Verklempt

My goal for 2017 was to read 70 books. It wasn't too much of a stretch at the beginning, considering how I read 127 the year before. I managed to read 31 in the first three months, right until I had that bad break-up and lost all the mood for reading.

But just like how I found everything when I had nothing, the tables turned on me. Instead of achieving my initial goal of reading seventy books, I wrote one. An actual manuscript that I took seriously, like my life depended on it.

My life never stopped revolving around buses and trains, even long after the one who first brought me on the North-South Line left. In fact, the love for roads came after the first major break-up in 2014, and the love for everything else came after the second, in 2017. I always have his dust to thank for the other things I come to realise.

It is thanks to this love for public transport that I came up with these thoughts. It is the love I had for a person that I couldn't have that first brought this image to me, way back in 2015.

For the first time in my writing, I am intertwining fact and fiction into a story. There is a collection of memories scattered into this book, interactions and words that only two people in the world will remember. And it makes me so nervous yet at the same time I can't wait for it to reach their hands.

This time last year I was wishing to die, imagining myself drowning or being dragged beneath the wheels of a train. I always couldn't decide between these two, couldn't decide whether death by your biggest fear or by something you love was better.

Now I am terrified of dying before my time. Before I can accomplish my lifelong dream. I've only ever shared the stories of my past with the readers of this blog; about the whole world going against me in 2012, about me wanting to let go of the world in 2016. Now I'm just dying to share my story with it, the story that fate and my mind made up and brought together.

I learned a new word a few days ago: verklempt, when you're too emotional to speak. It couldn't be more perfect to describe my 2017, my manuscript, my mind now. It's safe for me to say, I wrote a book in 2017, and that is all I care about.

Maybe next year I'll be able to say I published a book in 2018, and that is all I care about.

Maybe next year I'll finally be a writer instead of an aspiring one. Let's hope I don't die.

Mine

Blank pages are my comfort. Not alcohol. Not cigarettes. Not you. They are an opening, like a river mouth. They open me up like a knife slicing through your skin. Slitting through my neck, you can say.

When I was into reading, you didn't let me go into the library or bookstore for too long. Sometimes not even at all. And I don't like the way you kept telling me not to walk in the sun. You'd pull me in beneath the shelter, despite knowing how much I love the heat. Your way of protection is by restricting me even from the things I love.

You almost stopped me from writing this novel. "I don't want to read your book," you said. Just a simple sentence that will haunt me forever. It's fine if you don't want to; but I nearly stopped myself from writing it just to make sure you won't get upset about it. I don't blame you for it, because I'm using my past to write a story. My mistake was being sorry to you.

There's this couple from my secondary school, I told you about them. The girl with striking hazel eyes and the boy who broke my specs when he threw a paper ball or a bottle cap, can't remember, hard at me. Everytime I look at them my heart slumps, thinking about how they've been together for so long. Meanwhile our date was always supposed to be the 11th of January; but you left so many times in these five years that I don't have the right to call it ours anymore.

I'll forever be the girl who kept getting back with her ex. I can't be that woah, they're still together? couple with you and it's a tiny insignificant thing, I know. But everytime I think about it I start having doubts about you. It's not easy to trust someone who so easily dumped you so many times before. You told me not to think of the past, but if I do that I won't have my own land to stand on. 

Months ago I kept telling myself you'd leave for the tenth time if I let you in again. "I just don't love you anymore", "What if I like someone else and that someone likes me back?", "I just want to experience dating at this age". But this time the words were I just want to be single; and they weren't yours, but mine. 

When we first visited Admiralty Park, we went round back and went down this steep slope. In the past I'd whine about it and persuade you to walk the other way; this time, you held out your hand but I didn't hold it and descended just fine. It's such a tiny detail that serves as reminder for my strength now. You're finally treating me right, but you're too late... I'm treating me right.

When you asked me if I had someone in mind, you were right. But it isn't who you think. It's me. I want to chase this one real thing I've known a decade before I even met you. You already took my daughter from me; don't take my passion. Don't take me away from me. Don't pull me to the shelter from the sun, don't get angry at me when I write poems that aren't about you, don't pull me by the face and force me to kiss you. 

Maybe I'm the hurricane, but it took me a while to realise and leave the mess I made. I thought we had a future together. But that was what I thought eight months ago before you left me. I don't trust you anymore and I don't want to make the mistake of leaning on and relying on you wholly. I said it upfront that I just want to be single, and you called it an excuse. This blog post will be my excuse, then. If I'm still your fire, then okay, but you don't see two suns, don't you?

Chalet

I have many insignificant memories stuck inside me. Sometimes they come in handy, like how my friend's story from more than a year ago came to be a vital part of the novel I'm writing. Most of the time, these memories are vague and meaningless; but be close enough to me and I might tell you all of it the moment I suddenly recall.

Over this past weekend my family had a chalet to celebrate my niece's third birthday. See, give me the word chalet and I already have many things to remember; especially adding to the fact that my paternal family always had gatherings in the Downtown East resorts. But they are still fragments that do nothing to change my life or the world, you know?

I didn't even know how to spell it, my eight-year-old self writing 'shellay' in her diary entries. (A square blue Barbie notebook with a buckle to close it.)

My first memory is with my parents and elder brother; my younger brother still unborn. There was a playground at the back of our room, those classic ones with a sand base. I was riding the swing with my brother when I fell off and scraped my knee on the rough sand. My elder brother panicked and he ran in to call my parents. The structure of the playground and the look on my brother's face still ring clear to me.

Afterwards we went swimming, my mom sitting at the corner of the shallow pool. There was another little Malay girl with her father beside us, so I decided to show off my amazing 5-year-old swimming skills. The way her father exclaimed "Waaaah!" is still so clear to me, his daughter staring shyly at me, with just a tinge of envy.

The next memory is very, very insignificant. Just me and my cousins, the other 90s kids playing and screaming in the bedroom on the second level. Our 1994 cousin called us from below, and we went to stand at the top of the stairs. It's like it happened only yesterday you know: him singing "Happy birthday to you..." to let us know the adults were gonna cut the cake; all of us immediately rushing down the stairs, shoving at one another. I was the last one down, and the sight of my cousins before me is so, so clear.

The room that my parents got in block H still feels familiar to me. It must have been fifteen years ago, I don't know, but so many of the unimportant details stick to my head. Like how I was reading volume 4 of the Beyblade manga, the doodles I did on a McDonald's napkin. And the entire first night, when I got so paranoid about the block that I couldn't sleep. I kept waking my father up until he went into the bathroom, came out to rub my face with water and told me to sleep. The view of our room in the dimness feels like only yesterday.

Those were just the few memories I recall from primary school.

In my first year of secondary school my relatives organised a chalet again, though I don't quite recall whose birthday it was this time. It was during the June holidays, and for the first time I stayed over without my parents. My father told me to be good before he left, and then I received a notification after he topped up my phone for me. I slept between the other 1995 girl and our little 1998 cousin; I know it's unimportant to you, imagine having such insignificance stuck in your head like this.

I woke up the next morning to see all of them gone. I stood by the back door and stared at the swimming pool in the distance and that was when I heard a girl's voice calling out my name. I hadn't put on my glasses yet, but as you know it that scenery itself is still in my head, blurry as it was.

The three 1995 musketeers went to Escape Theme Park in the evening, the boy screaming his head off during the Inverter ride. And then we went to rent bikes, but I didn't know how to cycle yet so the girl and I got the kind with two seats. We were just chilling, me peddling as hard as my cousin in the front seat. At one point the boy exclaimed: "Yang orang kat belakang tu macam relax je!" and that was when I discovered that the pedals at the back don't do shit and I was just burdening my cousin.

Two years later, there was yet another chalet, a birthday celebration for one of the older cousins. I wore my school uniform beneath my grey hoodie, my hair tied so sloppily in a ponytail. I remember how one of the pictures we took looked, our oily skin making our faces shine.

I refused to return home that night; it was during my rebellious stage, you see. I went home to my 1995 girl cousin's house, a spontaneous sleepover. The other cousins wanted to watch Paranormal Activity, and I didn't. I was a coward who hated horror movies (still am).

My mother wasn't happy about it and she came banging on the door at two in the morning. I didn't want to go, I wanted to stay, but my aunt and uncle eventually relented and told me I could come back anytime I wanted.

Came 2012, when my anger was at its peak. When I hated my parents and the way they treated me, the way they jumped to conclusions and overlooked my own feelings. My classmates were finally treating me nice, inviting me to their chalet and everything. I stayed until midnight, being one of the posers taking long drags of cigarettes. Ignoring all the phone calls.

The other kids were tipsy, taking their drinks pure. One of them was called Cedric and I remember so clearly the image of him pouring in Coke and getting asked why he didn't just take shots. I still have his voice answering, "I don't like!" so clear in my head for some reason.

I switched my phone to flight mode eventually and just talked with everyone. We stayed awake the entire night, and that was honestly the happiest I was with my classmates the entire year. I chose to stay with them, because back then my love for other people was at its blindest.

I reached home at nine in the morning to see my clothes thrown across the room. All my t-shirts and jeans and dresses were in a pile beneath the window, which was right opposite my wardrobe. That was definitely my dad, his tendency to throw his anger on things, on people, on me.

He didn't go to work that day, I think he took urgent leave. Because of me. He came storming into the room just as I was about to fall asleep, with my contacts still on. His loud voice was the only warning I got before he smacked me hard across the face and threw a foot into my stomach, again again again.

And he said Why don't you go to your aunt's place I can't take care of you anymore I can't love you anymore.

He kicked me out, and I became a Paya Lebar girl instead for the whole of 2013. I didn't see him again until early 2014, when I came home and he stepped out of his bedroom, immediately hugging me and saying Daddy missed you so much.

All that because I stayed out overnight at a class chalet.

Fast forward to November 2017. The beanie and one-eyed fringe from November 2012 disappears, replaced by two bright eyes and a smile. Mine.

My dad comes over to my niece's birthday party after work, his shoes being removed at the foot of the chalet. The boy next to me stands up to take my dad's hand and kisses it. There is peace in this chalet. It ends in tranquility and there is no sign of anger. No fire.

It's safe to say chalets are an emotional thing, especially if you lived my life.

passion

About three weeks back I met a new friend. He randomly followed me because I was the only one who replied 'It's okay, I still love you' to SMRT's breakdown tweet in early October, while everyone else was cussing at it. He has a blog too, a WordPress to be exact, and is also a part-time poet.

We both talked about how our anger inspires us with our writing more than sadness or euphoria do. He has talent in rhyming his lines too, the classic type of poetry I thought was dying out. But that was the furthest the similarities in our writing go: the difference is he only started on it about three years ago, while I have been doing it my whole life.

I've blogged about this before, way back in year 1 when I was failing in school. I had to put my writing aside to focus on engineering Maths and programming and all that shit I was in school for; not a single blog post or diary entry.

It wasn't even a week before I surrendered and went back to both. Perhaps that was when I realised that I was not made for Engineering. I was made for writing and beyond. And it may seem stupid to any of you reading, with your diplomas in Polytechnic or ITE, or your place in a university.

Education is everything here in Singapore, and I know. But you can't put out a fire that's been burning for more than a decade. You can try, but the fire will crawl up the water hose and up your arm and burn you again, the way this species of fish can swim up your urine when you pee in their water, and eat your genitals. (They're called Candiru, Google it.)

Many people have no idea what they want to do in life. Others do, but are not that hungry for it, and they have better things to do in meantime, like school. They might want to be a musician, but their music is just a sideline while education takes the front seat.

In my case, writing is everything. It's the only thing I want to do. My daytime job used to be my drive, and it's the only place in my life where I'm so much better than everyone else and know every single thing like the back of my mind. But I don't feel a lust for it the way I do with writing, or typing like a maniac on my keyboard like this.

The only thing I have. Sometimes I randomly stumble upon girls who say they love writing, but it makes me feel overprotective of it. All these girls I've come across already have other things: they have beauty, or brains, or other talents like art or voice. They have kindness, sanity and regularity. I have none of it.

I suppose it was 1999 when I learned how to write. I can't imagine not ever knowing how to, and the thought of my hand being unable to produce letters confuses me. What could have been the first word my mother or father or aunt help me write? I'm sure it must have been my name: the only thing that sticks with you wherever you go.

With the love for writing comes the love for reading, or perhaps the other way around. It was with the hobby of reading that my love for stories came along. I wrote my first book at the tender age of seven, a mystery following a pair of sisters, inspired by the Mary-Kate and Ashley series I was in love with.

It came to be just the first of many more incomplete projects. Between then and today, I have three works in progress that never saw the light of day: that mystery; a magical realism about a pair of siblings with abilities to control dreams, the first ten chapters abandoned somewhere here in my room; and the one I'm currently working on.

