blank space

There are some people you miss because they left a space where an ending should have been. This is a quick epilogue to the first-heartbreak chapter, because I never leave a story incomplete.

A few years later, that boy came back into my life without an explanation for his disappearance. The closest thing to a reason came wrapped in practicality: he wanted to focus on his last year of high school and avoid distractions. As if vanishing was a productivity hack. I half believed him, the way you let a bandage pretend it’s stitches. I wanted a noble reason more than the truth. Any excuse can feel like relief when you’ve been living on questions.

I expected his comeback to cure the ache. I pictured it sliding into place like a false tooth, covering the raw nerve. When he returned, my body stayed braced. My mind didn’t celebrate. My heart didn’t open. The old silence sat between us like a bruise you don’t poke. Bitterness rose first, then something darker, close to vengeance. Teenage me had wanted an answer to “Where did you go?” Adult me wanted acknowledgement of the crater he left behind. The adolescent burn cooled into something defensive. I could harbour a grudge like a Taylor Swift bridge.

He acted like we could restart without touching the rupture, and he assumed my heart would forget what it had learned. But I couldn’t. The gap taught me what erasure feels like. So we didn’t get back together, because I resented him more than I missed him.  

And maybe that’s the real closure: not the lost explanation, or a happy ending that mends a broken heart, but the fact that my life moved on, and the strange realisation that the door I’d been staring at was never the only way forward.

ankle deep in yearning

There’s one particular scene in the latest Wuthering Heights movie that stirred an unexpected sadness in me. I didn’t understand why until I pulled it apart.

It’s during Catherine’s fever spiral. She’s lovesick in bed, the room blurring as time folds in on itself. In her delirium, the boy Heathcliff appears; then his hand reaches from under the bed and holds her ankle. The touch strikes like memory in muscle. She doesn’t look down, but her skin recognises him, as if childhood has returned to comfort her.

Under his grip, her body unclenches: I’m here. I’ve always been here. The adaptation carries their history without words. The past arrives through contact, and it grabs hold. Their story runs on yearning: the hunger to belong, to be seen by the person who knew you before you outgrew yourself. Beneath the romance, there’s protection, too: the flashback of him shielding her from her father’s violence. The gesture becomes shelter: Stay with me. I’ve got you. As she slips away, her mind reaches for the first safe place it ever learned to trust.

That’s when it hit me. I know that yearning. At seventeen, I was infatuated with a former boyfriend. I replayed our conversations like a broken record, trying to track down the part where he stopped wanting me. I told myself it was love, because what else do you call a feeling that consumes your whole body?

One day I was in his world. The next he blocked me, erasing us with a click. The silence left blank space instead of closure. I kept pining for him the way a tongue keeps checking a missing tooth, resisting the clean finality of absence.

So when Catherine reacts to that hand on her ankle, I notice the cycle: the brain clings to what once felt good and keeps wondering, Where did you go? The wound stays open, so the search continues.

That’s the heartbreak: a hand around an ankle. As her body begins to give way, the scene strips their tether back to instinct: reflex, nerve, something older than choice. Attachment refuses to let go. It keeps asking for the answer it never got.

relief without grief

It’s been over six months since I ended a thirty-year friendship, and I don’t miss her. No regret, no curiosity. Her absence is a relief. Good riddance.

But the anger stayed.

It’s sharp and active. I’ll be walking the dogs, doing laundry, getting a manicure, and a memory cuts in. A sour moment I once shrugged off now reads like evidence: the way I’d give her an inch and she’d take a mile.

The real injury is self-betrayal. That’s what rattles me. I expected grief, but it never came. I got a clean exit and leftover rage. The right outcome, the wrong aftertaste.

My mind keeps running inventory: every time I ignored my instincts, swallowed a cheap shot, and rationalised behaviour I didn’t respect. Each flashback lights the match again.

Embarrassment sits under the fury. Shame is the splinter, and anger is my body trying to yank it out.

She started as background noise in my life, and I assumed she’d fade out on her own. She trailed my circle, and we couldn’t ditch her. I adjusted instead of drawing a boundary. People warned me, but I didn’t listen, defending her instead. I pride myself on being inclusive, and sympathy traps me, so I let her in.

Onlookers called me loyal, but they meant blind. I knew it and kept going. The embarrassing truth is the real gamble was my ego. I doubled down, stubbornly backing a lame horse. I didn’t want to lose face after I’d vouched for her, but instead I lost time, energy, and self-respect.

