchanged while mine increased slightly. After a while, my love for her was not balanced with her love for me. This lead her to take 'control' over me, you could say. I already talked about the princess side of her. She would use this imbalance to exploit me, causing me to effectively become her slave, doing mundane and tedious tasks for her. Of course, if I tried to turn things around she would not allow it and because my love for her was greater, I would allow her to do such things to me.

I didn't understand why I had to sacrifice so much to be with her. Wasn't it enough to just be together and be happy and can't we do everything together rather than command me to do them? I still don't know if I was being childish and looking too much for equality or if those are the unwritten rules of a boyfriend. Of course, I understand about sacrificing for one another. However, it seemed like I am the only one doing it. I am the only one who was changing... I was the one who waited for her at the train station for five hours because she came back on a later train and her phone ran out of battery and she couldn't remember my number... would she have the patience to even wait an hour for me? Was she willing to do anything for me?

Whilst my feelings for her increased, I could at the same time see that she didn't really love me at all. There was simply a gap in her life without someone to be with and I was comfortable to be around for her. Nevertheless, it was too late for us to turn back now. The rollercoaster had already started moving along its tracks, it would only end once the bumpy ride was over... and when was the ride to end? Only time could tell...

In the 'second' year (fourth really) of my university life... she entered into my world as an objective. An objective that I am required to get hold of and achieve. Was that my only intention? Was she simply a target I should reach? What was I to do once I acquire my dream? Silly man... you didn't know the dream was a runaway...?

I had not really thought it over about what I would do once I became her boyfriend or how I would feel. Do I genuinely love her? Maybe not. Maybe I just felt it was right for us to be going out. Did she love me? Maybe not. She just felt it was right for us to be going out... Whatever she felt, I definitely had more feelings for her than she had for me.

It was just before the second year started that I felt like I really missed being with her. It was like a part of me was missing during the summer holidays and it would only return to me once the new academic year starts. For this, I impatiently waited, counting the days.

We met in the university restaurant. It was a brief encounter... we didn't talk to each other only exchanged a few emails over the holidays... it was a weird feeling, like suddenly meeting someone who you haven't seen for years. We glanced at each other, smiled and sat with our respective friends for lunch. Over the next few weeks, we slowly recovered our relationship to the point where we left off and then some. As I got closer and closer, more and more of her princess personality emerged. She was a lazy person at heart and even though she could force herself to be otherwise... her natural side was to order others to do stuff for her while she stayed put. So was her life at home as I mentioned before, she had been spoilt since childhood. Although for some people this would not be a problem, some guys like to service for their girlfriends... I, however, am not that type. You see, like her, in some ways, I have also been spoilt, although not to the same degree or extremity. I am unwilling to really sacrifice my time running backwards and forwards for someone... or so I thought.

Our relationship finally got to the point where I slept five days out of seven in her house (she rented one with three friends) on the floor, on a makeshift bed, next to hers. She would ask me to get into her bed at times to give her massages. It was after one of these massage sessions, sometime in October... I guess around 25th, that I finally got up the courage to ask her out. I, being someone who is quite unconventional, didn't really ask her as such. I was lying next to her in her bed and the dialogue went something like this:

Me: Hey, I can I ask you something?
She: Mmm... what is it?
Me: I want to do something with you...
She: ...what do you want to do?
Me: ...
She: ...
Me: It begins with a 'k'
She: 'K'? Is it kick? You want to kick me?
Me: -laugh- No... it's not that.
She: So what is it?
Me: ...
She: Hmmm?
Me: -sigh- Let me just show you...

We kissed for what seemed like hours...

The next morning, we kissed again... this time on my makeshift bed... we kissed until our jaws ached with joyful pain.

So it begins...

She came along and talked to me. It was my first year at university and roughly two or three weeks into the first term. The heavens have been good to me, giving me a second chance to redeem my 'mistakes' in life. (I had failed my second year exams elsewhere and came through to this university through clearing.)

She came along and spoke to me. She had seen me before... although I could not recognise her. (She was in my Japanese class which consisted of about 12 people.) She happened to be studying in the same department as I and she needed help with her assignment and that was how we met...

Forgive me... I am the kind of person who does not 'bother' to commit to memory things that I felt 'unimportant' at the time. Once I have labelled something uneventful or uninteresting then it is as if it never existed... deleted... trashed... gone forever. As such, people I meet for the first time or second time or third time or even I have lived with for some period of time, I will have trouble recalling their name if I have labelled our exchanges as being unremarkable. That is the type of person I am.

Therefore, for most of the first year I can not really recall my further exchanges with her. She was ordinary, and had no special features. A 6/10. (I don't normally rate girls like this... it's something I picked up from her actually.) What I do remember is that during most of our lectures together we barely talked and we definitely did not sit near to each other. That is for most of our lectures... but during Japanese classes we got closer and closer and suddenly I find myself sitting next to her. Of course, God had a play in this. We both had a lecture clash and thus we both had to move to another Japanese class group. I believe we were the only two to transfer to the new group and thus there was an obvious bond and commonality between us. Over time, although my memory is vague, we got closer and closer through these classes and it overspilled onto the rest of our lives. Suddenly we were walking home together (another play by God, we lived in the same halls, although different block) and sitting together during our other lectures. We even cooked together at times. This is what is normally labelled as a blossoming friendship.

What happened after was really a mystery. Although it could be a combination of her interesting personality and the fact that we had a big Japanese oral test coming up led me to study with her until the early hours of the next day in her room. I slept on a makeshift bed in her room until the sun came up.

Until now, I have not talked about her as a person yet. She is a straight forward type of girl who can be really blunt at times but at the same time she is cute with words and actions (even without her purposely doing it) and she has the kind of magnetic personality that can easily make friends with lots of people... that is, if she wants to make friends with you. That said, she would not show anger or annoyance with anyone not close to her and will always be polite and happy on the surface... with anyone not close to her.... not close to her.

She is a demanding person... a princess at heart... being spoilt by both her parents since childhood. Only the closest of people see her true nature and even then not many will understand it. Though I say all this, she is not a bad person. Her personality does not hinder her as one who is enchanting and delightful to be around with. Her princess attitude is only shown to those who are extremely close... close to her...

Then there was her ex-boyfriend. He lived elsewhere and had to travel many thousands of miles to see her. He surprised her one day by turning up at her doorstep... wow, romantic... that would win over any girl for sure. Her first reactions were, however, surprise and shock than anything else. (At the time, there was nothing between me and her and I had not even been to her room yet.) I mention him because he plays an important role in understanding her later. You could describe the guy to be head over heels for her. Someone who loves her a lot and is willing to sacrifice a lot for her love. She was ready to break up with him...

Cooking and eating with her on most days, and giving her numerous massages (I really don't feel anything weird or wrong at that point in time) near the end of the last term, and spending most my free days with her or in her room, it occurred to me that I might like her. To me, she was a person I was comfortable to be around with and could talk with effortlessly. To me, she was a friend... to her I was also a friend... I wasn't that close to her.

Our first year ended... I went travelling with some friends... and I talked to her on email (which she rarely checked) and then... I missed her... I went dreaming....