I already started writing in a diary when I was seven, probably even before. Nothing but shallow entries, about how annoying my elder brother was, how fake my girl best friends were. I daydreamed a lot even then; I wanted to be everything. An actor, a teacher, a fashion designer. I wrote about it all: everything except a writer.

When I was eight, I had my personal portfolio of short stories and magazine articles. I folded colour paper into half and stapled them at the side, makeshift storybooks. Whatever my classmates and I did, I wrote about it, complete with little illustrations.

Someone invented this game of Bad Luck, a sort of Catching that by default, only started from the girl with the register number 13. When we moved to the new classrooms after the renovations were done, we squirmed from the centipedes crawling all around the new general office. I wrote about all of that and more.

My primary three self turned her encounters into stories, the way I now use my heartbreak to create literature.

That was my only way of popularity back then. Everyone gathered around me in between the changing of classes, wanting to borrow and read my little books below their desks. Our form teacher eventually caught one of them, and ironically she was our English teacher but she hated them, and gave all of us a scolding.

Especially me: she told me I was never to bring them to class anymore. "Such a distraction!", she exclaimed as she snatched one of my books and threw them on the teacher's table.

My primary four teacher the year after that was a stark contrast. She was both our English and Maths teacher, and she did this thing where she gives you stickers for your work and you collect them in a little booklet. I was always handing in my Maths work late or not at all, so I didn't always get them.

But she made us write journal entries every week, and that was my personal favourite. I got a sticker for every entry, still more than any other times, and it was probably the only assignment where I could diligently sit down and do and pass up on time, all on my own accord.

Came the week when the topic was Ambitions. Despite all my previous diary entries of wanting to be an actor, teacher, whatever, I wrote just one ambition in that journal entry: a writer. I included an excerpt from one of my colour paper storybooks, and she gave me three stickers for it, and even read it out loud to my classmates after she asked me if she could.

Before she read it she was just mentioning about how it was the best entry she read that week. My classmates were monkeying around, shouting out What? What she want to be?? and making wild guesses; but my teacher said "She wants to be a writer!", and she never looked or sounded so proud, just a little hint of disbelief at the fact that a nine-year-old wanted to be a writer.

I guess that was the moment it was set in stone.

I got teased afterwards, especially by the Malay boys, with their high-pitched voices yelling "Chey! Nak jadi writer sey!" It was also the start of what everyone says whenever I tell them I want to be a writer: "Write a book about me ah!"

Move on to the next year, primary five: I still sucked at Maths, and only knew how to write. Our form teacher told us about the blog she made for our class, and I was like What's a blog? She wrote on the whiteboard: web log. And that was everything started.

My very first blog came in the year 2006, with some anime shit for its link. I made many more for different things; one for my dreams, one for the things that happened in class, one for my 'fanfiction', etc. They all came to be deleted when I started getting bullied again, for the stories I made up and published online.

One of the girls I knew made a blog especially for me, what an honour: whodoeseindahlyks.blogspot.com, centering around my love life and all the gossip about it. Who was my lover, who was my next crush? I don't really need that from her anymore, since I've been writing about my love life on my own accord for five years now. I took that girl's concept and made it my own, the way Taylor is taking all the criticism from the media and creating her art from it.

The next blog I made afterwards came to be my last: what you are reading on right now. Blogs continued being popular in my early secondary school days, until 2009 when everyone else started deleting or neglecting theirs.

I remained loyal to mine, even throughout the two years when we didn't have internet at home and I couldn't update it anymore. In the meantime, I continued writing in my diaries, shallow entries about getting some guy's attention and how my parents loved my brothers more than they loved me. My aunt got me my first laptop at the end of 2010, and my life changed.

My blog was revived, although my writing style remained cringey. It was just the same problems all over, parents and boys and school, but heated up. I blogged about my father's burning words and hits, a first kiss from a crush who got a girlfriend just a week later,  the kids at school disliking me with every breath I took. It's true that I've died in the town of Pasir Ris enough times already.

That same boy came to be the subject I revolved around for the next two years. We actually got together in November 2011, but he went to ITE and of course abandoned me, three months later. He was starting a new life somewhere else, and I was just a high school prop that had to be left behind; I couldn't accept it at the time, and spent the entire year struggling to get over it.

The only thing I had was, you guessed it: writing.

2012 was my last year of secondary school, and also the beginning of my Solitary Author persona. My writing escalated with my emotions: I was my 2007 self, but angrier. Everyone was against me. The girls who were supposed to be my best friends, the teachers, my parents, the entire school. They all hated me and wanted me gone... I'm sure we have all felt that way.

For my entire O Levels year, I wasn't focusing on my studies. I concentrated more on myself, the process of healing that I took so long to realise. I kept getting class suspension, not school suspension, so we just had to sit outside the general office during our lessons. It was a great arrangement, because I spent the entire time writing in my diary.

The whole world was against me, but my diaries and blog were there for me the whole time. As well as my English teacher; she wasn't really a teacher at that time, but an assistant in the classroom. Every Wednesday and Friday morning we had to do spontaneous writing instead of silent reading, and of course that was my favourite.

This teacher always seemed to love reading mine, and when she saw how I ostracised myself from everyone, she decided to take me under her wing. During one of the lessons this one day, she caught me writing in my diary and made me give her whatever I was writing. It just had to be some masochist shit about killing myself, so she brought me out of the class and talked to me while the main teacher continued with the lesson.

She lectured me, obviously, and told me: "Since you love writing so much, I'll give you something for you to do. Write in a journal for me. I know you have your own diary and everything, but I want this to be for the things that you want to talk about with me. Can you do that for me, E'indah?"

So I did, and she became my one and only drive for school.

It's 1:38 A.M. now and my eyes are tearing the fuck up.

Her efforts didn't change everything, because I continued skipping the other classes and getting suspended for it. The desks outside the general office became my home, where the Principal and all the Heads Of Department walked around, glancing at me and judging me, most probably.

We had our Mid-Year Exams, all of which I couldn't do because I was suspended. For some reason I was actually only allowed to sit for the English papers: maybe the discipline master pulled some strings, because he was our English teacher at the time and he loved me for my potential as well.

And what a great thing it was, because sometime after we got our results back (during which I was in suspension), one of my classmates came over to me outside the general office and told me about the HOD of English coming to class and praising my Mid-Year paper while I wasn't around.

"Madam Kamisah was praising your Mid-year like shit. 'The best 5NA compo I've ever read'!" This HOD never actually taught us, but she always passed by my desk outside the office and never missed giving me a smile.

And it became another drive for O Levels.

I continued topping my class for every English test, exam, prelim, whatever. The other kids got sick of hearing my name whenever our teacher was announcing who got the highest; I remember the boy who later got into the same poly course as me complaining: "Wahlao 'cher not fair sia, E'indah always sleeping also still can get first in class!" Well it was never my fault for having it as my natural instinct.

Even as the national exams were nearing, I kept writing. I ditched all the ten-year series and textbooks for my own diaries and blog, because it truly was the only thing that mattered to me. I was still struggling to get over that stupid boy, but I felt like everything with my writing, with English. The other subjects didn't matter to me anymore.

Come January 2013, when we were finally getting our O Level results. I was worrying like shit about English and the other subjects barely crossed my mind. My form teacher for sec 5 called out my name, and as I sat at the table in front of her she announced, "Congratulations E'indah, you're the only one of my students who got a distinction for English!"

I really wanted an A1. I remember even months later, I kept wishing it was an A1. I didn't even care about failing my Humanities and getting C's for my Maths and Science. I just wanted an Afucking1 for my English. But of course, I didn't. I think even now, I'm still wishing it wasn't an A2.

And then my English teacher for sec 5, who was also the Discipline Master who had been chasing me the entire five years for my grooming/behaviour (it was kind of a big deal to have him know your name and reputation) came over and said: "E'indah! Congrats for your distinction! But too bad, I was really expecting an A1 from you man."

I wish I'm kidding, but he really did say that. It was also a big deal for him to have such a great expectation of me, and it shows how much he believed in me. But damn I sure let him down, and myself down.

Because of my D7 for Humanities, I couldn't really get into any Media-related courses. It didn't help that I only had five subjects, since I dropped Art at the beginning of 2012. Thus, my entrance into an Engineering course. How ironic that I hated Maths all my life and it came to be the foundation of my next three years.

Before I started school in April of 2013, I worked at a bakery in Loyang Point. Remember the HOD of English who was apparently praising my compositions like shit? She must have lived nearby, seeing her like once a fortnight. She didn't teach me at all, but recognised and remembered me, as I did her.

One day she asked me what course I got into. I remember my hesitance, but I admitted that I got into an engineering course. She looked so surprised and then disappointed, and said it was such a waste, considering my 'potential for writing'. She told me to make sure I join some writing CCA or shit like that, "Just don't stop, you have such a rare gift."

That was the first person to have ever called it a gift. I never imagined it as a skill or talent, only labeling it as a hobby or passion, just something I loved to do. It never crossed my mind that it is something to specialise in, something to be good at.

2014 was my second year of heartbreak. The one I called the hurricane, abandoning me at Jurong East one year into our relationship. Again, writing was my only thing, with diary entries and blog posts. It was the year I came up with my Type metaphors, where he started out as Flying Type and came to be a hurricane; where I started out as Fire Type and came to be a flame.

Where would I be without those metaphors, and who would I be without this gift? I literally have a sticky note on the wall in front of me: I can't imagine not being a writer. Whether it's my poetry, or diary entries, or this blog you are reading. I can't live with any of it.

Right now, I'm working on a manuscript. I'm 95 pages in after starting on it more than a month ago. I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, but only now starting on an actual novel. And I think it's fine, because I needed to go through everything I did just to have this idea.

Tomorrow is this blog's 10th anniversary. On the 8th of November, 2007, I created this to rant about a boy I liked, and each year continued writing about boys, boys, boys. To think they are all nothing to me now, to think that now I have a man who's been crazy about me for nearly five years.

He gave me a necklace that says passion in mid-2013, for our sixth month together. It's fuckin' symbolic now, the thought that the only love I was obsessed with shone a limelight on the only love that should matter.

It took me everything to realise that love from a boy isn't all that matters: it's passion that does. Some people have no idea what they'll do after graduating, or after ORD, or what they want to do in life. To think that I have unknowingly realised mine since I was seven? It means everything. I'm legitimately tearing up right now because I'm a fuckin' marshmallow when it comes to this.

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and just scrapping my entire manuscript. But it's the thought of having my name on the cover of a novel that gets me going. The thought of writing about three Malay main characters being my contribution.

Words are all I have: it's my beauty. My way of making music. My art. I don't have what it takes to be a literary figure, up with names like Sylvia Plath or Edgar Allan Poe, or popular modern novelists. Just a small Singaporean girl who just wants her twists of words to be read.

April

The following are my diary entries from early this year. I'm working on other stuff and I feel bad that I haven't been updating here for the very few people who regularly check on it. So here's something from my heart for you to read too, now don't disturb me, I have project to work on.

01 04 17 // 7:17 PM
Too tired to write yesterday. I want to talk about normal things, because I can. Because I am. Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said. Because you are. Because you can be.

But I can't. I am not beautiful, or talented, or privileged. I am this miserable human I was moulded into, whenever it'd happened. From birth? From my seventeenth birthday? From the times I would get beaten to a pulp by my older brother? From my time at the hospital two years ago?

I think shooting myself in the head is sort of a perfect way to die too. That way, all the thoughts would finally stop beating. You have to destroy the brain, as all the characters in the zombie games and movies always discover after we all know it.

After two years, I'm still here. At times it's the one thing I live for, the only thing I still wake up for. Today, I am trying hard to let it work its magic, but it hasn't been working. And how ironic that the tool of my happy place is what I'd just used to inflict scars upon myself.

During my first week of work, I'd been given a penknife from one of my then-new colleagues, and up til now if I ever lose it for a while I would feel really awful. Today that same knife has found its way through the skin on my wrist, just a little. What stopped me? Just the idea of having work, my safe place, intertwine with my depression, my hell.

I have a problem with sleep and the alternate reality that is my dream world. But now I feel like these nightmares are still a thousand times better than this real life. I wouldn't mind giving up my beating heart for hers.

02 04 17 // 7:18 PM
I tried everything that I could, and it still wasn't enough. At times I've wished to go back to when I was in hospital because it seemed to be the only time I could have truly died and he was so damn afraid of losing me.

I wish I could die a million times because I can't seem to pick the perfect way to die. This morning I had the thought to overdose on sleeping pills instead, as an ode to my sleeping problems. If only insomnia was the most of it.

There are dozens of thin red lines down my arm and all over my belly as I write this. It stings a little especially on my wrist but I can't deny that I'm fond of the pain. I'm hunched over and it stings at my belly too. It doesn't compare to the pain in my heart and my head.

How does one stop seeing the lack of worth in them? How is it possible to see ourselves as worthy when the one person who's seen our everything and loved us for them all, stops? It wasn't enough, all that I'd gone through and did for him.

