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Friday, April 17
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Today I received a pleasant - no, more than pleasant - I must say it was a fantastic surprise from The Boyfriend.
Just when I was beginning to feel quite insecure. I was beginning to have doubts - why is he always going to the lan shop on some street in Kaoh Siung and sending me messages on Facebook? I mean, yeah, his messages and texts are nothing less than sweet words of a uber doting boyfriend, but still, did SAF spend so much money to send a bunch of naval divers to Taiwan for 18 bloody days when all these FREE TIME can be cut short to like, 10 days or less, if you minus the weekends that they're free to go clubbing and shopping, and all the afternoons and evenings that they're so damn free, SO THAT these precious naval divers can come back home to Singapore and be with the people they love??!
Ah so anyway.
I was beginning to feel really insecure. I have never been that insecure in this relationship before. Not even when The Boyfriend had a pesky 'old-time friend' whom he was once interested in, who kept contacting him for dubious reasons and even scolded him for deleting her off Facebook.
And she even had the cheek to blame ME for making him delete his friends off Facebook, when I had totally, absolutely no clue that he had gone and deleted at least half of his friends! Both male and female, because he said that Facebook is becoming too public and he does not want half the world to see what's going on in his life and become a gossip point for people.
Luckily, The Boyfriend and I have agreed that we would share everything with each other, even things that would hurt us, because we want to have an open relationship. And I wasn't even the one who initiated that pact. I agreed with him because I no longer wanted to hide anything from someone who loves me this much.
And I got to know about all this rendezvous when he showed me the incriminating evidence of his text messages with her. And when I saw her replies...I was boiling. She had not only tried to place the blame on me ("Is it because of your gf? Everything also for your gf! Nothing but your gf!") until The Boyfriend said that I knew nothing about his actions; she had also tried to act all coy and cute at the end of it all ("I really can't bring myself to be angry at you for long. Rar.")
When I read those messages I was boiling, and it seemed like a dark cloud had formed over my head, and boy did I fume. I never wanted to show it because I wanted to seem like, "Ok, fine, whatever. You deal with her yourself," but inside, I felt like every part of me was being eaten up.
A few weeks later, she texted him again. "Hello stranger. How are you?"
A seemingly innocent message, but ask any girl, and she would have immediately caught on to the innuendos lurking beneath. Once again, The Boyfriend did not reply to her text, but instead showed the text to me. Once again, the dark cloud formed over my head. This time, there was not only thunder but lightning as well.
I said to him, "You yourself judge this text for yourself. You tell me that you know she's still interested in you despite both of you being attached. And I, as your girlfriend, cannot stand this shithead anymore. I know you will never be interested in her again. And I know you are trying your best to stay away from her. But I cannot stand the fact that she blatantly tries to keep in contact with you despite not trying many years ago when she became attached and threw you aside like an old rag. We both know what she's trying to do ok."
The thing is, The Boyfriend was indeed interested in her at the same time, or even earlier than when he was interested in me. But they had only gone out on one date, and the rest is history, because he started asking me out more frequently.
So anyway, we disposed of that problem immediately (she still had the cheek to bring up stuff like "Remember when you said you wanted to go jogging with me? When we went out on Christmas Eve?" I mean hello, obviously he said those things because he was trying to court her, but now that he's attached shouldn't she have the decency to respect him and his relationship, if not his girlfriend, and stop trying to be a blatant flirt?) and life went on.
Even that episode didn't make me as insecure as I felt yesterday. I constantly felt like he was going to the lan shop too much- possible liaison with a pretty taiwanese babe? Although yeah he did say that he would log on to Facebook and send me messages and look at my pictures and videos, but it only takes at most 10 minutes to send me a message, then he can waltz down the street with some chick!
Yeah that's called thinking too much.
But every girl will know that the slightest thing matters when they are insecure. And even I scare myself. I used to think that insecurities of other people are very insignificant, and when I decided to be with The Boyfriend, I realised that I hardly ever felt insecure with him. I had become one of the most secure persons around. Despite being uber insecure in the past, I have realised that it is your partner who has most responsibility to see to your security. Of course, it takes two hands to clap. But hell, if a man can't succeed in making you feel secure, it ain't really a relationship.
Therefore, I scared myself with my insecurities yesterday. I tried to ignore them, to push them away like I do for all negative thoughts and emotions. But I couldn't, and nothing he said would make me feel better. Deep down inside, I knew he was not doing anything behind my back. He couldn't even bring himself to. That is how confident I am of him and our relationship.
But yet, I would read too much into everything he said, or didn't say.
And it was only the 5th day.
He said he has a surprise for me. His text read, "Go to the cupboard where I put my clothes. You will find a thumbdrive. Your surprise is in the thumbdrive."
Excited, I opened the cupboard and felt on the uppermost rack. I felt it immediately, that small, capsule-like thing.
I quickly inserted it into my laptop which was faithfully on standby (office email). There was only one folder in the thumbdrive. It read "For Maxine".
Obviously, I clicked on it. And I saw not one, but FOUR videos. And a smile crept onto my face.
In case those perverted minds are wandering and wondering if The Boyfriend is yet another Edison Chen or Gary Ng, please halt.
