I have many insignificant memories stuck inside me. Sometimes they come in handy, like how my friend's story from more than a year ago came to be a vital part of the novel I'm writing. Most of the time, these memories are vague and meaningless; but be close enough to me and I might tell you all of it the moment I suddenly recall.
Over this past weekend my family had a chalet to celebrate my niece's third birthday. See, give me the word chalet and I already have many things to remember; especially adding to the fact that my paternal family always had gatherings in the Downtown East resorts. But they are still fragments that do nothing to change my life or the world, you know?
I didn't even know how to spell it, my eight-year-old self writing 'shellay' in her diary entries. (A square blue Barbie notebook with a buckle to close it.)
My first memory is with my parents and elder brother; my younger brother still unborn. There was a playground at the back of our room, those classic ones with a sand base. I was riding the swing with my brother when I fell off and scraped my knee on the rough sand. My elder brother panicked and he ran in to call my parents. The structure of the playground and the look on my brother's face still ring clear to me.
Afterwards we went swimming, my mom sitting at the corner of the shallow pool. There was another little Malay girl with her father beside us, so I decided to show off my amazing 5-year-old swimming skills. The way her father exclaimed "Waaaah!" is still so clear to me, his daughter staring shyly at me, with just a tinge of envy.
The next memory is very, very insignificant. Just me and my cousins, the other 90s kids playing and screaming in the bedroom on the second level. Our 1994 cousin called us from below, and we went to stand at the top of the stairs. It's like it happened only yesterday you know: him singing "Happy birthday to you..." to let us know the adults were gonna cut the cake; all of us immediately rushing down the stairs, shoving at one another. I was the last one down, and the sight of my cousins before me is so, so clear.
The room that my parents got in block H still feels familiar to me. It must have been fifteen years ago, I don't know, but so many of the unimportant details stick to my head. Like how I was reading volume 4 of the Beyblade manga, the doodles I did on a McDonald's napkin. And the entire first night, when I got so paranoid about the block that I couldn't sleep. I kept waking my father up until he went into the bathroom, came out to rub my face with water and told me to sleep. The view of our room in the dimness feels like only yesterday.
Those were just the few memories I recall from primary school.
In my first year of secondary school my relatives organised a chalet again, though I don't quite recall whose birthday it was this time. It was during the June holidays, and for the first time I stayed over without my parents. My father told me to be good before he left, and then I received a notification after he topped up my phone for me. I slept between the other 1995 girl and our little 1998 cousin; I know it's unimportant to you, imagine having such insignificance stuck in your head like this.
I woke up the next morning to see all of them gone. I stood by the back door and stared at the swimming pool in the distance and that was when I heard a girl's voice calling out my name. I hadn't put on my glasses yet, but as you know it that scenery itself is still in my head, blurry as it was.
The three 1995 musketeers went to Escape Theme Park in the evening, the boy screaming his head off during the Inverter ride. And then we went to rent bikes, but I didn't know how to cycle yet so the girl and I got the kind with two seats. We were just chilling, me peddling as hard as my cousin in the front seat. At one point the boy exclaimed: "Yang orang kat belakang tu macam relax je!" and that was when I discovered that the pedals at the back don't do shit and I was just burdening my cousin.
Two years later, there was yet another chalet, a birthday celebration for one of the older cousins. I wore my school uniform beneath my grey hoodie, my hair tied so sloppily in a ponytail. I remember how one of the pictures we took looked, our oily skin making our faces shine.
I refused to return home that night; it was during my rebellious stage, you see. I went home to my 1995 girl cousin's house, a spontaneous sleepover. The other cousins wanted to watch Paranormal Activity, and I didn't. I was a coward who hated horror movies (still am).
My mother wasn't happy about it and she came banging on the door at two in the morning. I didn't want to go, I wanted to stay, but my aunt and uncle eventually relented and told me I could come back anytime I wanted.
Came 2012, when my anger was at its peak. When I hated my parents and the way they treated me, the way they jumped to conclusions and overlooked my own feelings. My classmates were finally treating me nice, inviting me to their chalet and everything. I stayed until midnight, being one of the posers taking long drags of cigarettes. Ignoring all the phone calls.
