un

How does keep missing chances and keep orbiting but never have the gall to land, how does one get everything she needed at the wrong ages of her life? Someone once said timing is a funny thing, and I agree wholeheartedly and it makes me want to laugh until I drop dead. 

And here comes the blue moon where I so badly prefer to die, I have not seen it since the time my melonsoy was drunk without permission. I saw glimpses of it half a year later in dec 2021 when I found out my unborn child was a boy, and again in early 2023 when I saw my empty room. 

But it's clear now, I've seen it threatening to come when my demons found me through my mirror again last year, it's clear as day now. It's here in this room with me, typing in the darkness with my husband snoring behind me, it'll stay throughout the day in the hottest of weathers and brightest of spotlights. 

My suicidal blue moon orbits around me and nobody will be able to see it, they will see my crestfallen face and hear my silence but nobody will tie it to wanting to die. What a shame, I've only started getting some colour back to my face after so many insecurity issues the past year, I've only started being more social and a peoples person, and now it will fall back flat. 

Just like I wish I could be now, I live double the floors now than when I was living with my parents, I can imagine the splat from the eighteenth floor. How glorious my fall would be and I could think of a year of my life at each floor from 2024 until 2008, ages 29 to 13. 

The many times I have shed blood from down there for various reasons, I could have shed blood and tissue from the crack in my head instead. 

It takes a split second for one to ejaculate but an infinite more for another to think about how this will change her life once again. How her personal will uproot once again 

20. Sweet nothing (2024/2011)

 (the playlist)

I used to have my ears plugged with music all the time, I needed a soundtrack for every bus I took to work, for the way home, for every new station I wandered. I needed words to associate with every step of my life. Like a song about demons heaving on my shoulders when I didn't have the strength to get up anymore, or a song about daylight when I got married.

When he was born, I stopped relying on music. I started measuring time with his life, a week old, a month old, a year old. Two and a half years old. I have no songs associated with his first steps or words. From the moment he was conceived, I measured my birthdays with his existence, 26 and pregnant, 28 with a one-year-old, next year, 30 years old with a 3-year-old. I spend more time with him than my music or writing, and I have to tell myself I am mother first, writer second.

But maybe one day I can go back to my writing, in his independence and silence. When he will go to school on his own and I no longer have to hold his hand crossing the road. His father and I won't be the first thing he looks for in the mornings, maybe a phone or a cup of coffee instead.

But if I raise him right, he will still talk to me over the things in his hand. He will still talk to me about the cards he was dealt with, numbers on the front of tests or words a friend stabbed into his back. If I support whatever he does and comfort him with my kitchen humming when he comes home from school. The way my own mother was for me in my youth.

I always thought her nodding at my endless chatter was a sign of absence. But I grew older and she tells stories about me as a kid to my husband. And I am surprised to know she was there. She remembers my awards in primary school and friends from ballet, I'm sure she remembers every single time her 16-year-old daughter came home late without greeting her.

What she doesn't know is I remember everything she does too. I remember her bragging to my kindergarten teacher about me knowing the word 'astonishment'. I remember her praising the makeshift storybooks I made in primary school. I remember her listening to the speech I made at secondary 4 camp, and if she had kept it up afterward, I would remember her reading my scribbled poems and cryptic posts. 

Now I get annoyed when she makes the entire family pose for a picture, not realising she is just trying to make memories the way I do. She is back to being happy whenever I visit, and just because of that I feel safe coming home to pasir ris again. And I want my children to feel this way with me even decades down the road. I want them to walk around their lives knowing I will always support whatever they do in the sweet nothing of my settling down.

Maybe they will turn out okay immediately, or maybe they will have to go through their own versions of 2012 and 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and so on,,, like I did, before they can come to the very moment in their version of 2024 where they realise... that they may not break the generational trauma after all... and maybe their child will still turn out to be the cursed way they did no matter how much they try. 

Restart the never-ending cycle: 1. You're on your own, kid (2012)

Ordinary days

One of those tiring-for-good-reason days. The tiredness that reminds you how fun life can be. For some reason every Ramadan will have one of those days, and in the midst of my routine and my settling down, I had one just yesterday.

It started when I was stuck in a traffic jam on the way to work. My husband got the car after his motorcycle was scrapped from an accident last year, and he's been sending me to work everyday since changing jobs. I missed riding at the back of the motorcycle and riding the trains by myself sometimes, but at this point I've accepted the passenger princess nickname. A bit ashamed though. 

Anyway when we were exiting onto the highway what was supposed to be a single lane became two because cars were overstepping each other. At one point we were at the beginning of the split, line of cars on either side, and for a moment it reminded me of riding pillion. That was the picture I snapped. 

