Love is.
Life.
Love is life.
You are one life. I am one life. Love is also a life by itself.
Love is life. When and where there is love, there is something living, breathing, moving and feeling.
The funny thing about it is, we are have really funny interpretations about it. We tell our parents, lovers, friends, children that we love them but we act a little bit differently than we speak. I have had a friend or two who told me that they were my good friends, but never called me to say hi. I have had lovers who said that they love me, but didn't spare me their time when they got busy with their own lives.
I have realised that someone tells me that they love me, I tend to have a funny interpretation about it too. My father and I have had this banter from time to time, that I pay too much attention to what people say. My response is usually silence. There is no such thing as too much attention to what people say, there is only just listening. Logically speaking, I would tell someone that they are paying too much attention to me when I have done something that did not give me an advantage. But if that is true, how's that for love?
Love is life. It never demands. Wait, let me rephrase that.
Love demands when it is telling you that it needs something. Otherwise, like my grandma once taught me, once one becomes quiet, you know that you have something to be afraid. It is a life, like a human or even animal. To survive, it has needs that need to be fulfilled. It needs attention, affirmation, admiration, understanding and respect. It is the most obsessive topic in the world, and yet, we are becoming more and more obsessed with love. Strangely, if you think that there is so much material, guidance, support out there for love, why are we becoming more and more obsessed with it?
Like it or not, and you shouldn't have to agree with me: more and more of us are forgetting how to love.
We kinda lost the plot, mate.
To have love is free. But love is a life of its own. The aftermath ain't always a happy ending into the sunset. You know what I have found out?
A lot of us have problems maintaining love.
"Can't be with you...my mother will kill me."
"Can't love you...it's against my religion."
"Can't show you affection in public...what if they all stare?"
"Can't be me....it's too dangerous."
"Don't do love, darling. Did it before. It's way too tiring."
"Loving you is complicated."
"They told me not to love you."
"This is too much effort."
And the most common one that I have heard:
"It's not you. It's me."
Well, I have used that one genuinely before.
Love is life. You gotta make time for it. Everything that lives dies, whether we like it or not. Don't wait till it's dead before you cry for it.
Love is life. While it's still alive, treasure it.
Believe me, it does more than money or someone else 's honour ever will. At least, in the end, you will never be alone.
Friday 25 March 2011
Monday 21 March 2011
.My Long Suffering Wife.
Dear you,
The biggest experience of my life so far, has been marriage.
Long distance, interracial, same sex, gender stereotypical, inter religious marriage.
I can't settle for a normal marriage, can I? (laughs)
But who said that I was normal?
I have had people, including my own mother, condemning me for being abnormal after coming out. Truth be told, it hurt a lot. At the butt of the discrimination, the loneliness started filling me with suicidal thoughts. Marriage or not. Having a wife sometimes made things worse, especially when my wife was not around during these depressive moods. I would have these moods for days, and snap out just in time for the beginning of the week, to only resume on my knees that I make it sane just for the rest of the week.
For a month or so, that was how I had lived. For months before that, I denied myself the truth that I was hurting. I am still learning to come out of it.
The worst kind of discrimination or hurt that you can give or receive from someone is that of a family member. For most of us, a family member (especially the close ones) matters. Whether we like it or not, they matter. No amount of blindness or sight can deny you that truth. Even banging your head on the wall can't erase that truth.
Since marriage, the one who matters most to me is my wife. She is the woman that I have married, and the woman I am in love with. It is huge alone just write these two sentences; a commitment this deep is the dream that I finally have. Everyone, including myself has always told me that loving someone unconditionally and being loved unconditionally could never come true for someone like me. In fact, I used to only know rejection or conditional love as love.
But the only thing that could thunder on this parade is probably fatherhood, or parenthood. I have traits of transsexualism, and although I may have maternal traits that pop by, I have always yearned to be a father. Perhaps, in a way, I always thought that my own gave me a very good impression of fatherhood. He seems to thoroughly enjoy it, in spite of the difficult times, and made big things for me easy when they were supposed to be hard.
Yet before I get there, marriage to Leah is the best thing that I have done for myself. Today, I am more vulnerable than I have ever been. And yet, I am stronger than I think I ever was in the past. For me, dealing with my emotional health so much harder than training for mountain running.
I am letting go to love. I am learning to brave making mistakes and even risking my heart to build something with somebody else. Heavens know that it took me eight (8) days to realize that I wanted to marry Leah, and another six (6) months later to come clean about our marriage. Even married, I cannot say that I totally trust her or another person. But, I can say that marriage inspires me to trust another person.