The other kids were tipsy, taking their drinks pure. One of them was called Cedric and I remember so clearly the image of him pouring in Coke and getting asked why he didn't just take shots. I still have his voice answering, "I don't like!" so clear in my head for some reason.
I switched my phone to flight mode eventually and just talked with everyone. We stayed awake the entire night, and that was honestly the happiest I was with my classmates the entire year. I chose to stay with them, because back then my love for other people was at its blindest.
I reached home at nine in the morning to see my clothes thrown across the room. All my t-shirts and jeans and dresses were in a pile beneath the window, which was right opposite my wardrobe. That was definitely my dad, his tendency to throw his anger on things, on people, on me.
He didn't go to work that day, I think he took urgent leave. Because of me. He came storming into the room just as I was about to fall asleep, with my contacts still on. His loud voice was the only warning I got before he smacked me hard across the face and threw a foot into my stomach, again again again.
And he said Why don't you go to your aunt's place I can't take care of you anymore I can't love you anymore.
He kicked me out, and I became a Paya Lebar girl instead for the whole of 2013. I didn't see him again until early 2014, when I came home and he stepped out of his bedroom, immediately hugging me and saying Daddy missed you so much.
All that because I stayed out overnight at a class chalet.
Fast forward to November 2017. The beanie and one-eyed fringe from November 2012 disappears, replaced by two bright eyes and a smile. Mine.
My dad comes over to my niece's birthday party after work, his shoes being removed at the foot of the chalet. The boy next to me stands up to take my dad's hand and kisses it. There is peace in this chalet. It ends in tranquility and there is no sign of anger. No fire.
It's safe to say chalets are an emotional thing, especially if you lived my life.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
passion
About three weeks back I met a new friend. He randomly followed me because I was the only one who replied 'It's okay, I still love you' to SMRT's breakdown tweet in early October, while everyone else was cussing at it. He has a blog too, a WordPress to be exact, and is also a part-time poet.
We both talked about how our anger inspires us with our writing more than sadness or euphoria do. He has talent in rhyming his lines too, the classic type of poetry I thought was dying out. But that was the furthest the similarities in our writing go: the difference is he only started on it about three years ago, while I have been doing it my whole life.
I've blogged about this before, way back in year 1 when I was failing in school. I had to put my writing aside to focus on engineering Maths and programming and all that shit I was in school for; not a single blog post or diary entry.
It wasn't even a week before I surrendered and went back to both. Perhaps that was when I realised that I was not made for Engineering. I was made for writing and beyond. And it may seem stupid to any of you reading, with your diplomas in Polytechnic or ITE, or your place in a university.
Education is everything here in Singapore, and I know. But you can't put out a fire that's been burning for more than a decade. You can try, but the fire will crawl up the water hose and up your arm and burn you again, the way this species of fish can swim up your urine when you pee in their water, and eat your genitals. (They're called Candiru, Google it.)
Many people have no idea what they want to do in life. Others do, but are not that hungry for it, and they have better things to do in meantime, like school. They might want to be a musician, but their music is just a sideline while education takes the front seat.
In my case, writing is everything. It's the only thing I want to do. My daytime job used to be my drive, and it's the only place in my life where I'm so much better than everyone else and know every single thing like the back of my mind. But I don't feel a lust for it the way I do with writing, or typing like a maniac on my keyboard like this.
The only thing I have. Sometimes I randomly stumble upon girls who say they love writing, but it makes me feel overprotective of it. All these girls I've come across already have other things: they have beauty, or brains, or other talents like art or voice. They have kindness, sanity and regularity. I have none of it.
I suppose it was 1999 when I learned how to write. I can't imagine not ever knowing how to, and the thought of my hand being unable to produce letters confuses me. What could have been the first word my mother or father or aunt help me write? I'm sure it must have been my name: the only thing that sticks with you wherever you go.
With the love for writing comes the love for reading, or perhaps the other way around. It was with the hobby of reading that my love for stories came along. I wrote my first book at the tender age of seven, a mystery following a pair of sisters, inspired by the Mary-Kate and Ashley series I was in love with.
It came to be just the first of many more incomplete projects. Between then and today, I have three works in progress that never saw the light of day: that mystery; a magical realism about a pair of siblings with abilities to control dreams, the first ten chapters abandoned somewhere here in my room; and the one I'm currently working on.
