Jinxed January, Fucked February

Sometime end of January;

I had brushes with cancer a lot.

Most of the time I decided to keep it to myself. This includes those many times during my bimonthly check up when my gynae told me that they have found a lump in my breast. I went back with a heavy heart. I would be kept in suspense for about 18 hours or so before I am told that it was benign.

I went for my usual check up yesterday. I took a longer lunch break. My gynae, Dr. Lim as usual greets me with her smiling eyes and we proceed to do some standard tests.

One would recognize the look on their gynae’s face when something is amiss.

“I need to run some tests. I can feel a lump here (Pressed the area just slightly beneath my left breast).

I looked at her, silently alarmed. I did not say anything. It was a look the gynae must have recognized as the ‘I am gonna die.’ look.

“Don’t worry. I’ll have the test confirmed tomorrow.”

I took off from work early and decided to drive all the way to Permas Jaya to have a bottle of beer. It was one those nooks me and BF (ex) used to frequent. But I was thinking about my condition more than I was thinking about my recent flop of a relationship.

A couple of expats were giving me the eye, but I gave them the ‘piss off, I am not interested’ look. I am always up for a conversation but yesterday was not one of them days.

After that, I went on driving rampage, all the way to Stulang and contemplated on going to TGIF but I was scared that I might bump into BF(ex) with the new bitc… I mean… woman and so I took the long way home, going through Dhoby Street and Waterworks.

I was alone, and I was scared, and there was nobody close enough for me to turn to (Like usual). It was times like these that I truly wish that I am in KL.

I have changed a lot in the past few weeks. The experience has been harrowing and traumatic, between being totally alone to discovering that I might have breast cancer at a young age. I wish I was someone else, and somewhere else.

My Gynae called me this morning around 11.45 am. I couldn’t stop shaking from the moment I woke up, probably in anticipation of worst things to come.

It was not cancerous.

I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard of the result. It was one of those tricks my body decided to pull on me.

Maybe after this, even though I am still struggling to cope with all the things that happened throughout the jinxed month of January 2007 (and I am guessing it will remain that way in February as well) I would be able to see things in a different light.

I can’t stop myself from crying still, and every so often I would just sit at some bar looking at couples who looked as though they are in love with each other.

I must have looked like that. WE must have looked like that.
--
I cut my thumb today, by accident, and as I sucked the blood from it quietly at the bathroom sink, it dawned to me that if Trey was around, he would kick a big fuss over it.

I wondered how it would be like had I stayed with him still.
--
February, 7 days before my birthday;

I made a list of things that I don’t like about BF (ex) when I was at my new fling’s house (Yes, Sarcy’s got a new fling… someone who is fuckable with no strings attached.)

My Fling, let me just call him Phil, looked at the list and asked me as he stroke my hair and kissed my forehead;

“Then why were you with this bugger in the first place?”

And I went, Ha’ah eh? Why-la? Aloud. For one, the ‘Orang putih’ next to me is never going to understand my very local exclamation.

I should have gotten rid of him a long time ago. But as usual, as corny and depressing as it might have sounded, I was blind to everything to notice it. But I have to admit, he did spoil me to bits. That was why I fell in love with him. And as stupid as it sounds now, I am STILL in love with him.

I turned to Phil and asked, jokingly;

“YOU… Mr. Big Shot Engineer is not gonna do anything stupid and call me like, all the time will you? I will only have time for you on the weekends.”

It was that look that he had on his face that scared me, to the extent of giving a lame excuse that I had to go and drive home at that very moment.

As a matter of fact, It wasn’t just that look.

It was the kiss on my forehead and on my eyes, the way he hugged me from behind and how he smiled when he turned up with the brunch he cooked on a tray especially for me who was still lying on the bed on that Saturday morning.

For someone with whom I have recently just got to know for two weeks, it was starting to feel as if another 'relationship' was already in the works.

And, I can't let that happen.

Phil called me that night, I was getting ready to go out with friends for a beer session.

“Are we meeting up tomorrow? It is still the weekend.”

“I’ll keep you updated on that. I might have to go out with some old friends tomorrow. Bye.”

He must have thought that I am some cold hearted bitch to lay him off like that.

Don’t get me wrong. He is sweet, and I would not say that he is not my type either. He is made, he is humble, he respects people, he reads and it was partly his huge (…) collection of books that turned me on in the first place, he looks good and he smells nice (Yeah, I am just shallow like that) but It’s just that it has been too dramatic for me to even start over.

Never in hell or heaven would I repeat my mistakes of being too involved with a man anymore. I am not going to let anyone have the chance to walk all over my limp heart ever again.

Why would I want to be accused of having some kind of pride that I never knew I had, to be told very rudely that I don’t own him just because I asked where he was at that moment, and that I am repulsive, again, when I had nothing but love and support for him?

The scars run deep. I can’t quite get over it yet. It will take a fucking long time for it to heal.
--
5th February, 2007, 5 days until my birthday;

One thing that I still had to laugh off was how BF(ex) told me that he never meant to hurt me. Right… as if.

I laughed about it this morning, on my drive to work.

The guy next to my car must have thought I was crazy for laughing alone.