19. Dear reader (2023)

(the playlist)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18. Mastermind (2022)

(the playlist)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

railway sleepers before/futures [deleted]

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

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

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

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