Fire

Anger management issues: it runs in the family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Limbo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Construction

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

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

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

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

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

Hazardous

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

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

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

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

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

And then they all turn to look at you.

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

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

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

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

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

You miss one, and
down
you
go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Middle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L. R.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course those friends never stayed. But you did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever you smiled at me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

H. M.

It's now the 20th of April, 2017 and this post has been scheduled to be published on the 10th of June, 2017.

At this point I've watched 6 episodes of Thirteen Reasons Why and already starting to see a little of myself in Hannah Baker. You'd think we would kill ourselves without telling everyone what had been done to us first? Grab a snack, as she would say, because you'll be here on this post for a while. I am writing this in one shot and I hope whoever you are you'll read it in one too.

By the time you are able to read this I should be long gone. I've slit my arm from my semi-colon tattoo all the way to my inner elbow, cutting through all the tinier cuts that go across my wrist. These words are the blood that came dripping out, after all these years of being clogged up in my system.

Where do we start this story? Is the starting point of our life truly the day we were born? I don't believe we deserve to mix our innocence with our mistakes and havoc--I've always seen a line cutting through my life somewhere, I'm just not sure of its exact location.

Does my life start from the day I left my best friends in 2012? Or the first day of school, the day I met them all, way back in 2008?
Does this story start from the day I lost her? Or maybe the day I found out I had her?
Does it start from the day I last kissed the wind? Or the day we had our first kiss, back in 2013?
Does it start all the way back to the day my parents were making me?

Let's go to the day her parents were making her.

The 31st of January, 2015.

The idea was mine. This whole mess started with me. You were working the night shift at Ibis hotel, and I'd gone to fetch you. It's weird to think that I have a vlog from that very day, when we'd visited the cat cafe above Burger King. The calm before the storm, wasn't it?

The place we went to was called Mayo Inn, and there was a Cheers opposite. We got sandwiches there, remember? They weren't doing hourly charges, and we paid a hundred for a night; they didn't accept nets, and I waited for you at their lobby while you went to withdraw money.

My heart still quickens when I think about that day; when I think about any of the days we'd gone to a hotel. You know the truth of how I got pregnant, right? You took yourself out before you came, but you went back in after for some reason. I was so in love with you I didn't take notice or think there was anything wrong about that. We were stupidly in love, joined together again after one year of being absent from each other's lives.

Maybe I still am, but I need to force myself to write every single thing I've missed out. I have diary entries from the year, but when I read them back anyone could see how badly I was trying to cover up for you. My own way of protecting you. Maybe not anymore, right?

I already wrote the whole story of my pregnancy, but this shall be a clearer one.
My previous post titled "Unborn" was written in late 2015, but just only published a few days ago. That wasn't the whole truth either.

We went to Universal Studios on the 4th of March, 2015. At the time I was living at my Paya Lebar house, my granny's place. The day after my mom came over and we went back to our Pasir Ris house together, took a cab all the way on the Pan Island Expressway and Tampines Expressway.

When we were passing by Ikea I already felt like throwing up. I felt that wetness in my mouth, you know, right before you're about to throw up. That's when I furiously tapped my mom on her knee and somehow she understood, but she was too late. I'd thrown up all fucking over. It was funny though, because my mom actually took out a piece of tissue to pass to me. Like that pathetic piece of tissue could hold in all my vomit?

Do you remember my nephew? On 10th March, I was following my mom to her regular bakery supplies shop when she received a phone call. I heard her saying the prayer that a good Muslim says upon the news of someone's passing. It was my cousin and his wife's first child, a son. He passed away a day after birth.

I couldn't stop crying, even though I'm not that close with this cousin. Just bawling, endless tears. Maybe it was the life that was starting to form inside me at that time. Maybe it was already giving me a motherly instinct. Nobody will ever know.

A few days later we had a wedding to attend to, all the way in Kuala Lumpur. My grandmother is from Malaysia so my mom has lots of cousins and relatives from there. Everyone mistook my vomiting episode as fever, even me. From young, I will always throw up whenever I was sick. It was nothing to be worried about at all. Still, they got me those asam things to suckle on if I felt like throwing up.

At the time I had this favourite shirt, the one that's grey in the front and checkered green down the back and the sleeves. I was wearing it on that road trip to Kuala Lumpur. We had our lunch at a pit stop, the one with Baskin Robbins opposite the toilets, I'm sure you know that one.

I didn't have appetite to eat rice, and my mom got me porridge. I threw it up when we were walking to the car. If you brought me to that pit stop again, I could show you exactly where I'd stood, hunched over with my granny rubbing my back.

One of the relatives got us a villa to stay in, my family and the others who came from Johore. That night upon reaching I had dreams of that house, I dreamed of a family of three, a little daughter sleeping in a crib in that very room I was sleeping in. They weren't white per se but their skin was so, so pale. I told my cousin about it, when she arrived with her husband; I'm not sure if she remembers.

