NS17/CC15

The earliest memory with you, just the two of us, was back in early 2014 when I was figuring out ways to school from my Pasir Ris house. I hopped on the first bus that came along and took it right to the end, without a care for being late.

Before that there was always a third party: a hurricane, because you were the only mid-point from Woodlands and Paya Lebar, where I was staying at the time. We used to sit outside the gantries with our pizza bars, nestled between the other lost souls.

We always separated the moment we tapped in again, me towards the Circle Line and him, the North-South. My grandmother doesn't understand the concept of all these lines, so despite you being only fifteen minutes from her place, she always said Buat apa pergi jauh-jauh?! She doesn't realise that I've heard Change at this station for the Circle Line more often than for the North-South Line, because I am always on the latter.

Somehow, you became the first place I always end up, whenever I didn't know what else to do and where to go. Four years ago you were my routine, during the time I was getting over him. There were other shorter routes but I stubbornly loved going the long way, and that was through you.

A year ago it was the same, running away from him and to you. I found comfort in you, with my diary and a cup of iced chocolate even long after he left again. My grandma was right, you are so far away but I never get sick of that one-hour long ride, even with the same views over and over.

It's a whole other world with you, the moment we pass the park on your outskirts. It almost feels like home, even if I've never stayed here or have any relatives here, even with the crowds changing lines and forming queues for the trains during rush hour. Bishan, where I feel at home despite the sea of strangers.

NS18

If this is happening in the past, we won't be nobodies. We'd have the attention of everyone, alright. Staring and pointing fingers like we are an exhibit. We'd be animals, hopelessly staring out the glass of our cages.

We won't know what to do. Maybe we'd just be kids who somehow fell through the screen doors. Everyone's usual lifeless eyes would open wide, and maybe there'd be a collective gasp. What are those two boys doing in there, they'd panic.

The presence of people on the other side of the glass doors can only mean one thing. That it's happening in the past, in an alternate reality where the world is still fine, that a train is definitely coming. 

No one will be reaching out to us, or even frantic enough to seek authority. We used to complain about the trains being late, the screens stating 4 minutes or even 6. But we'd do anything to slow the next one down this time, a beast made of six carriages. 

I'd gather just enough balls to turn and stare once the headlights find my face. There's a last minute guess to what the last thing I see would be: the tracks, the stunned expressions, or the dusty sign that says NS18 Braddell. It so turned out neither, but the train's wide smile as it robs us of our lives.

NS19

For as long as I've lived, I've only ever seen him work at this place. Decades, it seems. At the edge of the bank he will always stand, in his police uniform and greying hair. A baton pokes out one of his holsters, though I find it hard to imagine him using it. That's funny since a huge part of my life revolves around him beating the shit out of me with a belt or hanger.

This is an old story but I was away from my family for the whole of 2013, so I missed a year with him. Both our egos acted as walls, until heartbreak from a third party finally knocked them down. I returned in early 2014, and it was just too easy falling back once the awkward hugs and tears were over and done with.

His colleagues orders bottles of cookies from my mother every Chinese New Year, so we grew to have this annual thing where she, my little brother and I would lug bags over. If not, I doubt we'd come anywhere near here as a family.

You can gauge from that how loose my tie with this station is. Yet somehow I will always remember my way around because it's that familiar. From the bookstore above the bus interchange to the lift standing out at the side of the atrium, nothing much has changed. The bright canary walls remain and the entire vicinity still thrives.

But we changed. I went from a bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl who kept looking down to an adult standing tall and straight. He went from handing my mother a fifty-dollar note to buy my little brother and I dinner, to having his money rejected for his lunch to be on me. 

We went from just a teenager and her strict old man to a daughter and father. Now I talk about the book I'm writing when I always tried so hard to keep my passion for writing from him. Now he talks about our family's problems, when he used to lie all the time to keep up his steel facade. 

Despite being one of the first stations to be completed, this is one I very seldom pass by. But just like a father I missed a year with, its winding ways and atmosphere will always feel like home even if we don't always lean against each other. I guess Toa Payoh is just like my father; the oldest station still standing and my oldest man still thriving.

NS20

This wasn't a part of my routine at any point of my life yet it unknowingly grew on me. (Or, I grew on it.)

I wanted to tell just one story about this station and then I remembered another, until ultimately I realised there's an abundance of tales. Some of which aren't mine, some of which may or may not be true, some of which aren't even in my lifetime or the universe I am living in.