Leah is a burst of colour. Loud as hell, and angry when she wants to be, she's a scene to behold. People either can't get enough of her or can't stand the presence of her. She holds you or either puts you off. She makes you love her or hate her. Sometimes, she soothes you beyond words, or makes you run up the wall when things get heated.
Boy, do we know how to drive each other insane.
But I think one thing about Leah is that she is often misunderstood. I think that for her entire life, she was misunderstood by somebody or someone who wanted to change her to become somebody they wanted her to be. They just could not let her be. So, when she roams free, well, sometimes, she crashes into walls but forgets about the broken hearts and pieces along the way. I still marvel at her amazingly good luck that have helped her scrap out of sticky situations in the past and at current.
She laughs at me and shrugs it off. Sometimes, she forgets to lie well to me.
My Leah is one living superwoman. She tries, and she tries so hard. As part of her Sagittarius trait, she can pursue her goal without looking at any or either way. And as mentioned, sometimes, there are broken hearts and pieces that Leah can oblivious to. Because of this, she can be seen as a bulldozer or aggressive. And with me and some of her love ones, she can be seen as isolating us all to pursue her goal. But like I said, my Leah is often misunderstood. And sometimes, my Leah misunderstands herself. I often find myself observing and analyzing my wife for a long time before the same smile creeps in.
My long suffering wife. How I love you so.
Love has a funny way of showing itself.
When you love someone so much, you can worship that love so much that it can turn toxic. My own mother admitted once that she worshiped me, but that was before she hit me. My father loves my mother so much that he can't event talk to her about his feelings. He is afraid that she will not support him like the way he has felt for the last twenty nine (29) years. My wife loves me so much that she tried to walk out on me one day when we fought. I love my little boy so much that I have to leave him on his own for more twelve hours a day to go to work.
Love is so funny. It makes us do a lot of dumb things to the ones we love the most.
We misunderstand the people we love and ourselves so much.
Her entire life, my wife has been put down for being a mixed child, a child of unexplained roots, not part of a family, different, aggressive, gay, sexual, fat, ugly and stupid. Funnily, my long suffering wife has just been misunderstood her entire life. Even by me.
Because my wife is not ugly and stupid. She may have many traits that are not agreeable and/or different from everyone else, but she is not for any other purpose than to love. When she is with a baby, she holds it like she will never let anything harm it. When she talks to a naughty child, she reasons with it like it is the most important person to her. She speaks languages to many people in her and their tongues. And she does this effortlessly. She reaches out without thinking of whether she has hands to spare.
Oh-here is a tip: look deep into the heart of her eyes. They are filled with love, but you gotta pay attention, ok?
Leah does not judge you quickly for being different. She simply looks and stares at you with love. Even if she is screaming her head off at you. Sometimes, to love my wife is to stand back, watch her, and smile. There is no trick or rule to this but you need to always let her know from time to time that you love her. And be PATIENT and WISE for that moment. Yet, we are all human, aren't we?
Repeating myself, being married to Leah is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The one setback is how much I miss my wife, and that I am not able to stop the feelings that have been flowing like water. I too, am human. But I can't ever say that I didn't love my long suffering wife.
I will love my Leah though, for as long as I can. Here is to hoping for the best:
"To my long suffering but beautiful wife, Leah-I pray that I will grow to understand you more and more, and misunderstand you less and less in our days yet to come."
The biggest experience of my life so far, has been marriage.
Long distance, interracial, same sex, gender stereotypical, inter religious marriage.
I can't settle for a normal marriage, can I? (laughs)
But who said that I was normal?
I have had people, including my own mother, condemning me for being abnormal after coming out. Truth be told, it hurt a lot. At the butt of the discrimination, the loneliness started filling me with suicidal thoughts. Marriage or not. Having a wife sometimes made things worse, especially when my wife was not around during these depressive moods. I would have these moods for days, and snap out just in time for the beginning of the week, to only resume on my knees that I make it sane just for the rest of the week.
For a month or so, that was how I had lived. For months before that, I denied myself the truth that I was hurting. I am still learning to come out of it.
The worst kind of discrimination or hurt that you can give or receive from someone is that of a family member. For most of us, a family member (especially the close ones) matters. Whether we like it or not, they matter. No amount of blindness or sight can deny you that truth. Even banging your head on the wall can't erase that truth.
Since marriage, the one who matters most to me is my wife. She is the woman that I have married, and the woman I am in love with. It is huge alone just write these two sentences; a commitment this deep is the dream that I finally have. Everyone, including myself has always told me that loving someone unconditionally and being loved unconditionally could never come true for someone like me. In fact, I used to only know rejection or conditional love as love.