The day of the wedding my mom and I got into an argument. It was so stupid and insignificant; she was mad at me for not waking up on time and kept yelling at me. I called her a bitch when I was walking to the bathroom, and she gave me one hard hit on my back. Such a tiny detail, but how would she feel if she'd known I was pregnant at the time?

On the trip back to Johore we made a stop at the place with a bridge, the one with A&W on it, I think. Or was it Marrybrown? I can't recall for some reason. But I can remember using the Wifi there and seeing lots of messages from you; the way you said you couldn't stop thinking of me and you couldn't sleep from missing me and "I really can't live without you".

When we got back to Singapore my mother brought me to a clinic for my rashes. I'd developed some on my legs at the time, and after explaining about them to the doctor, she mentioned my nausea to him as well. He said they weren't related to each other, and then asked me, Could you be pregnant by chance? And I said no.

I made a video called Document Your Life for March 2015; I made it on my brother's 15th birthday, and when I went to dinner with the family I texted you: Do you think I might be pregnant? My period didn't come for the whole of February and it's not coming for March either.

You were so scared, you panicked. You begged me not to ever mention such a possibility. It was clear from then that you never wanted her. That you never had the intention to stay whether or not I gave you what you wished for.

My sister-in-law got me the test kit thing, and when it showed up positive I was deadly calm. I called you, and I lied to you, saying it was negative. You were so relieved, you said Thank God, and I was already holding back my tears.  I really wanted to protect you, you know. I was planning to keep it secret from you until I aborted it.

Half of the reason why I didn't want to keep her was because of my parents. They already had a granddaughter outside of marriage, and I didn't want them to think there was something wrong with the way they raised their children.

You were still most of the reason. I loved you so much, I still do and I always will even if the whole world tells me not to. I wanted you to be happy, more than anything. I honestly daydreamed about keeping it from you, but I couldn't. I was a terrible liar and you were already suspicious of me, you were almost accusing me of cheating on you. You called me the worst girl you ever met, do you remember?

I cracked, and I told you a week after I took the test. You were terrified, and I regretted telling you immediately after. I hated the things you were saying to me but I hated seeing you so scared. I wanted to protect you from it, so so so fucking bad but I failed at it, like I always do.

Remember the few days when I was badly craving for pancakes? You brought me to the Gelare at One Km Mall, where I got banana pancakes. I'd worn my maroon shirt tucked into my black skinnies and had my hair in a ponytail, and you told me I looked like a minah from behind.

You stared at me while I ate my pancakes, with that in-love look on your face, and you told me, "I'm just gonna stare at you right now."

You sent me a song that you were obsessed with at the time; it couldn't have been more perfect. If all we have is time then we'll be alright / it's not much but it's better than nothing / We're running on fumes but we'll make it through the night / it's not love but it's better than dreaming.

You went to meet your friends that night, one of them coming back from Australia after two years. You confided in them about your situation, and one of them, the one who never really liked me the most, asked you "How sure are you that it's yours?"

And you came to ask me. You came to fucking ask me, "Are you sure it's mine?"
We argued again that night. I couldn't fucking believe you asked me that.
That question started everything. It started all my fucked up thoughts and all the feelings I had for my fucking baby.

We talked about getting jobs--you'd just ended your internship at Ibis hotel, and we were both just freeloading at home and not having much income. Talked about the abortion and realised how badly we needed money at the time.

I contacted an agency on the 30th of March, 2015 and they told me to come down to their office the next day. That night I'd gone to visit my grandfather at hospital with my mom, and we slept overnight. I slept on the cold hard fucking floor; such a tiny detail but to have done so while pregnant. It actually hurts to think about; I never cared much about her didn't I?

At that time I was reading a book called My Heart And Other Black Holes. It revolved around a website where people meet to make plans for suicide together. The protagonist meets someone who wants to do it on April 7th. What an eerie coincidence, wasn't it? I'd already had ideas then: I daydreamed about dying together with the life inside me. Maybe I was already starting to fall into depression then, but we'll never know.

The next day I went to the agency at Bishan. I got a job at Popular One KM, starting on the 1st of April, 2015. I was terrified, but little did we know it turned out to be my second home. But that shall maybe be a story for another day.

Here's another part where I need to rewrite my story.
I never mentioned much of this in my diary entries or blog posts.

There was a night when I listened to this one song repeatedly: Breathe, by Taylor Swift. It's such an old song, I'd listened to it on a CD player back in sec two. It was way past midnight, and I mentioned keeping it to you. I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to abort it, I wanted so badly to keep it.

And you said "Sure, you can keep it. But just know that you won't have me around anymore if you do."

Do you remember?

I also vaguely remember you mentioning that you would give me money every month as financial support. But you made it clear that if I kept it, you would leave my life. You made it clear that it was a choice between a life with you, and a life without you.

And you wonder why I always asked you to choose me over your friends.