If you don't know me I have never been late for work, never. Even when I take my own sweet time getting ready I am never late, from my Popular days until now. It's a curse. So you can imagine my panic when it was like 8:30 and we were still stuck somewhere in the north-east. That's the time I'm usually sitting in the pantry, in uniform, sipping on hot coffee. (I start at 9 for morning shifts, and in orchard)

I got a little bit pissed at my husband for taking that alternate route, but trying not to because he was sending me out of his own goodwill. I fell into silence after awhile but I was watching the time on the dashboard. And then he zoomed through the PIE, some occasional setbacks, and then I'd never been happier to see my building come into view. 

We reached at 8:58!!! I jinxed myself when I said the lifts better not fuck me over, as they are wont to do. I slammed the door after yelling Thank you, bye, bye, thank you as usual, ran up the steps and pressed the buttons for both lift lobbies, to take whichever came first. 

Of course they both took forever to come. One came a split second earlier, so I went for that one. At the same time the lift on the other side came, but I was already queuing up. And by the time people left the lift, others boarded, the lift I did not go for had already ascended. JINX. 

When I tell you I ran from the moment the lift door opened on the fourth floor. The logistics team was already setting up their space, getting ready to start the day, and library trolleys were everywhere,, more obstacle courses for me. I was just swishing myself around like some ninja warrior. 

Another obstacle: I knew I had to stop and declare the book that I brought with me, by writing my name and the title on a sheet of paper before coming in. I just plopped my book on the security's desk and bolted to the thumb in machine. I did not stop to say hi to anyone!! But I heard giggles from security and my colleagues while I was zooming past. Have been working here for 5 years, they know me always being early at this point. 

And guess what time I clocked in: 9:00. With 30 seconds to spare before I was late at 9:01. I guess I cheated in a way because I usually changed into my uniform before clocking in. But record not broken! Never late for work! I was changed and at my department counter by 9:07, with some sips of coffee in my system. (currently not fasting)

That run from the lift lobby to the machine actually took a hit on my knee. I'm growing old. But that chaos was the start of my day, and by the end of it I was feeling in touch with myself again. 

I had counter duty from 10 to 2, which meant I had to park my ass at the information counter and be the scapegoat for every customer that needs something. And most of the time it's a curse sitting there because all the hard and annoying customers will come out of nowhere. 

Yesterday was pretty uneventful, not as much as that one day earlier this year when every single customer that came to my counter was difficult. My partner was one of my close friends too. But when she momentarily left to do some of her department stuff, I saw a boy running past the counter crying.

It took me awhile to register, until I saw another customer staring at him. He looked to be about 7 and his face was wet with tears. I managed to stop him and ask Are you lost?, he nodded, I asked for his name; I couldn't get it because it sounded like a long Japanese name and his crying made it harder to understand.

Because I couldn't get his name so I called the receptionist to simply page for: A boy wearing a black t-shirt has been found. Will the parent of the boy please proceed yada yada. 

Like 10 seconds passed and I decided to ask the boy to write his name down. This time he left out his surname so it was a short one syllable name. Got the recept to page: A boy by the name of blah wearing a black t-shirt yada yada.  And then I saw other customers who needed assistance was starting to gather in front of the counter. I asked the boy to come into the counter and sit while waiting, and I quickly served other customers before getting back to him.

Now I managed to get his age, 6. And there was still no sign of a frantic parent coming, so I got the recept to make the announcement one more time. That was when my counter partner returned and I told her what happened; she went out to look for that frantic parent. And maybe 5 minutes later she returned with the boy's mom and older brother, and the way the lost kid hugged his mother made me wanna cry too uwu. 

She comforted him with something like the Japanese version of  'dah, dah' while the older brother patted him on the head. It wasn't the first parent-child I reunited at work and definitely wouldn't be the last.  

After counter duty I spent time with my D3 brother and sister through the shift, both working and giggling over stupid things. I hardly write about them but we were always the ones suffering at work together. When I had to be acting commander because the two ranking above me were on mc for 2 days, they were there. With enough respect for me to heed my instruction but at the same time enough comfort to make fun of me when I do dumb things. 

One of the random things that make me laugh until now:

Called a customer about her enquiry. After I told her everything I needed to, she asked me questions. But everytime I was just starting my sentence, she cut me off with another question. It happened a total of four times, so my colleagues heard only my side of the conversation: "Uh---uh---uh---uh" and when they told me I was stuttering it just made me laugh so hard.

After my shift I had about an hour to kill before the iftar my colleague from Logistics had organised. I wanted to contribute some funds but he wouldn't hear of it, so I just helped with any preparations I could. Which was basically laying out plastic plates and cutlery, and asking one of my work friends if she wanted the kopi or teh. 

