Another year older, another year wiser.
My yearly mantra as I turn another number.
30.
I’m 30. I’m 30. I’m 30. I’m 30.
I’m fucking old.
Ahh, looking back this year that has come and gone that was known as my 29th year, it has been another steady growing experience. Looking back this whole decade, it has been a huge growing experience for me. It’s been more than an exponential growth for me every year for the past 10 years.
As stated in many of my earlier posts and especially in my yearly Bah Humbug post is that I’ve come to make many tough decisions on what I felt was right. Also, I finally realize that I still have so much growing left in me.
I think, in a way, that’s the weirdest thing, I still have so much growing left in to do. I felt that I’ve grown up tremendously throughout the past couple of years, especially the years that I have started this dear blog of mine, but it just still surprises me that no matter how much I’ve grown, there is still so much more growing left in me to do.
I think the biggest growth that came about this year was that I was able to make those tough decisions and stick to them.
Letting that one know that I can’t hang out with her anymore because I was interested in her. Letting her know that the more we hang out, the more I’ll like her and I just can’t put myself through that again. I was honest, upfront, and she respected me for that.
Endings. I ended something that needed to be ended and I felt horrible about it. Heartbroken, shattered, but ultimately things got better. It just made me stronger, and also not want to get into a relationship anymore because it just scares me. I don’t want to experience something like that again, but I know that I do. There’s no way around it.
Strangely enough, it was around Chinese New Year that came the biggest change. Maybe it is just that I felt that my life is actually going forward in a small way, or maybe it is because Scott and I started to audition for A Political Situation and things finally clicked. I am doing something. I have a new project and I was actually excited about it.
But I don’t know. For some reason, about that time, another changed happened. I’ve become even more happy-go-lucky, more easy going, and just more happy. I felt good about myself. I felt great and I do feel great now. Just beautifully wonderful fantabulous. Amazing.
Life is just amazing now. Just beautiful.
Again, this past year has been the most relaxed and stress free I’ve ever been. I do owe a lot of it to my current job, which I just love ’cause it is just so relaxed. No angry ignorant boss breathing down my neck wanting this and wanting that and just not understanding the basis of IT and technology.
I got a great group of guys and gal to work with, to help support and actually support. Just a group of other IT people that understands what it is to do IT stuff. Just beautiful.
Maybe strangely it is around that time in February, Chinese New Year, when I realize that I’ve been at the awesome job for about a year now. I don’t know. I made quite a few friends and know many great coworkers. Just excellent.
Ahh, all happiness and happy things. Things are just great.
There are just a lot of things that are just changing in me more and more subtly that I notice. Again, like me two years ago, I’ve become more and more optimistic and also more and more confident in myself.
Not just with girls but also in life.
I made an effort to just go out more, socialize more…but hahaha, I’m sure many of my friends still think I’m the anti-social hermit. In a way I still am. I’m still that home-bod, but that’s how I like it.
One thing that I do notice a lot more are the reaction of girls when I’m around them. Total strangers. Well, not so much total strangers since I actually work with many of them. And when I say work, I work in the same building and sometimes I do help them.
I mean there are a couple that I do talk with almost daily as we start to chat because I’ve helped them a bit or I have noticed them and for some reason or another we just chatted and things just progress. Tyra, Delicate Flower, and Skittles.
With those, it’s different. Since I do interact with them, mostly for work, we just end up chatting. And I know me, after the initial fear of talking with them, I get more chatty, a lil more of a smartass, and things just progress from there. I can give them my brand of charm.
I don’t know how they feel about me, but it does make me feel good to know that I’m getting attention from these fair ladies. Well, maybe not Delicate Flower because, well, I’m me. At first I thought that there might be as we notice each other from the crowds and just smile and wave. I’m just a little different, a little too much of a heathen, just maybe.
My brand of charm.
