So Sorry

Songs for the Broken-Hearted:

Feist, Feist and more Feist.

I met him as a casual acquaintance while I was still in school. Met him again right after school, and struck up a friendship which evolved into a two year relationship. I lived with him for more than one of those years. We had some hard and turbulent times in the beginning, since we were both involved in heartfelt relationships not long prior to dating one another. Between the two of us, there's plenty of emotional baggage.

I thought we worked through it all. I met his parents and spent some time with them, and vice versa.

We were very different people in a lot of ways. He grew up the son of a former preacher, in a conservative Southern household and loves all things fried and racquetball. More recently, he also loves most things beerpong related. I grew up in Taiwan and the US, the child of a pretty progressive thinking and strong hearted woman and the emotionally unavailable architect whom she divorced when I was 5. I like crafts and fine arts. Used to wax philosophical on life with friends for fun.

I like communication and expression feelings, especially in close relationships. I tend to say things that are often passing thoughts in my head, like doubts about my relationship with him, anger at a small inconvenience, and so on, out loud when I'm with him. I feel comfortable. My inner dialogues exposed. He bottles. His closest friends and family don't know his real troubles of the heart. He thinks it burdens them.

So in all, since he doesn't talk about it, no one really knows who he is. I doubt he knows the answer himself.

Point is, he dumped me two weeks ago. I gave him my heart, and he gives it back to me broken in two. He got a promotion to move to a city two and half hours away. We said we'd try to work it out. He was my world then. I wanted to come home to see him, hug him, tickle him every night after work. I'm not the domestic type, and have feminist tendencies. I'd cook dinner for him and massage his back, even through complaints that he should go to a chiropractor, hell, I'd pay for him to go to one. It made me happy when he was happy.

He told me no longer feels the same way about me. He still loves me, but is no longer in love with me. Apparently this has happened in all his past long term serious relationships. The fires of romance just dies, without explanation. it's been three months since he started feeling this way, he just didn't know how to tell me. He wanted not to hurt me. He also wanted not to regret his decision.

I asked him why? How did this come to be? He didn't have an answer. He did say, though, that I blew him away. I was the most generous and caring person he's ever been with. It scared him that someone (me) can love him this much, when he doesn't deem himself worth loving. He can't figure out why. I can't figure out why. If I'm so great, why doesn't he love me like he used to anymore?

I have been coping with the situation by telling everyone I know whom I think will listen. My analysis is this, he is just a very inward person who might never know what it feels like to completely open themselves to extreme vulnerability by loving unconditionally. He has accrued quite a bit of debt, with school and car loans and credit payments and all. I realize now, that his first priority in life was to pay off his debt, make and save some money, and then go back to law school. Actually, all he can think of now is paying off his debt. I was there to provide emotional outlet and love and support for him. I don't think I was ever as high in his list of priorities as I had wanted to be. He also gets very defensive about comments I make toward him. He doesn't like being told things he doesn't think is true. He likes to avoid confrontation at all cost. Debate, constructive criticism, discussion = argument to him.

None of his relationships have lasted for more than 2 years. Ours was the longest, at almost exactly 2 years. I didn't see it coming. Although I often wonder how our relationship surivived thus long, we being such different ppl and all, and have lots of communication issues. My feelings for him has died down fromt he happy, fuzzy puppy dog love honey moon stage to a comfortable level of deep care. I had thought to myself that i can see myself really settling down with this person. He always tried to dote on me. Avoid arguments. The last couple months I thought were the happiest in my memory of the relationship. I thought he had changed, became more thoughtful, and cared for me more. He bought me more presents, apologized in arguments more readily, and seem more willing to at least attempt to talk about issues we might be having. In hindsight, that was his attempt to make me happy, hoping that seeing me happy will rekindle his feelings and fall in love again.

My close friends had all just moved away from me. All moved across the country. He has lied to me before, a year ago. I was going through a depressive stage, and cried and threw tantrums often. He went away to visit friends for July 4th. Came back a little strange and distant. After a particularly sad night for me, he came over to my place and comforted me, hugged me and told me that I'm worth it. Later that night I found out he had met a girl while away and had been texting and phoning each other. He told her he couldn't get her out of his head. He also called her right after he left me that night. Apparently, emotional infedelity does not constitute cheating in his book. After that incident, we worked it through, and I made me promise he would never lie to me again. And if for any reason he doesn't feel for me anymore, he should let me know asap, unlike his ex-girlfriends.