Sadly ex-staff weren't allowed to join like the previous years, a new rule put into place. It did feel like something was missing but I still loved every minute with the existing presence. The ones who were on the Afternoon shift had to go back to work, so the rest of us helped to clean up. 

And if that wasn't enough, I had the chance to get on my east-west line. My husband was at the geylang bazaar with his friends so I met him there; after parting ways with my work friend, it was just me and music on the old familiar green line. Putting my face close to the window to look at the view clearer was a reminder that I was still the same old me.

It was bittersweet alighting at EW8/CC9. I had just spent time with the people of my new life in orchard, people I've spent five years with now. But paya lebar in ramadan just hits different and I can't help but think of my previous job and colleagues. I was walking towards my old workplace around the same time I usually left work back then. If I had looked for her, I would definitely have seen the 2017 me jaywalking.

The song that was playing at that point: losing a friend - elijah woods. Randomly heard it on the radio awhile back but it perfectly encapsulated the walk from paya lebar.

I hadn't walked much through the bazaar because my husband and his friends were pretty much done with it. We got in the car after last cigarettes were put out, and the mini traffic jam when exiting the carpark meant we could point out girls for the singleton friend to look at. 

My husband dropped his friends off in tampines where both of them had parked their motorbikes, and we got down for one more round of cigarettes and jokes. It's a little different not riding around on one too, to have the friends you used to ride with squeezed in the back with the baby seat. 

Would definitely have made more plans this ramadan if I hadn't been insecure about my face. I thought having insecurities was something only youths had, but now I'm looking more like my age and am not being mistaken for a student anymore. My son is closer to his adolescent years than I am to mine and customers call me ma'am instead of miss now.

But I know I need these ordinary days to make the ordinary life I had always wanted. 

19. Dear reader (2023)

(the playlist)

If you're still here reading this, reading these numbered posts inspired by somebody's music and lyrics, somebody else's words, then you should know by now: somehow, I made it. 

But what they usually don't show when somebody has made it is what comes after. Not runners lying down, gasping for air by the finish line. Not critically acclaimed actors getting into drugs at their peak, losing all sense. Not the cleaning of floors and picking of bottles after new year's eve parties. 

Definitely not girls from broken homes spiraling back into nothingness after creating their own healthy families. 

I never read anything about that, so I didn't know what to do when I became one. With a job that I loved and a man who was nice to me and made me laugh and a kid who was alive and perfect and a house that overlooked my expressway of loneliness - you'd think with this success I would have no reason to be sad. But we all forget, when we are at our highest, there is nowhere to go but back down. 

What had to happen for me to feel this way but the erasing of my past. Just earlier this year I thought of a trip to langkawi when I was fifteen; the pictures were on my old facebook account which had been unfortunately deleted from being stagnant too long. I thought of the sketchbooks and diaries from primary school, I thought of 2012 when my father decided to discard all pictures of me out of spite, a gap between my brothers'. 

Then I thought of the diaries from my naivety of fourteen, crushes on tall boys next door and wondering what having a boyfriend would be like. The diaries from my loneliness of seventeen, painstakingly writing about my parents seeing me as a bug and other metaphors. The laptop from the time, I didn't know the concept of hard drives. All gone, not a word or picture or cell left. 

The knowledge of snippets of my past disappearing started collecting like rainwater, until one more memento broke me like a dam. 

Back in 2018, someone gifted me a dreamcatcher. When I started thinking of all the lost memories I had the heart to take that back; I didn't take it with me when I moved out, being a gift from another man after all. But I was slowly losing proof after proof of the adversities I was so proud of going through, and I needed to hold onto every scrap. 

Timing is a funny thing, it's true. The things in my room were left untouched in the almost two years since I moved out in June 2021. But come March this year and my heart stopped when I saw an empty corkboard instead of the one thing I needed to stay upright.

I had to laugh it off in front of my parents, keeping up the illusion of having matured. It was only when I left that I thought of my older brother's room being left alone for longer. It was only the next day that I wondered whether my dreamcatcher giver was still alive. It was only after more vivid dreams that I wanted a dreamcatcher after all, be it against Islam. 

I retraced all the wrong things and made up conclusions about my father still not loving me after all, that the friend who gifted me never existed and that my youth wasn't real. I wanted to retrace further, but now the medals I wore with pride were tainted with the trash of the landfill they sat in.

Afterwards I did what I did every time I had my heart broken. I gallivanted. I wrote endlessly. I listened to music I liked in the past, trying to grasp onto who I was as my own person, neither wife nor mother. And I couldn't find her. I could not find myself anymore, because I was too happy and at peace. 

Friends had to see my unravelling through stories, because I think texting people directly about it would be forcing them to listen or advise. If anyone wants to ask if you're okay, they will, and if not, they can flip past without feeling guilty. 

