what keeps me sane

These days, a sense of stability has come over me.

Stable? Me? Now that's a word you'd hardly think of associating with me. Ever. Despite my lack of expression - on my face, in my voice, my gestures and the lacking of empathy - inside has always been of a different story, with emotions of a volatile kind.

It must be because of his presence in my life, my new friend whom you will start hearing of a bit more often from now on.

I don't know what makes me feel this way. Is it his mellowness that is rubbing off on me? Could it be his relaxed nature that puts me at ease?

He makes me feel very ordinary yet very special. With him, I am me and so much more. I am not just a friend or a comrade from a rival company. He praises me for my intellect and laughs at my absurdities. He puts up with me in so many ways that it amazes me and scares me as to how patient and obliging he can be.

He laughs at me with me, and I laugh with him at him. Every day we are full of laughs and smiles, and he told me that he likes it whenever he sees me grinning back at him like a mad person from the inside of my car during the times I come to pick him up for dinner near his place.

To him, I am not just a girl, childish and full of weird humour. I am also a woman, beautiful and sexy and desired. And I like that. I like the fact that I can be this and that with him instead of this or that, which was and still is the case with so many others.

But I am scared. Still. Of the unknowns and the yet-to-be-felt pain. I've been hurt enough, I think. I've been lied to enough, I think. I am scared that I cannot measure up to become the person he idealises. And I worry that my grand plan of presenting him with a pair of socks as a token of our friendship will fall flat on its face.

Many, many things scare me.

He is good to allay me of my fears (although the way he does it in his strange joking way irks me to no end sometimes). He is good to me. He is good to everyone. I wish he will be more good to me. I wish he will continue to be good to me.

Recently, I have a desire to make him happy and being a naturally happy person, I worry that I cannot make him happier than anyone, anything and any place could. So I had to ask because I don't know how I can make him happier.

And he said that I need only be there and that would be enough for him.

What? Not socks?

Could a girl be any happier?