Anyways, just getting out steam. What's the point of staying upset and angry and lamenting the past. I want to say, fuck it, this man is not even worth being friends with. He's lied majorly one too many times. Or should I be resilient, and think, well, we are still one each other's closest friends, ones who know each other's daily complaints. Just let it be, forgive his past and know that this is the type of person he is. Can't change him, just accept him. I should still try to give my all in love and care, whether it now be maintaining a friendship with this man or perhaps person in my future. I just have to learn to let go and bounce back when need be. It is too much work to hang on to sadness. My instincts didn't fail me. He really doesn't love me the same way I had loved him, and I was right not to feel like I can trust him Completely. Turned out i was right all along.

Time heals all wounds. I'll try to use that time wisely.

Runs in the family.

What better way to bring on a new day than creamy strawberry yogurt and granola, freshly baked baguette with sweet butter and strawberry jam, as well as one's parents knocking down the apartment door and exclaiming "thank goodness you are alive!"

So I haven't talked to my mother in two-and-a-half days. So they drove two-and-a-half hours from Charlotte to Chapel Hill just to check if I'm alive and not dead in the ditch. You see, the problem is that I'm not married. Apparently, once I'm married, my husband would help check if I'm still breathing everyday. Only then would I be able to take the liberty of only calling every two or three days. Otherwise parents might presume me dead/raped/lost and other horrible things. Apparently, at the baby age of twenty-two, I'm completely incapable of taking care of myself. I apologize to the poor people whom she called repeatedly asking my whereabouts. Mom told me she was on the verge of reporting missing person to the police.

I'm not quite sure how to feel right now: guilt for worrying my mother who just had surgery last week? incredulous at having such crazy parents? hoping I can somehow escape the influence of genetics and not turn out so much like mom? thankful for having parents who love me and who will forever think of me as their little girl? perhaps I'm a little nuts myself, sitting here tediously making teeny rice shaped pellets and molding tree branches and chicken bones out of clay?

I'll ponder on this over some pineapple sorbet and a cup of tea. .

A series of Blehs. But there's also good Food.

The series of unfortunate events continue. 1) We are stuck in the leaky house for one more month, until the end of June. 2) My academic advisor is otherwise a very nice lady. But she makes mistakes. A recently discovered mistake means I have to take 2-3 more hours of classes before I can graduate. I think I will take Child Psychology. 3) I still don't have a job. Short-term internship doesn't count.

On the other hand, I had success with making and serving a lazy man's sushi today, as well as an apple crumble. Dinner at Lantern with the big G last night was also wonderful. We enjoyed sake and tea cured salmon bento box with pickled radishes and wasabi mayonnaise, mushroom and cabbage dumplings, also fried catfish in Thai red curry sauce with cucumber salad and jasmine rice. We saved room for a dessert of hot chocolate cake with Thai coffee ice cream.

I take back my comment about Lantern serving not so good entrees - the catfish plat was delish. Dear G is an intense person, and likes to focus on the appreciation of one thing at a time. He also speaks softly. Therefore, there was not so much multi-task eating and talking. Eating and talking had to take turns. Still, lovely dinner.

I heard Saludos Compay play for the first time at Weaver Street yesterday, and they were very good. Also had a glimpse of the fabulously eclectic collection of people that make up the Carrboro/Chapel Hill neighborhood. Families and dreadlocked heads and birkenstocked feet. Sushi boxes, vegetarian dishes and organic local produces. Slender hula hoop girl in gypsy dress and a woman in black leotards, juggling wooden pins.

Tonight in our basement apartment, six girls attempted breast casting with eight packs of cheese cloth and a box of plaster. Laura made a remark on feeling like the object of an art project, while the rest of us were busy dribbling water and smothering plaster powder over her chest. Now that's an idea to hold on to for my next...art project.

And I'm making clay replicas of wooden twigs while listening a song by a French rapper with an Italian sounding name.

Hmm.