I’ve always thought that I was charming, well, a different type of the dashing Prince Charming, but charming none-the-less. But it was just more about being a smartass than actually be smooth with my words and actual “charm” per se.
But I was just surprised to hear from Skittles that I was actually charming. She thought I was charming and flirtatious. I know I’m flirtatious; it’s just within my nature to be. I’m a flirtatious person by nature, so I flirt in many different ways. Mostly with my smartass words and sayings, but charming none-the-less.
I have a child’s game of tease and tease more. Hurt them with my stupid words and games.
I don’t flirt as much with Delicate Flower though. As attractive as I think she is, I don’t know, there’s just something about her. I guess she’s just not my “type”…if I ever did have a type.
As for Tyra..she’s just a sweet girl.
Now those are just the girls that I know. Now the office have many girls. Many, and I’m not going to lie, there are many attractive ones at that. But maybe they are just a great bunch of friendly ladies, but I do notice them make eye contact with me and just smile whenever they see me. Sometimes it is followed with a “Hi” or what not, but a smile. Attention. I’m getting some sort of attention.
I’m a attention whore. A whore I tell you.
But any who, I am who I am, and things like this usually don’t happen to me much. I think there were a couple of times that I notice it happening, like the night at Starbucks, or another time when I saw the same girl twice in the same day in the span of three hours. There were small moments like that, but they are again, once in a blue moon.
Maybe I am attractive and girls do like me in that way and would like to get to know me better in many ways. But I do notice a part of me is still scared to ask them out. I know that I have much better self-esteem and confidence than what I use to have, but I guess it is just not enough to feel comfortable in taking the next step. There’s still somethings that are holding me back.
Maybe I’ll even be able to speak to the Month or even the Snooty One, well maybe not her. She is “snooty”, but nice to look at.
Skittles tells me I don’t give myself enough credit. Maybe I don’t. Maybe for some reason, I just like to just flirt and not have that “serious” relationship. Just flirt and be gone, so my fickle heart can have its play and not get hurt.
There’s still a large part of me that is still scared. Scared of the unknown, scared of getting hurt, scared of hurting someone else, scared of rejection, scared of hurting someone else, scared of losing someone.
I know that I shouldn’t be afraid of those things. They are just a part of life. I know that. I see that. I understand that, but I am scared. Just SCARED.
Maybe it just spans back to the 10 years that just passed or maybe even longer. Much much longer. I don’t know what it is, but slowly, slowly…but surely, I am going to fix it. I have to.
* * *
10 years.
I’ve changed so much since my I was 20. No more manic depression. No more quarter life crisis. No more just waking up and wondering what the fuck I’m doing with my life. No more wanting to runaway and just doing stuff.
Maybe I was just the naive little boy that I was when I was 20, being held back by my duty to family. Being the nice guy, not wanting to hurt anyone because I don’t want to hurt people, not wanting to be the bad guy.
But throughout the years since I moved down, lessons learned. Hurting people is okay. Not caring is okay. Just being more selfish is okay.
But I know I do care about a lot of stuff. I just have to decide what I need to stop caring about.
Looking back, reading my old blogs, things were just so different. When I started this blog, it was a way for me to vent, to release all the anger that was within me, to cope with my father’s death. This void was my outlet, my therapy. It was something that I needed to help fix me.
Now, I’m not saying I’m totally fixed. I sure as hell am not. I still have many many major problems. Tons of problems and many I know for damn sure that I’ll never get fixed.
I’ve lost so many people near and dear to me in my twenties. Many. Maybe that’s why I’m afraid to get into relationships.
Once I found my confidence, one would think that one should easily get into a relationship. Maybe I’m just so broken in many different ways, that there’s just no way to actually fix it. I’ve been broken so long, and this is the best patch up work that is for me. I don’t know.
I do know that I still break down. I still cry, shed tears, grieve. I still do.
