JYG

Michael Green: My wife is an alcoholic. Best person I ever met. She has 600 different smiles. They can light up your life. They can make you laugh out loud, just like that. They can even make you cry, just like that. That's just with her smiles. You'd have to see her with her kids. You'd have to see how they look at her when she's not looking. To think of all the things she lives through, and I couldn't help her.
Alice Green: Maybe helping wasn't your job.
Michael Green: Well, it wasn't. See, I love her. And I tried everything, except really listening, really listening, and that's how I left her alone. I was so ashamed of that, and I couldn't even tell her. Maybe if I tell her, she'd love me.
Alice Green: Or more. She would have loved you even more. I think you should tell all this stuff to your wife.

- When a Man Loves a Woman (1994).

It's official. I am a couch-romantic.

I really can't help it. I wish I wouldn’t tear up when I hear sappy lines from sappy movies like the above, but I did. What's coming over me? First Sepet, now this. Gosh.

But I have to admit, I loved watching When a Man Loves a Woman on Star Movies. If you try really hard to remember (and if you do, you are either part of the "Mushy Movies Members Club" or a freakish movie buff), Meg Ryan was this alcoholic-cum-wife, while Andy Garcia was the lovey-dovey husband who tried to help. And if you read the line above, by his standards, he failed. Factor in two kids, their jobs, pride, ego and stress, and you have yourself your typical hardships-in-relationships chick flick.

Nothing revolutionary. But I just absolutely adore the film.

For one thing, there are just these gem quotes that made me think that, behind all the gloss of romance, the effort needed to make a relationship work is monumental. Like when Alice looks at Mike, all exasperated after her darling husband tried again to offer help, and whispers: " I think I could love you again if you could, for once, say 'I don't know.'". Or when they get into this heated argument, and Alice just shouts: "Fuck that! Fuck making it better. It's not getting better! I don't know how to make it better and I swear to God you don't either!" Or this moment with Alice and her rehabilitator, who shares about her own recovery from alcohol, and her struggles with her own husband.

Alice: So, everything turned out ok, right?
Nurse: Not really...I divorced him the next year (Both start laughing).

So real. Oh so painfully real.

It made me think about my previous relationships, especially the most recent one. I guess I was just like Mike - thinking that my role was to always try and fix things in her life, to be the always-dependable, 'you can count on me'-kinda guy. Given the hell she went through in life, I thought that was what she needed. And when it turned out I wasn't that kind of guy, I couldn't take it, and scrammed.

Silly me. If only I listened to her, and embraced Grace. If only I learnt to walk through doubt, and understand it's always going to be there. But then, as people like to say, the past is forgotten. The hard part is believing in a second chance. And a third. And a millionth.

"It's horrifying how much you can hate yourself for being low and weak and he couldn't save me from that. So I turned it on him; I tried to empty it onto him. But there was always more, you know. When he tried to help I told him that he made me feel small and worthless. But nobody makes us feel that, we do that for ourselves. I shut him out because I knew if he ever really saw who I was inside, that he wouldn't love me. And we're separated now, he's moved away, and it was so hard not to beg him to stay. And I don't know if I'm going to get a second chance but I have to believe. That I deserve one. Because we all do." - Alice.

Man, this is just too much. Is there a cure for this? I need to follow Y's lead - give me that DVD of XXX2. I need to see a freaking building blown to smithereens.

j

Posted at 02:28 am by jyg2
Comments (1) Permalink

I'm moving.

So to anyone who needs a fridge, washing machine and an Ikea double-seater sofa, I'm selling them for cheap. Still good as new.

Staying alone has its benefits. First of all, you don't have to worry about dorks complaining about how your joint looks like. Unless you invite them over for dinner of course, which i don't. I used to, in Melbourne. Maybe I'm just to lazy to whip up a meal nowadays. And most of my pals either work a lot or have a family to attend to. Gone were the days of pot-luck gatherings and college parties.

Not only you can sorta design the way your place looks, (or should not) you also have the immense privilege of dancing around naked, smoking your marlboro, while downing your Corona. The problem with this I find is that it gets depressing after a while, knowing that you are alone partying by yourself. Which is quite sad.

Of course, the loneliness could have be easily alleviated by the existence of cable tv, a video game console (did I hear Halo, anyone?) and high-speed broadband. All of which I tentatively refuse to have for a whole semester. True enough, it showed cracks into my hollow way of life. Really, there is nothing much in this world that can truly satisfy our insatiable wants and needs. I'm just a dysfunctional emotion-driven, approval-seeking, sex-hungry creature who could easily be tipped off balance by my own insecurities.

I think I'm an introvert because I like being alone. But being alone and liking it because I like doing things alone give hints that I could be dysfunctional. I can quite easily construct a nice, comfortable environment for myself where I'll just drown every moment of my supposed solitude with my favourite toys. Remove those, and as it had occured many many times - a irrepressible ache in the heart which at first disguises itself as boredom. Then comes wave after wave of ineasiness, pulling you in different directions, leaving you utterly dismayed and thinking "there is nothing in the world that could ever cure this." You can't be alone just because you like it. There is nothing more vulnerable than a wandering heart in the desert of loneliness. When the demons strikes, one can't even be fit enough to fight ,for one is already paralysed by his own thirst.

Someone asked me to teach on solitude at his cellgroup next month. Quite frankly, I feel inadequate. My ears cannot even bear the sacred hums of silence. I've been used to being alone simply by drowning my thoughts with meaningless noise and activity. The withdrawal symptoms of the last six months proves exactly that. Perhaps as I am beginning to come to grips with the ache I'm bearing that comes from the removal of those distractions, I can start experience the true peace in those "dark nights of the soul." Even in solitude, all that is flying randomly in your mind can be replaced with new meaning and focus.

Perhaps the better way to learn solitude is to live with someone. It is only with company that you learn how to be alone in a meaningful way.

Yuchun and Sophia has agreed that I could crash into their new apartment for a while once they move in as newly weds. That should be interesting. The biggest temptation then would be to get an Xbox. Well at least, I'll get to enjoy it with someone. After all, yuchun would stop me from playing too much. But then again, he might go overboard himself. That could lead to some serious newly wed disputes, for which I'm the instigator. Oh boy.

G

Posted at 01:19 am by jyg2
Comments (1) Permalink

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realised by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethen and God Himself accordingly. He stands adament, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Father, forgive me for being that dreamer. For being proud and pretentious in all my ways. For my idealistic notions of a utopian environment, where I demand my own set of laws. May You, and only You, bound us together in one body, as You have already laid the foundation of our fellowship. For the Christian community is not an ideal reality, but a divine one. I give up my wishful thinking, masquerading as a heavenly calling. For the basis of community is not of one's definite idea of what Christian life together should be like, but of grace. Grace which shatters such dreams. I thank You for this gift of grace - the privilege of living this common life with my fellow brethrens. It is only possible with and through Christ who has done everything vital for us to have Him and one another. For all eternity.

G

Posted at 11:17 pm by jyg2
Comments (2) Permalink

It's 12.15am, I'm still at the office, and I want to go back. But this was so funny I just had to let everyone know.

It kinda belongs on our dormant JYG Uncensored, but it just cracked a tired and fatigued man up. So sorry, it's here to say.

From now on, you can call me:

Tricktickler Jonathan Fresh

Suede Chew Smooth

or my favourite:

Pimptastic Chew Love

As for Greg, please refer to the Man as:

Pimp Daddy G. Kicks

or

Treacherous Chang Clinton

And please, don't call Y Yuchun anymore. He's officially known as:

Mack Master Yuchun Wicked

and the ultimate,

Mr. White Chocolate Yuchun Shizzle

So brilliant. Thanks to another superdupershagaliciouswambamthankyoumaam website. The fact my brother is the editor is just a coincidence.

j

Posted at 01:24 am by jyg2
Comments (5) Permalink