There's a mix of everything here, from a history of Jewish cemeteries to devotion sessions at nearby Catholic churches. Its very name was derived from the latter; Novem, the Latin word for nine, symbolising the prayers said for nine consecutive days.

Ghost stories, involving coffins and phantom trains. Some even claim seeing headless apparitions especially during the last hour of service, because who in their right mind would haunt in broad daylight and peak hours, right?

But you know me. I'm a very personal soul, so the stories that hang heaviest are my own ghosts. Unresting pasts, unexplained dreams, unfulfilled promises.

I know a boy who had to make this place home, along with its crowds and shoving commuters. He didn't want to become one of them with their lifeless eyes and impatience. So he stopped taking the train, escaping getting swept with the floods.

I know another boy who had to make this place home, the smell of the hospital and the heights of the twin towers. Their collision was at its peak, and the thought of his ex best friend being just next door irked him. So he stopped working there, and is now about to soar even higher than the towers of New Phoenix Park.

I know two other boys who had to make this place home, living on the remnants of the dead. Their masks were their only protection, music and each other their only company. It took them a month to realise the stillness of the world outside the station's walls. So they kicked a door open and jumped down, their torchlights accentuating the train tracks.

Even with stories that aren't mine to tell, it's evident that Novena is home. A shelter, a safehouse, even when these boys didn't want it by choice. They managed to leave, but its platforms and crowds continue to thrive.

NS21/DT11

Thirty years ago you were structured, years before I was born. At only twelve meters deep, you are the shallowest of all underground stations. I never noticed even through any telltale sign, like short escalators and ceilings that don't rise.

The last time I saw you, the posters for an insurance company plastered your walls all over; everywhere I looked. Enough for me to associate you with that white outline against a red background. But I don't have the right to say that, as if I see you everyday, because it was only that once. I'm pretty sure the posters have changed ten times since then. Or have they?

People have commented on your flaws, like having to tap out to change lines. Your red and blue aren't connected, making the people who use you exit and enter through two different doors. But I love you all the same, letting myself go with the flow of all these strangers. 

They don't notice the illustration on your wall, an intertwine of past and future. Singapore in the year 2200, inspired by both your history and what will come next and next and next. 

Mention you and most people will think of your circus. You used to be one, until they scrapped it off your name. But what irony, because you keep ending. Your walls, your depth, your posters. Don't you? You used to be Newton Circus, but now you're just Newton. Maybe the art on your wall that keeps getting ignored will come true someday.

NS22

So it's a date, then.

No, wait, not a date. Just a meeting.

He said both sentences in less than ten seconds, as if reflecting the indecisiveness of his feelings for me. At one point a hurricane, at another nothing more than a sudden released breath.

This was late 2014, when I was only just discovering the world with me in it. When I finally figured out that he was the wind and sky and birds. 

I almost didn't recognise him because he looked so much lighter, in his face and weight. It was about five months since we last met and talked. Maybe I was lighter too, so I was able to look at him in a different perspective. It was so much easier to forgive back then.

He had on a light blue t-shirt and I was in grey, no cardigan. I'd described it as going back home to Pasir Ris after a year: the familiar outline mixed with something new. I didn't follow my instinct to run as fast as I could when he said You just can't easily forget someone you were with for so long.

The main objective of meeting was to follow him collect his pay, but that was exactly what we did not do. Instead we had Pezzo and took a weird elevator with only two buttons: the fourth and fifty-fifth storeys. Why is it so dark?! he exclaimed, but I could barely hear him with the air pressure kicking in. 

We both hadn't been there before, and I remember wishing there were other things we were both experiencing for the first time together. But there weren't. 

There were poems about clouds and wherever you looked there were just sky and skyscrapers. If only it wasn't an air-conditioned place but open, with natural wind. It would have made it perfect, with the hurricane running shy beside me. 

He only held my hand when we walked through the bookstore and never once did we kiss. And that alone made the entire day flawless for me. I wish it'd stayed that way.

Orchard, where we messed up our first few dates very early 2013. Where we fell back together almost two years later to mess up everything else. 

NS23

Late 2013: his school, in the middle of the red line. She came from hers on the green and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were none, be it for each other or for trains. Just two friends who happened to have a lot to talk and argue about. Two people who almost tore friendships and relationships apart.