There's nothing else to blame but my stupidity, the love I had for you. I loved you so much and I was so, so, so willing to do anything to make you happy. There was never anyone else to blame but myself. I should have seen by then that you never had any intention to keep me.

You promised me that you would give me another baby in the future. You kept telling me that you did want to keep it too, 'trust me I want it just as much as you do', but that 'it just isn't the right time'. And when I brought up the topic of adoption, you got angry, you told me "I'll never let anyone else have what's mine, ever. I'd rather let God have it than someone else."

I cried almost every night, and when I told you, you said my tears were like tap-water to you, 'so common and meaningless'.

Do you remember? Because I do. So clearly.

I started work at the place which turned out to be my most favourite place in the world. During my lunch break I called you, you were at home, and you told me not to carry heavy things. I said okay, but unfortunately I had to, because it was my job. I didn't want to complain about anything when my colleagues told me to do this, or carry that, I didn't protest. I was doing my job.

On my first day, one of my best friends now taught me how to do Housekeeping duty. You know what that's about, right? Whoever's on duty has to open and close the doors when the time is right, and throw the rubbish down at Basement.

Maybe it's nothing much to you. But imagine being four months pregnant and pushing a trolley filled with cartons and carrying bags of rubbish. Lifting that huge metal divider that goes between the shutters and using all my energy to slot it into that fucking gap at the top of the store. You won't know how annoying that thing is unless you work here. And I did it until I was four months in. I could do anything you know?

In early May there was World Book Day and we had to hang the posters on these metal bars that are suspended from the ceiling. They made us part-timers do it, and I climbed up right to the top of the ladder to hang those stupid posters; at the time I was three and a half months pregnant.

I didn't complain, not once. But I was scared. At the time I'd grown over-attached to it, and I was grateful that it wasn't showing much because it was easy to hide. But I was scared if there was anything wrong with it because it was so unusually small. I was never a healthy person to begin with and I started thinking of my every little action because I know everything I do will affect it.

Remember the day I'd fainted at work? During morning briefing when my vision started to blur and my knees went weak and my hearing slowly disappeared. When I realised what was happening my Chinese Department colleague and manager were carrying me to the office.

I was

so

fucking

scared.

And where were you? You were at home, sleeping. We were arguing that day, I remember. I tweeted that I'd collapsed at work and a girl from your secondary school replied to it, asking if I was alright. It's funny how I remember the smallest details, but I always do.

I brought myself to the polyclinic when I came to. My best friend from secondary school, the one with a gem for her name: she had to take an injection for a trip she was taking too, so we'd gone together. We had to wait for more than an hour, so we got donuts and bubble tea and sat at the community centre in the meantime.

And I told her. It was difficult too, but way easier than if I'd told any of the other girls in the clique. All of them were so pure at the time, never having boyfriends and never knowing the feeling of giving a boy your everything. I've always been sickly involved with boys back in school, and I knew deep down that if I'd told any of them about it, they would have secretly thought I deserved it.

That day at the polyclinic was my first time talking to a doctor on my own, without my mother even waiting for me outside. So insignificant, but it was a sign of my growing up, wasn't it? They made me pee into a stupid little tube, and when the doctor confirmed again that I was pregnant, he asked: "Are you keen on this pregnancy?"

I shook my head because what else was there to do, right? And so he referred me to KKH Women's Hospital.

Life wasn't very nice to me during my pregnancy. I had to hear the news of my nephew passing away a day after birth. I had to go through Mother's Day with my sister-in-law telling me I have a baby and that I am a mother too. I had to let my niece come near me and smile at me and then later hearing my sis-in-law saying that babies can sense when you're pregnant.

And I never told you this but there was a time when my mother walked into the room and asked me if my period was here. She knows whenever I get mine, because I would have soaked and hung my underwear in the toilet, something I hadn't done for a long time. She told me that my granny asked her to ask me, and then she told me to stand up. She said I looked fatter, and I was so fucking terrified that day and I don't remember what lie I'd said to get her off my back.

I hated the nausea. Everytime I had my lunch at work, I would lean over the toilet, waiting for whatever to come spilling out of my mouth. Most of the time it refused to come out despite the nauseous feeling in my stomach being so damn fucking strong. I developed a habit of poking my finger down my throat to force myself to puke, I just couldn't stand it.

Imagine not being able to talk to your own best friends about it. We once all met for dinner, where I stuffed my face with lots of ice-cream, and my stomach was bloated afterwards; they started joking that I was pregnant, and pretended to talk to my stomach. Only the girl with a gem for a name knew there was something growing in me for real. The way the life inside me was being talked to, but as a joke. "I may be a mother but I sure am a cruel one." a line from my diary entry that day.

You didn't make it any better. We hung out around Pasir Ris one time in May, bought ourselves hotdogs from the 7-11 at Downtown East and sat at the stairs between the escalators. You wanted to make out, asked if we could go to the toilet in the middle of Pasir Ris Park. Your exact words being "You're already pregnant, what's the worst that could happen?" And whenever we argued, I'd ask you to remember what I'm doing for you; you'd say "What are you even doing for me?"