I already started writing in a diary when I was seven, probably even before. Nothing but shallow entries, about how annoying my elder brother was, how fake my girl best friends were. I daydreamed a lot even then; I wanted to be everything. An actor, a teacher, a fashion designer. I wrote about it all: everything except a writer.
When I was eight, I had my personal portfolio of short stories and magazine articles. I folded colour paper into half and stapled them at the side, makeshift storybooks. Whatever my classmates and I did, I wrote about it, complete with little illustrations.
Someone invented this game of Bad Luck, a sort of Catching that by default, only started from the girl with the register number 13. When we moved to the new classrooms after the renovations were done, we squirmed from the centipedes crawling all around the new general office. I wrote about all of that and more.
My primary three self turned her encounters into stories, the way I now use my heartbreak to create literature.
That was my only way of popularity back then. Everyone gathered around me in between the changing of classes, wanting to borrow and read my little books below their desks. Our form teacher eventually caught one of them, and ironically she was our English teacher but she hated them, and gave all of us a scolding.
Especially me: she told me I was never to bring them to class anymore. "Such a distraction!", she exclaimed as she snatched one of my books and threw them on the teacher's table.
My primary four teacher the year after that was a stark contrast. She was both our English and Maths teacher, and she did this thing where she gives you stickers for your work and you collect them in a little booklet. I was always handing in my Maths work late or not at all, so I didn't always get them.
But she made us write journal entries every week, and that was my personal favourite. I got a sticker for every entry, still more than any other times, and it was probably the only assignment where I could diligently sit down and do and pass up on time, all on my own accord.
Came the week when the topic was Ambitions. Despite all my previous diary entries of wanting to be an actor, teacher, whatever, I wrote just one ambition in that journal entry: a writer. I included an excerpt from one of my colour paper storybooks, and she gave me three stickers for it, and even read it out loud to my classmates after she asked me if she could.
Before she read it she was just mentioning about how it was the best entry she read that week. My classmates were monkeying around, shouting out What? What she want to be?? and making wild guesses; but my teacher said "She wants to be a writer!", and she never looked or sounded so proud, just a little hint of disbelief at the fact that a nine-year-old wanted to be a writer.
I guess that was the moment it was set in stone.
I got teased afterwards, especially by the Malay boys, with their high-pitched voices yelling "Chey! Nak jadi writer sey!" It was also the start of what everyone says whenever I tell them I want to be a writer: "Write a book about me ah!"
Move on to the next year, primary five: I still sucked at Maths, and only knew how to write. Our form teacher told us about the blog she made for our class, and I was like What's a blog? She wrote on the whiteboard: web log. And that was everything started.
My very first blog came in the year 2006, with some anime shit for its link. I made many more for different things; one for my dreams, one for the things that happened in class, one for my 'fanfiction', etc. They all came to be deleted when I started getting bullied again, for the stories I made up and published online.
One of the girls I knew made a blog especially for me, what an honour: whodoeseindahlyks.blogspot.com, centering around my love life and all the gossip about it. Who was my lover, who was my next crush? I don't really need that from her anymore, since I've been writing about my love life on my own accord for five years now. I took that girl's concept and made it my own, the way Taylor is taking all the criticism from the media and creating her art from it.
The next blog I made afterwards came to be my last: what you are reading on right now. Blogs continued being popular in my early secondary school days, until 2009 when everyone else started deleting or neglecting theirs.
I remained loyal to mine, even throughout the two years when we didn't have internet at home and I couldn't update it anymore. In the meantime, I continued writing in my diaries, shallow entries about getting some guy's attention and how my parents loved my brothers more than they loved me. My aunt got me my first laptop at the end of 2010, and my life changed.
My blog was revived, although my writing style remained cringey. It was just the same problems all over, parents and boys and school, but heated up. I blogged about my father's burning words and hits, a first kiss from a crush who got a girlfriend just a week later, the kids at school disliking me with every breath I took. It's true that I've died in the town of Pasir Ris enough times already.
That same boy came to be the subject I revolved around for the next two years. We actually got together in November 2011, but he went to ITE and of course abandoned me, three months later. He was starting a new life somewhere else, and I was just a high school prop that had to be left behind; I couldn't accept it at the time, and spent the entire year struggling to get over it.