In dating, I leave at the first red flag. I protect my peace. I didn’t apply that same discipline to friendship, and that inconsistency is what stings.

When I think of my high school best friends, CP & LN, I’m flooded with warm nostalgia. We had that rare kind of closeness that made ordinary days unforgettable, ridiculous laughter and spontaneous adventures that turned into favourite stories I still tell my children.

With her, it was just habit. Nothing heartfelt. No memories that make me smile.

That contrast hurts. It shows me what genuine connection looks like, and how long I confused tolerance with sisterhood.

the cost of cheap friends

Friends are the choices that shape your life. The wrong crowd robs you of time, energy, money, and even your sense of self.

I could list a dozen good traits in a friend: kind, loyal, considerate, respectful. But there’s one deal-breaker: stinginess. Not just with money, but with words. The type who can’t give a compliment without a barb and peppers every conversation with snark. Being around them is like someone giving you multiple micro paper cuts that you’re told not to make a fuss about, until you realise you’re bleeding.

It starts in the schoolyard. First, a sip of your iced chocolate. Then your whole lunch. They take and take, subtle at first, then relentless. That’s not a friend; it’s a leech. Rip it off, let it sting, and keep walking. The skin will heal, I promise, but the mind remembers. The scars aren’t on your hands, they’re on your heart.

Left unchecked, the pattern follows you into adulthood and leaves you open to exploitation. Better an empty table than a bottomless cup. It felt like being nicked a thousand times, but I grew numb until the piggy bank shattered. When you’re young, she pockets your pearl necklace, swaps it for a plastic bracelet, and calls it a fair deal. When you’re older, she trades you lemonade scones for your king crab.

I finally cut off the spongers. A great 21st-century philosopher said it best in one of her many nuggets of wisdom: “Never be so kind you forget to be clever,” Taylor Swift writes in Marjorie.

Here’s what I’d tell my teenage self: you’re not stuck. You can leave. Real friends make you feel safe, seen, loved. Don’t let anyone treat your goodwill like an open bar tab. The worst kind of person is tight-fisted with theirs and greedy with yours. You don’t owe anyone for your good fortune. You never have to feel guilty about it, and anything you choose to share is a gift, not an obligation.

In the end, money wasn’t the gun. Three decades of cheap shots bled me dry and killed the friendship.

winter blues

I'm starting to feel winter's icy grip; the chills are creeping in. For the past month, I've had that warm and fuzzy feeling to wake me up every morning. This week, though, hasn't been so peachy; the giddiness and butterflies have vanished, leaving me with an empty void. Maybe I should just chalk these feelings up to PMS.

The BF is lucky to be out of town, dodging the storm, and how convenient that his phone battery went flat right in the middle of my PMS meltdown!

full in a box

Anthony gets a ton of text messages every day. I know, because I’m the one sending them. Every time I have a thought, a funny idea, or read something interesting, I drop everything and shoot him a message. Vodafone must love me.

He’s received gems like: “My throat is sore,” “I just bought a slurpy drink. Is it normal to crave sugar this early?” and “I’m falling asleep at work.” Most of my texts are brief, but occasionally, I’ll send him quotes or Bible verses. Despite the barrage, he claims my dozens of texts per hour don’t bother him. Either he really likes me, or he finds it comforting to know someone is constantly thinking about him.

I’m starting to miss his face. He’s gone interstate for a scout camp and won’t be back for another eight days. To keep myself distracted (not that it's hard, given my 12-hour shifts at a mind-numbing job), I reminisce about our time together. Unfortunately, my timing for daydreaming is terrible. My mind always seems to drift when I’m driving at night. The other night, I was on the road, replaying a conversation we had, and I laughed so hard I nearly crashed my car. So, if you ever see a black hatchback with someone laughing behind the wheel, it’s probably yours truly.

bum chums

Yesterday, Anthony and I were watching our favourite show, Friends. The episode was about the different stages of a relationship. I looked at him and asked if our honeymoon period was over, wondering if we’d become too comfortable. He assured me we were still fun and happening.

This, of course, after he’d spent his day teaching Sunday school and furniture shopping with his family, while I was slogging away at work. We met up after church for dinner at a local restaurant because driving too far would delay the eating process.

