under the blanket

In addition to speed-reading musty journals with gripping titles such as Questioning The Media and The Political Economy Of Global Communication [or should it be Global Communication Of The Political Economy?], I have been keeping late nights with an altogether more thought-provoking book.

Hanif Kureishi's Midnight All Day was picked up a couple of days ago purely through serendipity. I had nipped under a bridge during one of those sudden downpours and found myself browsing through a makeshift second-hand book stall after swearing I would not lug any more books back to Singapore.

But these words just leapt out at me, right there in the gathering gloom under that damp bridge:

"We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something -- to punish, bully, or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all, give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo. Not just anyone can do this."

Flying off without even a goodbye from a certain cheating and lying someone, and without a single word to break the hurtful, sullen silence between us since then -- I had given up trying to sort out the conflicting pangs of emotions whenever thoughts of him flit unbidden across my mind. It might not have been love, it might have felt almost right, but at least now I have the words to describe my state of mind -- Hanging in limbo.