The only thing I had was, you guessed it: writing.
2012 was my last year of secondary school, and also the beginning of my Solitary Author persona. My writing escalated with my emotions: I was my 2007 self, but angrier. Everyone was against me. The girls who were supposed to be my best friends, the teachers, my parents, the entire school. They all hated me and wanted me gone... I'm sure we have all felt that way.
For my entire O Levels year, I wasn't focusing on my studies. I concentrated more on myself, the process of healing that I took so long to realise. I kept getting class suspension, not school suspension, so we just had to sit outside the general office during our lessons. It was a great arrangement, because I spent the entire time writing in my diary.
The whole world was against me, but my diaries and blog were there for me the whole time. As well as my English teacher; she wasn't really a teacher at that time, but an assistant in the classroom. Every Wednesday and Friday morning we had to do spontaneous writing instead of silent reading, and of course that was my favourite.
This teacher always seemed to love reading mine, and when she saw how I ostracised myself from everyone, she decided to take me under her wing. During one of the lessons this one day, she caught me writing in my diary and made me give her whatever I was writing. It just had to be some masochist shit about killing myself, so she brought me out of the class and talked to me while the main teacher continued with the lesson.
She lectured me, obviously, and told me: "Since you love writing so much, I'll give you something for you to do. Write in a journal for me. I know you have your own diary and everything, but I want this to be for the things that you want to talk about with me. Can you do that for me, E'indah?"
So I did, and she became my one and only drive for school.
It's 1:38 A.M. now and my eyes are tearing the fuck up.
Her efforts didn't change everything, because I continued skipping the other classes and getting suspended for it. The desks outside the general office became my home, where the Principal and all the Heads Of Department walked around, glancing at me and judging me, most probably.
We had our Mid-Year Exams, all of which I couldn't do because I was suspended. For some reason I was actually only allowed to sit for the English papers: maybe the discipline master pulled some strings, because he was our English teacher at the time and he loved me for my potential as well.
And what a great thing it was, because sometime after we got our results back (during which I was in suspension), one of my classmates came over to me outside the general office and told me about the HOD of English coming to class and praising my Mid-Year paper while I wasn't around.
"Madam Kamisah was praising your Mid-year like shit. 'The best 5NA compo I've ever read'!" This HOD never actually taught us, but she always passed by my desk outside the office and never missed giving me a smile.
And it became another drive for O Levels.
I continued topping my class for every English test, exam, prelim, whatever. The other kids got sick of hearing my name whenever our teacher was announcing who got the highest; I remember the boy who later got into the same poly course as me complaining: "Wahlao 'cher not fair sia, E'indah always sleeping also still can get first in class!" Well it was never my fault for having it as my natural instinct.
Even as the national exams were nearing, I kept writing. I ditched all the ten-year series and textbooks for my own diaries and blog, because it truly was the only thing that mattered to me. I was still struggling to get over that stupid boy, but I felt like everything with my writing, with English. The other subjects didn't matter to me anymore.
Come January 2013, when we were finally getting our O Level results. I was worrying like shit about English and the other subjects barely crossed my mind. My form teacher for sec 5 called out my name, and as I sat at the table in front of her she announced, "Congratulations E'indah, you're the only one of my students who got a distinction for English!"
I really wanted an A1. I remember even months later, I kept wishing it was an A1. I didn't even care about failing my Humanities and getting C's for my Maths and Science. I just wanted an Afucking1 for my English. But of course, I didn't. I think even now, I'm still wishing it wasn't an A2.
And then my English teacher for sec 5, who was also the Discipline Master who had been chasing me the entire five years for my grooming/behaviour (it was kind of a big deal to have him know your name and reputation) came over and said: "E'indah! Congrats for your distinction! But too bad, I was really expecting an A1 from you man."
I wish I'm kidding, but he really did say that. It was also a big deal for him to have such a great expectation of me, and it shows how much he believed in me. But damn I sure let him down, and myself down.
Because of my D7 for Humanities, I couldn't really get into any Media-related courses. It didn't help that I only had five subjects, since I dropped Art at the beginning of 2012. Thus, my entrance into an Engineering course. How ironic that I hated Maths all my life and it came to be the foundation of my next three years.
