The Heartbreak Handbook & stuff

Eventhough [Eleven Minutes] was really good, there's nothing more useful than Valerie Frankel & Ellen Tien's [The Heartbreak Handbook]. Am now at its second last chapter: [Just When You Thought You were Over Him].

Bits that made me choked on tears:

Chapter 5: "When you are so connected to someone and then the connection is broken, you feel as though a part of your body has been ripped off. Like you're missing a vital internal organ." (this one hit me right on)

Chapter 9: "Five reasons to love men:
1. Because they put up with us. What seems like perfectly normal behaviour to us is bona fide alien-nation stuff to them. And yet, often, with great grace and good humour, men do their level best to accommodate the needs of these strange female creatures.

(made me want to smile and cry at the same time, thinking how he used to look at my eye-lash twister and said it looked like stuff from a torture chamber; and how he will now no longer put up with me changing 5 times before we go out)

2.Because they don't want us to be afraid.

3. Because they hurt when we hurt. When you tell a guy about the latest trauma in your life, he might not be so adept with the hand-holding and the counseling. But most of the women we talked to agreed that men, more than women, fee other people's pain. Where they are lacking in sympathy. They usually make up for in empathy.

4. Because they shoulder so many burdens on their own. Men are taught to hide their feelings. They may travel in loud, raucous groups, swinging bravado, but at the end of the day, so much than us women, they go it alone. More often than not men will, in their own sweet, clumsy way, do their level best to show us the world can be a friendly place.

5. Because they see the good over the bad. Oh, we can be a critical breed, we women. We notice everything --- particularly things that we perceive as bad or ugly or stupid. We sweat the details. Men, on the other hand, have an endearing way of...Skipping over the bad parts. What's more, they really mean it -- since men don't know from etiquette, you can pretty much count on their sincerity. In other words, men don't search for the blots and stains that we so eagerly seek out. When they look at us, they instinctively see us as the good, whole, desirable people that they really believe we are. And by and large, they treat us accordingly."

I used to diss self-help books, thinking if you can't already help yourself, what makes you think that a book (self-help book, that is) can help us? Now I know otherwise, a good self-help book makes you see the situation clearly and sometimes even understand it a little better, than it brings you to realize/see the bigger picture: life goes on, you might as well make the rest of the ride more enjoyable for yourself.

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I can't remember the last time I dined alone as a single, but I'll always remember my first dinner with myself in a restaurant as a single after this relationship:

Date: Sep 17, 2004
Location: Cafe 1918-1920
Menu: Iced peach & apricot tea with mushroom olive oil spaghetti, dessert: banana fritters with vanilla ice-cream
Damage: RM 30++

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Woke up today at SM's dream-like condo alone, the bed sheet is heavenly, her perfume lingers in the room and the occasional crow outside her window was good company. I took a leisurely swim at her pool and had nasi lemak for breakfast, then for the first time in years, a stranger asked me for my phone number -- the waiter at the pool-side cafe. If I could charge each guy who ask me for my contact number (and save the money for my apartment), I'd start wearing bikini to the streets.