I can't stop the aching thoughts. They're gone with him next to me, but the moment he boards 950, the moment I board 168, it all comes crashing down all over again. Why can't I ever say the things that I want to say?

Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said.
Because you are. Because you can be.

03 04 17 // 11:34 PM
Hopefully it stays this way this time. I get nightmares in bed and I get nightmares in real life. He makes it all better. I think he is the wind after all, my wind. He still has the thoughts and capability to leave, to fly and be free, but not if I treat him right.

04 04 17 // 7:50 PM
This world is miserable. People are constantly destroying it, treating it like it's been ours the entire time. When it truth, this planet has been around since humans first came, and I'm certain it can live just as long and fine after we're gone.

I say all these things, but it doesn't make me want to do anything to save it. I guess I just think it's too far gone to try helping. Just like what the wind thought of me before deciding he's given up on me completely.

I have everything to say, but my hand isn't writing as fast as I am thinking them. I'm trying to get better. I do not want to be the old woman wandering the streets on her own, thoughts consuming her, sitting atop her hunched back and shoulders.

There's a new Linkin Park song that I first heard at the tattoo parlour yesterday, and its lyrics hit a little too hard. Holding on; why is everything so heavy? So much more than I carry. A song hurts when it's about your life--but a few years back I learned that it hurts a thousand times harder when it's the life of the person you're causing pain to.

I keep dragging around what's bringing me down, if I just let go I'd be set free. And he's been carrying me around, the sun among the wings of a bird, a regular bird who deserves the love of somebody as small as he is. I know he feels it; I just wish he doesn't.

05 04 17 // 7:25 PM
When was it? June, year 2014. My year of Wonderland. The year I fell in love and never stopped. Are you thinking of who I think you're thinking? Well, you're wrong it's a fucking book. The first book that made me see the magic of jumping in a novel without knowing much about it.

I'd bought it at the Popular at Bishan Junction 8, read it while waiting for the North South Line train towards Jurong East, read it on the train, not even bothering to remove my backpack to place it on my lap. Even while walking to NYP, my nose remained buried in this book.

Nearty three years since I'd read it, and even now being my fourth time reading it, I'm still helplessly in love with it. At times I wish to go back to the very day I'd bought it. But of course we won't ever know when we would fall for something, and we don't keep the messages they've sent us over the years. We don't keep receipts we'd once deemed insignificant.

There are no reasons why you'd love a book. Why it's the first one we go to when we have no idea what to read, or what to do, or how to feel. Just like how there is that one person you will always think of first when you're at a loss.

At times, this very book makes me want to go for a swim. I've never been much of a swimmer or even a fan of the water. In fact I'd named it my biggest fear before the wind brought me to a waterpark a year ago and helped me overcome it, just a little.

At other times, this same book makes me want to drown, or burn to death, because I sympathise. It's indescribable.

06 04 17 // 7:40 PM
When you have to constantly ask yourself why you're never good enough. When you've done everything you could and more and you're still not enough, the person called your other half saying he wants to date other people. Were the last four years just a dream to him and was all I'd done for him just the same as errands that daughters are expected to run for their mothers?

A minor detail, but the wind has two mothers. I'm not sure if they're both supposed to be labelled as his, but one is his biological mom and the other is his father's second wife. In our religion men are allowed to marry up to 4 different women. By the things he's saying I won't be surprised if, even if he marries me, he finds other women to make his wives too. The apples don't fall too far from the tree.

Imagine your other half of four years being the only person you can bear, the only one you can even think of spending every day every hour of the day with, the only one who's been loving you even after all your beloved tertiary and secondary friends leaving--only for him to lose interest in you as well. Only to know, all along he thinks the same of you that all the others do. He is just like the rest, and the way he treats you like you're special was just a facade.

07 04 17 // 7:27 PM
About 29 hours since my last meal. Give me three more days and I'll stop drinking water too. I think this is fine, I really just couldn't pick the best way to die. I picked the slowest possible way that I am easily capable of. It should be a mercy that I'm choosing to go slowly so he will have time to change his mind.

Why wasn't I enough? If he never had the intention to stay why couldn't he let me keep her? Everything was going just fine until he had to say stupid things and make stupid decisions. At least I now know he had never loved me or cared about me. A constant reminder that I am worth nothing.

What cruelty it is to have chosen the one who left. The one who loses interest again. When I'd been the one who's stayed there for him the whole time. I know I'm worth nothing and I remind myself about it everyday but it hurts to know it's how the one person you want to be with feels too.

I tried pills before, but they didn't work. I feel like trying them again, sleeping pills, at the same time of this starving. Is there a way to disappear for a short while? Maybe one month, without a single person knowing where I am. If I'd had money I'd go to KL on my own. It terrifies me, but for a suicidal person whose life doesn't matter, it'd do the world a favour.

He never wrote me letters. It would have made things feel just a little better. I wish I could go back to 2013, when I never had her, I wish I wish I wish. It would only have changed things if I'd been pretty, or normal, or both.

08 04 17 // 4:40 PM
There's nothing beautiful about being sick. Some authors fabricate it to be, even going to the extent of calling a tragedy beautiful. I am sick, and nobody sees it or believes it, and if they do, they can't do anything about it or can't be bothered.

I thought I found love at fifteen, but it wasn't and it couldn't have been. It would never compare to the past 4 years of my life, and I have lost it. And I wish a broken heart is the least of my problems. None could erase the insecurity and the overworked mind and the hideous past.

The first major time he'd left, he only saw me in a different light when he saw how great I was doing without him. But this time there is no way it could work that way again. I am too far gone to do great things like I had 3 years ago. And there is nothing beautiful about being sick.

I still think of ways to die and I still can never make my mind up about it. I'm too far gone to be great and I think the last thing I could do is overcome a phobia that the wind always made fun of me for. The act of having my throat cut open. My sick, twisted mind tells me, he'd be proud to know I have overcome it in my last few breaths.

I'd written a letter today, addressed to 'the one whom I call the wind'. I don't really want him to, but I hope he finds somebody who loves him as much as I do, maybe more. Only difference, she would be the very opposite of who I am as a person. Not somebody sick in the mind, not somebody who is afraid of so many things and yet is in love with what normal girls would be afraid of.

I just hope he would never forget us, his two girls. A daughter and an other half. Because we won't, and I'm sure she loves the person who gave her a life too, albeit it only lasted four months. Back then he'd said he didn't want to bring her to this cruel world. And when we talked about adoption, he said he didn't want to let other people have what's his, ever.

For sure he'd only been making decisions out of fear. The middle child of 7 children, the son of a well-known religious leader. Screwed up, the moment he fell in love with me 4 years ago. I was the Gat to his beautiful perfect Sinclair family. The Heathcliff to his Earnshaw family. I would never have fit in, so it's great that I'm gone.

What is worse, to have died doing a great thing and having people feel such a significant loss, or to have died invisible, nobody caring about it or knowing who you were? I never really thought it through, but the better way to go would be to make sure everybody hates you, then you wouldn't be able to hurt any of them.

To have the person who once thought you were everything not love you anymore is a big first step, and I'm sure it would be easier from then on out. I'd contemplated handing in a resignation letter as well, because my happy place seemed to have lost its magic yesterday. But I know I'll somehow regret it and all I wanna do right now is give my best friends from work a great big hug.

Once caught sight of one of the best friends from past, from secondary school, talking about how their group is made up of differences. Their group of 6, she emphasised, because once we were 7, with me acting as the sore thumb.

She goes on how their group has a dancer, an artist, a traveler and the likes. They are a hexagon, made of art and dancing and music and flags of countries traveled to. And graduation gowns, because they are all normal and have no damaged brains and could endure 3 years of tertiary, academically and socially.

I am part of a hexagon too, and just looking at our places of birth is enough to see our diversity. And although there are constant language barriers among us, I love them more than anything. I have developed the habit of asking them if they knew what it means if I said a cheem word. They have the intuition to turn on Google translate to explain a word to me. And I love each of them for their snide remarks, their bounce, and their ridiculous dances.

I once thought of this, 3 years ago: (it seems I did most of my thinking in 2014) Sometimes when at a loss to what to do, the best way to move on is to go back to where you'd come from. And although I'd a few times let my dark side take control and gone back to old habits of drinking or self-harming, it's nice to go back to old friends or sit at places you once sat at, crying, when you were 17 or 15 or 12. I am almost 22, and I have plenty to do and go, old and new.

Occasionally getting the thought to travel outside the country, completely out of my comfort zone. But I'm terrified, and it intensifies the desire to do things I'm afraid to do. Once I gather enough balls and money then I'll do it. Even though airplanes and hotel rooms scare the shit out of me.

After 4 months, I have made goals for the year. I'm gonna send some of my work to local publishing houses. I'm gonna write poems when I'm sad or angry or have a lot on my mind. I'll make videos every month. I'll try to wear different stuff occasionally, when I have friends to go out with. I will not forget her, but I'll keep the feelings under wraps. And I will not let anyone in, or kiss any boys.

A day ago I'd felt like my world was falling apart. Today, I am building it from scratch and it's already turning out pretty. How great it feels to have started this entry saying I've no great things to do anymore, and here I am now, singlehandedly building back up the world I'd destroyed with my wind.

09 04 17 // 7:22 PM
I thought I had it together, but I don't. To him, all the pain I'd gone through was really nothing. I wish I could easily treat it like a dream just like he does. I don't even feel like writing. I don't even feel like a human.

I wish everyone would stop talking for a minute. I wish this world would stay still and quiet for a moment. Everyone deserves no right to tell me how to feel unless they'd gone through what I did and have felt the same loss that I have. The same self-hatred that I do.

10 04 17 // 7:35 PM
Still for sure, can't decide the best exit. In the meantime I'm making a list of things to do before I go.

(1) Write a letter to each of the girls from my secondary school. Honestly this one would take up a lot of my ego.
(2) Donate some of the books I loved. And if I have enough courage: donate my most favourite, We Were Liars.
(3) Compile all my poems I've written and send them to local publishing houses. It doesn't matter if they get accepted to be published or not.
(4) Rewrite my 2015 diary as a novel and get it published under a penname.
(5) At least try to find out where her grave is. Or wherever they'd buried her.
(6) Get over my fear. And if it turns out to be the last thing I do, then it shall be my fate.

I don't think I could ever get up onto my feet again. I don't have the strength or enough height in me to fix the lightbulb of my self-worth. It blew out when she seeped out of me, and it would've taken more than 2 years to 'get over it'. I just wish he could have been patient.

To think that I was the one who'd been there when he was young, dumb, skinny and I'd stayed during his whole 6 months in camp, even though girls were always prone to leaving their other halves for not having enough time for them. To think I'd been the one there for him when he was broke, never expecting anything and never looking at him in disdain when he asked if I could pay. Never asked to be paid back immediately. Never asked for it back like a loanshark.

It's so shitty to think about.

Fire

Anger management issues: it runs in the family.

My father uses exclamation marks in his texts to show his anger now, but I guess it's better than the way he used to hit me all the time. Even when I was 17, the only way he knew how to punish me was by giving me a beating. The day he kicked me out nearly five years ago, he rammed his foot into my stomach so many times, he should have done it when I was pregnant and saved me all the abortion fees. But he will excuse himself every Hari Raya when he says he beats me up because he loves me.

I've seen my elder brother snap at my mother just for the way she fidgeted with her toes. The way he took all my books and threw them across the living room because he didn't like how I dumped my bag on the floor when I got home from school. I've seen him break down because of an extension cord, actually throwing it at my father. I've gotten my fair share of beatings from him, oh how my mind and body have been so bruised from the hits of these two. The two older men whom I thought were supposed to protect me.

I know the way my mother likes to use her role to get what she wants; how she thinks I should be giving her $500 because that's her entitlement as a mother, even though she knows I earn less than a thousand each month. I remember the way she shrieked at me in the dining room: "I am your mother E'indah I AM YOUR MOTHER!" I never once forgot that she is my mother, but why does she always forget that I'm not her only child and I don't deserve every one of the burdens?

Save me the pain from seeing my younger brother turn out like them too. I've seen him cry when our elder brother and father fought because of an extension cord, and it breaks me. I'd rather be killed than watch him grow up angry, only knowing how to throw things and hit people.

Last night I watched my elder brother break down again, because he didn't like the way my father scolded my niece. He accused him of venting it on her while he was angry at me, for reaching home late. I tried to drown out my elder brother's voice, my father's daring him to sini pukul ah bapak kau, pukul. I knew my elder brother would have punched my father's face right in, I knew, and all I made myself do was get up of bed and stand between them.

But I wasn't strong enough, you know, I had nothing. My mother was the one who held my elder brother back; my grandmother the one who told him to mengucap. My niece didn't know what was happening, but her father's angry voice was scaring her and she started crying, together with me. She allowed me to wrap my arms around her and she hugged me back, her wailing almost as loud as my elder brother's possessed voice.

