Breaking Point

Today, I had to sit and wonder once again, why doesn't this man respect me?

I am tired. I am done. 

I feel like I am screaming at men to respect me and I am so so tired. 

Somehow, respect for the sexual woman is such a struggle. 

Why does it feel like respect comes so much more easily for other women?

I had to lie down on my bed, between e-lectures, covering my eyes with my forearms and chanting, "you deserve to be respected, you deserve dignity, you do so much". I had to come out of that and realise I was wasting time. Time that could be spent feeling good about myself and continuing to do everything I need to do. 

On Loving Someone You Barely Know

R messaged with some bad news and i havent been able to get it out of my head.

so he hasnt been replying much lately, with other guys my defence mechanisms wouldve kicked in - okay dont look too eager, it seems like hes pulling away, time to play the game who have can act cooler; colder. but lets be real.. anyone who knows me knows i suck at being cold. and if he did pull away, it would absolute sense. we couldnt be physically further apart, and he has a full life with children and a job. out of everyone, all the other men ive encountered, he has the most legitimate reason to essentially... ignore me...

its funny. J has told me before: you should expect more, you shouldnt let them treat you like that, cut him off he sounds nasty.

my resistance to cutting these guys off at the first sign of aforementioned nasty behaviour was a mixture of wanting to believe in the good of people + being in denial that i wasnt being treated with respect.

where does this come from? how can i begin to unpack this? is it just something you learn with experience?

i feel so much love for R (i guess im not exactly in love with him). and i felt like that was wrong. i felt like i simply loved him for being kind to me. its honestly tiring to continuously question your feelings: are you only in love with the idea of him? is this just a case ~daddy issues~? is it because hes the first guy you feel secure with?

i honestly feel a lil crazy haha. ive been thinking about him and this bad incident of his the whole morning. the man doesnt like much in this world, i cant imagine what effect this would have on him. im touched that he let me in like this? maybe im blowing it out of proportion but he's only let me in on his emotions in the tiniest drips and drabs - can i blame him though. im just a young punk making a cameo appearance in the third act of his life hahah.

ive been thinking how i can get myself back to the Netherlands. is there an expiration date to this, or can we pick up from where we left off even years down the road? would he really be okay with him living with him for awhile or was that just something he said in the moment?

one little fantasy ive been holding onto is heading down there for a short stint - a job or internship or something - staying with him, getting domestic, cooking and watching things together, making myself scarce when his kids come to visit, popping over to Denmark to see my darling M or to London to see my beautiful aunt and cousins.

i feel like its such a waste that we had planned all these things to do together, and never got around to it. ofc i'd need some excuse (the internship/job) to underplay how crazy it'd be for me to fly 17 hours for a man i kinda barely know.

i keep saying "youre so beautiful" in my head. which is such a cheesy thing to think, but i feel that a lot about him?

okay so ultimately, this post is for anyone who feels crazy for loving someone they barely know. as with all things crazy, dont worry im one step ahead of you.

to R, with love

i was a casualty in the recent premature termination of exchange - the forceful eviction from a foreign land back to the home land.

why does it feel like the opposite?

right now i feel hopeless - i know this is a crazy, temporary, all-consuming feeling - i feel hopeless that i will ever love Singapore like i did before, now that ive had a taste of something so different.

ive had a taste of picturesque blue skies, alongside glistening canals, amongst the flurry of disgruntled bikers; ive had to fight against the cold harsh winds, unpredictable Parisian streets, gushes of rain blurring my vision.

ive been to a land where i dont feel different, out of the norm, ugly, even.

and R, of course no post would be complete without a guest appearance by a man who plays a part in my narrative.

A and I spoke a lot about how our fathers failed us, we constantly saw touching scenes of father and child, welling up at the loss of our own such innocence.

i dont want to think that this has anything to do wth R. i really hope not.

but if im forcing a narrative or a story arc out of this, this is the only way it makes sense for me?

why else would the universe send me into the comforting arms of a man twice my age?

i felt so safe with him, close to no second-guessing, for the first time, a man's words were not lines to be read in between, they were simply words.