Amazing...

how profoundly uplifting a simple phrase can move you when said by the right person at the right time. All he said was "Ai-Ling, you are better than that." Tis it. That made my day, yesterday.

The doctors finally found out what's wrong with my mother. She's having surgery next Thursday, and all should be well afterwards, I hope.

I don't want to be a bitter, sad girl anymore. Beautiful moments are striking in part because of their fleeting nature. I want to throw myself into this brief life and make the most out of it. I want to be the maker of beautiful, joy-bringing things. (And I will.)

I'm looking out the window of my bedroom; the green leaves of the trees outside are sprinkled with flecks of golden sunshine.

Toast with sweet butter and strawberry jam, dipped in rich hot cocoa. That made my morning.

Love.

The Gotan Project

Current favorite: Queremos Paz from their La Revancha del Tango album. Check it out, it rules, in a sexy jazzy loungy latin fusion sort of way.

The joy of discovering wonderful new music. Lovely happiness.

Grenadine, Orange Juice, Vodka and Chambord

Makes a Broken Heart according to iDrink's website. Alternatively, TheDrinkShop.com offers recipe for a Broken Heart Martini with sugar, cocoa powder, orange slice, Absolut Kurant and Godiva liqueur.

Chocolate was also once given by French doctors to their women patients as a prescription to cure broken hearts.

That was what I came up with when I ran a random Google search on "recipes for the broken hearted" (When I really should be writing one of my many overdue papers) .

Not that my heart is terribly broken. It just struck me how much we identify with one another in matters of sadness and heartbreak. Coping mechanisms for hard times differ widely from person to person, it'd be interesting to run a study on this, or just hear people's crazy stories. I once ate a one pound loaf of challah bread and half a jar of peanut butter in a few hours while agonizing over oncoming exams.

I think I'm going to start a running list of recipes and cures for ill-humored days. Soul-soothing for those heartbreaking, lonely, dejected, high-stress, dog-kicking, (do not take this literally; I heart animals), stomach-aching days where every traffic light you encounter flashes red.

To start, I found a recipe on the BBC-Food website for Chocolate Souffle Tarts with White Chocolate ice cream, served with vanilla sauce and chocolate cubes in dark chocolate cups. Total chocolate overload with major sugar-high points.

Then there's always Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Fudge Cake. Paired with an optional case of Coronas and a lime.

I find a cup of rich, fragrant hot chocolate soothing in down times. Aromatic earl grey with a tablespoon of pink grapefruit marmalade and honey is calming as well. Drink while listening to Air's "Alone in Kyoto" and Savath + Savalas' "Folksong for Cello."

Perhaps I shouldn't look solely at the multi-purpose cure of chocolate, and ignore the energizing orange. Chocolate and orange are a great couple. For a second there the thought of zingy orange zest and the lively scent of citrus perked me up a bit and I sniffed the air, hoping to smell the scent of grapefruit or navel oranges.

Orange is such a bright, happy, yummy color. So is yellow. I have a wonderfully color-cozy room: Bright yellow-orange walls tacked with spots of warm hued paint chips; orange and red paper lanterns floating above a brick red papasan chair and a bed covered in similarly colored comforter; a row of colorful scarves (colorful means belonging mainly to the red-magenta family) dangling above a bright red magnetic board on my dark brown bookshelf. The colors of the room are especially lovely when the morning sunlight streams though the window and the room glows a warm yellow-gold.

Ah, the power of beautiful, happy colors. And happy-inducing chocolate.

Read On, there's more...

best F*ing scallop dish ever

best F*ing scallop dish ever
Originally uploaded by Li^2.

*sigh*
Photographic evidence of that yummy meal at Le Repaire de Cartouche a while back. Succulent scallops, grilled to perfection.

ummmm... scallops.
:-)

If you are in Paris

check out the Hotel du Petit Moulin on the northern edge of the Marais. It's a recently opened hotel designed by couturier Christian Lacroix, in a building that used to house the oldest continuously operating bakery in Paris. So outrageously colorful and eclectic, or so I gathered from the many full-page photos from the recent issue of I.D. magazine. The issue also showed the new Pierre Herme patisserie on 185 rue de Vaugirard, designed with crisp lines and candy colors by Christian Biecher.

I heart I.D...