Why do we throw things when we're angry? Why did you pick up your son's crib and your daughter's little chair and throw them at your father? I heard your increasing voice, bringing up all those years from your youth, how our father beat you up and it's led you to be this way.

Anger. It runs in the family.
Fire. It might run in this house someday, burning it down. Maybe our family could reflect the one in my most favourite book, we can be our own Sinclairs. We could look perfect and happy on the outside, only to burn to ashes someday.

Limbo

The dreams that take place where you are currently sleeping are the worst. I could be lying in bed, and then off my alarm goes: I get up and head to the shower and nothing seems odd... until I look into the mirror and realise half my face is gone. Another alarm goes off, and I wake up again but this time for real.

I don't know if you've experienced those before, but I get that a lot. I'm not looking at my sleeping body in third person or anything, but it's an entirely different scenario taking place in the exact same room. The same furniture, the same placement of the books and bed and the like.

My thoughts rob me of my sleep sometimes, but they also rob me of sweet dreams. I got home at 2 last night, after ignoring the phone calls and texts from my parents at Pasir Ris and aunt and grandmother from Paya Lebar. I thought it was unfair for my parents to call Paya Lebar asking about me, but they were sleeping when I got home. They made my aunt and grandmother worry for me and left them to it while they go off into slumber.

Those were the last few things I thought of before I drifted off sometime after 3 in the morning. But my sleep never really lasts, because I was forced awake a while later: at 5:32 A.M. Maybe it isn't a coincidence but I'm not surprised by it anymore. I'm haunted by my own head and a heart that never got to beat.

In the afternoons I could sleep through an earthquake; at night the sound of my heartbeat is loud enough to keep my eyes wide open. I don't dare close them, to give way to the dreams that grow from the tiniest of thoughts. It exhausts me, and I think it's taking a toll on my dream-self too.

During my very few 5-minute naps before my alarm at 8 this morning, I saw my/her reflection. The depth of her dark circles, how the skin beneath her eyes seemed to have sunken into her sockets. I can't get the image out of my mind, it really did feel like my own body standing in front of that mirror.

I talked to my mother, about how she wanted all the money that I have or lack thereof. How I walked into my bedroom to see her in my chair, waving my wallet around and accusing me of lying to her. How she'd wiped my bedroom clean of any notes or coins, taken the gold necklace my grandmother gave me for my 21st, and then pointing to my face and laughing.

My elder brother threw a tissue box at me, hitting me square on the head, I swear it might have left a dent. His daughter, my niece, was standing between us and I felt my body move toward her. He rushed to carry her away and looked at me like i was the most hideous monster he'd ever seen... which maybe I was.

I sat with my aunt and grandma, who told me they'd made chicken nuggets for the foreign workers from downstairs. I took a bite and they were burnt like hell, the black bits melting like dust against my tongue. I watched my aunt go into the lift, a cat following her; the doors closed before the cat could fully go in, and the lift's departure gave me detached feline legs.

I woke up at 8:38 A.M., with my mother and grandmother stand at the edge of my bed. My mother threw my towel at me and yelled at me to get to work, you useless motherfucker, you're already late. But me, I'm never late, I'm always awake before my alarm even goes off, I'm never late, I stick true to my routine.

I woke up again at 8:00 A.M., to an empty bedroom, to the sound of rain. I'm still sane enough to tell the difference between reality and the dream world, but with my worsening eyesight I'm not sure how long that'll last. God if you exist help me, get me out of this limbo, this in-between world that is giving me the insanity I worked so hard to get rid of.

Construction

Construction sites: you think they are a hindrance. The noise they generate. Breeding ground for mosquitoes. The way they have to shut off your usual path and you're forced to take a longer route to the bus stop.

But I have a thing for them, I may even say I love them. I love the strangest things, from caterpillars to buses; it shouldn't be surprising for me to love construction sites. There's something about the way they're growing into what they'll be, maybe a hotel or another mall or a train station. It's the way I watch them slowly form whenever I pass by on the bus every morning.

Back in April, a week after the break up I'd gone to my old school. The last time I passed by the new Downtown Line stations they were still under construction, not much hint to what their names in the future will be. Just like everyone else I overthink, but just like nobody else I overthink about construction sites: I think about how I was there everyday during its forming, but I left school before it was done and couldn't be there for its completion.

I thought about how I was there for my hurricane through his growing up; from the day we both got out O Level results, our broke and skinny and dumb days, all the way to his vocation at Police Cantonment Complex. But he left, and I wasn't going to be there for his ORD; the honour was about to go to another girl, whoever was stupid enough to fall for his maturity without realising someone else stayed with him when he didn't have anything.

I love this station from the top deck of my bus; from the time they had to close off the roads and leave only one lane open, to the construction workers placing the yellow logo I see everywhere but which name I do not know. Just recently they have placed Tampines East over the outside walls; how I love you so. Of all the Downtown Line stations, it is my favourite, and I will stay in this routine long enough to catch the completion of its construction.

Hazardous

Who are you? You're nobody important. You're never smart enough to go anywhere higher than you are right now, not in the real world. Sure you've always had your head stuck in the clouds, daydreaming, your insistence to believe in six impossible things before breakfast right?

Maybe you want to be the store manager, driven by your passion and knowledge, but you could never handle the pressure of a thousand discriminations. Maybe you want to be a poet, but normal people wouldn't understand that overly complex brain of yours. The smallest dreams seem hard to achieve, so good for you that you've never thought of being a pilot or a lawyer or a business woman.

So what are you doing here in the sea of seemingly important people? They're all in their business suits, posture straight unlike yours, you with your spine bent twenty-five degrees. They have wine glasses between their fingers, voices so low and laughter so polite. The only possible explanation for you to be standing here so casually is you're a servant, refilling their empty glasses with every slight raise of their hand.

You grew up believing that the higher the authority, the more hazardous they are. The more their wealth, the less trust they deserve. Of course you want to get out of here, of course; but I think it's your job and you need it, for college maybe, or to pay off debts I can't imagine.

Walking across the carpeted floor in your Aldo shoes, the very pair your younger brother was wearing what seems like a hundred years ago, you spot another important-looking couple coming in. She has a feather boa, I think that's what they're called, and he in a suit of course. They both have their noses raised high, and you watch the existing guests welcome them, patting their cheeks against each other's like your relatives used to do you.

And then they all turn to look at you.

All your life, you've always wanted to be noticed. You were always invisible, just the girl sitting in the corner by herself; when would people realise the gem that you were? But now, with all these men in black and women in their shiny dresses laying their eyes on you, you'd rather the floor open up and swallow you whole.

Their tongues start wagging.
"What do we do with her?"
"She's not very pretty anyway."
"Do you think she's seen too much already?"
"Need to get rid of her, right?"

And then you remember the debt that you owe. You owe somebody their life. You're there as a criminal, you murdered someone highly prioritised in their society. They caught you on the spot, his blood still splattered across your unfortunate white shirt. Rained across your face.

But they want you to take over them next. They want you to be their boss, they commend you for your work, the way you murdered him until his body was unidentifiable. But you don't want to be part of them, with their noses in the air and flawless skin and murderous intent. They close in on you, softening their tones, telling you how you did such a great job! Your work as a killer would be appreciated here!

And you turn and run. You struggle, almost knocking into the glass door and barely escaping the clutches of two or three. You step out of the carpeted room, your stupid Aldo shoes banging against the marble floor. You crash against the doors that lead to a stairwell, run for your life down the steps.

You miss one, and
down
you
go.

Your head crashes against the dusty stairwell floor, and you can't move. You feel a thick wetness that can't be anything other than blood. Nobody's chasing you, probably because running is too low an act for those people; they don't rush. They don't hurry, because they know whatever they're chasing will come eventually to them anyway.

You can't get up, you can't move, not even when you see the man in front of you, tossing his cigarette to the floor and walking up the steps towards you. The man you murdered. You pray you'll pass out just so you won't feel whatever he'll do to you; I guess God exists because everything turns black.

Your first awakening was down a pathway that reminds you of East Coast Park, where you walked with a flower a lifetime ago; but you seem to be floating instead. You see your body being dragged by a suited man, leaving behind a bloody trail that actually resembles train tracks.

You see a woman in a headscarf passing by, and she looks to the man and nods at him like nothing is wrong. You see a family of five, a father and his four kids in their school uniforms. Your body is dragged right next to them, their feet stepping into your bloody mess; but this is nothing new to them. You are freshly killed game, being brought back to the slaughterhouse where you'll meet your fate.

Your second awakening is in your bed, the sound of your 8 a.m. alarm piercing through the walls of your head. The whole dream jolts into your mind like a memory but it's normal to you. Being dragged like fresh meat? Not surprising. Your alternate person is crazy, and her insanity sometimes seeps through to you.

But you know better, so you grab your towel and head to the bathroom. You prepare your lunch afterwards, you run for the bus that takes you to Pasir Ris interchange. You wait for your same old bus 21, the one with the license plate SBS7304D, shoot for your usual seat. You open up Blogger on your phone and start writing.

Middle

I'm not made for commitment--I think that's an understatement. In three months I went from thinking my life was worth absolutely nothing to being someone with pride heavier than her own weight.

I was always stuck in between, never quite belonging with one group or the other. Never had the spunk and energy like most of the Malays I see on Twitter, never had the confidence of the girls my age, or the same interests as any of them.

Even now, my colleagues, my best friends; they're having an intense ranting session in our group chat, their voice notes about the new manager we all hate. But of course I can't join in or even listen to their rants because they're all speaking in Chinese.

I know most people would say their secondary school friends are the best, the only ones they still bother to keep in contact with. The only ones they want to jalan raya or go on picnics with, whose graduation ceremonies and POPs they make effort to go to; but of course I was proven wrong about mine nearly two years ago.

Not even a month after I started school in Ngee Ann, I already found myself drifting away from my new classmates. I honestly thought it could be true though, I really thought I could start anew after the disaster that was 2012. Then they all moved up together while I retook every module; that was enough to tell me that they weren't the ones either.

In early 2014 I got myself lost in the WhatsApp group community and got to know this group of people called Heroine. It was just after the first break-up, and they were the reason I could go on, always making me laugh through conversations and everytime we met. They were the only jalan raya with friends I genuinely enjoyed my whole life, one where I truly belonged and had the rights to laugh in.

But as luck would have it, I screwed over the Admin of this group, the one who brought us all together: of course everyone would be on her side, right? I couldn't blame her, or anyone of them, but myself and that's just fine. They're still hanging out til today and I honestly think that's amazing.

Sometimes I tried to find somewhere to slot myself in, like the secondary school friends of the wind and the flower. It's true that I loved them more than I like my own secondary acquaintances, but that didn't help me fit in. I didn't have the same memories to reminisce or the same interests, and I was all the way from the other side of the country, I didn't have the rights to say 'Fuchun' as well when we were taking a group picture.

I was not made to sit at a desk, confined within the walls of a classroom, with others listening intently to everything the lecturer is saying. I used to think it was because I'm too stupid to catch anything that's being said, but now I realise, maybe it's because my brain is so large that whatever I find irrelevant will just float at the back of it where it belongs.

I know I'm living in Singapore where everything is about education and money, but it doesn't keep me from thinking how lucky I was to have dropped something I wasn't very happy in. My grandmother keeps telling me to continue with my studies, that it doesn't matter how old I get, I could always keep trying for that diploma. But I don't want to, it's not me and I don't care what adults will think of me for it.

I will always remember the exact clothes I wore on the first day of tertiary, I'll always remember the story telling the origin of the phrase 'the cat is out of the bag', I'll always remember the way my 1995 boy cousin fell flat on his face way back on my 7th birthday. Little unimportant things that stick to the walls of my head like house lizards, but I will never use this same energy to get through school.

You know how most people would have a place they automatically go to whenever they feel down? Maybe you'd go to a hill at Marsiling, or sit on a breakwater at Pasir Ris Park, or just go to your bed and lay beneath the blanket. Even the spot at your void deck where you'd go to have a smoke becomes a place of solace.

I discovered back in 2014 that my place was all over. When I ditched the one I called river and disappeared, he didn't know where to find me, because my place of comfort was on public transport. I am always on the move, never quite belonging in Pasir Ris despite having spent about 20 years here.

You see, even in homes I don't quite belong. I may have grown up in the extreme east, but I matured during the two years in an old neighbourhood near Paya Lebar. Every year on the first day of puasa I'm conflicted about which house to have the first buka at. My mom wants me with the family but I always can't stand the thought of my grandmother and aunt eating on their own, without their granddaughter/niece for them to talk to.

Is it true that most of us would have thought at least once that we were adopted? We always feel we don't belong with our family, like none of them understood us and even they are against us. Like your parents only loved your siblings but never you.

