was tumultuous but a time of freedom. because i am inherently sadistic and like using pain as a fuel, i went back and looked at my blog archives for december. i remember this post, and the cupcakes, and what i thought was a calling. i remember this post as well — how it came about after a review session on the chain rule for our calculus final. that first quote about the onion is from the teacher assistant who conducted the session. funnily enough, this semester a lot of my math work focuses heavily on the chain rule as well. what a cruel joke. even after a year, i do still plunge through the chain rule recklessly and keep forgetting to differentiate the last variable.
re-reading that post and remembering all the little stories i hid among the veiled sentences makes it even more cruel. “haha”; apostrophes; another makes me hope as well as grieve. i think this time last year i was already there, amongst light hearted hellos. i felt like a giant in a mechanical toyland. everything seemed so small and my heart felt like it was this huge, inflated thing so filled with excitement. it was a promising time. but in hindsight, perhaps there were many signs that should have told me i was rushing through the chain rule. perhaps most of all, the dangling displays even when no one was watching, tears over soupy noodles, and the same boring topic being brought up over and over again. i wish i could go back in time and erase everything. i wish i could go back in time and have gotten on the correct flight. i wish i did leave, the way i did over summer. i wish i had made better use of my summer, and held the right hands and leaned in for kisses that would not have been turned away.
i remember the cold nights most of all, out in the streets, just talking. there was a strangely disproportionate amount of giggles throughout. i remember crying in selfridges, and having timtam there to save me. i remember the neat smell of the hallway, choosing christmas tree ornaments, stressful supermarket times, finally watching a movie that i know now is hardly reflective of anything that has happened. that movie was so breathtaking in all the wrong ways. what a drawn out romanticized picture for the lost and the loveless. its sequel and all the anguish in between made so much more sense. actually, come to think of it, maybe the lengthy romanticized picture makes a lot of sense too. only i wish i had left it at one day, instead of all this elapsed time that we are never getting back. i shake my head now at all the things that have been said and done and naively believed. at the same time, i think i have found a quiet closure. i’ve been storing so much anger within me, but it seems to have evolved into something else. i don’t know for sure what that is right now, but it’s making me feel like i want to take back everything i said about wishing this had all never happened.
this time, this time. hopefully i won’t mess up again.