I remember the day we went out and watched Child 44 at Jem, how I tried to tell you again that I wanted to keep it. You told me, I will always remember, "We can't have it, not right now. Trust me I want it just as much as you do, but now is not the right time. I promise I'll give you another one in the future." You, the wind, the hurricane, will always be cruel. I never wanted 'another one'; just my first. But of course I listened to you, I loved you too much, me and my stupidity.

That one day, when you knew how much I wanted to keep her and you were so scared that I would do that; your words: "I keep wishing you will fall and have a miscarriage," but at least you apologised for that, right? The word 'sorry' solves everything doesn't it?

This one time, when I was on the way to work on the train; this Indian woman had boarded the train with her son, and she took the empty seat beside me. Her son started to squeeze between her and me, and that day I was honestly not feeling well at all, I think I was past three months at the time. I really needed that fucking seat; but of course everyone stared at me, waiting for me to get up and offer my seat to her fucking son. So I did.

And I so badly wanted to scream: I'M

FUCKING

PREGNANT.

This post is getting so hard for me to write right now.

When did I start falling in love with my child?

Imagine being a worthless person your whole life, beaten by your elder brother as a kid and by your father as a teenager. Being disliked by all the kids in your secondary school, not belonging with the people at polytechnic, being the girl who makes her boyfriend's friends say "Aamir you deserve someone way better."/"Aamir why did you go back to her, why are you licking back what you've spat out?"

I'll never forget 8th April, 2015. The way I'd cried like an idiot on the bus going home from work. I started tearing up at the bus stop, and one of the other part timers was passing by and saw me cry. He's long gone from Popular now, but I'll always remember him as the one person who knew then that something was wrong with me.

A song that goes: Turn off the lights when you leave / 'Cause we've got everything we're gonna need / We're gonna run we're gonna run we're gonna run child / We're on the run we're on the run we're on the run child giving me ideas, making me daydream about running away with my second soul but making me cry, knowing it was more than impossible.

I wanted it so, so, so, much. And I kept it to myself because I didn't want you to say things that would hurt me. I had to pretend that I thought keeping it was never an option. But I never stopped daydreaming about disappearing from your life and bringing it along with me.

I fell sick in mid-May, exactly on the day I was supposed to go KKH for my scan. I really wanted to see my baby, but tried as I could I didn't have the strength to get out of bed. I cried the whole day, I refused to eat and I ignored all the texts and calls from you. I hated that I loved you so much, I wanted my child so damn fucking much.

I called KKH and made a new appointment for the 2nd of June, 2015. My heart expanded and shattered at the same time that day, seeing that monochromatic screen. The past twenty years of my life, I'd been so useless, not worth shit in this ever-moving world. So tiny and insignificant on earth and the afterlife--and then being blessed with a life growing inside me.

Do you know how it felt?

You wouldn't, unless you've been pregnant yourself. Unless you've been shunned by society and ignored or hated by everyone around you yourself.

I was stunned, looking at that screen. I started tearing up, definitely, and then I hesitantly asked the nurse: "Is it possible to tell if it's a girl or a boy?" She said she'd try to see, and while watching her pinch and zoom in the screen here and there, I held my breath.

I always thought having a girl first is perfect. I grew up believing elder brothers are pieces of shit, and I didn't want my first to be a boy.

And then she said the one word that shattered me in all ways: girl. It was more than enough to make me so excited and at the same time deflated because I can't fucking keep her. But she moved, I saw her move, and I didn't know whether I'd wanted to laugh or cry at that moment.

I also wished you'd been there to see her for yourself too. Maybe you wouldn't have moved on so quickly then. It was amazing, she was amazing, I was amazing.

The nurse asked if I wanted to keep a picture of it, which of course I wanted to, more than anything. Just one shot of her, the life growing inside me, the heart beating next to mine. A mere piece of paper already curling at the sides that I carried with me wherever.

I had my last counselling session afterwards. I was constantly asked Where is your boyfriend? I told the counsellor you couldn't make it because you lived in Johore. She said there was no excuse, but I tried to defend you by telling her that you'd be there during the procedure. Then she said the sentence that rang in my head constantly after it was all over: "The guy can be there throughout everything but at the end of the day it's only the girl who suffers."

Again, she tried to talk me out of the abortion. I didn't cry throughout all the counselling sessions I'd had thus far, would you believe it? I kept composure and just smiled through all the talks with the people of the hospital.

Only one exchange cracked me, when I said I was doing it for my mother, remembered up until now:
"Would you rather hurt your mother or hurt your baby?"
"My mom is more important."
My first tears shed after all the interactions with counsellors, nurses, doctors.

My last room for the day: a doctor who gave me the final appointment. I was told to report to Admissions at noon, the 8th of June, 2015, and expected to stay for at least two days.  And that for 19 weeks, it could not be by vacuum anymore, but a 'slightly more painful method'.

