our 敏 dynasty

haha no this isnt an entry borne of inflated delusions of grandeur. i just thought it would make a lovely title of our novella someday, given it is also a character we both share in our middle/chinese names. what are the odds, eh? hers is  淑敏 while mine is 爱敏 (and incidentally she shares the exact same chinese name as my kid sis, which is a story for another day).

anyway,  敏  also means intelligent and wit and that very much sums up our chemistry and mutual attraction. i recall how we met >7 years ago. it was at an event for a charity cause and let's just say she laid quite an impression, both from her 1.8m stature and personality to boot. i was thinking, wow, this is a person who is exactly what she appears to be because most tall women i've met are usually meek and somewhat awkward, possibly compensating all their lives for always being the tallest in a given dynamic.

admittedly she left quite an ambivalent first impression -- something in between shock and awe. she was brazen and forthright in expressing her opinions at the drop of a hat, often audible in a 5m radius, something my pristine fundy christian family-conditioning had never prepared me for such an encounter. i mean, apologies to her, the only time i've witnessed such volume was in the presence of inebriated folk, so suffice to say i was somewhat stunned everytime she made observations verbally without inhibition (or trepidation, i might add!)

years passed and we continued to keep in touch, mostly online through our respective journals and occasionally  with meet-ups, sometimes with my shrubs in tow. she had taken an innate liking to them which i guess comes from being the eldest sibling of three and her penchant for animals. she even kept their drawings and such and at points recalling their words verbatim, which shamefully i wouldn't even recount myself. during that time i was also dating a mutual friend and she was seeing another whom i had personally forged closer ties with. the latter would even call or meet me on her own, regretfully to seek my advice when they had a row. i say regretfully because in time, i started to take sides with her ex and form rather unfavourable opinions of her slanted on my loyalty to the ex, having spent more face time with her.

so after they broke up, we hardly communicated because it felt almost like a betrayal to her ex if we did. a few years passed and we caught up on fb again yet i continued to keep my cautious distance because i didn't feel the need to and more honestly, i didn't think she was a nice person based on the version i heard from her ex. sadly, a part of her continued to show interest in my shrubs through her comments on my fb posts about them. she even added jo on her list. so up till the beginning of the year, she was merely another hi-bye pal whom i never thought i'd have face to face with. ever.

funny how that works out innit? because i had long averted any PR meetings with her for fear of having to bring up some possibly sore points about her ex, and the next moment i'm hanging with a colleague who recently was spurned by her gf and i'm thinking of how to set her up, and as the heavens would have it, her name comes to mind (if at this point my dear reader is increasingly vexed by the convoluted narrative due to too many 'her's present, well that tends to happen in sapphic storylines, so deal with it).

anyway, after a few gaffes in that set-up, and during one of them in fact, i start to acknowledge that old familiar feeling in her company. i couldn't then address what it was other than the comfort factor of our history, and more importantly the realisation that she was sorely misrepresented by her ex in character and values. what i thought was a self-absorbed bitch turned out to be not just the opposite, but one who at that point of realisation, drew both my sympathy and admiration. sympathy because i knew exactly where she was coming from in love and loss, and admiration because she handled all that with dignity and class. so by the time i acknowledged what was going through my mind about her, my heart had long established a profound certainty, that this was someone i got, could get and god knows, would very much want to get.

so in this lengthy overshare and the point of its entirety is that i truly believe we were meant to meet, to meet again and then to build something from this meeting. we have a shared destiny, and dynasty haha couldn't resist the wordplay. i guess dynasty could also work because that's what we are. a powerhouse of divas who have both lived full lives doing what we do best, we both have the strength of seeing things through with principled conviction, and we both want to make a complete life together so that our loved ones can also thrive with us. so look out world, its not just about a love story but i think from what i've seen so far, we're quite a combined force to reckon with because what holds us together is a faith that continues to grow from strength to strength, even as the flux of what is beyond us may challenge the ties which bind.

all i know is, we were made to grow in parallel only so our lives would in present converge. and we've resolved to make this work till our paths end in the hereafter.