Of course I couldn't even fit in among my parents and brothers; my father making his friends laugh, my mother fitting right in her colleagues who are at least 20 years younger than her. My elder brother with his many many Twitter followers, my younger brother with his phone lighting up non-stop with notifications, which he ignores because he's too busy gaming.

And you know it doesn't help that my brothers care more about their clothes and hair than I do mine. My elder brother with his Armani Exchange or whatever it's called, my younger brother with H&M labels head to toe. And here I am with a t-shirt that my colleague got me from Bangkok, not that there's anything wrong with it because it has fucking cats all over it.

But there were times when I wished I was 'normal'. I didn't understand why I was made the way I am, why it had to be me who was different. I had beauty in neither my appearance nor heart, and the only magic I made was with my words. It wasn't really much in society was it?

Even in the community of aspiring writers I'm different; I don't find myself wanting to write novels. I want to fill the world up with my poetry so coded, my secrets in plain sight but wrapped in metaphors and my flowery language. I don't wish to create new characters, but to write stories about real people, about the wind and the flower and the aspiring pilot and the artist and everyone from my last 22 years.

Maybe the wind really is my soulmate, the name that fate insists stays with mine. If he is I really can't fathom the reasons why, seeing how different the both of us are. He still has friends from all walks of his life, from secondary to ITE to his colleagues today, while I obviously am not that blessed. And we were raised differently, our parents like chalk and cheese. He is easily swept away by the words of society or the people around him, while I stay true to the words I make.

You know how some people say 'his face was carved by God' when they speak of a beautiful person? I think He didn't spend that much time on me, but He made me the way Professor Utonium made his girls, and I've grown to love myself for that. I was really made to float, accidentally made perfect. I'm not made to stay anywhere, not made for commitment, not in friendships or family or school, definitely not in a relationship. I'm made to always be caught in the middle, never one but not the other.

Aftermath

Three months feel like a long time, especially the three months that follow suit being dumped after a four-years relationship. I died several times and have developed a thousand scars in the process, all of which I feel proud of right now. How did I survive so many times?

I recall the day I first died; I'd just ended work and was going home to my Paya Lebar house, the one with the grandmother and aunt and uncle who sheltered me for the whole of 2013. My uncle wanted KFC, so I was going to get some for him.

The entire day my other half of that time, the wind, wasn't there for me. He replied my texts late and the last thing he said was wanting to date someone other than me. He appeared before me suddenly that night, when I was walking to KFC; took out a knife and plunged it into my chest, leaving me to bleed out on the floor.

I told myself to get up, people are watching. So I collected my legs and went to buy KFC, nobody noticing the blood dripping beneath my clothes or the trail I was leaving behind. Or the knife still poking out of my chest.

That was a Thursday, the 6th of April. The following day I started to die again; I didn't eat a single thing. Had the intention to damn near starve myself. I started seeing no purpose of staying in this world a year before but never quite acted on it. Never found the perfect way of leaving, constantly wishing I could kill myself a thousand times in all the ways I'd desired.

Public transport was always the only place I could cry in. I took the long way home on my bus 21 that Friday, curled up with my knees to my bleeding chest, tears and snot running down my face. Loud sobbing and shoulders shaking, sleeves across my eyes and nose.

It took me less than a day to pick myself up again. The very next morning I got out, hopped on bus 88 and rode it to Bishan, feeling like I could do anything. I started conversations with old friends, with girls that I always wanted to talk to but was too shy to. I smiled at a baby girl looking at me, something that I never usually did.

The Monday afterwards I told my colleagues everything. My best friends, the only people who accepted me so easily and who make me laugh every single day. They finally knew what the tattoo on my stomach means and the truth of my 'spine surgery' back two years ago. They wouldn't get the whole story, even if they read my blog because of our language differences, but they understood.

On Good Friday I was supposed to go drinking with the one whom I call the flower, but the unexpected happened and I guess it didn't feel like we had the rights to meet anymore. I was still in the process of understanding why he didn't want the wind and I to be together, and I couldn't really hate him. We couldn't even talk, it really felt like we didn't deserve to.

So I packed my passport and a red dress and ran, but my plans fell short when my cousin found me staring at trains by her house and decided to drag me to a staycation in Johore. I guess it was fate, because while she did the checking in, I met a butterfly who was struggling to get out, constantly crashing into the glass window ahead of it. If it wasn't for this insect I would not have stayed longer; it was really the tiniest things that gave me push or pull.

But I ran away again the moment I set foot back in Singapore, passed by completed stations that were construction sites the last time I saw them. Visited my old school, climbed and leaned over railings and poked my head out in the pouring rain, hoping I would somehow slip and fall.

Even today I still recall the words of somebody from my secondary school. We were never really friends, just strangers who follow each other on Twitter and Instagram; but she once wrote about how she admired me for my tendency to run whenever I wanted to. She thought my running away from things that scared me was an act of courage instead of cowardice.

I tweeted one last thing on the 20th of April before I disappeared: Always do what you are afraid to do. And that was exactly what I did.

I took a knife and finally ran it down my arm, after weeks of just imagining it. I bled for hours but I didn't want to bandage myself; I wanted to let it all out. I let it stain my shirt, I let it go all over and beneath the keys of my keyboard, I let it mix with the coffee I forced myself to drink. I went to bed and work still bleeding.

When I left my workplace that day, I didn't run for my bus like I always would. Instead I took a cab down to the bus terminal at Bugis and hopped on a bus that would take me to Johore. In the past, I was always afraid and uncomfortable with going anywhere outside the country by myself. But that night I felt invincible, I felt so powerful with that fresh wound on my wrist still wide open.

I discovered a few unimportant things on my solitary trip past the border. I realised how everyone else was going through a routine and I was the only one among the crowd who was feeling a new adrenaline. I realised how much easier I slept anywhere other than my own bedroom at Pasir Ris. I realised how easy it was to go on with life and not post everything that you do on social media. I realised how I was a universe and the wind will never take much of me anymore.

And then the month of May went by in a blur. It started out slow, the morning I listened to the playlist I'd made for her, for my daughter. Sobbing like a baby over the loss of one, how fucked up was life? I was just getting my milk coffee like I did every morning when I exploded into tears, ruining my face further and trying to cover it with my shaking hands.

Of course I tried to find her grave. I gathered up my balls to e-mail KKH about it, on their address for Postnatal Depression. They took days to reply me while I was obsessively checking my inbox all the damn time. I died again when they finally told me that according to some law, I'd lost all the rights to know the location of my baby, just because I hadn't claimed her during the time of birth/termination.

It felt like the only way I could move on from her was by forcing myself to think I never loved her. I never gave her her life, the only thing she had the rights to. I never claimed her as mine when I lost her, never prayed for her despite wanting to see and hear her all the time. I have not moved on, but I had to force myself to keep walking.

I frequently took the East West Line from Pasir Ris all the way to Joo Koon but never cried despite the abundance of memories with the wind. I admired how the train bent when it was heading towards Joo Koon, a Singapore flag fluttering in the distance. My heart only shattered and I felt a few tears when I once looked at a little girl sitting so quietly opposite me.

I met a pilot who brought me to sunset by the pier, boats coming and going beneath us and the sun setting on our backs. He told me I was made to discover these things on my own; why he never wanted to catch me despite having strong feelings three years ago, after the first break-up. He isn't here anymore but I owe him for that, for helping me believe I was made to float around always.

Despite being broke after spending 200 bucks on Microsoft Word, one day I just decided to pop into a saloon and do whatever I could to my hair. I went in with long brown hair, the dyed locks that have seen everything with me from August 2014; I went out with hair to my collarbone, the edges dipped in a colour that was neither red nor purple, somewhere in between.

I found my one and only poly friend that is even remotely bearable still, played cards with him and his friends until midnight. His mom interrupted us a few times, asking if any of us has seen her cigarettes. I loved her then, the way she stumbled around mumbling to herself, and I realised how important friends are, the company of people around you.

After four years, I just started talking with my one other 1995 girl cousin from my father's side. I went to Aljunied to fetch her, an overhead bridge that goes right next to MRT tracks. Sometimes you find yourself slowing down just to catch sight of a train, right? Or perhaps it's just me.

There I stood, bouncing around on my torn canvas shoes by a petrol station; waiting for her to come right up in her white car whose make and model I don't even bother to know. We were the two girls who stuffed our faces with nuggets and burgers at the Burger King in a Kallang mall. Who filled up a long dumb survey just to get free fries.

Work continued being my favourite place, my colleagues and their bounce, their ridiculous faces and dances. The girls were my best friends despite all of us coming from different cultures and places. Four years ago it was the girls from secondary school that I laughed at Marina Barrage with; in the middle of May it was my three girls from work, two from Ipoh and one from Macpherson.

We played Uno over pizza, destroying our friendships with each other in the process. Took pictures with Marina Bay Sands behind us, leaning against the sunset and one another. I loved these girls so much and I knew they loved me back, me with my broken heart and overworking brain.

But of course the one who had just graduated from poly had to leave, had to find her own full-time job. Her last day working with us was on the 31st of May, when we all got McDonald's after work and played Uno again. I couldn't imagine ever having to leave this job, and she was the only part-timer who lasted so long with us, two whole years and then some.

This year was my first Ramadan without the wind at all, but it turned out to be my favourite. He was my entire world, but sometimes having nothing is the only way you could have everything.

The first day of the fasting month also happened to be my maternal grandmother's birthday--I don't really take note of how old she is because I don't want to remember how much closer she is to going.

I used to be attached to my paternal family in my childhood; after my solitary days in 2012 all that love crossed over to my much smaller maternal family, and I couldn't have it any other way. We were the obnoxious bunch gathered around a table in Penang Culture at the airport, from a grandmother to her two great-grandchildren.

My workplace is in the heart of the Malay society especially for our special month. Every evening there would be a sudden burst of Malay customers at work, as usual mistaking me for a Chinese. I would see kids sitting on the floor outside Popular, breaking their fast when the time comes.

The only times I actually literally run is for my double deck 21 every night. It was a lot harder when my usual route was clogged with my people, Malays, off to get their raya clothes or decorations or maybe just some keropok lekor, who the fuck knew?

I secretly loved squeezing through everyone, dodging people and hopping up sidewalks. The adrenaline rushed twicefold when I once pushed through the people waiting for the light to turn green; everyone's eyes on the girl in a black cardigan, running across the line of cars and ignoring the sharp whistle of the traffic policeman.

I thought the Ramadan in 2014 was eventful, but this year's has come to be the best. I spent so much time with the wind when I was with him, I didn't give much to anyone else. The month of June was my favourite, my solitude being reason for days spent with those that mattered.

I have my loneliness to thank for the night I'd sat in my cousin's car at 1 in the morning, singing 2007 hits with the smoke from her cigarette running through my nose. For the night my financial consultant drove me home on the highway, the both of us singing a song that I can't stand called Closer.

I have the absence of the wind to thank for the night with his best friend, laying beneath the moon until 3 in the morning. Were we really just on a hill in Marsiling, or was that the top of the world? The moon was full, just like how he was next to me, his hand on mine. It's funny how I have gone through so much but it is the holding of hands, such an innocent act, that hurts and helps me the most. His voice telling me I'm glad you didn't die, becoming my wake-up call every morning.

Back in the early hours of 10th June 2015, I was dealing with the loss of a second heart. Two years later in the first 3 hours of 10th June 2017, it was the opposite, my head leaning against the person I had to think of in order to stay in this world.

That night I reached home at 4 in the morning, and it was my first time in forever sleeping without the lights on. I've had trouble going to bed in the dark since 2013, but the 9 hours spent with the one I called flower and moon and everything in between helped me overcome such a tiny thing.

The next week I had an off day on a Friday again, and I felt a bitterness bite into me. And what do I do when in doubt? I get out, hop onto bus 88 and alight at Bishan, admiring the views along the way. But it wasn't enough, and I found myself taking the Circle Line to Paya Lebar, walking through the bazaar crowds to get to my workplace at One Km. My safe place, my haven more so than my houses are.

I called up one of my best friends, the one who'd just recently left to find her own full time job, and we got our colleagues the keropok lekor they are all in love with. We laughed over our seafood pasta and the LiHo drinks we smuggled in, down at Saizeriya; her phone camera on me with her voiceover, Look at this naughty Malay girl eating non-halal food.

We walked from One Km to MacPherson MRT, talking about the one I called flower and wondering if there could ever be anything between us. You know how the rest of my best friends are mostly Malaysians, and one being from China; how I could never express myself fully for them because of the language barriers? I have her to thank for being there, be it the first few weeks when I was still a part timer at Popular, and that night talking at the bus stop til 11 at night.

