Today the heart is hungry.

Its appetite has been whet by impossibility.  Fantasies have poured out like drool, imaginations of a love that could be despite what is.  Rehashed scenes of tearful goodbyes, meaningful gifts, spontaneous moments and that dastardly thing called hope - hope that somehow, inexplicably, here was a connection that would defy all boundaries and rules:

A love that should not exist, but does.

See I've got so many self-defence mechanisms in place that I don't even recognize them anymore - the relics of an older age when the mind relied less on alcohol and more on tactics, like traps left behind by an ancient advanced civilization that you know was once part of you. The mind holds a hidden treasure waiting to be unlocked but how, how do I find it when I don't even know if these fears of bottomless pits and being spiked to death are the very things that keep me dying a slow painful death itself?

And worse, what if the thought of treasure is the trap itself?

It never really does go away, the same old yearning for an embrace, to curl up in another's warmth and to hear his heart beat "it's okay, i know, it's okay". For when every inch of the hypothetical you envelopes me it's hard not to think that our lives, like the air we breathe, are intertwined - part of each other, you living my life, no longer prisoners to our solipsism.

The truth is, there is nothing to write when one is happy. I have been deliriously so over the past few months - squandering most of my pay on booze-filled parties, gambling, meeting new people, and going on casual dates that carried the glimmer of hope with the light laughter of non-commitment. Most didn't work out anyway, but like at the mahjong table, I was always prepared to lose, sometimes won a bit, and made new friends around these vices.

Deliriously so. With these I built a bubble of contentment that comprised of the best things that people tell you life should be about - a meaningful job, a host of casual friends, and good times spent with the more loved ones.

Pity that it should start cracking so quickly. All it took one was rejection - one misread game of dating, where I made the beginner's error of mistaking uncertainty for sincerity. This bubble of contentment is rooted in my Achilles heel - built alone, maintained alone, and cracking from the realization of how alone I am.

This mode of existence is a bit pathetic really - thank god I'm going back to NIE.