"there were so many things i wanted to do with you" - was simply that.

its easy to romanticise the time we had together, it was too early for things to go shit as they routinely did. but part of me cant help but wonder, could it have just gotten better with time?

i think im done. im done looking for the hidden life lessons behind every male encounter. R makes me want to believe that sometimes good things can come to me, for no reason in particular.

i think i know how to be myself now, more importantly, i think ive learnt how to be enough for myself.

rushing home to cook a dish id been fantasising about earlier in the day, and settling down with my laptop to rewatch old shows that have a special place in my heart - ultimately, this was my favourite thing to do, miles away from home.


this was my first piece of writing about R:

ive taken a lover - sounds dramatic right.

JK.

so i started hanging out/having sex with this 43 year old guy. our first hang was very pleasant, we felt comfortable with each other very fast (the boredom and utter lack of connection with my previous date still looming over). but i feel a bit weird after having sex so im trying to make sense of it here. do my impulses reflect my true intentions? barely 20 minutes in we were seated, watching a random flock of flamingoes, and i initiate the physical with a "are you gonna kiss me?" - do i regret starting too soon? i feel more vulnerable with clothes on, where all we will have are our words and thoughts, not caresses and touches. have i grown so comfortable with communicating with men in this manner that i have lost my voice? or, does that just reflect my true intentions - maybe my mind doesn't want to engage with him? it doesn't see it is as worthwhile investment? why then, do i agonise over my inability to communicate. he said something strange about gender equality/feminism and i didn't know how to respond.

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im glad to have proven myself wrong. im glad he turned out to be a source of happy, of comfort. i will never forget him. i have the wrappers from our juice bottles. i dont want to forget what it was like being in his arms, his overwhelming scent, his forceful touch. but time will catch up with me, no matter how much i fight it. and soon this post will read as melodrama to me. but thats okay.

when things dont go your way for the 700th time

the universe has taken upon itself to ensure that i cease online dating
for the umpteenth time, something has not gone my way. i finally realise why this was is and continues to be so upsetting. it is a cognitive dissonance of sorts. when what you imagine and what happens in reality completely mismatch - like a mini shock to your system.

my butt is a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse
i feel like a pornstar who's trying to break out of the scene and change her line of work. there is for sure an element of self sabotage and lack of control on my part. perhaps the ideal hang/bang situation i envision is not something that can even happen - for anyone.

having sex does not mean i deserve less respect  
i fear that i have grown accustom to inherently distrusting men. recently after sexting, a guy said he had a family emergency, wasnt in a good place and didnt want to meet anymore. my deep distrust led me to actually entertain the thought that he could be lying, and even im being honest, 5% of me still thinks that. which makes me ugly honestly. this distrust can manifest in a self-centeredness that i resent.

i am running out of lessons to learn 
i feel like ive learnt every lesson out there. ive nursed the hurt from being ghosted, from him liking someone else and from a simple lack of reciprocity.

the. irony. of. just. wanting. to. have. sex. with. someone. i. vibe. with. 
what does this connote? hassle free, problem free, light, easy.
what does this entail? uncertainty, lack of closure, ambiguity.

stop having sex?
starting to believe that this is the answer. perhaps, yes, it does feed into the madonna-whore complex. but i am also just utterly tired. so maybe i stop fighting, stop trying to defy the norm.

why online dating makes me wanna cry

WAIT, I THOUGHT THIS BITCH WAS ON A HIATUS? WHAT SHE DOIN BACK ONLINE?

i shall begin with a small story time (i wish i had the balls to actually do videos and post them online but the possibility of working in government/as a teacher looms over me).