He was sitting next to me watching TV while I listened to a sermon on my laptop. The only things missing were knitting needles, a rocking chair, and some false teeth. That’s when we realised our lives were truly riveting.

I could wallow in despair, wishing we were suddenly more interesting people, but at some point, you have to embrace who you are. Anthony and I have crazy work schedules, and as insane as it sounds, we like to spend our free time doing my favourite activity (eating) or watching DVDs together.

I was perfectly content with this arrangement, but he thought we needed to pick up a sport as a new hobby, trying to convince me that a bit of exercise wouldn’t kill us. After all, he was a fit person before meeting me, so I’m guessing he’s starting to miss the outdoors. I have a talent for turning perfectly healthy and athletic people into couch potatoes.

silent conversation

Above all else, we long to hear that satisfying click when pieces of ourselves and fragments of another person fit together, like a space rocket docking smoothly at the space station among trillions of twinkling stars.

Midnight chats carved into the guts of our adolescence and seared into my memory, naive yet intoxicating in their nostalgic infatuation. For the connection to hold, it had to be mutual. It had to move through honest conversations that flowed both ways. To understand and be understood, we had to break down walls and pay attention. You were the first to truly know me. Between our banter, I sometimes let you ruffle my feathers to amuse your boyish humour.

Handholding, hair twirling, hearts racing. Warm hugs, French kisses, bodies intertwined. Never underestimate the power of touch. Discovering new ground and stumbling through more firsts than I was ready for, I thought we were madly in love. With juvenile hearts and restless minds, we believed we could test our desires, but in hindsight, the real drivers were hormones and chemistry. What makes young “love” so unstoppable? At an age when we were still innocent, even after the flame dies, embers cling and keep the memory glowing. An unfinished romance can haunt for years, stories left untold.

I shoved our past into the back pocket of my mind and cast us off as one of my biggest mistakes. I could not and would not revisit those feelings. You were not worthy of my time. When triggered, buried memories rushed back, flooding me with embarrassment at my fatal attraction. For years I convinced myself you were not special, that what we shared was fleeting. I did that because I believed that was how you felt about me, too.

Until yesterday, when you finally said what should have been spoken many moons ago. It would have saved me years of regret and resentment. I guess this is what they call closure.

limerence

The complexity of human emotions is impossible for our simple minds to fully comprehend. When the emotional wheels start turning, the brain releases a host of chemicals, causing a series of fascinating reactions throughout our bodies and, in some almost magical way, determining how we feel.

Thinking about someone who isn’t thinking about you is agonising. Missing someone you’re not entitled to miss is worse. It’s a mixture of embarrassment, vulnerability, and helplessness. It is a bittersweet sentiment where your heart and mind are in conflict. You’re stuck in a swirling black hole and supernova combination, exploding outward and pulling inward at the same time. Missing someone exposes us to loneliness and gives us time to appreciate them. We also learn independence as we navigate the darkness and endure emptiness, leading us to seek joy and peace from within ourselves. There is pain in the process, but also maturity from the grief and excitement in the growth. We will never finish growing, because we are perpetually learning.

Sometimes you have to cut certain people out of your life because you don’t want the same things at the same time. You assume he doesn’t want all of you while hiding pieces of himself. You quit playing his game because you don’t agree with his rules, knowing there are no winners in the end. You shut down and move on.

At first, you miss him. Your heart aches for him, and you spend every moment replaying the last time, the last kiss, the last hug, the last touch, the last smile. One day, a minute goes by when he’s not on your mind. The next day, it’s five or ten minutes. Over time, you notice that you haven’t thought about him in a whole week, because life is full of people and distractions. After a few months, spanning years and over a decade of this, he’s just a tiny speck in your memory.

Then you discover something new about your history, and the missing puzzle pieces leave you flabbergasted as you stare at the complete picture. In an instant, that little speck explodes into a full-blown desire, and all of those past feelings come rushing back. How can a moment from adolescence still reach me here?

You realise just how much you’ve missed him. You miss him more than you remember him, a haunting truth that slips through the silence you thought was safe. “Stop it,” you tell yourself as you try to block out the amatory flashbacks. It is unfair how an outdated confession can impact you, stir up intoxicated passion, and evoke awkward questions. Honesty is not always the best policy when there is no future. Unrequited love is for naive adolescents. I am far too insatiable and pedantic for such novelty.