The videos were of him, no doubt, with some clips of me, of course, but he was on my screen, larger than life, fully-clothed and talking to me. It had been days since I've heard his voice, seen his smile... and I'm very used to the way he talks, his expressions, so much so that I've taken them for granted, and didn't know how much I really missed him until I saw him on that first video clip.
It was him sitting on his bed. Fully-clothed, I reiterate. It was him, acting like an MTV VJ, talking to me like I'm right there in front of him, showing me things like little notes I had written to him, movie ticket stubs which he had collected, saying, "Contrary to your belief, I actually kept all your little notes and almost all the ticket stubs."
I saw the sarcasm even before it came and that made me smile even more.
My silly sister broke my reverie in the 2nd or 3rd video clip by bursting into my room and saying, "Why are you smiling to yourself?!?"
He even said, "And I'm a video guy, and that's why I take so many videos of you -- (stop being perverts everyone) -- not wanting to take videos..."
Cut to him trying to take a video of me walking Orchard Road with me screaming, "Can you stop it? Can you stop it! Don't take me!"
Yeah sounds very perverted.
"...Videos of you eating at Outback (Steakhouse)," he continues. Cut to me eating a juicy steak and smiling at the camera while he delivers a light punch to my face and I laugh. Different video from the one on Facebook, at Starbucks when he punches my face in front of Forde and Pamela.
"...Videos of you vacuuming your own car..." Cut to me vacuuming my car with his portable vacuum cleaner, wearing a hat with a feather in it and asking him, "What are you doing?" I remember thinking that night I was vacuuming, "I wish we didn't have to waste time vacuuming my car when we can spend the time together,"
The second video clip was of him after he had sent me home. I bet some of you are thinking, "What the hell, you drive but he sends you home?!" Don't worry, even my own parents think we are ridiculous. But hello, shouldn't the older generation respect chivalry more? Sometimes I really think my family is slightly dysfunctional.
So anyway. The second video clip was late at night, after I was safely tucked in bed, he was filming himself on camera. After we had watched Detroit Metal City with Forde, Pamela and Jason.
The third video clip was of him buying ice-cream for us! All the Ben & Jerry's. His hair sucks in this video but I seriously don't care. I am still grinning from ear to ear. On this day that he was filming, I was on my way to his place.
In the last video, he was topless (woo!). He had just sent me to an event and had gone home to nap, before coming to pick me up again later. He says, "You are probably watching this video while I'm in Taiwan, and I just wanna assure you that --" he pauses, and I hold my breath.
"I won't die ok," he finishes, and rolls his eyes.
Before he left, I was going on and on about him dying while under water. "What if your oxygen tank runs out of oxygen?! What if you get poisoned by a stone fish which you thought was a bomb and happily picked it up to defuse it? What if there's sharks? What if you get hypothermia or pneumonia due to the freezing waters? What if you eat Taiwan food and get food poisoning??!"
Obviously he just laughed it off. Now, even when he's in Taiwan, he is reminding me of how pessimistic I am and how he loves to laugh at me.
"I'll be fine there. It is very safe, so you don't have to worry," he continues. I pause the video and just as I expected, there he was, smirking at me with that you-must-be-insane-to-worry-so-much look! I felt like he was right there with me, chiding me and smirking at me and laughing at me and I just felt like wiping that stupid look off his face.
But then all I did was to laugh back at him. Back at his frozen face, with the frozen smirk. I was too happy that I could even feel his presence. The video subsided with me and Pam holding guns, shooting at House Of The Dead 2, and my mouth forming the words "Go away lah!!!!" because The Boyfriend was blocking my view and blocking the sensor for my gun to shoot the corpses.
I wish I hadn't shouted at him like that, even if it were in jest.
And it cuts to him walking to pick me up from my place. The camera focuses on me. I obviously see him from afar and walk towards him. And then I smile at him.
As a former media student, I must say his work is very homemade, with his specialty in jump cuts. But despite the lack of expertise in lighting and sound, and even editing, the director had clearly portrayed what the video clips were meant to say.
It was not that he missed me while in Taiwan. It was not even to assure me that he still cares for me and to fill my lonely gap while he is away. It is not that he wants me to know that he won't die, or whatever. It is not that he wants to show me how capable he is of planning and executing romantic surprises. It is all of the above, yet it isn't all of the above.
He meant to portray how he sees me from his eyes and his heart. The camera is like a pair of eyes, conveying to the audience the director's viewpoint.
And I swoon over the clips so much not only because I am able to feel him again, or that I am gloating over my sweet Boyfriend who has gone to the expense of making four video clips to surprise me...but because I am able to cherish him so much more, knowing that those clips are shallowly meant for me to see him because he knows I will miss him, but then, why would he put snippets of ME in the clips? Why the hell would I want to see ME for?
I finally understand that he has filmed me in the most unexpected circumstances, when I am caught by surprise, or happiness, and that is how he remembers me by when he is away. He sees me as that all the time. I never really believed him whenever he says he is thinking of me all the time or that he misses me. I mean, we spend ALL our time together, days merging into nights and turning into days again. But now I do.
By this, I truly understand now. Because I am able to see and understand, I am able to cherish him so much more.
And because I am able to cherish him more than ever, my insecurities are all gone. I am back to who I was before the insecurity plague hit me. Waiting now. Just waiting...
the angels they burn inside for us|12:28:00 AM|
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