I took the North East Line back to Outram Park, and then all the way to Pasir Ris. I went to Ikea on bus 58, bought myself a corkboard. How normal life seemed to be, huh?

I informed my manager that I was going to take MC for two days, on the 8th and 9th June. I was a part timer then, and I told her I was supposed to get some sort of bullshit surgery for my spine. I didn't know what the fuck else I was supposed to say.

And then I told my parents that my best friend, the one with a gem for her name, was going to be alone at home for a few days because the rest of her family was on holiday. I told them that she didn't go along with them because she had school and assignments to finish, and could I accompany her with a sleepover?

You'd informed your mom that you were sleeping over at your best friend's place, the best friend that we weren't even talking to at the time, but that shall be a story for another time too.

All was set.

The remaining days between my last appointment and my admission, I slept on my left side, so I wouldn't be lying down on her head. I listened to Two Of Us On The Run and Fumes on repeat and cried myself to sleep whenever I could and I kept it all from you. I didn't want you to tell me again, "Your tears are like tap-water to me, so common and meaningless."

And on the day itself, the 8th of June, 2015; I was calm. Taking the train to Bugis, walking to the bus stop with the shuttle bus to KKH, it was all becoming a norm. I didn't really feel any fear, it'd felt like any other day. Maybe it was just me surrendering the one thing that mattered. Maybe it was like how an old man would be calm on his deathbed.

Lucky for us it was the day of my salary, so we managed to make a payment of 800 bucks. Just a complete sweep of my bank account, but it was all we could do to make sure no letters were sent to my house. They mentioned sending a bill over to my address if I still owe the hospital anything.

I was brought to Ward 42, Bed 10. A bed by the window, how perfect huh? I was a mother, but also still the girl who loved looking out windows and sitting on windowsills.

They made me change into a red-brown garb that hung to my ankles, and you probably said I looked cute in it. Then two nurses tried to hook me up to that machine thing, but they couldn't find any veins big enough for it or something, so they started hitting my hands. In the end they hooked me from my right hand, rendering me completely useless and not being able to feed myself or sign all the stupid documents they made me sign afterwards.

One last counsellor came over to my bed, still trying to get me to change my mind. It did me more hurt than anything, because of course I wanted to run from that hospital and run from the country and maybe from the world, anything at all as long as I could keep her. And she told me: "Don't ever feel like you have no choice."

Of course I had a choice. And now, thinking back, I made the choice between my daughter and a boy who never had any intention to stay. My stupidity, my love for someone who would leave in two years' time over someone who would have spent her whole life believing I was beautiful.

A doctor explained to me that she will be putting in pills into me from down below, one pill every five hours for five times. Before she started, she told me: "Are you sure you want to do this? It's still not too late for you to change your mind, at this point of time. But once I put in the first one we can't go back."

And I just wanted to die.

It would have been so much easier.

But I nodded.

And she drew the curtains over my bed, told me to lift my knees and spread my legs, and then she placed a pill inside me. And it hurt like hell and when she left, I looked at you and at my best friend with a gem for her name, you both looked at me, and then I started to cry. Was it from the pain, was it from the fear, was it from the longing to keep her?

We never expected it to be a slow, painful process. I guess the pills part wasn't so bad, because we were just waiting for it to slide out. They told me I'd just have the normal discomfort of wanting to pass motion, but they really underestimated that one. I kept walking to the toilet in my bare feet, sitting on the toilet bowl but having nothing come out at all. One of the nurses also mentioned that it would be exactly like giving birth.

The only difference? I wouldn't be getting my baby.

You left for a while to eat at Mac, but then you couldn't come back in because visiting hours were over. And I was so miserable, wanting you around but at the same time not being able to care if I was alone or not. You told me you walked around Bugis, that it was a walking distance from KKH.

I didn't have much appetite by the second day. The makcik who gave us patients our food came over, asked me to choose what did I want to eat, or something right? And I didn't pay attention to anything and you answered for me, but I hated you and everyone and everything so much. I just remember having the strength to say thank you to whoever aided me, that much I know.

It was the day the new Mockingjay Part 2 trailer came out. I watched that and then went to watch the music video for Safe And Sound, and for the whole day afterwards that song was stuck in my head. You sat next to my bed the whole time, stroking my hair and occasionally falling asleep with your head touching mine, both of us jolted awake when nurses came to check my blood pressure.

They were constantly changing the doctor's nameplate that hung above my bed, and you told me Look, there are so many people here looking after you. And I said yeah, but none of them are my parents. Remember?

By that evening the five pills were already inserted but nothing was happening. The doctor came and told me they had to start a new procedure, a much more painful one. And I thought the five pills was the most painful it could get???

I couldn't even pay attention to what was happening anymore, I was so tired. But I remember the doctor putting a stick-like object into me from below, and this one hurt like hell and I even tried to pry her hands away. It was needed to hold my womb open so the fetus could slide out easier.