It began to rain when they reached their destination, just about to cross the junction by the H&M building.

I have an umbrella!, he exclaimed, digging through his backpack while the drizzle fell on them. It took a while before he finally came up with an umbrella cover, announcing that he didn't bring the umbrella itself.

She still remembers the look on his face when he stretched the cover over his head, that fang poking out at the corner of his lips. They ended up running the moment the traffic turned green for them, raindrops soaking her pink cardigan and his moss t-shirt.

What was it they were looking for? Shoes. He needed a new pair of shoes, even though he had no money, saying he would come back if he saw something he really liked. They made their rounds along town, him taking every pair into consideration.

Late 2017: his vocation, in the middle of the red line. She came from home on the green, and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were gone, after spending weeks at their peak. Just two friends who almost. Two people who tore friendships and relationships apart.

It didn't rain when they reached their destination; in fact, they realised they alighted at the wrong station and ended up walking to the next.

Again, they were looking for shoes but not for him this time. He wanted to get her a belated birthday present, never forgetting the ones she bought him four years before. They made their rounds once again, her turn being picky with every pair of shoes.

You know if you get someone shoes as a gift, that person will walk out of your life, she was telling him, because she was abundant in superstitions like these. Since then they kept trying to run but to no avail.

Somerset, where they spent hours scouring for the perfect pair of shoes, only to get one somewhere else. She paid for his when feelings were none while he paid for hers when feelings were gone. And while his long broke, hers are still new, the gloss brighter than the futures they dared imagine.

Next station: NS22

NS24/NE6/CC1

You stand out because you are the only station with three lines. But maybe not everyone favours this number, since a third party will always symbolise treachery.

The rose and I were supposed to fetch the wind from Outram Park but we were late, having spent the day at the abandoned tracks and the bridge overlooking everything that usually swallowed us. We rushed to Dhoby Ghaut instead, where he was waiting and already starting to sulk. We were running late but he was thirsty, so he stopped me for a Boost. 

Remember how the smallest things stick and the most insignificant mean a lot to me? Somehow I knocked over my smoothie and it flipped on the counter. The way he reacted still burns in my mind, and it almost reminded me of when he caught me whenever I fell.

He asked if he could try mine, and took a sip right out my straw. In front of his best friend, he wouldn't dare, pretending to be grossed out at the thought of sharing something with me. It's funny, the way he kept trying to hide.

I remember the conversations we had walking to Cathay, where his best friend was waiting. She says you're pretty and you deserve better, he casually said. 

I picked the movie adaptation of a book I was just telling him about: The Girl With All The Gifts. Thinking about it now, it wasn't really his kind of movie and it was his birthday but he let me pick. Sometimes he degrades me with mean words but once in a while I catch a glimpse of his own willing kindness. 

His twentieth birthday will somehow always be my favourite memory of him. Not anything from before, when feelings were none; not anything from after, when feelings were peaked. It was the underlying compassion and all that we'd gone through with or without each other.

Where he hid his face by my shoulder when somebody on the screen was about to get killed. Where I hooked my arm through his as we walked; where I slid around on my sneakers and he asked how old are you already. Where I went on about what really happened in the book that the film didn't include and he had all his attention on me. 

We separated at the station, where he went home on his red line. His best friend was going back to his aunt's place at Eunos, so the two of us went on the Circle Line together. 

Dhoby Ghaut, the only station with three lines. Where I realised that I was the girl with all the gifts she could ask for: an other half and a best friend who meant everything.

Next station: NS23

NS25/EW13

I have no idea what his name is. But he has daughters, and was asking me what Teacher's Day gifts he could get for their teachers.

He had a fist on my stomach and I felt a little embarrassed at the way it vibrated at his touch. It was my first time but it wasn't even painful, just a little ticklish. What is the meaning behind this, he was asking, and I started wishing I spoke as easily as I wrote. 

But even if I told him everything he wouldn't understand my grief; he had two breathing versions of what I lost. While he was etching into my skin the date that she left, I wondered if he had tattoos symbolising his own daughters. If he did, they were probably their initials or birth dates, which was still a whole existence more than mine.

I came back a year later but he wasn't there. Another young lad tattooed my semi-colon, and he took a picture of it to post on their Facebook page. But it didn't mean anything because he kept silent the whole time, never asking me what this tattoo meant to me. 