But the only thing that could thunder on this parade is probably fatherhood, or parenthood. I have traits of transsexualism, and although I may have maternal traits that pop by, I have always yearned to be a father. Perhaps, in a way, I always thought that my own gave me a very good impression of fatherhood. He seems to thoroughly enjoy it, in spite of the difficult times, and made big things for me easy when they were supposed to be hard.
Yet before I get there, marriage to Leah is the best thing that I have done for myself. Today, I am more vulnerable than I have ever been. And yet, I am stronger than I think I ever was in the past. For me, dealing with my emotional health so much harder than training for mountain running.
I am letting go to love. I am learning to brave making mistakes and even risking my heart to build something with somebody else. Heavens know that it took me eight (8) days to realize that I wanted to marry Leah, and another six (6) months later to come clean about our marriage. Even married, I cannot say that I totally trust her or another person. But, I can say that marriage inspires me to trust another person.
Leah is a burst of colour. Loud as hell, and angry when she wants to be, she's a scene to behold. People either can't get enough of her or can't stand the presence of her. She holds you or either puts you off. She makes you love her or hate her. Sometimes, she soothes you beyond words, or makes you run up the wall when things get heated.
Boy, do we know how to drive each other insane.
But I think one thing about Leah is that she is often misunderstood. I think that for her entire life, she was misunderstood by somebody or someone who wanted to change her to become somebody they wanted her to be. They just could not let her be. So, when she roams free, well, sometimes, she crashes into walls but forgets about the broken hearts and pieces along the way. I still marvel at her amazingly good luck that have helped her scrap out of sticky situations in the past and at current.
She laughs at me and shrugs it off. Sometimes, she forgets to lie well to me.
My Leah is one living superwoman. She tries, and she tries so hard. As part of her Sagittarius trait, she can pursue her goal without looking at any or either way. And as mentioned, sometimes, there are broken hearts and pieces that Leah can oblivious to. Because of this, she can be seen as a bulldozer or aggressive. And with me and some of her love ones, she can be seen as isolating us all to pursue her goal. But like I said, my Leah is often misunderstood. And sometimes, my Leah misunderstands herself. I often find myself observing and analyzing my wife for a long time before the same smile creeps in.
My long suffering wife. How I love you so.
Love has a funny way of showing itself.
When you love someone so much, you can worship that love so much that it can turn toxic. My own mother admitted once that she worshiped me, but that was before she hit me. My father loves my mother so much that he can't event talk to her about his feelings. He is afraid that she will not support him like the way he has felt for the last twenty nine (29) years. My wife loves me so much that she tried to walk out on me one day when we fought. I love my little boy so much that I have to leave him on his own for more twelve hours a day to go to work.
Love is so funny. It makes us do a lot of dumb things to the ones we love the most.
We misunderstand the people we love and ourselves so much.
Her entire life, my wife has been put down for being a mixed child, a child of unexplained roots, not part of a family, different, aggressive, gay, sexual, fat, ugly and stupid. Funnily, my long suffering wife has just been misunderstood her entire life. Even by me.
Because my wife is not ugly and stupid. She may have many traits that are not agreeable and/or different from everyone else, but she is not for any other purpose than to love. When she is with a baby, she holds it like she will never let anything harm it. When she talks to a naughty child, she reasons with it like it is the most important person to her. She speaks languages to many people in her and their tongues. And she does this effortlessly. She reaches out without thinking of whether she has hands to spare.
Oh-here is a tip: look deep into the heart of her eyes. They are filled with love, but you gotta pay attention, ok?
Leah does not judge you quickly for being different. She simply looks and stares at you with love. Even if she is screaming her head off at you. Sometimes, to love my wife is to stand back, watch her, and smile. There is no trick or rule to this but you need to always let her know from time to time that you love her. And be PATIENT and WISE for that moment. Yet, we are all human, aren't we?
Repeating myself, being married to Leah is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The one setback is how much I miss my wife, and that I am not able to stop the feelings that have been flowing like water. I too, am human. But I can't ever say that I didn't love my long suffering wife.
I will love my Leah though, for as long as I can. Here is to hoping for the best:
"To my long suffering but beautiful wife, Leah-I pray that I will grow to understand you more and more, and misunderstand you less and less in our days yet to come."
Friday 18 March 2011
A Brave Introduction
Hi.
I am Gen.
Gen means a lot of things. Gen also doesn't mean a thing. It's just a name.
Gen.
But there is more to Gen than just a name.