after a 9/10 month dating app hiatus (except for that one time i had a mini breakdown while studying for finals and used tinder web for a few minutes), i finally found myself typing up "bumble.com" in my search bar one fateful afternoon (after promising my lunch buddy "ya ok what you say makes sense, i wont go back to the apps"). what possessed me to do this? most likely a combination of boredom and desire for male attention. i selected my pictures - picture 1: cute picture of me in sunlight taken by D, picture 2: a quirky picture of me laughing and showing off me b00ty taken by B and picture 3: a simple cute smiley photo of me against some foliage (lets see if you can already spot my rookie mistake).

after swiping right on every guy for awhile (i was trying to leave it up to fate rather than choice) bumble finally stopped me with its right-swiping-limit and i went to bed. the next day i woke to a bunch of matches and naturally, felt validated - they like me !

but then came scrolling through and deciding who to actually talk to (still prefer this to being bombarded with 50 "hi how are you"s - 50? i exaggerate, im cute but not 50-messages-on-tinder-cute).

so look, im not trying to be racist or xenophobic, but i was trying to sieve out the guys who might be from india. as someone who likes brown dudes, i have not-so-unintentionally gone out with AND slept with more men from india than i have from singapore. tried and tested, i havent exactly gotten along with them - we always reach a wall, especially when it comes to humour. i dont have much luck in dating as it is so i just wanted increase probability of vibing by talking to sinGaporean men. so that was my little prelude, please dont get me wrong dear readers.

WHO AM I?

so i deliver some quality bantery messages to a handful of guys - top notch stuff. but then i realise, i've forgotten how to talk to boys. sending the first message is like composing a tweet, one-way, quippy, funny, more so for your entertainment. but once they reply, it becomes a two-way thing.

suddenly im stuck.

stumped.

to the guy with the bio "the best indian you'll ever takeaway" do i say, "yeah i love eating indian food if you know what i mean ;)" - because thats my default! innuendo-riddled sexy fun timez messages! but no, thats not what we're doing anymore. we're trying to nOT have meaningless sex with strangers remember. so... what do i do, what do i say? i went on a date with a guy (with whom i am now pals with, shout out to you D!), and he told me i was coming off too strong with the whole "tell me how you REALLY feel, who are you REALLY", so i was trying not to veer into that either. avoid the extremes! so this was obstacle number 1: how the fuck am i supposed to be my authentic self...

i decided: dont put so much pressure on what youre saying exactly, just have the right intentions

the right intentions being: get to know him, not bone him

and with that i merrily chatted with a few suitors

WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT THE HELL DO THEY WANT FROM ME? 

one guy in particular catches my attention. our conversation flows really easily (its indian takeaway man). we move to telegram real fast (i was hesitant but i was also trying not to second guess things too much, "go with the flow" as the kids say). i made it a point to not explicitly say, "oh im looking to vibe with someone and then possibly have sex with them" - in the past ive been very upfront with my intentions, but ive learnt that this kind of robs the connection of genuinely developing. instead of actually engaging with them, i have an internal checklist of what should/shouldnt happen. so this time, im free and easy (not like THAT).

after a few messages, i realise he's being a bit overtly flirty with the "hey sexy"s and "is that ass real", but okay, i excuse it because he also asks more innocuous questions like, "what do you look for in a guy" and "what're you up to". i dont encourage the flirty messages, i deflect them by asking more questions instead (nice one girl, there was a time when you wouldve jumped on the opportunity to send someone a naked picture). i pat myself on the back for being a good converser with this man. eventually we decide to meet and THAT'S when things get hella confusing.

firstly, he refuses to pick me up even though its along the way. is this a red flag? am i asking for too much? should i insist on it to make a statement about what kind of girl i am?

secondly, upon meeting he cannot. shut. up. about how pretty i am. yall, im not trying to be self-deprecating, i know i am pretty and hot and all, but no one has gone on and on about it like him. it confused me more so than validated me.

thirdly, all this below:
so after grabbing my hand a few times in the car and interlocking his with mine, we get to mount faber. i think to myself: great, we can walk and talk, and attempt to get to know each other. but then, all hell breaks loose. fella keeps touching my ass, says weird things like "do you know how many other girls i cancelled on to meet you, i wanted to see if that ass was real". i thoroughly regretted my cheeky (pun always intended) ass pic immediately.