Last April I returned, with a brilliant idea and a poly friend's rough sketch. My first tattooist was there, and we spent some time coming up with the final draft. I told him I wanted a triangle made of flames and roses and feathers, symbolising the friendship between the two most significant boys of my life and I.

The feathers were the hardest to render, until he eventually suggested making it a whole one instead. It fed me another brilliant symbol: that my hurricane was always made of just one chunk, unlike my rose and I who were made of different bits and pieces. My tattooist made some changes in the drawing on his computer until there it was: our love triangle, laid out before me.

This last tattoo was the most painful for me, physically and probably emotionally. I know it's painful babe, just tahan, he kept reassuring. It only reminded me of the voices at the hospital, telling me it would be alright when I was nearly screaming. I tried my hardest not to flinch even a little after that.

Again, he asked me what it meant and I told him the significance of each side. But I never got to elaborate; once again, I wished I spoke as well as I wrote.

I boarded the train at City Hall again three hours after I entered, with an aching shoulder and a broken heart. It wasn't even the start of this tattoo come to life.

Next station: NS24/NE6/CC1

NS26/EW14

Once upon a time I hated birthdays with a vengeance, almost for no reason at all. Those people are just black voids to me now, blank and meaningless. But there was one girl I still think of from time to time: I lost her several times, but thinking back, she was the one there for me nearly every birthday.

She was an artist, making art on canvases and the foam on coffee cups. Maybe she still is; I haven't heard from her in two years, being one of those girls who left in their train without me. She probably still thinks I was just being disloyal, which is fine with me. It was my fault for never telling her anything. 

Just like how a tiny rose watched the hurricane grow, she was there from my immature thirteen-year-old self to the pre-depression in 2015. It was just too bad that she never stayed longer, that I never held her back with me the way I always did. 

She got me iced chocolate on my nineteenth birthday, took a picture of me in my tight red dress. We were surrounded by strangers, office workers making their way down the escalators, where they tapped in and continued wasting their life away in the peak hour crowds.

We didn't take a picture together, but I remember what she was wearing. A flannel from Uniqlo; a few days later I got the same shirt, after she picked out the one in red for me. But come to think of it, why didn't I stay longer with her?

She held my arm as we swayed through the crowds, the way she did in secondary school. Her mother always called me her bodyguard because I was one head taller than her. We separated at the platform, as she made her way home while I went to Serangoon to meet my mother.

Raffles Place remained her workplace for the next... I can't even say because I'm not sure. We stopped talking. I guess it just became the last time and place she ever held my hand. 

Next station: NS25/EW13

NS27/CE2

Five years ago there were seven against the world.

Girls, a mix of artist and dancer and academic. One of them stood out for all the wrong reasons, with the accidents she spilled, be it the muffin she spat out from laughing too hard or the horrors she faced alone the year before.

None of them wanted to know. But they were playing a game where they passed a corn cob around in their circle, pretending it was a microphone and taking turns to update each other about their lives. She just had to tell them the one thing that made them squirm on the insides. She told them about Black.

They didn't want to know. You could see it clear on their faces, but the one girl who confessed didn't notice. She just wanted to let them know the biggest change in her life. Not school, or her boyfriend of eleven months, but the boy who was using her when she was down.

That girl regrets it now, looking at that very scene more than four years later. How could she be so blind? No wonder they aren't here anymore; they all took the same train and left, telling each other that she missed it on purpose and will not be thought of anymore.

Eight months ago there were four.

They weren't against the world, with no floods to make them huddle the way fire ants do. They weren't against each other either, despite the differences in their kinds of depth. One girl still stood out though, with the long scar down her left arm.

But their peace was made yet threatened with rounds of Uno, the grease from their pizzas making the corners of the cards oily. Just the day before they already spent twelve hours together, facing the same threats: unreasonable customers and mountains of stocks. The day afterward they did the same, keeping their picnic secret from the others who slaved away in their absences.

They took pictures against the sunset, with arms around each other's shoulders and waists.

Since then, two of these girls have resigned, finding other full-time jobs outside their safe little bubble.

The girl who stood out wanted to love those girls forever, but despite taking the same train, they still alighted at different stations. That was when she realised they will separate the same way she did with the six girls from years before. Who knew that their own differences came to be the flood that she thought missed them?

Six months ago there were two.

A boy and a girl, pasts so different and futures both bleak.