What a coincidence, to be the only passenger walking towards the other escalator at Paya Lebar station; what a coincidence, for the wind and his secondary school friends to be the only ones walking towards me. Truth is, I saw the one I called the river, and the one whose face I always thought looked like a monkey; and then I saw him, the very hurricane that ripped my heart to shreds and almost broke my life the same way.

I saw them all from afar, and I had the chance to turn on my heels and walk the other way, but I didn't. I walked on straight, because I didn't feel afraid. I wasn't afraid I was going to slap his face, or run to him and beg for him back, because I was already too high up to do either. I already knew by then how powerful I was compared to them all; the way they panicked upon seeing me just intensified my pride.

And those are the days that made this year's Ramadan my favourite.

On the first day of raya every year my father says the same thing: I scold you, I hit you, only because I love you. He says I'm the one who stresses him out and breaks his heart the most, despite being the quietest and least social among my siblings. I know he will never learn that actions are not always influenced by company, but by solitude as well, and I've learnt to accept it. I'll accept my fate as the black sheep of the family, linger around on my own while my parents and brothers will always be making the people around them laugh.

That afternoon was my first time visiting my maternal grandfather at the nursing home. In the past I always took the chance to sleep over at the hospital whenever he was admitted, but I couldn't take it when he had to stay at nursing homes instead. My parents, my younger brother and my aunty, all of us gathered around my grandfather in our baju kurungs the first day of raya.

My mother pointed to me and asked him if he remembered me. He looked at me, no words spoken, and she prompted: Tak ingat ke? Abah yang kasi nama ni, nak sangat kasi nama tu. I looked at him, withholding all my tears, and smiled at this old man who has forgotten the granddaughter whose name he had given nearly 22 years ago.

At the last house of the day one of my many aunts told me she would pray for me to meet my jodoh. I always thought what a powerful word jodoh is, even more so than a mere 'soulmate'. I once believed the wind and I were each other's, that I was made to always be swept away by the hurricane that he is.

I wish I'd told her that I have found much greater things than a mere person to marry. I have found love in solitude and hope in strangers, only possible after the leaving of the supposed love of my life. I have my cousins, how I thought I never belonged with them because they always have a cigarette between their fingers while I have a pen between mine. But of course I do, because we share the same blood. They are never quite your friends, never quite your siblings, but they will be there for you the same way both are.

They were the ones lingering beside me midnight, blasting their stupid mainstream songs and smoking in their damn baju kurungs, but how I loved them so at that moment. How I loved my paternal relatives again after five years, my father and his eleven siblings and all their children and their children's children. There was hardly any room in the house to stand in, these relatives occupying the living room the way they occupied the space in my heart again.

On the cab back home with my parents and 17-year-old brother, I realised how everyone grew up into cigarettes and I was the only one who grew up into trains, but I couldn't have it any other way. I started thanking fate for throwing me into her tornadoes and black holes all the time, her faith in me to pull through it all. And I don't quite believe in Him all the time, but sometimes I love God a little for the way He's made me.

4 months ago I was part of two, somebody's girlfriend. They say having a significant other is the best, but it was his leaving that helped me find love in a life I was about to give up on. I always thought I was fire for my passion in everything that I do, every little thing I come across, and he a bird for his tendency to leave as and when despite the mess he'll leave behind.

But you know, in the three months from early April to late June I became my own eagle. My heart broke but the pieces came to be my wings, and the people around me became the wind that blew beneath me. The wind comes and goes, just like all of them, just like me; but I'll never forget those three months. I disappeared to find myself, but I found greater things, I found infinity in loss.

Of all the poetry I've written this is still my favourite verse, written in mid May:

Despite its infinity the universe doesn't scare her
Maybe the hurricane wasn't the worst of a stir
She needed more than a crash, a dive and a delve
To realise the biggest storm of all was herself.

There's this bittersweetness that has no word powerful enough to describe. But it's just like how you'd survive a tornado ripping through your hometown, how you'd go back to see your house and neighbourhood torn down. You've lost everything you've ever known, but you know, at least you're still alive. That's how I've learned to feel, I've learned to tend to my own wounds first and understand that pain isn't the only thing life has to offer.

I guess now it's safe for me to say, I am overcoming my depression. Even a second is worth gold, and three months was enough to change me. I was never officially diagnosed, and neither did I have the intention to be labelled as such, but I managed to at least claw myself out of the dark gaping hole that is this mental illness.

It's hard for me to say sorry but although I've said it a few times when necessary, I am not the least bit apologetic for the ways I have harmed myself, for my stupid decisions that caused me both physical pain and emotional suffering. I built my throne on the heartache and all the blood that came dripping out of my arm, the bodies of my pasts that I have killed. A throne sitting amidst the hurricane's aftermath; a knife poking out of my chest as my crown.

June

I remember so much. I didn't know an 'almost' could hurt this bad. All the stupid poems I wrote for you hurt a thousand times worse now, all the words I tried to give you are biting me back.

The longest running conversation between a flower and a flame, a stupid flame who thought she was the sun and mistook her poison for energy.

I didn't realise how badly I burnt you just from leaning against you, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so so so sorry. I wish I never called you back, I wish I never held your hand, I wish I never brought you out for your birthdays, I wish I can forget the fireworks by your eyes.

You once said I was the reason you never got a girlfriend, I wish I never came into your life and I wish I never existed. If only I'd stayed in the main game instead of going over to the sidelines to sit with you.

We are all hurting even though I didn't mean any harm to anyone. I just wanted to hurt myself, never you or the wind or even my girl. I didn't mean to make the both of you cry, I'm a fucking storm and how the fuck do I live like this?

You are the only other person who's been close enough to see the stupid mole beneath my eye, close enough to have felt the warmth from my legs. I never wanted to own you, I just always wanted to sit next to you and sit in comfortable silence.

Why does your ghost linger? One month later and I still feel your hand in mine and your arms around me in the cold up on the hill at Marsiling. Why couldn't you stay gone, you shouldn't have felt my absence the way I did yours because clearly you are the only one running through my mind.

How do I let go of something I never quite had? Like sand through my fingers and rain dripping down my hair, never quite mine and never solid enough to grasp and throw far away. How do I forget you, your tooth poking out at the side and the veins on your hands a strange bright green?

Eight paragraphs, and they don't do justice to what I feel for you. I wish you'd known that kindness doesn't mean deceit, and I wish you knew honesty doesn't have to be harsh. You always said I was perfect but you just wish I was someone else, I wish for that too and I wish we'd met under other circumstances. I wish for a lot of the impossible, things that I know I can't do anything about.

No matter where I go, floating around or back with the wind or with somebody new entirely I wouldn't be able to forget you. I'd spend my whole life thinking of you and remembering you to be the person who saved my life. I'm so sorry, the only way I knew how to repay you was by destroying yours.

I'll stay gone, but please don't forget everything I'd mumbled to you up at Marsiling hill, and don't just erase my face and voice from your head. Don't ever exorcise my ghost from next to you, I want to be the heat that we both strangely loved.

L. R.

So it's the 13th of July today, and this post was originally intended to be posted on the 21st birthday of the one I call the flower. But you know, plans don't always go the way we want them to and people don't always turn out the good we thought them to be. It took me a while to figure out that you were the toxic one all along; and I hate the things I've written here, the way I thought so highly of you. I guess this is my way of finally letting you go. 

Today is the 17th of April, 2017 and this post has been scheduled to be published on the 29th of September, 2017.

I have lost my best friend of four years. Maybe that's why it's so easy for you to go; I've only been in your life for four years. Why would you risk a friendship of eight years for me?

You were both wearing each other's t-shirts, him in your white Converse tee and you in his black one. February 2013, our first time meeting, both of us finally seeing the person that our best friend/boyfriend kept talking about. Me with my hair tucked beneath a beanie, you with your hands tucked between your legs.

After all this time, I can still remember our first proper conversation, about a week before I started poly life. We talked about genders and sexuality, of all the things to say to a new friend. I'm pretty sure you remember what was it we were wondering about together? It was so stupid, but it did make our friendship.

When and how did we get so close? When did you start being the centre of mine and his arguments? When did you stop shipping us and start seeing that we were no good for each other?

The affection I have for you grew together with my writing. Four years ago when I wrote about you, they were just shallow entries, calling you really immature names and complaining about you non-stop. We were like children, constantly bickering with each other and running around the tired adult that is your best friend/my boyfriend.

On my first day of school, you were the person I was furiously texting with the entire day. My other half, the wind; he wasn't around much at the time, I remember. He was already starting lessons that week if I'm not wrong, and he didn't reply as fast as you did.

You told me not to be afraid, to make eye contact with my new classmates and smile at them. You made sure I wasn't covering my eyes with my hair, to push it back, that much I remember. You starved my insecurity by telling me again and again you thought I was pretty.

Even in 2013, you were really the only other person who thought I was special. I know it's hard for you to be honest, but you once told me that you thought I was the most precious diamond and that you genuinely cared about me. Hah, don't you remember? You were so afraid of losing me, actually sending me that long apology text when you made me mad and I ignored you for weeks.

We never had much proper interaction and that's why it's easy for me to remember the memories with you. I remember being at my school atrium when you randomly called me and said something in French, was it? You laughed at me when I pretended to understand and then we talked about the wind. By then I was already addressing you as my best friend, to the few friends I'd made in poly.

Of course those friends never stayed. But you did.

You were always the first person I ran to when I got scared. Being left behind at a void deck at Woodlands, heartbroken and alone at Woodlands Waterfront, dumped at Jurong East station, two days after our first anniversary. I could never figure out when you became the person I always fell back to. When I started being jealous of my own boyfriend for having you as his best friend.

If you looked at the bigger picture, you were the only one who never took advantage of me. Even if I expanded the comparisons, looked at all the guys who came during my lonely year in 2012, before I even met you, the guys who came in 2014, after you. You are the only one I could lean against and feel safe with. The only one I could close my eyes with and wake up to your hands still in the same position as before.

When he broke up with me the first time in January 2014, I went to you. Ran to Marsiling where you sat in a navy blue shirt, a hand raised high in the air for me. You listened to me, you watched me, your striking brown eyes that I'd never noticed before, suddenly so piercing in the falling light.

Your best friend's hands scared me. His hands have slapped me hard across the face until my head flung to one side, they have crept beneath my shirts and into my jeans, they have pushed me against walls in dusty stairwells.

But yours are different. That night, your hands just stroked my hair while I laid crying. They held onto me when I walked onto the road before the cars even stopped. And that was just the beginning, the solace I find in your hands after the fear I've developed from his.

All the other friends I'd made through him disappeared when he left. I think you tried to go too, you are his best man after all and if those people started disliking me the moment he broke up with me, you should have too right? But somehow you didn't. You looked at me as me, the day I decided to text you after three months, with a push from one of those Heroine people.

I never wanted to own you, and I guess that's how you became a flower to me. I wanted to take care of you, to water you everyday but not wanting to ever pluck you out like I did your best friend. A white rose; in the Victorian Flower Language white roses mean 'a heart unacquainted with love', and that's all I have ever felt for you. I've used the word love so many times that I've grown to believe it isn't worthy of you and you mean so much more.

Remember the day we saw each other again after three months? I was walking to NYP to meet my secondary school friends, and you were walking to the MRT station, and while everyone else was walking on the sheltered walkway, you and I both decided to walk underneath the sun, and we popped out at the same time. What kind of crazy coincidence was that? We clearly saw each other, but we could only pretend we hadn't.

I never knew when those feelings came to be stronger. Maybe they came when I sat with you at your school library, you in your red/grey raglan, the one you said your mom bought for you. Or maybe they came when we sat at Yio Chu Kang station, letting the trains pass and looking at pictures of red pandas that you had an abundant of in your phone.

You made me play that stupid piano game, the one where you had to tap on the black tiles and avoid the white ones. You laughed when I lost and yelled in frustration, and I watched you play, your hands moving so naturally against your phone screen.

Despite everything I had gone through at that point, you made me feel sixteen. You made me think I was a flower too, so afraid of leaving my safe place beside you although I'd already been uprooted and ripped apart so many times, my petals falling all over and being stepped on. But the few interactions with you in person made me so happy back then, you wouldn't believe. They made me forget that I was an ugly person inside, the complete opposite of you.

We watched Godzilla together, but I know you don't remember that. Funny that even after three years I'm still blushing over how you'd suddenly placed an arm around me, and then grinning at me awkwardly after the movie. How I'm still not over the very rare hug with you, at the foot of your block with a Siamese cat as the only witness.

Our heads over each other's shoulders and arms around the other, your voice breaking the silence: "How long more are we gonna do this?"
"Until tomorrow morning," I'd said.
"That's a very long time," but I felt your arms tightening around me anyway.

And then you tried to run away again. You told me you didn't have any special feelings for me and you didn't want me and just like that you stopped talking again.

I disappeared for a while too, and then I went on with life again. But one thing was for sure, I never stopped thinking about you. I guess it was during this absence that I came to realise I was no good for you, just a flame gripping onto you tight and threatening to burn you; you were just smart enough to dislodge yourself from me and not allowing it to happen.

