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.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Friday, August 04, 2017
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.
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.