Whenever I watch anything that has to deal with grandparents or even parents or losing someone, my heart strings are pulled and tears flow. I can’t stop that. That’s the biggest broken part. Maybe that’s the big reason why I think I don’t want to be in a relationship. I don’t want to lose anyone.
My first experience with death, I was 20. My grandfather. That’s the first real one that I remember.
But a few years later, after I moved down, the biggest one that just shattered my world. I was inconsolable. My grandmother. My beloved grandmother passed away.
It hurt. It still hurts. Just pain, painful. There’s nothing I could have done about it. I knew it was coming. I knew it did. But, it still hurts. Till this day, it hurts. Watching shows or even movies where there is a character needing to take care of their elderly parent or grandparents and needing to make that decision to put them in a home, it kills me. It literally kills me.
My face will crumble, tighten, and tears will flow. My chest will clutch tight as I gasp for air, trying to fight back the feeling. It doesn’t work.
Then a few years later, the worse pain ever. My heart is still broken till this day because of it. There is no way to fix this one. It may be THE reason why I don’t want to get into a relationship anymore, ’cause I don’t want anyone so near and dear to me gone. I don’t want to lose someone anymore.
With my grandmother, it was expected. She was old, but with my dad, unexpected. It happened out of the blue. Gone.
I think about him all the time. I loved him in my own special way. I know he love me in his own special way. It was a unspoken love, repressed through culture, because that’s how my family is. We just don’t talk about anything. Our love is through our actions, our loyalty to family.
I still break down and cry because of him. I miss him sorely. My heart still aches because of him. I have father issues and those are never going to be fixed. Even today, just sitting down to dinner, eating something that reminds me of him, the good ol’ days, I would just break down. It never happened in front of anyone, just alone at home. I’m glad that it never happens in public, ’cause I don’t think I would be able to explain it. It just happens, and my heart breaks, and tears will flow.
No amount of tears shed will be able to bring him back. I miss him and I know that I will be dealing with this problem for the rest of my life.
That is a slow fix that I won’t be able to fix till my dying day. Nothing is able to help me fix it. Nothing.
The fear of losing someone. I know that’s the big reason that is holding me back on so many levels, especially of relationships.
I know that I’m able to find someone, someone special. I know that there are other factors to explain why I’m alone. The lack of confidence in asking someone out, the rejection, the anti-social nature, my constant need of space, me being just so dead set in my hermit ways, my love for my independence…the list goes on.
There are many reasons why I’m single, but I think the biggest one is the risk of losing someone, especially someone so dear.
I know that nothing is forever. People will come and go. Death is natural. But the fear of losing someone is so debilitating, it just makes me hesitant of being in a relationship with someone.
I haven’t dated that many people in my life. 3 was my last count and it all happened in a span of the past 4 years. But with each one, as it ended, I felt like shit.
With Twinkle Twinkle, I guess it was just because it was my first. She was my first. It wasn’t that things ended, I knew that things would end eventually. She’s not the one for me, but the fact that she lied to me hurt me the most.
With Sheilah, I had to end it. Maybe in the long run, we could have lasted a little longer than what we had. I made the decision to end things and maybe I rushed into it and just ended things because I can’t see us in the long run. I don’t know what it is, but I was down in the dumps for a few months afterward.
The worse one was Selena Kyle. That one hurts the most. I had to do it, but I still cared for her when it happened. It just had to happen. I haven’t broken down and cried so hard in a long time and that night when we officially broken up was one of the worst. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing because I know that it had to end and I had hurt someone. If my heart hurt so much, I wondered how much hers hurt. I abandoned her.
I still stand by what I did, but after that, I don’t think I can go through another one.
I don’t think I can go through another breakup, hurting someone else again. I know for sure that it will happen, because I am that difficult. I am so dead set in my ways. I understand about compromise, but still. I’m just afraid of hurting my heart.
My heart is weak. It is damaged. It is what it is, and I don’t think there is a fix to patch it up. It is patched up in the best possible way right now.
