For only the second time, two girlfriends and I sat down to dinner together tonight (although tonight, we had a fourth on the table). This would not have been such a significant event if not for what had happened to all three of us in the past year and a bit.

In the last one year, all three of us have gone through rocky periods in our relationships, divorce proceedings and subsequently recovery. Although our respective relationships ended sequentially, we all went through the difficult times in parallel. Interestingly, while our individual problems are on the whole different, from my point of view, there is much similarity mirrored in each of our experiences.

In this particular “menage-a-trois”, I was the “link” in our relationship. For much of 2003, I was consoling and comforting these girlfriends. I would alternate between them, listening to, and inevitably silently comparing, each of their problems. Unfortunately, while they were going through their progressively full-blown break-ups, I was privately suffering from my imminently dying relationship and ruefully remarking the similarity in our unhappy situations.

Of all the times that I had spent consoling them, three stand out in my mind. The first was when I received a phone call from girlfriend ‘A’ one morning (I can’t remember when) as I was on the LRT on the way to work. After listening for about 10-15 minutes on the mobile, I realised that talking on the phone wasn’t going to be enough. I got off the train (I was literally halfway to the office), called my supervisor, and hopped back on the train in the opposite direction. She picked me up at the end of the line and we spent the morning in a Coffee Bean.

The second memory was of late one night, again at some indeterminate point in time in 2003. I can’t remember what had happened prior but soon enough, I found myself saying to my (then) partner that I had to go over to girlfriend ‘A’s house as she needed company. He asked why, and I replied that she was going be divorced. That wasn’t strictly true. She hadn’t embarked on the route to divorce at that point in time and I don’t think she was ready to even contemplate that option then. But somehow, in an outside observer kind of way, I knew… I spent a couple of hours with her at her spending a couple of hours at girlfriend A’s parent’s house, in a dimly lit living room, with both of us dressed in house clothes, hugging her, listening to her each other as she we both sobbed to no end. He never learnt the lessons of her predicament. And she was to return repeat the exact same “kindness” a year later, but at the place formerly known as home to me.

The starkest memory I have of Ramadhan last year was of one lunchtime in KLCC. Girlfriend ‘B’ and I were sitting down on a bench across from Isetan on Level 2 (or was it 3). As I wasn’t fasting, I ate a hot dog bought from 1901 while she, who was fasting, sat beside me. We were both silent for long periods of time, wrapped up in our own world, perhaps ruminating our own miserable situation and predicament, having if nothing else at least each other for company, poor as it might have been then. It was a lonely, cruel world we lived in that lunchtime, and I remember the emotions that went through me vividly.

One year on, we have each, in our own way, come through this dark period. We have embarked, or in my case about to embark, on a new page, if not chapter, of our individual lives. I don’t know if we will ever regret having had the relationships that we have had, but I am sure that there have been happy moments that we will cherish and “lessons” that we have learnt.

Tonight, as the three of us were having dinner in a convivial and relaxed manner, laughing away at funny anecdotes and facts of life as they were recounted, it occurred to me that while we might each still reserve a special place for the relationships that we have had, I am certain that the days ahead will be happier for each of us.

Here’s to the First Wives Club!
(though that description is not strictly true in my case!)

p/s and there was this

Posted on October 22nd, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal