The following are my diary entries from early this year. I'm working on other stuff and I feel bad that I haven't been updating here for the very few people who regularly check on it. So here's something from my heart for you to read too, now don't disturb me, I have project to work on.
01 04 17 // 7:17 PM
Too tired to write yesterday. I want to talk about normal things, because I can. Because I am. Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said. Because you are. Because you can be.
But I can't. I am not beautiful, or talented, or privileged. I am this miserable human I was moulded into, whenever it'd happened. From birth? From my seventeenth birthday? From the times I would get beaten to a pulp by my older brother? From my time at the hospital two years ago?
I think shooting myself in the head is sort of a perfect way to die too. That way, all the thoughts would finally stop beating. You have to destroy the brain, as all the characters in the zombie games and movies always discover after we all know it.
After two years, I'm still here. At times it's the one thing I live for, the only thing I still wake up for. Today, I am trying hard to let it work its magic, but it hasn't been working. And how ironic that the tool of my happy place is what I'd just used to inflict scars upon myself.
During my first week of work, I'd been given a penknife from one of my then-new colleagues, and up til now if I ever lose it for a while I would feel really awful. Today that same knife has found its way through the skin on my wrist, just a little. What stopped me? Just the idea of having work, my safe place, intertwine with my depression, my hell.
I have a problem with sleep and the alternate reality that is my dream world. But now I feel like these nightmares are still a thousand times better than this real life. I wouldn't mind giving up my beating heart for hers.
02 04 17 // 7:18 PM
I tried everything that I could, and it still wasn't enough. At times I've wished to go back to when I was in hospital because it seemed to be the only time I could have truly died and he was so damn afraid of losing me.
I wish I could die a million times because I can't seem to pick the perfect way to die. This morning I had the thought to overdose on sleeping pills instead, as an ode to my sleeping problems. If only insomnia was the most of it.
There are dozens of thin red lines down my arm and all over my belly as I write this. It stings a little especially on my wrist but I can't deny that I'm fond of the pain. I'm hunched over and it stings at my belly too. It doesn't compare to the pain in my heart and my head.
How does one stop seeing the lack of worth in them? How is it possible to see ourselves as worthy when the one person who's seen our everything and loved us for them all, stops? It wasn't enough, all that I'd gone through and did for him.
I can't stop the aching thoughts. They're gone with him next to me, but the moment he boards 950, the moment I board 168, it all comes crashing down all over again. Why can't I ever say the things that I want to say?
Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said.
Because you are. Because you can be.
03 04 17 // 11:34 PM
Hopefully it stays this way this time. I get nightmares in bed and I get nightmares in real life. He makes it all better. I think he is the wind after all, my wind. He still has the thoughts and capability to leave, to fly and be free, but not if I treat him right.
04 04 17 // 7:50 PM
This world is miserable. People are constantly destroying it, treating it like it's been ours the entire time. When it truth, this planet has been around since humans first came, and I'm certain it can live just as long and fine after we're gone.
I say all these things, but it doesn't make me want to do anything to save it. I guess I just think it's too far gone to try helping. Just like what the wind thought of me before deciding he's given up on me completely.
I have everything to say, but my hand isn't writing as fast as I am thinking them. I'm trying to get better. I do not want to be the old woman wandering the streets on her own, thoughts consuming her, sitting atop her hunched back and shoulders.
There's a new Linkin Park song that I first heard at the tattoo parlour yesterday, and its lyrics hit a little too hard. Holding on; why is everything so heavy? So much more than I carry. A song hurts when it's about your life--but a few years back I learned that it hurts a thousand times harder when it's the life of the person you're causing pain to.
I keep dragging around what's bringing me down, if I just let go I'd be set free. And he's been carrying me around, the sun among the wings of a bird, a regular bird who deserves the love of somebody as small as he is. I know he feels it; I just wish he doesn't.
05 04 17 // 7:25 PM
When was it? June, year 2014. My year of Wonderland. The year I fell in love and never stopped. Are you thinking of who I think you're thinking? Well, you're wrong it's a fucking book. The first book that made me see the magic of jumping in a novel without knowing much about it.
I'd bought it at the Popular at Bishan Junction 8, read it while waiting for the North South Line train towards Jurong East, read it on the train, not even bothering to remove my backpack to place it on my lap. Even while walking to NYP, my nose remained buried in this book.
Nearty three years since I'd read it, and even now being my fourth time reading it, I'm still helplessly in love with it. At times I wish to go back to the very day I'd bought it. But of course we won't ever know when we would fall for something, and we don't keep the messages they've sent us over the years. We don't keep receipts we'd once deemed insignificant.
There are no reasons why you'd love a book. Why it's the first one we go to when we have no idea what to read, or what to do, or how to feel. Just like how there is that one person you will always think of first when you're at a loss.
At times, this very book makes me want to go for a swim. I've never been much of a swimmer or even a fan of the water. In fact I'd named it my biggest fear before the wind brought me to a waterpark a year ago and helped me overcome it, just a little.
At other times, this same book makes me want to drown, or burn to death, because I sympathise. It's indescribable.
06 04 17 // 7:40 PM
When you have to constantly ask yourself why you're never good enough. When you've done everything you could and more and you're still not enough, the person called your other half saying he wants to date other people. Were the last four years just a dream to him and was all I'd done for him just the same as errands that daughters are expected to run for their mothers?
A minor detail, but the wind has two mothers. I'm not sure if they're both supposed to be labelled as his, but one is his biological mom and the other is his father's second wife. In our religion men are allowed to marry up to 4 different women. By the things he's saying I won't be surprised if, even if he marries me, he finds other women to make his wives too. The apples don't fall too far from the tree.
Imagine your other half of four years being the only person you can bear, the only one you can even think of spending every day every hour of the day with, the only one who's been loving you even after all your beloved tertiary and secondary friends leaving--only for him to lose interest in you as well. Only to know, all along he thinks the same of you that all the others do. He is just like the rest, and the way he treats you like you're special was just a facade.
07 04 17 // 7:27 PM
About 29 hours since my last meal. Give me three more days and I'll stop drinking water too. I think this is fine, I really just couldn't pick the best way to die. I picked the slowest possible way that I am easily capable of. It should be a mercy that I'm choosing to go slowly so he will have time to change his mind.
Why wasn't I enough? If he never had the intention to stay why couldn't he let me keep her? Everything was going just fine until he had to say stupid things and make stupid decisions. At least I now know he had never loved me or cared about me. A constant reminder that I am worth nothing.
What cruelty it is to have chosen the one who left. The one who loses interest again. When I'd been the one who's stayed there for him the whole time. I know I'm worth nothing and I remind myself about it everyday but it hurts to know it's how the one person you want to be with feels too.
I tried pills before, but they didn't work. I feel like trying them again, sleeping pills, at the same time of this starving. Is there a way to disappear for a short while? Maybe one month, without a single person knowing where I am. If I'd had money I'd go to KL on my own. It terrifies me, but for a suicidal person whose life doesn't matter, it'd do the world a favour.
He never wrote me letters. It would have made things feel just a little better. I wish I could go back to 2013, when I never had her, I wish I wish I wish. It would only have changed things if I'd been pretty, or normal, or both.
08 04 17 // 4:40 PM
There's nothing beautiful about being sick. Some authors fabricate it to be, even going to the extent of calling a tragedy beautiful. I am sick, and nobody sees it or believes it, and if they do, they can't do anything about it or can't be bothered.
I thought I found love at fifteen, but it wasn't and it couldn't have been. It would never compare to the past 4 years of my life, and I have lost it. And I wish a broken heart is the least of my problems. None could erase the insecurity and the overworked mind and the hideous past.
The first major time he'd left, he only saw me in a different light when he saw how great I was doing without him. But this time there is no way it could work that way again. I am too far gone to do great things like I had 3 years ago. And there is nothing beautiful about being sick.
I still think of ways to die and I still can never make my mind up about it. I'm too far gone to be great and I think the last thing I could do is overcome a phobia that the wind always made fun of me for. The act of having my throat cut open. My sick, twisted mind tells me, he'd be proud to know I have overcome it in my last few breaths.
I'd written a letter today, addressed to 'the one whom I call the wind'. I don't really want him to, but I hope he finds somebody who loves him as much as I do, maybe more. Only difference, she would be the very opposite of who I am as a person. Not somebody sick in the mind, not somebody who is afraid of so many things and yet is in love with what normal girls would be afraid of.
I just hope he would never forget us, his two girls. A daughter and an other half. Because we won't, and I'm sure she loves the person who gave her a life too, albeit it only lasted four months. Back then he'd said he didn't want to bring her to this cruel world. And when we talked about adoption, he said he didn't want to let other people have what's his, ever.
For sure he'd only been making decisions out of fear. The middle child of 7 children, the son of a well-known religious leader. Screwed up, the moment he fell in love with me 4 years ago. I was the Gat to his beautiful perfect Sinclair family. The Heathcliff to his Earnshaw family. I would never have fit in, so it's great that I'm gone.
What is worse, to have died doing a great thing and having people feel such a significant loss, or to have died invisible, nobody caring about it or knowing who you were? I never really thought it through, but the better way to go would be to make sure everybody hates you, then you wouldn't be able to hurt any of them.
To have the person who once thought you were everything not love you anymore is a big first step, and I'm sure it would be easier from then on out. I'd contemplated handing in a resignation letter as well, because my happy place seemed to have lost its magic yesterday. But I know I'll somehow regret it and all I wanna do right now is give my best friends from work a great big hug.
Once caught sight of one of the best friends from past, from secondary school, talking about how their group is made up of differences. Their group of 6, she emphasised, because once we were 7, with me acting as the sore thumb.
She goes on how their group has a dancer, an artist, a traveler and the likes. They are a hexagon, made of art and dancing and music and flags of countries traveled to. And graduation gowns, because they are all normal and have no damaged brains and could endure 3 years of tertiary, academically and socially.
I am part of a hexagon too, and just looking at our places of birth is enough to see our diversity. And although there are constant language barriers among us, I love them more than anything. I have developed the habit of asking them if they knew what it means if I said a cheem word. They have the intuition to turn on Google translate to explain a word to me. And I love each of them for their snide remarks, their bounce, and their ridiculous dances.
I once thought of this, 3 years ago: (it seems I did most of my thinking in 2014) Sometimes when at a loss to what to do, the best way to move on is to go back to where you'd come from. And although I'd a few times let my dark side take control and gone back to old habits of drinking or self-harming, it's nice to go back to old friends or sit at places you once sat at, crying, when you were 17 or 15 or 12. I am almost 22, and I have plenty to do and go, old and new.
Occasionally getting the thought to travel outside the country, completely out of my comfort zone. But I'm terrified, and it intensifies the desire to do things I'm afraid to do. Once I gather enough balls and money then I'll do it. Even though airplanes and hotel rooms scare the shit out of me.
After 4 months, I have made goals for the year. I'm gonna send some of my work to local publishing houses. I'm gonna write poems when I'm sad or angry or have a lot on my mind. I'll make videos every month. I'll try to wear different stuff occasionally, when I have friends to go out with. I will not forget her, but I'll keep the feelings under wraps. And I will not let anyone in, or kiss any boys.
A day ago I'd felt like my world was falling apart. Today, I am building it from scratch and it's already turning out pretty. How great it feels to have started this entry saying I've no great things to do anymore, and here I am now, singlehandedly building back up the world I'd destroyed with my wind.
09 04 17 // 7:22 PM
I thought I had it together, but I don't. To him, all the pain I'd gone through was really nothing. I wish I could easily treat it like a dream just like he does. I don't even feel like writing. I don't even feel like a human.
I wish everyone would stop talking for a minute. I wish this world would stay still and quiet for a moment. Everyone deserves no right to tell me how to feel unless they'd gone through what I did and have felt the same loss that I have. The same self-hatred that I do.
10 04 17 // 7:35 PM
Still for sure, can't decide the best exit. In the meantime I'm making a list of things to do before I go.
(1) Write a letter to each of the girls from my secondary school. Honestly this one would take up a lot of my ego.
(2) Donate some of the books I loved. And if I have enough courage: donate my most favourite, We Were Liars.
(3) Compile all my poems I've written and send them to local publishing houses. It doesn't matter if they get accepted to be published or not.
(4) Rewrite my 2015 diary as a novel and get it published under a penname.
(5) At least try to find out where her grave is. Or wherever they'd buried her.
(6) Get over my fear. And if it turns out to be the last thing I do, then it shall be my fate.
I don't think I could ever get up onto my feet again. I don't have the strength or enough height in me to fix the lightbulb of my self-worth. It blew out when she seeped out of me, and it would've taken more than 2 years to 'get over it'. I just wish he could have been patient.
To think that I was the one who'd been there when he was young, dumb, skinny and I'd stayed during his whole 6 months in camp, even though girls were always prone to leaving their other halves for not having enough time for them. To think I'd been the one there for him when he was broke, never expecting anything and never looking at him in disdain when he asked if I could pay. Never asked to be paid back immediately. Never asked for it back like a loanshark.
It's so shitty to think about.