They stood beside each other for four years but never touched. The world could only end if they ever did. He meant everything to her but was about to wonder for the rest of her life if she ever did to him.

He carried her in the rain that afternoon, lifting her up so swiftly and walking with her in his arms. Nobody could stop them but themselves, and it was the hardest lesson she would ever learn: that the weakest thing like a vine came to be the tightest boundary to pull them apart.

For these two, the flood hit them hard and she tried to hold them both above the water until she realised he wasn't even affected by it. She Let him go, and he swam so smoothly because he never needed her.

Marina Bay. Where the seven girls danced in the darkness; where the four girls hugged in the setting sun; where the boy and the girl loved in the rain.

Next station: NS26/EW14

NS28

May; he was an aspiring pilot. I mean, he still is, but he's too far gone for me to refer to him as someone still here. I met him four years ago after a break-up; he was my friend's friend's friend. Well, it was technically the peak of my social life so I had a lot of that thing called 'friend'.

He isn't important, and neither is my story with him. But he still gets the credit for bringing me somewhere I haven't been.

The station itself was so devoid of movement that even the security guard was falling asleep. I told the aspiring pilot I had to pee, and I still remember the way he said: Are you kidding me? I also remember wearing my blue jeans, dark t-shirt tucked haphazardly into them and the navy sneakers the hurricane bought me a year before.

We went up the stairs to the pier, the sun taking its time descending. He said it was too bad for me, considering how the sky was purple and pink when he came alone a few months before.

The wind never once stopped disturbing us, ruffling his short hair and my locks. My hair was still long and I remember the way some strands flew into his mouth when the wind picked up. There was nothing special about him to me, just an air of mystery that I didn't want to solve.

Eventually he sat me down and told his life story, since he already knew bits of mine. Family, academia, rebellion. For three hours I didn't get to talk and just listened to him instead. What a rare occurrence, huh?

But he taught me something that still hangs somewhere in my head, like a neglected sticky note that will always be there, waiting for you to notice it and remember it again: that I was meant to float.

I know it sounds silly. But he was a pilot, dreaming of living in the clouds someday. It wasn't strange coming from him, and was the reason I refused to make up with my hurricane so quickly after he returned. He showed me that staying in one place won't do; keep moving, keep typing, keep floating. Don't make anywhere or anyone home.

That was the first and last time I ever went to Marina South Pier.

Next station: NS27/CE2

Selfish

How is it that strength is measured in the amount you manage to lift? It's weights for the boys and heartbreaks for the girls. You keep testing the physical and emotional pain you can endure, just so you can be admired for how much you withstand.

When I think about it, the heart is so fragile compared to everything else. How is it possible for it to be the strongest organ in our body? Yet the moment I am writing this, I lean against my desk but my heart pushes me away from it each time it beats.

The heartbeat is so strong that it'll reverberate through another person if he leans against you. Keep still, the both of you, and eventually no one can tell which beats are whose.

My heart has gone through most of it: excitement when my favourite cartoon came on. Anxiety when I had to give a speech in front of the class. Ache when the stupid boy I liked changed his Facebook status to 'In A Relationship'. Euphoria when the swing I was sitting on went ninety degrees from the ground. Fear when I woke up in the middle of the night with a force on my chest.

I've had my fair share of weight, nothing special enough for people to think greatly of me. Maybe from the outside looking in, the heat is barely felt because I'm the only one getting eaten by the fire. All they see are the fading scars, never the blood pouring out.

Despite everything, I think my heart still hasn't had enough. You know how some people are so adventurous for some reason, always with the need to travel and climb mountains, jump from cliffs and shit? I believe my heart is one of those people, always looking for 'fun' where they could possibly die.

We're both at our highest, waiting to be pushed off all over again. Or our lowest, if you're looking at us from another direction. I once read a story where an anchor dropped from the sky and a sailor descended, as if the sea was beyond the clouds. Since then I never really figured out the difference between peak and trough.

I'm sure everyone has heard about that Japanese method of fixing broken pottery with gold. I thought it was beautiful at first, until I realised the absurdity of it. I don't want my heart to be attractive, for people to seek shelter in it. Let it be drowned, charred, broken. Anything but beautiful.

Bleed red. Stay in a burning house until the flames turn you black. Swim in the deepest recess of the sea until you turn blue. I have put you through everything, but it is dipping you in gold that is the hardest. God forbid you ever become a heart of gold, filled with kindness and generosity. We don't have much left for ourselves.

