Posts filed under 'Unsent Letters'
i know getting out of bed to write this is going to ruin my weeklong efforts to correct my sleep cycle, but i just had to document this. tonight, i finally feel like i have closure. from this point on, i can honestly say - and simultaneously know with all my heart that it is the truth when i say it - that i really don’t care anymore. i dont even know what’s changed; something must have clicked in between that claypot lo shi fun at dinner and that moment a few minutes ago when i sat up in bed and felt like someone had taken a washcloth and scrubbed away all the pain and obsession from the inside lining of my head. i feel like all the time that i’ve wasted by feeling awful has now been compressed into a tetris block, and tonight i watched it sink slowly, slowly, slowly down to fix itself among these other tetris blocks which i had subconsciously set up to receive it. it feels good. it really does feel good. even though it came way too late, it feels good to know that i no longer have any reason to doubt myself or anyone else around me. 3 months from now i am going away, and i will be going away with fearlessness, peace of mind and closure.
May 15th, 2008
summer is coming. promises of last-minute movie dates, thumb-wrestling matches and pseudo philosophical discussions orbit around my head like moons. my mouth waters as i daydream about these promises, like a child looking longingly at a dripping ice cream cone on a hot day. i want this in a way that we all want our fetishes, how we long for these liberating explosions of light as we crouch in the clandestine pits of our own stomachs. clawing at the walls, yearning, desiring, but always conflicted; always feeling shameful that we were made to fill all the wrong moulds.
i am angry. fleetingly so; the anger thuds in my skull like the strange headaches i’ve been getting lately - a few hard pulses in the upper left corner of my head, and then they’re gone. 5 minutes later it happens again. it’s the same thing with the anger. it comes and it goes. some moments i realize how silly it is to be angry at these things that i cannot control, and then other times i feel like i want to reach out and viciously bend things back into shape with my bare hands. it feels so good to talk about these things with people who understand me and let me talk; people who actually listen instead of raping me over and over again with self-righteous opinions. self-righteousness is something that should be taken and thrown into the pits of hell.. along with high horses, disloyalty and the murderers of Altantuya.
May 12th, 2008
one of those mornings again, where i haven’t slept all night cos i just can’t. i have to be out in 2 hours anyway for a breakfast meet, so i figure i may as well just stay up.
i’ve just been thinking so much. about things that shouldn’t be making me angry but are. about things that i should be doing but haven’t. like sending in my college decision, for instance. is it so hard to just send in a ‘yes, i will be attending your esteemed institution in the coming fall and i look forward to it’? it is. all these letters keep coming in the mail from the deans of the schools, the presidents of this and that association, alumni and current students. it’s very overwhelming. in three months i’m going to pack my bags and i will be gone. how did everyone else before me do it? with bravery. i always thought i was brave but apparently i am not. the thought of that escalator at KLIA is making my heart clench. after so many teary farewells of friends leaving to pursue their studies or careers all across the world.. it will finally be my turn. i slogged through the most horrid and excruciating college applications and exams to leave behind everything that i know and love? i did. 4 years is a damn long time and America is damn far away. i keep telling myself it will be worth it - that my family will still think of me, and that my friends won’t forget me, and that Martian will wait for me.
i watched The Black Dahlia on tv earlier with a pint of NZN Chocolate Ecstasy. it was a calming two hours that really gave me the peace of mind i needed. everyone else was sleeping. it’s the first night in a very, very long time that i’ve spent in my own living room, eating using a spoon from my home. i don’t spend enough time at home. even my last 3 months in the country are littered with travel plans. my dad and i are still not speaking from the argument we had a few days ago. Martian and i are still on the outs. i’m still bickering with my brothers. i still haven’t seen Jovann in a really long time, and only just got to meet up with Ivan yesterday. is this really how i want to spend my remaining minutes with my loved ones?
haih donno lah why am i so emo again. there’s always summer, right?