But I couldn't escape from you. Or you couldn't escape from me? Fate made us meet again on Yio Chu Kang station in early July, while we were with different companions, you with your two girls and I with the one I called the river. I couldn't even fathom that you were standing right in front of me, and you had to wave at me first. It completely slipped my mind how very much smitten I'd been with you.

It just had to be that the two girls and the river were talking among themselves, leaving the two of us standing next to each other but not having a word to say. Maybe we did have everything to say to the other but we just didn't have the rights to voice them out. So there we stood, our hands on the same pole but our minds on different worlds.

The girls left at Yishun, leaving me alone with the boy I liked, and the boy who liked me. How fucked up was that? No, how fucked up was I, looking at you the whole time and completely forgetting that I was with someone else initially?

I honestly can't recall what we talked about, or if we even did; but who could forget the way you suddenly stopped talking and just looked at me, into my eyes? You stunned me but I couldn't look away, and all I could do was stare back at you and hold my breath until you finally blinked and turned your head away.

At that point I had heard that if a person can make direct eye contact with you for more than five seconds, it means they're in love with you. That seemed a little far-fetched, but fucking hell, it reignited the spark I'd had for you before.

You alighted at Marsiling, and once again, I ran. I ditched the river and ran, disappearing at Choa Chu Kang station and hopping on the first bus I recognised; bus 67, bound for Tampines. I filmed the view outside the window through Bukit Timah, Serangoon, Kallang, Bedok; and I made a video to a song called Breathe.

You called me that night, a rare occurrence. I wanted to answer, but I didn't, I felt so weak for you when I was supposed to be the strongest girl in the world. Who are you? You're just a rose, and I'm the sun, but it was you giving me my energy.

It was in the middle of that month that your best friend came back to me. Asked if we could start all over again, and although a part of me was still thinking of you I decided to fall back into him. I convinced myself that he was the wind that got me under control without completely erasing me, even though that was how I felt about you, not him.

Our reunion was short-lived though, because you persuaded him otherwise. He texted me not even a complete day later, telling me he wasn't ready after all, that you'd talked to him and helped him see that it wasn't the right decision. I really didn't understand your intention then, and I wanted to hate you.

He came back and left again and again afterwards, a few times more. And somehow the first person I ran to each time was you, it was still you and it was always you. Four years of running to you but trying to run away from you, all at once. How was that possible? But at the same time, I know you know what that feels like.

On your 18th birthday in September 2014, I decided to wish you and told you never to let anyone take your grace. You knew my stupid metaphors already then, that you were a flower to me for your innocence, your never having had a first kiss and anything beyond that. It started off as you being Grass Type and me, Fire Type but over time it simplified to you, a flower and I, a flame.

At the time I was fooling around with another guy, the one I'd deemed Ghost Type for reasons that are so unimportant I can't be bothered to bring them up anymore. But on that day we'd had a fight, centering around the fact that he changed his WhatsApp wallpaper back to the pictures of him and his previous girl.

I did want to leave him that day, I walked out of his bedroom and towards his front door but he pulled me back and laid me down on the sofa in his living room. I guess I wouldn't have been thinking of you all morning if it hadn't been your birthday; if your "Lol ty" hadn't been the last text I'd received before it happened.

I don't quite remember what he said to me as he locked me in position on his sofa but I wouldn't forget the way I thought of you at that moment. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die; I guess that made you my life because you were what I thought of when I felt like this person was going to kill me.

We 'patched up' before leaving his house, and I looked okay again but I was still boiling and scared at the same time on the inside. I wanted to leave, but I wanted to stay, and I was foolish, believing he needed me and I needed him.

When I saw you walking past me at Jurong Point that day, I honestly didn't believe you were real. I thought I'd made you up, an illusion made by my helplessness. You called out to me first, and I asked where you were going and you said you were going to the toilet. And you laughed, and I fell for the fireworks by your eyes and I wished you were going home because I wanted to follow you there.

What were the odds of a Pasir Ris girl and a Marsiling boy bumping into each other all the way in Boon Lay? You were with your secondary school friends, the wind being among them, but somehow it was just you I met. It had to be you walking towards where I was at and that chance meeting was what set this mechanism in me that will always feel safe once I see you.

If it hadn't been for that coincidence, you wouldn't have asked me out two days later. Of course, just like with the movie you were only asking me because your best friend had ditched you and you needed a replacement. Still, I was down, I was always down for you because I was such a fool for you.

Sad that I can still remember the smallest things from that day. We both wore button shirts, you with your brown boots that you were so proud of. With our dyed hair, you with your brown and me with my red; you approached me at Bayfront and we walked outside Marina Bay Sands in the heat that we both strangely loved.

Why do the most redundant things stick with me? I remember the paths we walked, the things we conversed about. The way you sulked and threw the last bit of your burger onto the tray when your mom called you while we were eating Burger King.

I got us cookies from this place called Cookies For Sid while walking back towards City Hall station. We got three, one of which was yours, and I held out the bag to you and stated: "You have a one-third chance of taking out your cookie from this bag." You looked at me like I was just a pillar who served no purpose and answered: "So you're a Mathematician now?"

I always liked sending people home. The wind was an exception, because he lived in Johore, but I always wanted to send him to the maximum I could, like the berth of 950. Of course I sent you home that day, like I had twice before. I just wanted to go the furthest I could with you, you were always the safest I felt with even at the edge of the world.

That was why I held on to your hand, I'm not sure if you remember; and it was bittersweet to think about how you didn't let go until I did first.

You went back to being a new moon afterwards, not a sign of you anywhere. I moved forward together with time, crawled into the smallest spaces and painstakingly climbed over obstacles that I could have easily walked around instead. Where were you, I constantly wished I knew, but I never had the rights to wonder because I was too busy wrapping myself around the ghost's finger.

He didn't stay, which was no surprise. By that point I was so tired that I didn't care, I just let myself go. It felt like one of those stupid trust falls, how I'd closed my eyes and believed that somebody would catch me. I guess I did get caught, but I didn't fall back to where you were; instead it was your best friend whose arms I landed in.

The wind finally decided he wanted to be with me in late December, but I didn't even tell you about it. We had the kind of friendship where we could ignore each other for weeks and then pop up again just to talk about something insignificant but I decided to keep it from you.

You texted me in the evening of New Year 2015, while I was walking to fetch him from his morning shift at Ibis hotel. I admitted that we've gotten back together, and I knew you were always the first person who didn't approve of it. Over time you accepted it and we forcibly became your favourite couple, two idiots who never really complemented each other, your love for them both the only thing they had in common.

I figured you were like the moon. On some nights, you completely aren't there, like the new moon. On others, you are a crescent, asking how am I doing but never telling me how you feel. At times a half moon, when you try to tell me how you really feel but you just find it hard to do so. And frequently, you are the gibbous, when we talk about the world, things that nobody else in our lives would ever get.

And on some nights, you are a full moon, completely there for me. Your ears are mine to talk to and your eyes are open just to look at me; like the night I'd gone to your school, sitting next to you with a life in my womb.

Of course you were the very first person I ran to when I found out I was pregnant. I showed you the picture I'd taken of the test kit, and I can never forget your expression. You were so shocked, you looked terrified for the both of us. Or maybe, just maybe, it had been heartbreak on your part.

You took out a can of that Monster energy drink, do you remember? You drank some of it and passed it for me to take a sip, after you pointed out that it stated 'not for pregnant women', or was it expectant mothers? Of course I still drank it, but immediately after I placed my head down on the table and laid a hand on my stomach.

I wanted to cry. I thought I would cry when I was telling you, but I didn't. I will never know what you were thinking as you watched me from my left side; I just remember your voice, so near me, "Kau okay tak?" and that was when I lifted my head and looked at you and smiled, Yeah, I'm okay.

I guess you gave me strength. We talked for hours, about the most unimportant things, laughed about things that wouldn't be funny to us today, listened to songs that I would listen on repeat the following weeks. You leaned so close to me, and I never once wished you were the wind next to me instead. You were always my best friend, the one I felt safe with.

At times, even more so than my own significant other.

We had to separate at Yio Chu Kang station that night, you towards Marsiling and I, the Circle Line bound for Mountbatten and back to my granny's place. But I cracked when I watched your train go; I called you, Wait for me at Khatib, I'm coming. And I took the next train, watching the reservoir go by, the reservoir I've loved from the moment I first set eyes on it four years ago.

The North South Line is filled with memories of the wind and you. In 2013 it was him standing over me, his arms on either side of me while we talked about things that I can't even recall anymore. In 2015, on that night it was you, except I do remember one thing you said. You gave me a warning, you told me how my boyfriend was like in secondary school, your voice saying: "Just be careful ah."

You and I argued more than I did with him; we stopped talking again in early April 2015, just a few days after I started working at Popular. You were telling me to make an appointment at the polyclinic so they could refer me to the hospital, but for some reason I refused, and you got mad at me for it.

The wind got mad at you too shortly after, when he found out you'd told some of your secondary school friends about it, not the ones he'd told personally on his own accord. We never really understood why you always betrayed our trust like that, just the same as how you would never understand why we always ran to you about our problems but never listened to your advice.

We were each other's new moon for the next four months; you weren't there for me to talk to during my polyclinic visit, and my scan, and my stay at the hospital. You weren't there for the wind as well, letting him sit by my bedside and tweeting that he wished he had someone to talk to.

August 2015, your reappearance in my life. You apologised, and I imagine it must have been hard for you. Things changed by the time you returned; my conversion to a full-time job being one of them, my chopped hair being another, as well as bits of my depression slowly seeping in. Four months of our absences was enough to bring my unhappiness with the world and with myself.

I made it back into your life in time for your 19th birthday; got you pizza, your most favourite thing in the world. I watched the trains go by outside the window of bus 52 with you next to me, bound for Ngee Ann Poly. We ran across the wide road before the PIE, walked to the edge of the Grandstand where I once frequently sat by myself, hidden from society and typing on my laptop.

I started being all insecure about myself, telling you I didn't have eyebrows like all the popular girls on Instagram; you told me There, you do have eyebrows, and you reached out and touched them. What were we talking about afterwards, when you pulled a loose strand from my hair; after watching Taylor's Back To December video, when I caught you staring and your hand reached out to me suddenly, tucked my hair behind my right ear?

I told my other half about that, and he got mad at the both of us. He told me he'd put it aside but of course his forgiveness came with a price. He said the only way I could ever make up for it was by giving up my body that weekend for him to do whatever he wanted to. As always I did whatever he asked, because I was already not in the right mind and I'm so sorry for being a whore like you always said I was.

You did what you did on your 19th, but you called me ugly a hundred times that evening. You added fuel to the fire, and for that one day you gave me reasons to die too. Just one word, enough to wreck what little I had left, and it felt worse coming from you.

For the whole of 2016 you had to comfort me everytime I got insecure, bringing myself down and not seeing a single good thing in me. Sometimes you tired from it, from having to remind me again and again how you thought I was beautiful; but I never listened to you, hot-headed and stubborn as always. I guess that was your retribution.

At times I did think you were only saying these things because you were obliged to, me being your best friend's girl. You were stuck with me from the moment we met in early 2013, Downtown East, the Fish & Co that has long been destroyed. You couldn't run from me, and I from you.

2016, when my insecurities became desire to let go of the world. Being in a relationship didn't help much, especially one where I was the only one carrying the weight and blame and loss. Being the only one who was loving the other. Getting angry all the time, missing somebody who was long gone by my choice, seeing things that hurt me and hearing words that were just the same as knives to my chest.

Once again, it was you who turned into my solace. Not only were you always the first person I texted whenever I fought with him or had something unimportant to say. It was you who took care of me during his POP, walking ahead of your secondary school friends to talk with me, holding an umbrella over me to shelter me from the sun at its highest.

It was you who followed me when I walked out of the Challenger at Westgate, after breaking fast with your best friend and your other secondary school friend. It was you who joined me mimicking the MRT announcement when it came on, when he would clamp a hand over my mouth the times I did with him.

It was you who listened to me cry about how ugly I felt compared to your secondary school friends when I followed you guys jalan raya. It was you who slowed down to walk next to me and asked what book I was reading and it was you who listened to me ramble on about the series I was reading at the time.

It was you who sent me to the door when the wind and I were going off, who remembered that I needed plasters for the blisters I had developed from wearing shoes I wasn't used to wearing. It was you who asked me where I was hurting, who looked like you were gonna put on the plasters for me; but it was him who said it's okay and who pulled us out.

I kept wishing you were my best friend, and I was insanely jealous of the friendship you had with my other half. I never had friends that stuck with me, but you always stayed despite everything, despite knowing my annoying sides.

