In Continuum.

I haven't been in love a lot of times, but I have liked a lot of people. By the latter, I do not just include romantic relationships or mindless infatuations that I may have been unfortunately plagued with somewhere along my life. I include all kinds of relationships, like the kind you share with a friend, the kind you share with a neighbor, the kind you share with a momentary stranger, the kind you share with your pet parrot. In fact, just today, I learned of the strange sexual fetish towards inanimate objects termed as Objectum Sexuality. It is basically a kind of psychological condition whereby humans become sexually aroused by inanimate objects like tables, chairs, a lamp, stuff like that. A woman fell in love with the Effiel Tower and changed her last name to Effiel. She also claims to have a deep and committed relationship to Paris' landmark, and I am not even smiling at what I have just typed because it is simply too disturbing to be a laughing matter. Even relationships like that, I should say, a certain dynamic is involved, you know. Relationships are that way, always evolving and always changing, but there are some dynamics that just seem to be always progressing towards the worse.

It is difficult to explain what this dynamic means, it is a rather abstract idea on my part. It is vastly based upon observation, a feeling that you can when you see how the relationship develops. You sit and watch in a bar or a restaurant, that couple on the other table across the room, and it is that feeling you get regarding their so-called dynamics. I suppose it is difficult to say how you are like with your significant other, since it is impossible to step away from yourself and observe with an absolute sense of objectivity - which is, by itself, impossible to achieve. So you watch others most of the time, you watch and you form your own opinions on how their dynamics are like. The dynamics, if kept positive, is always going to be the driving force in any kind of relationship that you have. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, I don't suppose I have been in very many love relationships in my life, and I don't suppose I am an expert in that field at all. Then again, who dares to claim him or herself to be an expert when it comes to such things away, especially when you have individuals interacting with each other in different ways. It's like the first time you got into the science laboratory in school, and you just got this sudden urge to want to mix everything together just to see what happens.

But there was always the teacher at the front of the class telling us what to do, telling us not to mix A with B, not to mix B with C, and never never ever mix C with anything else but D, or something like that. We had to dress in a specific way as dictated by the teacher, because the laboratory was always instilled in us in high school to be some kind of ticking time bomb where anything could happen with a single spark of fire. We had to wear goggles and stuff like that, and we couldn't do a single action without somebody telling us what to do. A lot of relationships are like that now, it seems, the way that we operate by the hidden instructions set by the rest of the society. You know, like it is as if there is a subscribed way a couple should act, places that they go to, or the things that they talk about. Very often, you hear stories from your friends about their old or current partners, and you just wonder to yourself if they've all signed some kinda contract in the past, a contract that told them to do the very same things, go to the very same places, and be a typical couple. Every couple is different, of course, but it is possible for their dynamics to feel the same. When it is a wonderful dynamic, everything feels alive and different. When it isn't, however, they all feel and end the same way.

There are some couples that I see, and I feel genuinely happy for them, you know. You see the way that they interact and adjust to each other, the closeness of their bodies to one another, sometimes you just can tell if they are going to last for a while. It is the comfort that one person is to another that is so important sometimes, and not so much about the physical intimacy that the two parties try to bridge. It's that feeling you get when you look at an old couple in the park, and you think to yourself "wow, they look so cute together". That is the kind of dynamics I am talking about, the unspoken bond in between two person that you can clearly see and feel, but yet hard to describe in words. It's a feeling that is probably pieced together by a dozen different observations, from the way that they walk together to the way that they admire a certain piece of display in a museum. Little things like that, I always believe, tell volumes about the kind of relationship that a couple is having. I know of couples who are like that, especially when you stand back and watch them stroll away into the crowd. Even without knowing what they are talking about, playful jabs and nudges at each other tells a lot of how they'd be like a few years down the road - hopefully.

I was at a X-Ray clinic just the other day to do a chest scan, a part of this health check-up thing that I have to do before going to the States. There was a small line at the clinic, and most of us were just waiting for our turn to come up when I noticed this man seated across from me, with his girlfriend or wife. He was leaning forward for the most part while his girlfriend or wife (let's just assume her to be wife) leaned on the wall behind her with her arms crossed. They weren't exactly arguing, but it could be told from the way that the man talked and acted, that he really didn't want her to be there at all. He was impatient, fidgety, and certainly wasn't very nice to the woman, who seemed to be from China. That's the kind of couples I am talking about, the kind that seems to have something missing in between them. You can tell from the non-verbal cues, the little things that their bodies give away to people that bother to watch a little closer than usual. You see such couples a lot, especially those with children trailing behind them in a shopping mall. It's sad when couples seem to hang around each other for the sake of the children, and sometimes you can see it written all over their faces. It's sad when you are in a bad relationship, but sadder when you are in a relationship that you don't seem to have a good excuse to get out of.