the thing is, i really wouldnt mind something casual. i would just like to talk first and establish some vibing before getting into that. at this point, i was sick of being sexualised, i dont need it no more! but, he's hella cute and very attractive despite all this, and i proceed to engage in risque activity with him. i apologise to my country for soiling mount faber like this!

some particularly weird moments during said activity:
- him grabbing my neck and pulling me into his face to kiss him, ignoring my "your hurting me"s
- him kissing me while i was mid-sentence
- him talking a lot about himself (this one i didnt hate, but i'd like to be asked questions too)
- his dogged insistence on fixing my jaw even though i said no multiple times (he proceeded to semi-erotically coerce me into opening and closing my mouth while he pressed on my jaw. only a man has the confidence to play doctor amirite)
- him doing other stuff despite me saying no multiple times

to his credit: maybe i wasnt saying no convincingly enough. maybe i did actually want it? maybe i was distracted because he was cute. i really dont know.

even though i didnt want to, i launched into a small monologue about how i was trying to change my ways, but it was met with indifference.

okay so thats all he wanted, to have sex with me. noted.

THE AMBIGUITY, THE FUCKING AMBIGUITY 

okay so the next day, fully aware of what he wants, i think to myself, "maybe having a fk buddy before i fly off isnt such a bad thing". i ask him if he wants to meet up and im met with a cold, disinterested message.

i shouldnt let this get to me right? but i did. not because he "rejected" me, but because i was upset with myself.

had i undone my 9-10 months of work? all the growing i was trying to do? 10 months later and i end up in the exact position that prompted me to go on a hiatus in the first place.

my mini spiral leads me to question, am i even capable of letting a man get to know me and getting to know a man (in a non-platonic capacity ofc, shout out to my male friends reading this, love yall boos)?

i am fed up with being in these positions. the grayest of gray situationships where being treated like a human being is a delightful surprise more so than the status quo and where i am always in a state of confusion as to who i am or what i want.

THE END 

so i go home. delete his messages and telegram contact. delete my bumble.com account. and meet my friend for gengki sushi to nurse my sadness.

and folks, this is why dating apps make me wanna cry.

why i stopped having sex with men i did not know

my earliest memory of romantic love (in relation to me) is this vivid dream i used to have - a man was on the brink of death, an apparition appears illuminated by my night light, she tells me that this man will die unless i love him, i agree to love him immediately, to save him. why do i agree to marry and love him so easily? why was my first conception of romantic love so linked with death?

if this is indicative of how i first became acquainted with love, then what was my first perception of sex?

when i was 13/14, i accidentally sexted a boy i met from this religious thing i used to go to. i was in my living room, sleeping on the couch (even though i had a perfectly good bed a few steps away), on my little Nokia phone, a luxury i was still getting used to, i was engaging in one of my first real "sms conversations". me and A were secret friends. at the religious place, we barely spoke, but for some reason, we texted a lot. it was odd. i didnt like being associated with him in real life. but the secrecy, the clandestine texts, reeled me in. A wanted to be a fashion designer. i knew he had to be gay. but he here he was texting me about some other girl he liked. we started playing an sms-text game of would you rather - we slowly transitioned from "would you rather nipples on your eyelashes or eyelashes on your nipple?", to "would you rather big boobs or small boobs?"

we both started feeling tingly - for me it was a tingly characterised by wetness, for him it was a tingly characterised by hardness.

my first brush with sex. post would-you-rather-sexting, my proverbial dry spell would go on to last about 5 years. until i actively sought it out.

it'd be reductive to say it was peer pressure. on C's bed, during one of our many sleepovers, she was telling me about the recent sex she had with her then boyfriend when i suddenly blurted out, "it feels like you've all been invited to a party and im the only one who hasnt been invited". (i always did like a party heheh). but it wasnt the act of "sex" that i felt like i was missing out on, it was the act of "feeling sexually desired".

