Mmm sair duck.
The title of this post is Cantonese. Sometimes there are some words which cannot be easily translated without losing the *oomph* of the meaning. I think this phrase, mmm sair duck is definitely one of them. The best meaning I can think of is to "not have the heart to let go". But that doesn't really go to embrace the enormity of the feeling which is about to be the subject of this post.This year, the phrase has come up more than the other 20 preceding years of my existence. I have also truly learnt the meaning of the word -- the hard way.
Hmm I better explain myself. Tonight, driving home from work, there was a woman on the radio crying to Richard Mercer about her husband of 10 years. He recently left her for another woman. And the poor thing is sobbing and sobbing, saying that everytime she feels like she's making a step forward, she tumbles down two steps back. And despite what he's done, all she really wants is for things to go back to the way they were, when they first fell in love. And then I hear this toddler shrilling in the background -- that's her infant daughter crying because she got scared seeing Mummy cry. Her daughter constantly asking where Daddy is doesn't help her get over him.
My heart sank so low; it's still somewhere underneath my stomach at the moment. I so know how she feels... the feeling of simply, childishly, thoughtlessly wanting things to go back to the way they were. The utter frustration of knowing that life is such that time cannot be turned back, things cannot be undone, and that the present, in its stark grating truth is what you have to live with -- that is undeniably the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my short life.
When your brain fights your heart. You know what you have to do (get over him, move on etc) but you just can't. Your heart keeps replaying the good bits of your relationship. And as time passes, the bad bits fade and you always tend to remember the good... polishing the past I guess. That makes letting go even harder, as the chiasm between brain truth (object reality) and heart truth (I can't live without him, he's the one for me) gapes wider and wider.
When it comes to relationships, I reckon girls are at a clear disadvantage from the start. The emotional vulnerability of a girl is soooo much more precarious than a guy's. After a couple has a fight, the phone slams or whatever, the girl is completely paralysed, analysing every sentence, every tone of speech, replaying everything over and over. The guy -- he's probably playing PS2, or gone to sleep. Guys can switch off emotionally, but girls cannot. And when a relationship terminates, a girl cannot let go as easily as a guy.
Why is that? I think it's because girls want coupledom more than anything else in the world. Any girl that tells you differently is lying to you or themselves or both. Case in point: Sex and the City. It spent six seasons trying to persuade a whole generation of 30-somethings that girls can be content with expensive shoes, shopping bags and no-strings-attached sex. And how does the series end? Two of them are married, one with a child, one adopting, the third one having found the love of her life and final one elated to learn the first name of her long-time lover. The finale almost acts as a moral to this warped fable -- despite how much girls think they can do without a guy, in the end they are deceiving themselves. They would give up their Jimmy Choo's in a heartbeat in order to fulfill their emotional needs with love.
But guys? They seem to prize singledom as much as girls prize coupledom. Okay maybe that's a generalisation (and I'm biased based on my own experiences) but whenever a guy gets together with a girl, I only seem to hear the guy lament about how he's lost his freedom. The girl is only too happy to give away her singleness.
So this Mars-Venus issue may go to some lengths in explaining why girls are more mmm sair duck when it comes to breakups. However, the point of my post (ha there is one) is this: whilst mmm sair duck is a very real and painful feeling indeed, it cannot serve as an excuse to not move on. At the end of the day, "heart truth" is merely euphemistic for "delusion". To stay in the shelter of mmm sair duck is like hiding in a crevice in a snow-covered mountain. Sure you're okay for now, but you're in the middle of an avalanche waiting to happen. It cannot be your safehouse because it is more dangerous than you could ever know.
This woman on the radio, I'm sure in her brain she knows she needs to move on -- she mentioned that within those last 10 years, he had cheated on her before, but she always forgave him. She sounds like she has been living in the crevice of mmm sair duck for a while -- she probably knew that she should have left him the first couple of times after he cheated. But because her heart could not let go, she stayed until finally, he did the leaving. The avalanche came tumbling down. And even now, she knows that if he came back he would probably keep cheating on her like he did for the last couple of years. But her heart just wants "things to go back to the way they were" -- a delusional fantasy which, I would be heartbroken to verbalise to her, doesn't seems like it is ever going to come true.
The best word I have learnt this year is to "ruminate": it's a psych term meaning when someone just goes "why why why" without ever seeking real answers, thinking things through logically with depth of insight. E.g. this woman, just repeatedly saying to Richard Mercer, why can't things just go back to the way they were? You talk to people, they give you answers, but it's of the "brain truth" variety that you don't want to hear. So then you just keep aimlessly asking questions.
There was a short period of time, two months after my breakup, when I had forgotten the endless problems in the relationship and being reminded with tiny little things of the past (e.g. driving past a special 'spot', hearing a particular song), where I was mmm sair duck. I knew deep down that we had no future together, but all I wanted was for him to tell me things would be alright blah blah blah. But you know what got me through? Seeing my other friends also ruminating, months or even years after their breakup, still hungup on a guy -- I vowed to myself that I would not end up like that. Like a friend said to me, one more day you're hungup is one more day you've wasted from moving forward. I hung on to that.
And I'm ok now. Now I can see that there was so nothing to be mmm sair duck about. I don't know how I came out of it, but I did. This woman on the radio, I hope to death that she will get out of this terrible trance. I'll bet that you think I'm writing about you right now -- but seriously I never started this (very very long) post with someone in mind. And indeed right now I can think of more than 5 people who read this blog who I think to a certain extent is still mmm sair duck about one thing or another. So to you, my dear friends, if this post resonates with you, I pray that you will also gather the strength to take a stance for your own sake to say, no more. You deserve to live in a time where your brain doesn't have to conflict with your heart.
The immense relieving joy of having your brain agree with your heart -- that's when you know it's true love.
posted by me. @ 11:40 AM
2 Comments:
Hahahaha.
I really appreciated the bilingual nature of that post... Everytime I got into it, I kept hearing this crude cantonese tone yelling "Mmm sair duck!!" in my ear. hahaha
But anyway, to 'ruminate' really does sum it up.
I think it not only goes for a person after a break up, but also in my case, when you meet someone and you click in some ways but not others. You've known them enough to match parts of them to the template ideal in your mind, yet at the same time, you're aware of the deficiencies.
This is where Mmm sair duck comes in and tries to convince you that it's worth holding on to when your mind is telling you to drop it.
But anyway, with regard to that, I've once again found the strength to kick it up the ass and see reality. The unfortunate side effect of this is that it tends to make me very frustrated/angry/disappointed.
It's become a bit of a trend with recent girls, but hopefully that should mean it'll get easier and easier to weed through the ones that are right and wrong for me.
Sorry for sorta hijacking your comment box! Back to posting on my blog, lol.
By the way, that was me, Jason. Oops
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