Pregnant

If you had a chance to meet anyone, dead or alive, who would you pick and why? This question was always asked in my English classes, being composition prompts or journal topics. I never had a good answer, probably just naming some celebrity to thank her for the songs she put out.

After some thinking on the bus this morning and all my twenty-two years of living, I've found my answer. I want to meet my mother when she was pregnant with me. 

I want to know what she went through with me forming in her. What pantangs she disobeyed, thinking it wouldn't affect anything. When she was pregnant with my elder brother, she refused to eat rice, saying the smell made her nauseous. He grew up with some kind of condition where he's almost phobic of rice.

With all the differences between my brothers and I, I wonder what she consumed when she had me. Alcohol, cigarettes? Sometimes I convince myself she must have taken some drugs, for me to have grown up this way, unable to look at anything without exaggerating its ordinariness.

Was she tender with all forms of life, thus my care for snails and insects of all things? Did she walk straight all the time like a wild boar, thus my obsession with lines? Did she go swimming when she was a few weeks pregnant and nearly drowned, thus my wariness of water?

I can't help but wonder if she had some kind of depression having me. I know she was angsty with my elder brother, which probably explains his anger management issues. But what kind of thoughts did she have with me? Did it ever cross her mind to kill herself along with me? 

I want to meet my mother when she was forming me, because I wonder what she had to be like for me to be this way. Or what she had to go through with this eccentric life banging against the walls of her womb. I'd like to know if it was her pregnancy habits that made me like this, or my already existing flame that burned her from the inside, causing any of her high or depression or anger.

Red

There's only one artist I'd immediately recall when thinking of the colour red. In fact, that's pretty odd in itself, the act of pondering about a colour. Who does that? Colours have always been there, just the same as the air we breathe and the numbers we count.

But this girl made me associate her with red, especially more than five years after her best-selling album in 2012. She just released her sixth last November, where she constantly used the word 'golden' in her lyrics instead. It's like your body is gold; Deep blue, but you painted me golden; Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo.

Five years back during interviews, she was constantly talking about the relationships she had and the chaos that came with them. She talked about the colour red symbolising not only the roses and passion, but also the anger and bleeding hearts and fire. She said that a love is only right and real when it is not red, but golden.

I don't want to be that girl daydreaming about 'love' anymore, much like how this girl has grown out of her country songs revolving around fairytales. You found me and you're no longer a daydream, no longer the "you'll find someone better" that everyone was telling me about before I met you.

Five years ago today you became mine. You brought me out of my misery, out of my shell but most of all, out of the east. You're right, I will always blame you for everything that happened in 2015. For leaving in 2014. But I will also thank you for showing me the first half of the red line.

With all the passion and anger and betrayal that came with the red, you brought me the North-South Line as well. I grew to love Woodlands especially, even after you first left me. I took 168 for the first time, falling in love with the expressways.

Orchard and Somerset, where we had our first few dates. Your ITE and camp days, when I frequented Choa Chu Kang just to fetch you, then Novena when you worked part-time at Mount Elizabeth. I loved Woodlands the most, where I would send you off to 950, where we would sit beneath the tracks with our drinks and takoyaki and talk about everyone walking against us.

It wasn't all sweet, of course. Jurong East was where you dumped me for the first time, shoving me off your arm and walking away. Bishan, becoming the place I'd go to just to get away from you. Dhoby Ghaut, where I stormed off in anger after yelling Fuck you! in front of everyone. Marsiling, where you stumbled around the blocks, calling me thirteen times with no answer.

Back in 2012, I called the boy who broke my heart Red. I wish I hadn't, because he isn't worthy of it. He is an empty face to me now, a meaningless void that spat me back out when 2013 and you came along. I know it's stupid for me to revolve you and this relationship around an MRT line, but I have both of you to thank for everything.

Without you, there wouldn't be red and without red, there wouldn't be you. I love you, and I love the North-South Line. How I wish the both of you could intertwine forever, but now you're in Pasir Ris with me, caught at the furthest end of the green line instead.

Disgrace

Regret is always heavy, especially knowing you had the power to say or do something different. Something that could have changed your day, or someone's perspective of you, or your entire life. Today I'm heavy with my silence, knowing I had the authority to step in; only I didn't.