I thought the pills were bad enough, but this one was a million times more slow and painful. Time didn't seem to move at all, and I couldn't bring myself to eat or talk, and I kept making these whimpering sounds because it was all I could muster. My stomach was as hard as stone, and you were resting your hand on it and agreeing, that's when you moved your hand up and did what you'd always liked to do.

Don't you remember? In midst of all my misery, you slid your hand under the hospital dress and groped me, fondled my breasts and fingered my nipples. You never learned, did you, oh, Aamir Bin Kamsari. I should have known then that you would never go to the right path no matter what I wore or what I did or how I became. And we both just constantly blamed me for it. The harder I tried to bring you away the angrier you got for bringing you there in the first place.

I am drinking all the coffee I can in order to stay awake and write this in one shot, even though it's getting difficult. I would never have the composure to record tapes like Hannah did, and you would never have the balls to listen to my voice saying all that I have written here. You're afraid of me, my voice and my words, just the same as how I am afraid of you, your hands and your actions.

You left shortly after visiting hours that day. You told me you missed your mom, and while you were going home to her, I was texting my father, telling him I was staying over my friend's house for one more night. Of course he got mad, so I turned off my data and threw my phone to the side and curled into a ball beneath the blanket.

I opted for the lowest class ward, and there were just these weak fans turning round and round above our beds, but it was still freezing, even after I turned mine off. The painkillers they gave me earlier were fading and the pain was coming back. Imagine feeling like all of your organs might slide out of you anytime soon, that's how it felt, but a million times more.

Again, I kept walking back and forth to the toilet. But nothing came out. It hurt like hell, and they gave me more painkillers but I threw them all up.

I don't know what time the extreme pain started. The time just crawled by when I felt it starting to slide out, and my whimpers turned to groans, which later turned to screams. I looked for the emergency button, desperately pressing it to call for the nurses or whoever the fuck could help me, even if it was a fucking angel coming or God himself coming personally to take me the fuck away. Anyone, anything, anyhow, just make it fucking stop make it fucking stop I'm so so so sorry I didn't want to do this I want her I want her I want her.

Just close your eyes, the sun is going down. You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now. Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound. 

I woke the whole ward up with my screaming. I'd really gone through it all at that point of time. You could split me in half with an axe or run a chainsaw through me or twist my head until it snapped off my neck and it would all be nothing to me. It was nothing compared to going through hours-long labour and getting an undeveloped, bloody body between my legs instead of a breathing, living baby girl, and knowing it was my choice.

I looked at my phone shortly after, I don't know why. But I saw the time and I'll always remember it: 5:32 in the morning. The last thing I saw was that, and the last thing I heard was 'Muslim cemetery', before I closed my eyes and finally fell dead to the world of slumber.

Later on, a few months after, we both found out together what was verse 5:32 in the Qur'an. I'm sure you remember, but I don't know how you could continue living after reading that.

When the sun started rising, patients started waking up and nurses started bustling out and about. I woke up too, but not fully as I watched one of them checking my blood pressure again. The narrow tube that ran from my hand to the drip was all red, my blood running from my veins and through the tube. I don't know what the fuck happened there but it was a sight I would never forget.

I used the last of my energy to text my manager that I was still at the hospital and couldn't make it to work that day.

The doctor came and talked to me but I just wasn't hearing anything. I was slipping in and out of sleep, or oblivion, or my dreams, or anything that sits between this reality and the next. I heard her voice saying, "I think she's very tired." and that again was the last thing I heard.

You came a few hours later, and they transferred me to a stretcher-like bed, brought me to the operations theater or whatever it was called. You later told me that my bed was all bloody and there were bits of meat, probably remnants of the umbilical cord.

I was injected at near the base of my spine, and I couldn't feel my legs afterwards. They had to vacuum my down below, to clean it and rid it of whatever's left from the fetus or whatever shit, I couldn't be bothered to listen. They wheeled me back to my bed hours later, and told me I can't go home until the anaesthetic is completely gone.

They told me not to get up and to call them if I needed to pee, and my passing urine would be the indication that the anaesthetic is faded. Never in my life have I tried so hard to pee, you remember that don't you? We drew the curtains over my bed and you helped me up, carried me against you and pretended we were dancing. We got scolded for that, and also for carrying me to the toilet to pee.

I kept asking the nurses to let me go home that night. They told me I had to stay for another day at least, but I wasn't having it. The doctor tried to talk to me again and that's when I told her, My parents don't even know I'm here, I really need to go right now.

They made me sign more documents, or more like scribbled on because my right hand was still useless, gave me medicine, gave me brochures about post-abortion care and all the things which I couldn't bring myself to give a shit about. We finally left the hospital about half an hour before midnight.

I got back to work a day later, with my first period after 5 months. Actually I'm not sure if it was technically my period, because I started bleeding below when she came out, and it never completely stopped.