ive always a sort of disjuncture between thinking i was pretty but realising that other people didnt think the same way. i used to think i had an actual shot with my childhood crush J, until i dug up an old photo of us in kindergarten and realised i was thrice his size. maybe not so much pretty, but attractive - i've always thought i was attractive because attraction (in my head) takes into account the person's personality. i think i have a nice personality. but, bit by bit, little me realised people werent always going to see it. what did they see was an obese little girl, red from running (mostly walking) around the netball court in TAF club. boys did not give me the time of day. i thought my neighbourhood-pal was cute but when i tried playing badminton, i distinctly remember him laughing at me and calling me some sort of fat-related insult. i think i skipped ahead to sex to compensate for all the years of feeling undesired - to me, sex was the most powerful indication of attraction, an attraction so alluring that it coerced someone into action, to act on it. having sex was a big fuck you to the boys i used to play with on the playground. 

i can separate the physical act from emotion, yes. but what i didnt foresee was that it'd be disappointing to skip ahead to attraction-affirming-sex. because it skipped past a part of myself that i love: my personality. my approach was disaggregated - i tried to neatly segregate parts of myself and affirm what i thought i lacked affirmation in. i'm not gonna lie, it did work. knowing and experiencing that there were people in the world who were attracted to me and wanted to have sex with me did have a profound impact on how i saw myself. to an extent, it un-did the years of feeling undesired, feeling neglected or looked pass, but i would be constantly disappointed (to different extents) when these men didnt fall in love with who i was. a weirdly inflated ego i have. i'd unconsciously make myself extra charming, extra understanding, extra funny, extra articulate, and yet, all these men wanted to do was to spank my ass. my new conundrum: why were they not falling in love with me? is my personality not as amazing as i thought? do i have to fix this now?

so i lost myself a little bit. it's not that i didnt know who i was. i did, i really did and do. i just struggle to show it on dates(?) and ambiguous interactions with men(?). i could easily be a body to them but i didnt know how to be a person. D kind of shared this sentiment, she wrote a poem about how out of body it felt to have sex. not because the sex was gREAT. out of body in the literal sense, like we literally felt like we were outside of our body, riding a random bearded indian fella we met online a few hours ago. subconsciously, i yearned for them to know me.

i only became cognisant of this when i had a brief encounter with someone who somewhat married "knowing me" and "fucking me". it gave me soOoo much satisfaction that he could say things like he liked that i was independent, out-going, confident, and not just that he liked my ass, breasts, soft hands. i became even more cognisant of it when this was abruptly taken away from me. this man became a ghost (geddit, cos he ghosted me) but more importantly, this unity of my physical attraction and personality, ghosted off with him. my tiny brush with a more holistic sense of affirmation.

ok this is why i stopped having (a lot) of sex with (strangers). for one, i didnt want this to happen to me again because it was so hard to recover from. my friends and i almost got in am accident and my first thought was that my last thought was being sad over a man i barely truly knew and who barely truly knew me. for awhile i didnt trust myself to make correct decisions about boys.

"youre going to get yourself into this situation again, because you've programmed yourself to expect the bare minimum and be happy with the bare minimum. so you're going to do this again because you cant fathom how to expect more".

okay something about that little sentence makes my uncomfortable but i wont delete it. its not that these men were monsters, they entered into something purely physical, its just that they werent the nicest about it + i had some weird expectation that they would be so enamoured by me. so its not their faults, no.

my little break has served me well. in this time ive voiced out when i wanted to stop having sex with a man because i realised i wasnt attracted to him, had sex with a complete stranger and left immediately after because i realised i didnt particularly enjoy it or his company and had actual good sex where i had the space to voice out what i wanted.

baby steps.

i still like having sex and i dont think i can get used to a life where i go cold-turkey. but im appreciating it now for other reasons: no more rhetoric about affirmation - the only thing these men need to give me are orgasms and some kindness. they dont need to be fixing my years of insecurities.