Working in retail for nearly three years, I've gotten the natural instinct to look up when someone says 'eh, excuse me' no matter how far or rudely it's called. This man's voice was so loud that I couldn't possibly ignore it; I thought it was a customer who needed my help.

But he wasn't calling me. It was a man standing by the Malay books shelves, his huge e-scooter thing parked next to him.

He started yelling at these two ladies, a pair I had served earlier when they asked me about calligraphy ink. The younger woman was noticeably timid, her voice and gaze low but never forgetting her gratitude. "Thank you so much," she shyly said earlier, still four words more than what most customers would say. She had an accent that I didn't recognise, very unlike my Malaysian colleagues with their Cantonese or the ones from China.

"Eh excuse me, you never see that you hit me is it?!" the man was yelling at them, the younger woman with a basket chocked full of supplies. She turned back to look at him, obviously shocked and confused.

"I never hit you." she said, loud enough for me to hear.

"What never hit? My thing drop what, what never hit?" he snapped back, referring to his stupid e-scooter thing that I always thought make their riders look ridiculous.

"I never hit, the thing drop itself." she answered, visibly confused. Her voice was still calm compared to his.

"What by itself?! This thing so heavy how to drop by itself!?"

And by then I was gone from their radius, instead walking in the cashier counter towards my Stationery supervisor. Even then I could hear his voice, repeating again and again: "Eh, this thing expensive you know! If break who going to pay!? You got money pay or not, huh!?"

None of my colleagues heard it because they all had their attention on their own customers. I was so busy concentrating on this argument in the distance that their voices still ring clear in my head, even til now.

I just continued helping my Stationery supervisor, packing the scanned items into bags while she made transactions. By the time I looked up again, I found that the next customer making payment was the pair of ladies I'd served earlier. I smiled and took the basket from her, and that was when our interaction was interrupted with the man's raging voice, already on his way out yet still tormenting this woman.

"Eh next time you walk you see in front! Bloody idiot. Eh this thing expensive you know, if break who going to pay?! You got no money pay one lah!" he keeps repeating it, oh my God oh my God, stop. And then he says something new: "Fucking idiot! Fuck you lah!"

And that was when I looked at him and saw how ugly he was and I wanted to do something when the younger woman's voice broke me out of my trance: "Do you have the camera here?" The way she said camera was unusual, like kah-may-rah, her voice still stubbornly calm and low. "This man keep saying I knock his scooter."

In the background all I heard was, "Eh fucking idiot! Next time you see in front of you when you walk, stupid bloody fucker!" and he turned to the person he was with and said, "Eh... benda ni mahal, dah pecah nanti dia ada duit bayar ke!?"

And all I did was snap at him Eh enough lah!, maybe the rudest I could have been to a customer, only for him to keep going on and on with his complaints and profanities and how expensive his stupid e-scooter is. And I wanted to spit on him, a man of my own fucking race.

My stationery supervisor was next to me, confused and only able to continue scanning the items in the woman's basket. It was only after the queue was cleared did I manage to tell them what I knew.

And I wish I'd said or done something differently for her and against him. I wish I'd intervened and told him to stop the moment it started, or shouted at him to get out of the store before I call authority, or just said to him not to tarnish our race's image. Anything at all. Anything but shut it out like a fucking coward.

I thought the man was a disgrace to our Malay society, but I guess that honour belongs to me. For not speaking up. For not helping her. For not doing things differently. For not intervening when I was the one in the store who had the power to. This will always be one of the things I will always think about, wishing I'd done something. It riles me up.

Years

2012 // 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016 // 2017

The girl from my past who always cared
About the mocking laughs or being stared
Eyes glued to the floor and dragging feet
Cheap sneakers rubbing against concrete

The girl from my past with one eye hidden
Her friends moved forward but she didn't
Photos of their graduation put up on walls
She barely escaped the loop of school halls

The girl from my past recovering from him
Her metaphors filling her head to the brim
Discovering the world in roads and tracks
Came to be her last time above the cracks

The girl from my past with a second heart
Days at a hospital almost tearing her apart
The brightness of her sun fading over time
Robbing her own life, the next perfect crime

The girl from my past drowning in regret
Her second soul will remain an unpaid debt
Strained eyes against her world's darkness
Her worthless body in her fragile harness

The girl from my past burning her flower
Who found and picked her from her cower
The tornado not only carried her but threw
Over the lion city and life's unusual view

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.