All my life, I have been rude to my parents, yelling at my mother and fighting with my father, making them both cry, running away from home, disappearing overnight and feeling no remorse looking at my own grandmother cry for me, I have been a flame, letting you fuck me in handicap toilets and going down on you in staircase alleys, walking past donation boxes for mosques and people needing my help and beggars needing money for their meals. I've done so much sin, and the only one that I will ever ask for forgiveness for is when I made the choice to throw her.

My biggest mistake in life was not having her. It was losing her.

And I'm so sorry.

She would have been so beautiful, despite having such an ugly mother you know? Even til today, I would do anything to hear her cry again. Just cry, I'm not scared anymore, I just want to hear her again. It's been two weeks since I lost you, Aamir, but everyone knows getting over you is the easy part. It's getting over her that's difficult, even after two years. I never stopped the habit of protectively placing a hand over my stomach. A heart beating next to mine; my only purpose in life, after twenty years of being useless and never belonging anywhere.

I already felt a bit of the depression even before I lost her. It worsened afterwards, even though I was so deadly calm to you all the time. I couldn't look at people the same way again. I couldn't hear my niece cry or see her laugh without feeling a million knifes stabbing into me. I always disliked children my whole life, but after the whole episode I couldn't help staring at little Malay girls in public, wishing I had mine.

We'd built the lies so damn carefully and intricately during the whole hospital stay. But one time in mid or late June, when I was sleeping over at my grandmother's place, she received a call from my mom. She hung up and asked me, "Kak, surat apa tu kak?" KKH had sent a letter to my address, because I forgot that technically I'd overshot my stay and owed them for it. I tried to shut her out, I didn't answer her and ignored her until I fell asleep.

The next day I was going off to Popular Headquarters to sign my contract because I was converting to full-time. My bank account was completely gone, and I think you'd just started working at Domino's around that time, right?

I was living on two dollars a day and constantly worrying about our finances to the extent of you saying: "If you're so worried about money why don't you just sell yourself on Geylang then?" Why did I get so hurt over that? I'd gone through so much worse, it shouldn't have fazed me. But of course I added it to my collection of things that made me want to die.

When I was taking the bus back to Jurong East MRT from Popular HQ, my father texted me, about the damn letter. I tried to ignore it, I get my anger from him so you could only imagine the things he was saying to me. And you, where were you? Sitting at home with your mother, the mother that still thought her middle child was so perfect, not knowing about the potential granddaughter she'd almost had.

You were there a few days or weeks later, when my father texted me again, being so angry and accusing me of exactly what I'd stayed at the hospital for. You read his texts together with me, your head leaning against mine, while waiting for 168 at the old Woodlands interchange.

I cried in front of you, but you never felt the pain. Your parents didn't know, and I think they still don't even until today. I cried on buses 168 and 88 home, wiping my eyes and nose on the sleeves of my stupid black cardigan. I cried myself to sleep, woke up the next day with swollen eyes. I kept wondering why they couldn't understand that I did it for them.

My father never talked to me after that, never did all the way to Hari Raya 2016. And you realise, despite knowing about it all, he accepted you when you came over to my open house last year. My grandmother, the one who's cried so many times for me, accepting you whole-heartedly and constantly asking about you even though it hurt her a million times more than you can imagine. Don't you feel any remorse at all?

When you enlisted in August 2015, I felt so alone. Being on my own in the outside world with the loss still fresh on my mind and body. I can just remember 31st of August, 2015, when I bought some pathetic bottles of alcohol, drank while watching If I Stay and cried and cried and cried. And then I went out and got my first tattoo, listening to Habits (Stay High) on repeat the whole time.

I got her initials and the date I lost her. I gave her a name, you know, but of course giving her a name is nothing because I didn't even give her a chance to live. You tried persuading me that we saved her, that it was better letting her go heaven an innocent soul than be born in a cruel world. Your sweet tongue, and I thought I was the one with the gift of words.

A memory from a lifetime ago: one of my best friends from work coming over to me while I was doing my stocks and somehow the conversation floated to superstitions and futures and the like. She took my hand and squeezed it, did the thing that would apparently tell you how many children you will have in the future. She told me my hands indicate that I would have only one child: a girl.

Here's something you wouldn't believe: I tried to cheat on you once in December, while you were in camp. I tried to cheat on you with death himself. I had lots of leftover medicine from post-abortion, and maybe I did it wrong or something because after swallowing about eight random pills, I fell asleep and woke back up, not dead but with a weird stomachache. How the fuck did I even survive that, I don't fucking know, or maybe I am a failure at dying like I am at everything else.

If a woman ever died during childbirth, she would be deemed beautiful. She would be granted a place in heaven. I kept wishing I'd died during my own version of labour; how beautiful for a woman to die giving life to another. It only seemed fitting for me to die taking the life of another.

Everytime I told you I missed her, you snapped at me: Then what the fuck do you want me to do? / You want a baby so fucking much? Get another guy to fuck you and give you a fucking baby.

