You never know when something matters

I haven't read a book in forever. Even the weeks leading up to his leaving, I'd already lost the mood for reading. I jumped from book to book and all of them just didn't seem to work. When all was lost, I jumped back into my favourite for the 4th time since 2014. I went into it still with an other half; I finished it without.

A few days ago my friend from 3 years ago asked if I was okay; he was the river, and now back to the block of ice as I'd known him as before I made a dent in him. I told him about my favourite book, and I felt that magical weird feeling when he said he remembered me, at his school, holding it the very first time I'd read it.

I'd read half of that book at NYP, his school, and half at mine. To think of that moment again, having held the book that would turn out to be my favourite. To think that at the time, there'd been a knife hidden among the pages, and I hadn't known about it. Hadn't known about the potential this novel had to break my heart into smithereens.

It's the same magical weird feeling when I once scrolled back through old pictures, ones which I'd had her right there but I hadn't known yet. Pictures of me and my cousin at a wedding in Kuala Lumpur, me smiling sheepishly next to a Minion statue at Universal Studios. She had been right there during those moments, and we all didn't know.

On Saturday I'd gone to my old school, taking a route I was once so familiar with. I caught sight of bus 87, going towards Sengkang, and felt that strangeness again. I see this bus regularly now on my routes to and fro work; I imagined back 3 years ago when I was going to school and caught sight of this bus and thought nothing of it, never knowing it would be my everyday during my working life.

I can't really describe it and I know nobody else would get it. Quite a disturbing feeling sometimes, but it's also strangely beautiful. We never keep receipts of the books we grew to love, conversations with people who would turn out to be the loves of our lives. It's only when we look back at a photograph or a memory do we realise that something was right there all along. It just never seemed important at the time.