Spinner Dolphins by Rob Hughes
The most stupid thing I'd ever done after a bad break up, was this. I turned everything around me that reminded me of him, into little symbols with magical powers, attached to them tiny little scenarios in which I could build around them just so that I could get the man back. One of these little things was a huge 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a single dolphin skimming the bottom of the sea. It was entirely in shades of blue, obviously a terrible chore to make. He bought the silly thing about a month after we started dating, but the lazy bum never had the patience to even start on building the frame, much less finish it, so it sat in my cupboard the entire three years we were courting, boxed up and forgotten.
Until the day we broke up. That night I walked into my room, rejected and destroyed, still in shock from the bomb that had just befallen me. So what I did? I stared at the photo frames around my room, and the huge-ass disney puzzle that adorned my wall. The first thing that came to my mind was, 'No more… no more… what would I do without you?'
Now this is funny okay? Looking at the disney puzzle made me think of a certain box of unfinished puzzle right in the corner of my cupboard. So that night, I dug the stupid box out, and opened it. And an idea bloomed in me.
'This is symbol,' I thought, my fingers fingering the blue coloured puzzle pieces. 'One thousand pieces of an unfinished puzzle, and of ALL NIGHTS, I'm taking it out now. THE NIGHT HE TELLS ME ITS OVER. This must mean something. This is the saviour to my relationship. THIS IS THE KEY TO OUR LOVE.'
And in my mind, there began the hatching of plan, and immediately, the tears stopped, because all of a sudden I became optimistic. 'This 'break-up' was predestined, so that I could find the meaning of my relationship. And you know what? This puzzle, this single dolphin, is the key to finding that meaning.'
Okaylah, sorry I was a bit of a drama queen, and you know what? I actually believed in that shit I made up. In fact, I believed in it so much that I told my friends about it. First, I got online and told Edrei, and then I called a few of my coursemates, who were seemingly supportive. OMG now that I look back I can just imagine what you guys were thinking ahah. Because my mother did not like the idea of me making things for someone who didn't want me anymore, I had to find another place to rebuild the puzzle. So I begged a friend to allow me a place in his house… and to my delight he agreed.
This wonderful friend even followed me all the way to a furniture shop to buy a RM45 folding table just for me to fit the puzzle together on.
We got all the mechanics ready, and I was seriously, NOT crying for many many days. I was so determined and driven, I managed to get the the impossible frame of the puzzle together in less than 1/2 hour.
And then came the hard part.
The bloody thing was entirely blue okay? COMPLETELY blue, in different shades. It was impossible to separate the pieces into clusters of different blues, every bloody piece looked the same to me. Now here's the fun part, my friends were terrified at the state I was in, and they pitied me. So everyone in the house became my friend, and they helped me to put the pieces together. I knew only one person in that house when I started off, but by the end of the week, everyone in the house knew that this girl was making a huge ass jigsaw puzzle of a blue dolphin just so that she could impress her boyfriend enough for him to want her back. After two weeks, I arrived at my friend's house, ready to fit the final pieces in, to see my new friends standing in the living hall, with the completed puzzle. It was awesome.
Now here's the stupid part. The 1000 puzzle pieces fit together into a lovely blue puzzle, pretty enough for me to put on my own wall, and I still decided it was to be a symbol to win him back. My friend asked me then (and I remember his exact words were), 'Eh, so nice. You want to give to him some more meh? Keep for yourself lah…'
But no. I said. This is the one thing, my last chance. I had to take it.
'Well, I will support you anyway.'
We went to Jigsaw Puzzle World and bought ourselves a RM150 frame for the damned puzzle. And we put it together. As we did it, we scripted the entire 'dialogue' to come, down to the part where he would stare at the jigsaw puzzle and be so completely touched and inspired, he'd say, 'Hey Claire, I'm sorry. Let's try again.'
***
Now that of course. That did not happen at all. I gave him the puzzle, and all he could bloody say was, 'Thank you. I will always remember you.'
And the CHEEBYE FUCKER TOOK OFF WITH MY PUZZLE AND DROVE OFF WHILE I WALKED HOME.
Of course I cried like shit after that. For weeks you know? Took me a while before finally being able to walk tall and stand alone as an independent girl again. And it took me even longer to look back at that moment in time, to admit that fixing up that puzzle was a darn stupid thing to do.
***
Now that I'm remembering the episode that is long past, and how the later parts of my life led me to fall in love again, and again, and how my heart had been broken in so many other ways before I'm where I am now, what happened then was pretty hilarious right?
Come on, laugh. You know you wanna laugh. I laughed when I wrote the story up there. All right. I was a bit embarassed to type it out, I am embarassed to remember the whole thing again but then again, I'm glad that I can now feel embarassment over doing what I did then.
I did several other things that were more embarassing really, but this remains one of the highlights.
***
Sometimes, I'm thankful for the break ups, because they spiced up my life. And at least, when you live your life to have someone who walked into your life telling you he loved you, and a few years later, over dinner tellimg you point blank, 'I don't want you anymore,' you get that rare opportunity to look beyond the pretty facets of your own life. In that situation, you've really no choice but to kneel down and dig out the dirty parts of yourself just to scrutinize them. While you wallow in your pool of self-pity and find ways to blame the other person for the bitter ending, most of the time, we fail, and we end up blaming ourselves. Some of us almost resort to hurting ourselves, and some lives, sadly, perish in that manner.
Yet sometimes, even the most negative of pitfalls may be a positive thing. In a way, bad breakups force you to learn about your own faults, and make you face the things that make you unlovable enough for someone to hurt you badly, so bad that he had to tell you, 'I don't want you anymore.' The journey through healing requires you to deal with all the pains and cuts, and of course, it will hurt. Good medicine hardly tastes delicious.
And after that, well, you turn out pretty okay. Seriously. And the great thing is, as you grow out of that misery, you pick up new friends along the way, people you never knew ever existed, and then you learn to realize, that person you thought you loved didn't ever deserve your love, and it's a good riddance that now he's gone. Right now, what's more important is how you spend your time showing to people who really care, how you appreciate their presence. Because they are the ones who really matter.
Do you get me here, girl?
