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.