Everybody knows couples like that, you know. If you don't know a couple like that, then you are probably that couple. You could be the kind of couple that sits a distance apart from one another at parties, the kind of couples that don't like physical contact all that much. The kind of couple always talking bad about each other behind their backs, the kind of couple whose friends seem to hate their partners' guts. There are couples like that, but for some reason they are still together, and all the friends are confused and puzzled. We see it all the time, and you see how their dynamics must have degraded over the course of the couple of months, and worse when you were there when there was still something going on, you know. Like, you used to feel something special is going on between the two, and then the stark contrast with what they have right now - it makes you wonder at times how your own relationship will turn out in a couple of months. A lot could change, but we always try to make the best out of it, and we learn to adapt and improve ourselves. It's all about the dynamics in between two people, I feel. I think it is all about how the two people blend together in this blender of love.

I don't know how I deal with love and relationships, I was not given a guide book to follow when I first started out. Compared to some people that I know, I suppose I am incredibly fortunate and blessed in terms of the state of my relationship. You know, some people may say that this is the honeymoon period, and that everything goes downhill from here. People say that, and I suppose it is not without its truth. Statistically speaking, I suppose prolonged exposure with the same person will cause some tension to surface. You know, friction that causes sparks, and eventually the entire science lab gets blown away because someone left the bunsen burner turned on. People say things like that, but I try my best to zone those comments out and live for this very moment, you know. It's like how all the mothers in the world would want to give you advice on how to bring up your child, when it really is none of their business how you are bringing up the baby. If you need help, you'd find somebody to help you, and you don't need these mothers to tell you what to do all the time. I don't want other people to come and tell me how a relationship could turn out, how volatile it could be and how everything could come crashing down. Yes, I know how it is like, because I have been there in the past so many times - I know.

But I try, you know, I think the both of us try. By trying, I'm not saying that we try hard to make things happen - they just do. It is easy with Neptina, it doesn't take much effort on my part to make what we have - the dynamic - to become comfortable and beautiful. Of course, like I mentioned previously, I suppose it is difficult for me to stand out of my own shoes and then try to judge how my own relationship is going. Friends tend to see better from their point of view, and people from the outside looking in are sometimes the only people who can see clear enough. Still, despite not knowing how I am doing, I know that I am doing something - we are doing something. We don't remain stagnant, and we do not dwell on anything for too long. Something changes, something happens, and we adapt and make the best out of it. It has been that way with Neptina over the past couple of months, and everything has worked out for us so far. It has been a beautiful ride so far, and if the honeymoon period has ended, I hardly noticed it at all. There shouldn't be a timeline tagged to such things, you know, there shouldn't be a beginning, or an end, or a special date, or a period of time that you keep track of. This thing between you and your special someone, this dynamic that I have been speaking about. It should be a continuous motion, this continuum that you never stop working at.

It isn't a job, and it shouldn't be a duty or an obligation. You should be doing something because you want to do something. Like, a special gift for that random someone for no apparent reasons, and not because it is a stupid generic day like Valentine's Day for all couples in the world to celebrate. Again, I don't want to be the student being told what to do in a laboratory. I want to be the student to mix chemicals together just to see what happens, even if it burns my eyebrows off. I want to experiment, I want to try out new things, and the same applies to love and relationship as well. Trying out something new, giving things a different attitude and perspective, all of these little things eventually adds up and moves the relationship forward. You don't go into a relationship and expect things to end there, because the chase really is only the beginning of it all. You don't expect your partner to remain the same, because everybody changes - even yourself. What you share in between, then, has to adapt and change as well, and it doesn't have be over a prolonged period of time. It could be a few months, or even weeks, and it is all about finding the most comfortable spot. It's like sitting on the sofa while watching your television at night. After some time, the spot that you have been sitting on for the past two hours get harder and warmer. So you shift to a cooler spot, and it is this dance around each other that makes the comfort of it all so damn beautiful.