Gen, in this context, is a five (5) foot, six (6) inches person. Female by official gender, a hundred and fifty (150) over pounds by weight. I have a few facial moles around my left cheek and lip. Chinese or oriental by descent, although I am told that I possess mixed blood in me. My grandfather (of my father's side) came from a mixed blood background, and was born in the Portuguese settlement of Malacca in Malaysia.
I possess black, straight, longish hair that tips slight below my shoulders; my shoulders, I am told are broad and manly, which has made me feel flattered, and I am fairly built although I try to keep myself as athletically framed as possible. This I do, though a fair amount of exercise, and against Western medical advice, I train on the treadmill at my local gym, with a bit of weight-training for the frame. I have quite a button nose, much typical of a Chinese trait, but my fairly wide eyes, hairy brows and bodily hair give me the disposition that I am not purely oriental. In fact, I have received various comments that I am hairy like an Indian, another comment which I welcome thoroughly. My skin is light brown, but turn my arms upwards and it becomes a dark yellow-caramel colour.
I dress androgynously. In fact, I practise androgyny. Being one and the other or neither confuses people, and I like not being labelled. It restricts things and me from being free with myself. I already find myself growing more restrictive with myself and life as I grow older. So the art of balancing my restrictiveness with the freedom of viewpoints is something I do in life.
Life is about balance after all.
In that sense, I wear my trousers, shirts, jackets, vests and suits. I love colour, and tend to dress myself a little more by adding as much colour as I can to my wardrobe. I have hairy legs, more hairy than my father and grandfather put together. They had absolutely no hair on their forearms and legs; I used to think that God saved all that hair for me and took it from them. I do not however, keep butchy appearances or short crew cut hairstyles or wear over-sized shirts. Shoulders are meant to be shown off. Besides, I am not uncultured that way. Even my godson, Danny boy, a thirty one (31) year old Nigerian, who makes little money from his day work as a carer, dresses very well for himself. At least, he keeps himself neat. Lately, my hair is dyed brownish copper. Yes, I am vain.
I have come to realise that I tend to carry myself off like a gay or bisexual man. I do have transexual tendencies, and have come to embrace myself as one. My yearnings to be a husband and father to my wife and my children are examples of my tendencies.
However, in postmodern terms, I called a pomosexual. One who does not like to be named.
Gen, also is one person who does not like spending time, talking or writing unimportant details such as hair colour or weight to people.
I like people getting to know me for who I am. Not how tall or big I am.
I am a twenty seven (27) year old person, currently working as a lawyer, living on her own in a state outside the main city of Kuala Lumpur. I decided to become a lawyer, having pursued an international career outside of my homeland right after my studies, and being forced out of the big boys world for not "belonging". People tell you all sort of things when your time is up. When I was told by the international world that my time there was up, I retreated to machoism to prove that I was going to hold my head up high, even when my girly instincts provoked tears of hurt and disappointment inside. It was amazing how alone I was, packing my things and going. And their slightly sympathetic but detached faces made me feel more aware of my solitude as I left.
I had already known for a while that being a lawyer might suit me for a while. I felt inept, as an international legal professional, with clean hands in court room battle as I was bulldozed into the world of the rich and famous. A young twenty five (25) year old lady meets CEOs and presidents of worldwide investment companies. I felt so small and little before them. Yet I knew that I would be just like one of them one day, and that meant going back to practice to get myself dirty in Kuala Lumpur. So as despondent as I felt initially about leaving the international world and Hong Kong, I happily set myself off for a new-old horizon ahead: home.
Not many people told me how home sick I would be when I arrived home. It took me almost a year to get over my home sickness. I got depressed, locked myself in my own world, spend many times talking and fantasizing nothing but the international world and the life I built during my time there. For that time period, everything ugly, boring, cold, clammy, stupid about my life internationally felt like something a whole lot better than being back in KL. I complained and whined about my life in KL a lot too. And I whined and complained about the people more to the people around me.
It did not help that most of my friends and myself had outgrown each other. I, at many times, felt that I had no one to talk to. Even my best friend, felt like a stranger to me at times. I had no partner, boyfriend or girlfriend to keep me company too. Had I known then that that was a good thing, would have helped the displacement period a lot.
When I left KL for the UK five (5) years prior, I left as a person very much afraid and who did not know her own self. After five (5) years, a few skeletons and closets, I was a very different person. I knew that my own sister did not have the courage to do what I was about to do: live back with the parents. Live back in Malaysia.
It is not like my parents are monsters and Malaysia is this huge grim of a reality. But in truth,
I am Gen.
Gen means a lot of things. Gen also doesn't mean a thing. It's just a name.
Gen.