now in my second attempt, i want to have sex with people that i attempt to get to know first. i want us both to make an earnest attempt at getting to know each other so the sex feel fuller, more whole. im still not out there tryna look for loVe or a reLationship. its taken me awhile but i truly dont want those things anymore. i like being a little free. ok some people have laughed and said that sex + vibing is basically a relationship with no commitment. but i think its different. (ok i could be wrong, like ive said before, i am not to be trusted). but it feels different??

who knows honestly. maybe the true secret to my happiness is celibacy.

thank you for reading this incoherent blabber. i will revisit this in my dark times, when i forget who i am. (or maybe when im in bed once more with a stranger)

Playing Boyfriend with my Boy Friends

I'm not sure how this started, but somewhere along the way, I started confiding in boys who were virtually strangers. Every time I started a "texting relationship" with a guy I matched with, it didn't take much for me to start pouring out my deepest secrets and feelings. I think, in my innocent young mind, I thought that the more open I was with them, the higher the likelihood that they'd fall in love with me. Maybe, if I try to psychoanalyse myself, this is a result of all the media that I consumed as an impressionable girl that fed me the narrative (that I consumed without resistance): pretty girls get the guys, fat girls were fun sidekicks at best.

I sincerely thought, I needed to lose weight in order for anyone to fall in love with me.

Something else has been happening these days. It's a bit more ambiguous, a bit more insidious, I'm not sure if its as "bad". I've gotten into the habit of assessing my male friends, assessing whether they can be something more, more than friendship. Friendship and more-than-friendship suddenly become permeable spaces. Maybe this only happens with a few guys right? That wouldn't be so bad? Not like EVERY male friend. Whatever it is, it's fucking irritating!

The last time this happened, I acted on the instinct that the boy must like me (he said my earrings were nice, he said he can see why guys would like me more when they're older, he said its unusual that he talks so much around me because he usually doesn't). Why do I value these comments more when I interpret them as romantic statements? What does it mean to receive validation, care or support from a platonic male friend? I don't know A evaded this process - I guess because he was attached when we met or because there was just an instant sibling-like connection.

Getting closer to R happened in admittedly romantic settings - long walks at night, swinging in a park. The setting doesn't help. At first I was just happy I had a neighbourhood pal to walk with. Now I'm looking at his tagged photos going, "aww he looks so cute", thinking about him before I go to sleep sometimes, itching to text him.

What is the value of a platonic male friend to me? Do men just have a romantic expiry date for me? Am I in a bit to prove to my young self that I am worthy of love? Does that discount the love that R had for me? Is it reciprocal love I'm looking for?

I'm afraid that I'm getting in the way of organic things - of the natural growth and decay. I disrupt these processes with my questions, asked in earnest, in search of clarification. Maybe it's not always good to be clear. When you ask someone to be clear, you put the pressure on them to have an answer, to wade amongst the weeds of uncertainty and emerge with a substantial answer. It could be a premature no, or a premature yes. I have to learn to bite my tongue, especially on the words, "are you attracted to me?".

This used to be my favourite question. If I were.a character in a video game, the answer "yeah I'm attracted to you" was what made my life bar full, filled to the brim.

When did I make these synaptic connections?

Boy nice to me = Boy like me
Boy say nice thing to me = Boy want to have sex with me
Boy nice to me = I want to have sex with Boy
Boy and I vibe = Boy and I should have sex

Who snuck into my brain and embedded this into it? Un-embed it please, I am tired of wondering, I am tired of shooting myself down, I am tired of having mind sex with these boys. These nice boys, who just want to be my friend. For reasons. These nice boys who make the effort to get to know me, something my 15-year old self thought was impossible. Boys who laugh at my jokes. Boys whose jokes I laugh at. To whom I can admit openly when I don't understand an economics terms, or with whom I can candidly admit I know jack shit about stocks.

Now when one of these boys gets in a relationship, I develop a relationship too, with a pit in my stomach. But they were never mine to begin with. And they aren't mine to end with.