Glass half empty

Riding on the MRT tonight I couldn't help but think, "Where is my fall?"

The one where luminous red and golden yellow leaves fill the trees looking down on their fallen friends, brown and crisp as paper. I miss the pumpkin butter bubbling on the stove. And nutty granola baking in the oven. How about freshly sharpened pencils from back-to-school sales? Or squeezing in the last front yard BBQ with friends before winter creeps in?

Gone.

2 months into Singapore, I managed to do the unimaginable. Burn the sides of my lips with strange bleach leaving a 3-week-old scar I'm SO afraid will never go away. Ruin an irreplaceable ruffled silk top merely by grazing it with the maid's iron. Forget what it's like to have time to myself or anything to look forward to. I'd like to think that's all coincidental but I really don't know this environment.

What I do know is that it's easier to feel sorry for oneself and think the glass is half empty. But certainly much harder to make oneself believe that the glass can be half full.

A friend whom I miss dearly taught me how to always think that way. No matter how grim things were, nothing perturbed him. Never once did we hear him complain or whine, or vent. It wasn't that he was simple or polite. He is after all an MIT grad, and I can assure you, we swore a fair amount over beers and client dinners. Having lived with a chronic autoimmune disease all his twenty-something years, he was wiser than most of us to let the smaller things get to him. Such endearing company, I can't help but wish I had spent more time with him.

The bf is that kind of person.

Picking me up from the MRT he simply said, "Better love?" and showered my cheeks with little kisses, slowly melting away the woes with each kiss. I wish I remembered that the glass can be half full when I spent hours scheming to smash my lagging work computer against the wall today. But that still doesn't stop me from missing my fall.