Of late, more than usual, many people have been asking me about my relationship status. The number of people who have been presenting the question to me have been so numerous that I am wondering if they have been conspiring. I usually smile, tell them it's a long story, but that I'm not in a relationship and leave it at that. If I think they understand and won't think I'm crazy, I tell them a little more-like that I feel God has told me to commit myself to be single till I graduate, to take time to know Him, know myself and to give myself space to grow in maturity. I have the peace He has everything planned out for me, so I've stopped being too anxious, really. Being relatively independent in some ways, I'm also happy being free to do what I want at the moment and taking time to rediscover myself. I'm only twenty-two- isn't it a little early? I often think to myself.
But there's another reason, too. And almost as if God were trying to bring my attention to it, a slew of people over the past month have been coming my way to question my attitude and outlook on relationships. As I stood, thinking through my answers, I realised that it made me more and more uncomfortable to think about it. This truth has been most difficult for me to accept, face and confront. I realise, just how I have been in denial all this while, using God as a semi-blanket disguise. Because the truth is, the little girl inside of me is just, so afraid.
Afraid of what, you ask?
Afraid of this feeling which is new and happy and startling all at the same time and which makes me feel I have absolutely no control over it. Afraid of how vulnerable and naked and young it makes me feel. Afraid of the possibilities, or the impossibilities of the situation.
The slightest flutter from deep within Petrifies me. That butterfly feeling which makes me happy then surprised then frightened then stressed then extremely willing to run out to the nearest exit. The artist in me is relieved that one has the freedom to imagine, hope and construe the future since it is not here. And yet, when there is a glimmer of that future coming to the present, she gets a cardiac arrest and goes into rewind lest the future does not materialise into a reality she had hoped for.
I once had someone tell me that I had built this invisible fence around me and that I ought to do something about it. I guess to some extent, he was right. It's a lot easier to be friends, isn't it?
The automatic defense system within me loses no time to build a fortress once I feel threatened- and threatened means feeling that all-too-familiar and terrifying heartsway like a lallang in the wind. I wish it would not.
Perhaps it is like that uncertainty and vulnerability one experiences when one mounts a two-wheeled bicycle for the first time, that moment where one has a fifty-fifty chance to riding the vehicle into momentum or losing balance and falling onto the tarmac. It is like I cannot bear the uncertainty and vulnerability, and so I take the safest option to will the feelings away. Willing it away- I'm very good at that and pretending I don't care. Or distracting myself by picking up a new hobby-I'm good at that too. Is that why I am always learning something new- swimming freestyle, photography and acrylic painting are next on my list.
It scares me so bad that my instinctive reaction to any Good Person has become running away so I can slink and disappear into the ground. Because it's almost as if while a part of me would like a white horse (brown is also okay and my preference actually) and a dragon and a pumpkin carriage all in the same story, I think I am afraid to know that none of this will ever be real and that idealist in me might be destined to be disappointed and robbed and deceived and that I cannot sue disney because I don't know how to. And when some of it actually does happen, an almost pathological fear takes over and I want to run ten miles away immediately or I say or do something like wearing a gigantic lion's mask which puts that distance right out there between myself and anybody so I am back in the Safe zone immediately, leaving a little brick wall in between so I feel Safe.
Stupid, isn't it.
I don't understand it. It's like some freudian force compelling Rapunzel to get a bob hair-cut when she finally sees a shadow in the distance coming to help her out of the tower. And the realisation and admitting of how serious this fear really is and has been, has been most frustrating.
Was it bad past experiences? Perhaps. And though I've never really been in a serious relationship before, I've seen and heard more than I would have liked to have grown a general distrust of and become mostly disillusioned with most of the male gender when it comes to this. It is one of the down sides of having too many male friends and listening to their conversations of women in general. Of course there are Good People around, but the fear remains.
Perhaps it is like myself learning to cycle. Since the age of ten, I had this phobia of getting on a 2-wheeled bike. After a few bad accidents without really ever mastering it, I gave up and was too frightened to get on it again. It took me more than a decade to finally decide that enough was enough and it was time to face my fear. I know it may take me a long time to learn how to trust again, I just hope I don't take that long to work this similar phobia through. What makes it worse perhaps, is my ingrained view that it is the man who must make the first gesture and if he does not, the lady cannot respond. So the fear is further compounded by my unknowing what to do with such Terribly Scary Feelings, except to tell them to God and leave them there with Him or simply take the easy route to will them away.
The heart is the most precious organ of the body. Yet, isn't it funny how we build so many walls.
After the race that day, I sat by myself at midnight, feeling completely overwhelmed by utter joy and sadness. Tears flowed like rivers. I didn't know why but at that point, a tangibly cold emptiness and warm, milky love enveloped me all at once. It had been such an emotional day for me- I had completed my first bike race and in it, represented the harrowing journey God had brought me through in the past years into the light of joy, peace and liberty. But there was an aching within me- for who could I share this wonderfully special experience with at that point? For who knows, sees and understands the prim, Type-A me at the hospital, the one who gets turned on by the operating theatre and yet, the artist in me who can dawdle at a gallery by herself for hours, the silly-dance-like-no-one's-looking me at sunday school when I'm with children, the me who loves to lie on grass and eat yummy muffins and drink hot milk, the me at church who raises her hands and tears, and the little girl me who then morphs into a sporty roadbiker-wannabe on my saturday morning rides with my lean-mean roadbiking friends, haha. Who understands my past and what I've been through that makes me so sensitive to certain things, comments because they trigger certain memories and places I don't want to return to. Who understands my fears about the future and why I live my life as such.
And the chilly ache was there because some part of me just couldn't imagine being known and understood in so many distinct dimensions. I wondered if anyone would want to, and I wondered if I could ever get to know anyone on so many levels, too. Yet a tangible warmth overtook me like a blast of hot air from a furnace in winter because I knew... that God did. He understands us, knows us through and through and through. He knows the efficient, girly, sporty, cranky, child-like me and He has given up so much for us and given so much to me that no matter how much I give up for Him, I will never be out of the Safe zone, no matter how vulnerable I make myself to Him. There is no distrust with God. Where He is, is where I can be Safe.
Almost every month now, I get wind of another friend getting attached or engaged-it's that time in life I suppose, and I don't know how these people do it. I'm working it through and I'm taking my time. You know I wouldn't be too affected about swatting a cockroach, travelling by myself to some developing nation or paragliding or scrubbing up for surgery and doing stitches for a patient with multiple gaping trauma wounds... ... but when it comes to this, I'm scared out of my wits.
But in spite of all this, I guess what comforts me most is that God always has a way when it comes to what we deem impossible. He makes time, things and people work in such a way we would never expect. Like how I never expected or even dreamt I would ride a bike someday, my own roadbike at that.
And perhaps the only consolation I have is that no matter how much fear, uncertainty or paranoia we may have about the future, His plan is best-that even if it means being single, then that would have to be best, too.
And perhaps the other consolation would be that in spite of bruising, and falling, and taking so incredibly long to overcome my fears and get down to it, I did learn how to ride a bike properly...
... eventually.
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