play.

i'm happier than this blog would indicate. i don't think about nicole as often as the frequency with which she is mentioned here would imply, either.

this is just where i come to get rid of the little wrenching moments that still grab me sometimes. today's memory is nicole gleefully prodding my PLAY shirt trying to get different reactions out of the different letters (L for Love, A for Asshole); after which i tickle her till she begs me to stop, and the two of us curl up comfortably with against each other for the rest of the afternoon.

...

last entry before thailand, probably. i'm scared to go. but at least nicole isn't there to lose anymore. i still remember her sms when i was in brunei, about there being a lot of guys in uni. her realizing something i knew all along.

in a way i always felt like gatsby; knowing that i didn't deserve the kind of love she gave me, feeling like i was cheating her somehow by being with her when there were other guys i was sure she would like better.

it's why i got so angry, i guess. because it was inevitable and i knew it was inevitable and i always knew it was inevitable but she said no, and that no denied the universe where she would go to uni and i would be in army and she would fall in love with other better guys.

the worst of it is that she wasn't lying. i think she would have stayed with me if i had managed to change. i let army defeat me, then. looking back, i was dead through the week, desperate through the weekends. all i was doing really was holding on to the one thing that still meant something to me - nicole. when what i should have been doing was waking up to what was going on and taking charge of the situation.

i'm doing that now, albeit belatedly, and not a day goes by that isn't wrenched out of my heart. every day i grow a little more, i lose a little more of her.

oh nicole. she was right to break it off. i should've stopped us first. but i didn't want to let her go.

nicole taps now on another boy's chest, and they are tender together, in that tiny artificial space i used to share with her, that space where it is mutually agreed that each will treat the other as a child.