I went to work laughing like a normal person, I went to social events and talked about my family, nobody noticing the caffeine and confusion up to my neck. Nobody suspected I was drinking four coffees in a day and searching in vain for something poisonous to feed on and spit back out as words. 

If I was religious or have had my heart swallowed by it, I'd have told myself to pray. I still did my five prayers during my mental breakdown, but I was only exorcised by it when I read through whatever of my writing I did have left. 

I read my blog posts all the way to 2012, I searched the storeroom for the notebooks I wrote in at 22, I scrolled up old conversations, I opened up the Word document for a novel I hadn't worked on in years.

I desperately read every single word, and I realised: the best self-reminders are the words you wrote yourself.

I saw between the lines, between the timeline of the young and now me's, a message from myself. A letter to myself. Dear reader...

18. Mastermind (2022)

(the playlist)

I read somewhere how all the eggs a woman will ever carry are already forming within her while she's a 4-month-old foetus. So you were already in your grandmother's womb when she was months pregnant with your mother. If you were pregnant with a girl, you'd already be carrying the eggs that would be your grandchild.

My son has been with me everyday since he was born a year and a half ago; you could even count the nine months before that. But scientifically, he's actually been with me since I was in existence, more than 28 years ago. And somehow that was everything. Somehow that was the start of the plan I didn't know I had, to create someone I would give up so much for. 

During a birthday you only celebrate the fact you were born. You don't celebrate everything else that had to happen for you to be. You don't celebrate your mother going into labour, holding you in her arms for the first time and thinking of all she has gone through before you. 

My life flashed before me when my son was born. I knew everything I did led me to this moment. I thought about the boys who had to break my heart and the friends I had to lose, the hits from my father and the insults from my mother. I thought about the unborn girl whom I still wish I could hold sometimes, and I know it was all steps and shoves I had to take to get here. 

I retrace my steps to the day I endured surgery to keep him, to when I cried for days after finding out it was a boy. To the day we saw a red line, pregnant, to the day we exchanged wedding rings and my husband took full responsibility for me. I retrace my steps to the days I almost jumped off the ninth floor for a cousin and a father and a few boxed drinks. 

I retrace my steps to our engagement day, to the first fights and touches, to the day we first met and the hardships prior. The bottles of coffee surrounding my laptop and the swipes on dating apps. I retrace the days I lost my mind after losing someone I didn't know if I still loved. The nights I cried for someone that I chose to kill. The train tracks that I fell in love with and that I wished I could be dragged across.

My first day working fulltime, my last day at ngee ann before I would drop out without graduating. My first day of year one standing on the platform at paya lebar instead of pasir ris, an aunt paying my school bills instead of my own parents. 

I think about the year 2012, when it all fell apart. I think about my youth where my father nearly kills me with his punches. My childhood where my older brother nearly kills me with his, after buying me the first diary that would kindle my love for writing on my 7th birthday. Where I start to notice being left out of the mother-older son and father-younger son relationships. And I know throughout it all, I was already on my way to my life today. 

When I looked at my son, both of us alive and well, I knew I made it. I burned bridges and paved the way with my mistakes to get here. They say God is the best planner but it was all along hand in hand with my bad luck and stupid decisions. The baby I held in my arms that night in April was the product of our mastermind: a God's creation and a girl's endeavour. It was all planned. 

railway sleepers before/futures [deleted]

Syahir was always the third wheel, the in-between of most arguments, but no matter what he’s still the best friend who knows the both of them inside out. For nearly four years he put up with it, but he finally admitted they were not good for each other and their differences only make it all worse. He thought Hanis will never be as mature as Zhafran and Zhafran’s shallowness will never help him understand Hanis. They were raised so differently and have gone through their own pain. Their expectations for the relationship will turn out separately too, if not now then years down the road.

Well, that’s what Syahir says. Zhafran is convinced he doesn’t know anything. Syahir hasn’t been in a single relationship his whole life, so what does he know? Sometimes contrasts between two people are what make them work the best together. Where Hanis is angry, Zhafran is patient and calm; where Zhafran is monochromatic, Hanis is colour. Just like how he is falling asleep on this bus while she stares out the window like she’s never seen the world before.

Hanis is a flame, with her never-ending hope. Zhafran is wind, for his ability to calm people down when they’re angry. He is the gust in her hair and the storm whose eye she calls home. They keep each other under wraps and for that, they deem their souls intertwined. Again, what does Syahir know? He has never loved anyone, never found something that gets him riled up the way a passion or lover would. While he has fire and storm as his best friends, he will always merely be the last tree in the field.

It is the last thing Zhafran thinks of before he falls asleep, with his head lolling back against the headrest and his girlfriend looking out the window.