But there is more to Gen than just a name.
Gen, in this context, is a five (5) foot, six (6) inches person. Female by official gender, a hundred and fifty (150) over pounds by weight. I have a few facial moles around my left cheek and lip. Chinese or oriental by descent, although I am told that I possess mixed blood in me. My grandfather (of my father's side) came from a mixed blood background, and was born in the Portuguese settlement of Malacca in Malaysia.
I possess black, straight, longish hair that tips slight below my shoulders; my shoulders, I am told are broad and manly, which has made me feel flattered, and I am fairly built although I try to keep myself as athletically framed as possible. This I do, though a fair amount of exercise, and against Western medical advice, I train on the treadmill at my local gym, with a bit of weight-training for the frame. I have quite a button nose, much typical of a Chinese trait, but my fairly wide eyes, hairy brows and bodily hair give me the disposition that I am not purely oriental. In fact, I have received various comments that I am hairy like an Indian, another comment which I welcome thoroughly. My skin is light brown, but turn my arms upwards and it becomes a dark yellow-caramel colour.
I dress androgynously. In fact, I practise androgyny. Being one and the other or neither confuses people, and I like not being labelled. It restricts things and me from being free with myself. I already find myself growing more restrictive with myself and life as I grow older. So the art of balancing my restrictiveness with the freedom of viewpoints is something I do in life.
Life is about balance after all.
In that sense, I wear my trousers, shirts, jackets, vests and suits. I love colour, and tend to dress myself a little more by adding as much colour as I can to my wardrobe. I have hairy legs, more hairy than my father and grandfather put together. They had absolutely no hair on their forearms and legs; I used to think that God saved all that hair for me and took it from them. I do not however, keep butchy appearances or short crew cut hairstyles or wear over-sized shirts. Shoulders are meant to be shown off. Besides, I am not uncultured that way. Even my godson, Danny boy, a thirty one (31) year old Nigerian, who makes little money from his day work as a carer, dresses very well for himself. At least, he keeps himself neat. Lately, my hair is dyed brownish copper. Yes, I am vain.
I have come to realise that I tend to carry myself off like a gay or bisexual man. I do have transexual tendencies, and have come to embrace myself as one. My yearnings to be a husband and father to my wife and my children are examples of my tendencies.
However, in postmodern terms, I called a pomosexual. One who does not like to be named.
Gen, also is one person who does not like spending time, talking or writing unimportant details such as hair colour or weight to people.
I like people getting to know me for who I am. Not how tall or big I am.
I am a twenty seven (27) year old person, currently working as a lawyer, living on her own in a state outside the main city of Kuala Lumpur. I decided to become a lawyer, having pursued an international career outside of my homeland right after my studies, and being forced out of the big boys world for not "belonging". People tell you all sort of things when your time is up. When I was told by the international world that my time there was up, I retreated to machoism to prove that I was going to hold my head up high, even when my girly instincts provoked tears of hurt and disappointment inside. It was amazing how alone I was, packing my things and going. And their slightly sympathetic but detached faces made me feel more aware of my solitude as I left.
I had already known for a while that being a lawyer might suit me for a while. I felt inept, as an international legal professional, with clean hands in court room battle as I was bulldozed into the world of the rich and famous. A young twenty five (25) year old lady meets CEOs and presidents of worldwide investment companies. I felt so small and little before them. Yet I knew that I would be just like one of them one day, and that meant going back to practice to get myself dirty in Kuala Lumpur. So as despondent as I felt initially about leaving the international world and Hong Kong, I happily set myself off for a new-old horizon ahead: home.
Not many people told me how home sick I would be when I arrived home. It took me almost a year to get over my home sickness. I got depressed, locked myself in my own world, spend many times talking and fantasizing nothing but the international world and the life I built during my time there. For that time period, everything ugly, boring, cold, clammy, stupid about my life internationally felt like something a whole lot better than being back in KL. I complained and whined about my life in KL a lot too. And I whined and complained about the people more to the people around me.
It did not help that most of my friends and myself had outgrown each other. I, at many times, felt that I had no one to talk to. Even my best friend, felt like a stranger to me at times. I had no partner, boyfriend or girlfriend to keep me company too. Had I known then that that was a good thing, would have helped the displacement period a lot.
When I left KL for the UK five (5) years prior, I left as a person very much afraid and who did not know her own self. After five (5) years, a few skeletons and closets, I was a very different person. I knew that my own sister did not have the courage to do what I was about to do: live back with the parents. Live back in Malaysia.
It is not like my parents are monsters and Malaysia is this huge grim of a reality. But in truth,
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