i am 19 going on 20. i am now at the age that once upon a time, i could only peer at from one end of a very very long telescope. when i was 13, i knew this guy who was 19 going on 20. we got along very well and i eventually developed feelings for him. i don’t know if he ever liked me back, but we spent hours and hours talking on the phone into the early hours of the morning, and we were always making plans to see each other. back then, i always wondered why someone so much older than me would want to spend so much time with a 13 year old. many nights i lay in bed trying to put myself in the mindframe of a a 19-year-old-going-on-20, trying to understand how someone of that age would think, how someone of that age would fall in love.
when i was 13 years old, 19 going on 20 felt so far away. a million light years. an entire secondary school experience between now and then. people of that age felt so adult and smart and mature. now i am here, at this age that i used to ponder so much about, but i don’t feel very adult, smart or mature. in fact, i feel so young and scared. i feel so much more immature compared to that guy i knew, who always seemed to know the right things to do at the right time. we met when i lost my mobile phone and he helped me look for it. would i now help a 13 year old kid who lost her mobile phone? would i want to be her friend?
so many things have happened since then, when waimin used to ice skate and i used to go to church. it makes my head spin just thinking about everything in between. 7 years of excruciatingly long wonderment. but you know, it feels like i slept through it all. one blink and i am here. i remember one particular night when i was 13 and i wished to be 19 going on 20 when i wake up in the morning.
well. here i finally am.
April 21st, 2008
on many levels i am angry. but on the most basic level, and the one closest to my heart, i am wistful. wistful over everything that has transpired be it good or bad, and wistful over what could have been. like my red curtains, and the lanterns i was going to hang from the ceiling in the middle of the room: things that never happened because like everything else, my wishes just weren’t communicated rightly or taken seriously enough.
what went wrong all boils down to communication and respect. lack of. i remember how i felt when i walked in and saw the grey curtains and how my heart just stopped and spilled all over the wooden floor. what is the word i am looking for? dismissed. a word so often used against me, but always ejaculated with a conviction that smells suspiciously like hypocrisy. irony. the most important things become forgotten and shoveled beneath layer after layer, mound after mound of flimsy defenses and self-righteous pride. how can you say you love someone when you are so much more in love with yourself?
pebbles in shoes come to mind. i have forgotten how to speak, i have forgotten how to be happy. reprieves come often enough, but i’m taken away from them by the call of duty and guilt, mixed together into a love potion. nothing complements each other, nothing feels perfect; it’s always either or, compromise, win some lose some. we give in all at the wrong times, and so we collapse together, recklessly and without any tenderness.
i feel deprived. starved, somehow. repressed. oppressed. sad. lonely. disappointed. furious. cold. contemptuous. on one hand, what was i thinking? on the other hand, there were all those laughs and all those mornings - those sweet mornings with the kisses and the cologne and the space invading. brushing teeth. making fun. siew long pau. pooch. the airport express. cold cinemas. you see? you see what i’m doing? why am i doing this? this is so fucking irrelevant. and you know what else? Ocean’s Thirteen was fucking balls anyway.
April 13th, 2008
i will always remember that moment where i tried to disappear into that corner outside the lifts, and the minutes leading up to that moment. i will always remember that sense of estrangement, that betrayal, that nauseating distress that was scratching its way out of my stomach and into my mouth. there is the quiet kind of loneliness that you feel in the never-ending expanse of your bed in the dead of night when you can’t seem to sleep.. and then there is this kind of roaring raging angry loneliness when you realize with a thudding clarity that trust is hurtful and dangerous when placed into the wrong hands.
slivers of that moment haunt me when i step into lift lobbies. or when i am back there. and even sometimes when i dream, especially that particular dream last sunday that felt like a grotesque hall of shame that i was eternally trapped in, thinking to my dream self over and over again, how could this be happening to me.
all i can do after i lock the door behind me each time is sigh. here we go again, these wooden floors. i wish they sold resilience by the bottles over the counter. i would break my piggy bank for a lifetime supply of the stuff.
March 20th, 2008
Previous Posts
