Inchoate Knowledge

If I'm incoherent so be it. It's one of those days when I just need to pen my thoughts down, mental diahorrea if you will, as if the purgative effect of expelling these thoughts on the blog would achieve a cathartic release of sorts. It may, it may not. But I care not.

I saw the Ex's sister at the gym today. I think she didn't see me. Which was fine. It's strange enough disapppearing entirely from a person's life. It's even more awkward attempting to explain to an Ex's family member that you used to see on a regular basis why you have for all intent and purposes dropped off the face of this earth since [insert DOBreakup].

God knows the excuses we furnish to sate the curiosity of puzzled family members: busy with his job, studies, migrated, sick, died, and if all else fails there's the classic 'So anyway [what's for dinner/when is X's birthday?/insert random question to which you don't really want to know the answer to]' diversion -brooks-no-further-discussion question.

Dealing with the sudden vacuum and in particular (for this aspect) the people who become aware of it is a messy uncomfortable affair of vague answers and brusque rejoinders. Unpleasant but inevitable.

I never have the habit of saving MSN conversations. I think it's tacky, a waste of time (both saving and reviewing it) and destroys spontaneity, in that the conversation is saved with the possibility that it may be used against the other party to make some point. A sign of just how little faith you have in that person.

But for some reason or the other, I saved three with the Ex. Even labelled it nicely with the dates and title and kept it in a separate folder. 20/04/08, 05/05/08, 06/05/08, 15/07/08. Pre-Mass Call. Post -Disastrous Bangkok Trip. I don't know why. Save that the emotions were extremely raw when I saved the said conversations.

Slices of time and the entire spectrum of emotions displayed, joy, coyness, bewilderment, rage, angst, hate, sorrow and mind numbing anguish forever captured in those unblinking words. The sharpness and vividness of those raw unbridled emotions leaping forth to assault the mind when reviewing the exchanges in the 4 conversations.

A microcosm of the wild desperate passion that laid the foundation, the intermission injection of responsible commitment and obstacles that kept it going and the tragic inability to communicate that brought the 6 year relationship to an end. I'd kept them, away. But never deleting them. I'd read them. Twice. Sometime last year.

I read them again. And once again like every single time I did so. I experience that whole spectrum again, joy, hope, anguish, sorrow, angst, disbelief, regret, rage, hate and pity. That gnawing vacuum in the chest where keeling over dead might somehow be a preferable way of stopping the ache. Crying is not an option, the tears have long dried up, the choking sobs dead in the throat. Then utter disbelief before the rage sets in, pure, livid, blinding in its encompassing entirety. Shaking in fury. But pity, most of all, pity that despite all the attempts at communication, somehow, somewhere, there was still this horrible miscommunication or lack of communication which proved to be the final fatal straw.

I know I shouldn't be keeping them, let alone reading them. Relics of a bygone past. A past best remembered for the good times and the things that made the entire relationship special, the ability to share your life with another for so close, so long.

I know. I know all the right things to do. I've repeated them to myself a million times over. I've moved on. Started on new activities, trashed some. Entered the scene again. Touched base again with some old friends, severed contact with other less deserving ones, forged new ties. It's what I would have advised anyone else. Still would. I know.

But like the quirky sometimes incomprehensible things that humans are, I know but I do it. Not 'Because I can', to borrow Obama's catch all caption of self-empowerment. One certainly does not need/want to be affirmative to do the things one knows is obviously detrimental (or at the very least not in one's best interest) for one. But simply 'Because I do'. A realistic outlook and a recognition of the frailties of human nature and people's idiosyncrasies .

That sometimes, whether you like it or not, people do things which they know they shouldn't do because it's not good for them and they know it, because they do. It's not rocket science, it's not some philosophical school of thought as to how people should behave, it's not even justification. It's simply human nature at its most idiosyncratic form.

I know I should delete them. I haven't. But they're somewhere. I'm calm but strangely numb. And I'm going off to bed.