I ruined your 19th birthday, by crying endless tears the whole time. I lost my secondary school best friends the previous night; add that to the mix of my believing I was ugly, my missing her, my feeling worthless to you. I felt so ugly all the time with my short hair, with my scars, my empty womb, my lack of friends, my blood, my blood, my blood.

Earlier on I couldn't decide where to start this story from but now where does it end? I started this off not knowing how you could move on so easily from it, from her; now after I've written it all down, I can see why. I finally understand how you feel about it all.

You weren't the one who carried her, that much is easy to see.
You weren't the one who saw her move during the scan.
You weren't the one whose organs threatened to slide out.
You weren't the one who was given silent treatment from your father for a year for doing something you thought was a sacrifice for him.
You weren't the one who dreamed of little girls and woke up looking for someone who was long gone.
You weren't the one with a growing niece whose smile always made you think of your own girl.
You weren't the one who listened to love songs and suddenly thought they were for daughters, not lovers.
You weren't the one who had to live knowing that your biggest mistake was your own choice.
You weren't the one being told What sacrifice? You call that a sacrifice?
You weren't the one whose parents can't look at the same way anymore.
You weren't the one who felt so, so, so worthless to the world and society and even to your supposed other half.
You weren't the one who lost friends time and again and only having the life inside you as your purpose.
You weren't the one who so badly wanted to die from both physical and emotional pain.

Even until today, I always feel a gap in my arms but not from missing the way I would wrap them around your neck. It's from wanting so badly to hold her. My elder brother recently got a new baby boy and while I was so scared from holding my niece when she was just born herself, I'm now a million times more terrified to hold my nephew, because I miss mine so much. There will always be that gap in my body, my heart, my life, and there's never anyone I could talk about it with, not my colleagues, not my family, not my flower. Because they weren't the ones who brought me here.

And you know something? Thinking about it, seeing my elder brother rocking his newborn son back and forth, I realise that this person I've hated more than anything is better than you, the person I've loved more than anything. Because at least he was responsible, at least he loved his daughter enough to keep her. And you? You supposedly pray five times a day but you wanted so much to get rid of her. An 'it' to you, because you once told me, your exact words being: "Right now there's nothing it's just meat." You think I would ever forget?

Maybe you don't remember, and you will say I am lying, making up words. Of course you would think that, and I don't blame you for it because you weren't the one on the sharp side of the knife.

Of course there are thirteen sides to every story; their Hannah had the thirteen people who treated her in different ways that led to her suicide. And here, now, your E'indah has her thirteen reasons too, thirteen things you've said in the year 2015 alone that have made her want to die.

Your tears are like tap water to me, so common and meaningless.

Why can't you be more decent?

You're the worst girl I ever met.

Are you sure it's mine?

I keep wishing you would fall and have a miscarriage.

Right now it's nothing it's just meat.

Sure you can keep it, but just know that you won't have me in your life anymore if you do.

What are you even doing for me? What sacrifice, you call that a sacrifice?

If it weren't for me you'd be fucking a lot of guys right now... Probably selling yourself on Geylang or something. 

If you're so worried about money why don't you sell yourself on Geylang?

Nampak baby kat advertisement pun nak nangis.

You want a baby so much? Get another guy to fuck you and give you a fucking baby.

Depression is just a passing cloud, get over it.

This post is one step towards my closure for 2015. These words are my blood, and I'm not sure if I would survive again or die finally or lie comatose, but wherever I go, I hope your love, or whatever feelings you'd had for me is completely gone so you wouldn't be affected by it at all. I hope you don't look for me the way you did when you first left three years ago. I hope I am just a stranger to you by the time you see me on the news, be it as a successful local writer or as a body of 22-year-old found.

And if you ask me; of course I've forgiven you. I've forgiven you for all your sharp words, for the times you would drag me to staircases and toilets, for the time you persuaded me to go a hotel with you and then tell me right afterwards "I wonder what it's like to date someone who can bring me to the right path." And as long as you were with me, you would always blame me for it.

I'm sorry I wasn't enough to bring you back, but I've learned that no matter who I am you'll always blame me for bringing you off, you'll always use me however way you want and even getting me pregnant wasn't enough to teach you a lesson; the only way I could have stopped it was by letting someone else have you.

And I'm sorry I never had the courage to leave you, but you've done that for us and you'll I'll be safe now and you deserve another bird who is just as tiny and shallow as you, not a flame, a sun who will always be swimming in the galaxy and its infinity. I'm much too powerful for you, I am the universe and you, the wind, do not take much of it at all.

I just wish I'd realised it all sooner.

I don't want to carry any grudge against you wherever I go; the weight of the guilt, the loss, is more than heavy enough. And maybe if God is kind enough to let me see her when I die, I hope to Him that you will never set eyes on her yourself. But you know, however old you live to be, there will always be the two girls that you once gave life to; the two girls whose lives you ripped out just the same.