Even the other day, watching Marley and Me, I broke down and cry.
I love my dog. He’s my son. I love Pickles.
It just bring tears to my eyes to see or even think of him gone. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t even want to think about it. If I’m so attached to a dog, and thinking about losing him just kills me, what will happen if it is someone I actually do care for.
I know how it feels like to lose someone close. I’ve lost many beloveds. Many. Too many in my life time. I don’t think my heart can take anymore. My mom. My brother. Pickles. I think my heart just have enough for them.
So, I’m afraid. Deathly afraid of what is to happen if I do find that special someone, that special someone that I start to build a family with. My wife, whoever she maybe. I’m deathly afraid of losing her.
But I guess it is something that I need to do. I need to get over this fear.
Maybe this year, my thirties will allow me to do that. Maybe my thirties is my time to just face this fear head on and start my life, not alone, but with someone that means a lot to me.
Maybe I can only fix myself in that front by facing that fear head on. Being with someone and just take it one day at a time. Fight our battles, making the compromise, and allowing my heart to be shattered, to be broken, to just break and give and give till there is nothing left in me to give, not even my soul.
Maybe I need to do that to finally grow up.
* * *
10 years.
I’ve grown up so much in 10 years. I’ve fixed so many issues in 10 years. So much about me then is just an afterthought. I have risen out of the flames as a brand new person. More refined, better with age, and just generally a better and happier person.
It took a while for it to happen. 10 years maybe. Maybe even less. At least almost 6 years since I started this blog.
What will the next 10 years bring? Will I even continue to blog in this thing in 10 years time?
How many stories will I be telling about my life through this void? I don’t know. It is just so scary. So frightening to think about what will be.
But I think I have learned to just let things be and just take a day at a time.
My twenties was the decade of fixing myself. My thirties, maybe the decade of facing my fears.
Throughout the last couple of years, I have become very optimistic. It crept up and just hit me out of nowhere.
There are many things I am fearless about. Just fearless, ’cause I’m not afraid to die. I really am not. I’m just afraid of losing people. I don’t want to lose anymore.
That’s my fear. Fear of losing someone close.
I’m not afraid of not achieving my dream of being a director. I’m not afraid of that. As long as I do make an effort, which I am, I’m happy. I’m doing that and I am happy about it. Making this last one, I do see my limitations in making this dream come true, but I don’t care. It’s still not going to stop me from doing my best and being my best and actually try to make this dream come true.
No. I don’t have many fears. Not many.
Fear. Losing someone. Getting close again. Opening myself and letting someone in.
Fear.
Broken heart.
Hurting someone.
Fear.
My twenties are over. I have fixed myself as much as I can and I am happy. This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. My fixing problems that only I can fix is over. I’m no longer angry. No longer frustrated. No longer lost.
I’m happy. I’m found. I have direction. Fearless in my life.
Now is the step that I need to take with someone else. Now is the time to go onto the next stage in my life, the next phase of me growing up and healing. To be not afraid. To let someone in. To be willing to allow for the possibility of losing someone near and dear to me again.
I need to take that risk.
I’ve never been the big risk taker. I’ve always played it safe. Safe enough for me. But it is time to take that big risk in life. To throw away all of my fears and just charge full speed ahead.
To be able to share my life with someone. The big risk.
I think, no I believe, the payoff to this gamble is worth it.
A deeply bonded love, family, forever enthralled happiness, against the fear of losing someone close and dear.
I’m a smart person. I understand most of the world. I understand life. Death is natural. Losing something is natural. People leave and people get hurt. It happens.
I just need to allow it to happen to me.
Do it.
My thirties.
30
The start of something new.
It will be the start of my new life, a life to be fearless.
My twenties have come to a spectacular end with many memories. Now it is time to make new memories.
Another journey to grow up, to allow for the possibility.
30.
Thirties.
Surprise me.
Mumblings of a Hermit 隐者 