There I was again, the person bringing you out for your 20th birthday, ten days after my 21st. I fetched you at your place, and when you showed up in your red/grey raglan, I laughed, I told you how I'd guessed you were gonna wear that.

I told you about how back in August, when the wind and I were waiting for you at your void deck, we'd tried to guess what colour you were gonna wear. He said white, and I was positive it was black, and I'd turned out right; I told you I was more of your best friend than he was, and you laughed.

It just had to be that you were the only one who ever understood my love for trains and buses. You brought me on 963, showed me the trains depot and the remnants of the old Bukit Timah railway, how you'd ridden on it a long time ago, before either of us knew what heartbreak and loss was.

We both walked on either side of the tracks with our arms out, trying to balance ourselves. I spun around on them, stood on one foot, and you took pictures of me. You flooded your phone storage with the moments of me getting lost in my own world and laughing like there was no tomorrow.

We passed by a pair of swings and I sat without hesitation; you joined me, and it's these tiniest things you did that gave me so much hope. Competed to see who could go higher, and I was almost going ninety degrees! I can't forget how happy I was at that moment; then I looked at you and saw you laughing as well, and that was when I felt the weight on my shoulders get lighter.

It was you who taught me that dragonflies can bite, when you brought me to that hidden spot overlooking the cliffs and I'd wanted to catch one; of course you were also the one who understood my love for insects. Why is it that I have four years of memories with the wind but it's you who is everywhere? You are flowers, you are the moon, you are the ocean and you are dragonflies.

The morning after spending your 20th birthday with you, the world that I'd thought dimmed over the months started looking bright again; you'd started being the sun as well for me.

Few nights later was when you were finally honest with me, during our frequent conversations that went past midnight. You admitted that you did return the feelings I'd had for you back in 2014, but of course you always saw your best friend/my ex at the time as the barrier.

You know those dreams where you run and run for the door but it just keeps going further? I hate those. My version is trying to get someplace for the entire dream but never reaching there because I keep stopping at unnecessary places and procrastinating my journey. They're one of the reasons why I'm always early for work and why I hate when plans aren't fulfilled.

I hate the feeling of missed chances as well, of knowing things would have turned out differently if one thing that can be helped, changed.

You taught me how to run properly, when I told you how I always ran for the bus after work and felt an adrenaline from it. I told you about my secondary school friends going out without me, and you told me I didn't need them. You reminded me again that you thought I was beautiful and strong.

We talked about how lucky I was that he was not the one to have brought me to the railway tracks and the Henderson Waves. We knew how he would have tried something, his penchant to pull me somewhere secluded to make out even when I didn't want to.

You enlisted about a week later, in the same place my own other half had gone to. No surprise that I started feeling lonely the moment you went in, because I'd lost the best friend I could talk about both the shallow and deep with. I tried to replace you with writing, when I'd struggled with that for the entire year due to my bit of depression.

Although it felt awkward for me to write again, I fell back into it, my entries being the things I would have talked about with you. I started writing about you always, tried to deny feelings by hiding them in metaphors. I wrote about you the most in December, the days I'd wanted to believe in impossible things and started floating between this world and the next.

It's weird to think that many things I do now were taught by days with you. You were even the reason why I'm blogging in proper capitalisation; before you mentioned it to me, I hadn't even bothered to properly capitalise my I's and first letters of my sentences. Of course you remember right?

The wind and I were the only ones who had gone to your POP, January 2017. I'd like to believe I was the one who dragged him to go, not the other way around, because I always felt that I cared about you more than he did. It was the few days before that your messages started having an underlying tone to them, the way I'd never seen.

You fell back next to me on the eve of Lunar New Year; you came in your dumb NYP shirt while I was struggling with my coins and receipts and our Koi. You got your Pezzo and we sat on the floorboards of the recent pasar malam, among the remnants of its stalls and patrons.

It started to rain and we went to sit a little deeper; you went into depth of your recent frustrations too, the way you'd cried yourself to sleep in camp. I was just hearing about it, not exactly watching you cry myself, but it reminded me that you were human too. I always thought of you as the strongest person I know, the way you never let anything deter you; I forgot that in the harshest of storms, even the strongest oak tree snaps in half.

There used to be this huge tree at my workplace, opposite City Plaza. It was really majestic, with vines hanging around it like rain suspended in mid-air. Always exuding an indescribable aura even when I looked at it from afar. Until one day I saw that they'd torn it down to make space for construction; I thought of trees as the symbol for virginity and how everyone was destroying their tree... And I associated you with that particular one, and started feeling some kind of loss.

Why did it have to be you I felt safe with? We went to fetch the wind from work, from Outram Park to Bugis, where we ate Seoul Garden. It was one of the few shops that were open that evening, everything else being closed for Chinese New Year.

The whole time you both sat opposite me and I couldn't hear a word either of you were saying because the table was wide and it was really noisy. Later on he switched places, sitting next to me and when we both talked to you, you couldn't hear what we were saying. And it was so damn ridiculous but it made a memory.

It also made an opportunity for him to say things he didn't want you to hear. He started asking me if I wanted to go to a hotel afterwards, to which I said no to. His voice in my ear, saying, Jom lah, just for a while. I tried to ignore him, but he started getting mad at me, I could tell. I wrapped my arm around his but he snapped at me, Don't touch me if you don't want me to drag you to a hotel.

I needed to pee afterwards and he followed me; it just had to be that the nearest toilet was secluded and it was a handicapped one. Of course he tried to take a chance, managing to jump in because the automatic door was closing so slowly. I was lucky enough, quick enough to get back out, angry enough for him to back off, and I walked to the other side of Bugis Junction to find another bathroom.

If only he hadn't done it on that very day, the day you were sitting back at Seoul Garden waiting for us. It was his own actions that made me find solace in you, and I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry for never forgetting everything you've ever done for me.
For finding comfort in the smallest things you've said and done.

And I'm so sorry for being me, for not being a generic girl that would not have had your attention. I'm so sorry for coming into your life and making a mess of everything, intentionally and otherwise. I'm so sorry for having a presence that threatens to wreck your friendship of eight years time and again.

I'm about to jump off the ledge so I might as well tell the whole truth. I always saw the world in a different way even before my depression; you were the reason I once stayed awake til 3 in the morning, wishing I'd had you instead because I wouldn't have had her to lose.

You were the reason I passed by NYP one day by accident, because the bus I was on got into a crash and we all had to transfer buses; the way I looked at your school buildings and started tearing up, because they felt like a symbol of the innocence I believed I'd had with you.

You were the reason I flopped, lost the sex drive when he and I were in a hotel room mid-February this year. I just started thinking of you when he was on top of me, his lower body moving against mine. He always had my body but you had my mind. How fucked up am I, how fucked up is he, how fucked up is this world?

His tendency to drag me was always brought up to you, and even you felt disgusted by that. During your POP I'd met an old poly classmate, and I introduced you guys; a few weeks later I got to know that you'd went up to this guy during some training and told him everything about the way your best friend treated me.

We were once three kids, running across the lane by North Bridge Road with our hands holding on to each other. I loved the both of you at that moment, the three of us laughing about how stupid we must have looked. I was always grateful, how the supposed love of my life and my best friend loved each other just the same as how I loved them.

I tried to disappear that night. The last time you both saw me was when I left the train at City Hall. I lost myself, replying neither of you and answering none of his calls. I told him I couldn't remember what I did the moment I said goodbye to you both, and he asked me, Did you get possessed?

Maybe I was. I think I realised how I couldn't look at you without feeling the loss, without wanting to be like you again, never throwing away my youth on stupid decisions. Before we met that day I was talking to you about how I wished I was like you, and you straight knew it was because you were always on your own, with no girls you claimed yours.

Couldn't stop blaming myself for the wind turning out the way he did, getting brainwashed with his logic that I was the one who started everything back in 2013, so I didn't have the rights to deny him whatever he asked for. After that day with you both I started seeing, just a little bit, how my relationship with him was hurting me.

In late March you and I talked about our past, our 'almost' from three years ago. I could have tried harder, or I could have waited for you, denied him the access back to my life. I kept blaming you for not telling me you liked me back, when really it was just me and my own choices.

I said we were perpendicular lines, meeting once and then off we go, never meeting again. But you said we were more like parallel lines, so similar to each other but never having the rights to touch. We are train tracks, you with your tendency to always think about the future, and I on the other side with my habit of looking too much into the past.

Your best friend of eight years, and my boyfriend of four; he told me about how he easily understood people, the way he could quickly read how somebody is like. His colleagues, his squadmates, anyone. But us? "I've been with you guys for so long, I've loved both of you so much and I still don't know what you're both thinking. Yet you two understood each other so easily."

It all came crashing down, finally, when I tried to tell him the thoughts I had of you. He took them the wrong way, but looking back now that turned out fine because it was just what we all needed. We still met, we got pizza at Marsiling when he asked if he could see our texts.

I didn't want him to, I hated it. Sometimes you talked to me about things that you couldn't with him, like your days in camp and with your family. I just felt it wasn't right for him to read your messages that you trusted on me; I know you don't have that mindset because you have a problem with keeping secrets, so it's fine if you don't get it.

But my refusal to let him see your texts just restarted everything. We walked to the MRT station, my thoughts starting to be the hurricane that he was. I started missing her, I started thinking about how you never took advantage of me, I started seeing the possibility of a life without him. This person who used my body however he wanted and blamed me for his own sexual urges.

Today you are 21, the age I will forever be. Four years of actually being with me was not enough to make the hurricane stay, so how would we fare with bits and pieces of times spent with each other? Does not being with someone make it easier for you to move on, or actually harder?

We don't have the seasons here in Singapore but you remind me of spring; the transition from winter to summer, the cold and dark days being left behind.

I owe you more than you know. From the day we met back in 2013 all the way to the last time we saw each other after watching Power Rangers back in March 2017; you were always the tiny flower growing amidst the tombstones. You were the only one who saw me hurting in my relationship, when even I had been blind to it.

Whatever I know now was taught by you. It was you who told me I was a book that wanted to be read by someone illiterate, art that wanted to be appreciated by a blind man. You will always stick by his side, but you were the only one among his friends that were close enough to see the bruises he left on my arms, my face, my heart.

You and your best friend were both anchors, but his weight was to prevent me from rising to the surface, and yours was to help me stay in this world where I stopped belonging. He gave me thirteen reasons to die, but you were thirteen reasons I still hung on.

When you sat next to me on the skygarden at your school, leaning so close to me and asking if I was okay.

When I caught you staring and you reached out to tuck my hair behind my ear.

When you said the MRT announcement together with me, even getting the tone and pauses right, instead of shutting me up.

When you asked me what book I was reading when I was walking slowly behind all your secondary school friends.

When you ran to your room to take plasters for me, asking me where I was hurting before he pulled me away from you and out of your house.

When you brought us on 963 and showed me the views outside.

When you took pictures of me from behind and then snuck up to scare me, your hands on my shoulders.

When we balanced with our arms out on the railway tracks, trekking up and about under the heat that we both loved.

When we sat on the creaking swings that felt like they were gonna break from our weight anytime soon.

When we watched The Girl With All The Gifts and hid and laughed together when the black guy was about to get killed.

When we sent voice notes to each other at 1 in the morning, singing nostalgic tunes with our broken voices.

When he asked you to go home first after we ate Seoul Garden but you didn't because you looked at me and saw me subtly shaking my head.

Whenever you smiled at me.

You always said that no girl would ever want you or accept you. You overlooked me just the same as how I overlooked you, maybe because you were always so busy looking at the ground that you never noticed the sun, despite its heat on you.

I'll never be able to repay you for the smallest things you've done that gave me this priceless thing called hope. You started off as a flower but over time you became my everything else. I feel the need to apologise for it, but not towards the person I was with the entire time; I'm sorry to you for the way I have pierced through your room.

10 days ago I thought my life depended on the wind. I threw away my pride and dignity for him and never took much back, but it was you who helped me see the difference between my safety and suffering. It was you who told him to leave, and I never understood your intentions but I guess it was because I tried so hard to close my eyes on his abuse.

I started off this post angry with you, with no clue what were your intentions when you asked him to leave me. Two hours and 7000 words later I'm starting to see. You spent your whole life staring at the ground, and I have spent the last four years looking up at the sky, at the tornado that kept carrying me just to drop me. I never saw you, the flower between my feet, the tiny bit of hope.

I may have lost my mind but I have gained everything else in the process thanks to you. I won't forget your smile or the crinkles by your eyes that I called fireworks, and I'll bring them with me wherever I may end up. I'm always sorry, I'm sorry for everything and I'm sorry that the only girl who ever thought you were amazing was also insane.

Don't ever be afraid, okay? I'm not here for you anymore, not for your 21st, and although I want to be the sun for you, shining down on you from above; you had taken on that role for me instead. Thank you for coming into my life and letting me go into yours, and I am so sorry I'm not staying to see if I could have fallen for you.