Before I started school in April of 2013, I worked at a bakery in Loyang Point. Remember the HOD of English who was apparently praising my compositions like shit? She must have lived nearby, seeing her like once a fortnight. She didn't teach me at all, but recognised and remembered me, as I did her.
One day she asked me what course I got into. I remember my hesitance, but I admitted that I got into an engineering course. She looked so surprised and then disappointed, and said it was such a waste, considering my 'potential for writing'. She told me to make sure I join some writing CCA or shit like that, "Just don't stop, you have such a rare gift."
That was the first person to have ever called it a gift. I never imagined it as a skill or talent, only labeling it as a hobby or passion, just something I loved to do. It never crossed my mind that it is something to specialise in, something to be good at.
2014 was my second year of heartbreak. The one I called the hurricane, abandoning me at Jurong East one year into our relationship. Again, writing was my only thing, with diary entries and blog posts. It was the year I came up with my Type metaphors, where he started out as Flying Type and came to be a hurricane; where I started out as Fire Type and came to be a flame.
Where would I be without those metaphors, and who would I be without this gift? I literally have a sticky note on the wall in front of me: I can't imagine not being a writer. Whether it's my poetry, or diary entries, or this blog you are reading. I can't live with any of it.
Right now, I'm working on a manuscript. I'm 95 pages in after starting on it more than a month ago. I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, but only now starting on an actual novel. And I think it's fine, because I needed to go through everything I did just to have this idea.
Tomorrow is this blog's 10th anniversary. On the 8th of November, 2007, I created this to rant about a boy I liked, and each year continued writing about boys, boys, boys. To think they are all nothing to me now, to think that now I have a man who's been crazy about me for nearly five years.
He gave me a necklace that says passion in mid-2013, for our sixth month together. It's fuckin' symbolic now, the thought that the only love I was obsessed with shone a limelight on the only love that should matter.
It took me everything to realise that love from a boy isn't all that matters: it's passion that does. Some people have no idea what they'll do after graduating, or after ORD, or what they want to do in life. To think that I have unknowingly realised mine since I was seven? It means everything. I'm legitimately tearing up right now because I'm a fuckin' marshmallow when it comes to this.
Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and just scrapping my entire manuscript. But it's the thought of having my name on the cover of a novel that gets me going. The thought of writing about three Malay main characters being my contribution.
Words are all I have: it's my beauty. My way of making music. My art. I don't have what it takes to be a literary figure, up with names like Sylvia Plath or Edgar Allan Poe, or popular modern novelists. Just a small Singaporean girl who just wants her twists of words to be read.
We both talked about how our anger inspires us with our writing more than sadness or euphoria do. He has talent in rhyming his lines too, the classic type of poetry I thought was dying out. But that was the furthest the similarities in our writing go: the difference is he only started on it about three years ago, while I have been doing it my whole life.
I've blogged about this before, way back in year 1 when I was failing in school. I had to put my writing aside to focus on engineering Maths and programming and all that shit I was in school for; not a single blog post or diary entry.
It wasn't even a week before I surrendered and went back to both. Perhaps that was when I realised that I was not made for Engineering. I was made for writing and beyond. And it may seem stupid to any of you reading, with your diplomas in Polytechnic or ITE, or your place in a university.
Education is everything here in Singapore, and I know. But you can't put out a fire that's been burning for more than a decade. You can try, but the fire will crawl up the water hose and up your arm and burn you again, the way this species of fish can swim up your urine when you pee in their water, and eat your genitals. (They're called Candiru, Google it.)
Many people have no idea what they want to do in life. Others do, but are not that hungry for it, and they have better things to do in meantime, like school. They might want to be a musician, but their music is just a sideline while education takes the front seat.
In my case, writing is everything. It's the only thing I want to do. My daytime job used to be my drive, and it's the only place in my life where I'm so much better than everyone else and know every single thing like the back of my mind. But I don't feel a lust for it the way I do with writing, or typing like a maniac on my keyboard like this.
The only thing I have. Sometimes I randomly stumble upon girls who say they love writing, but it makes me feel overprotective of it. All these girls I've come across already have other things: they have beauty, or brains, or other talents like art or voice. They have kindness, sanity and regularity. I have none of it.
I suppose it was 1999 when I learned how to write. I can't imagine not ever knowing how to, and the thought of my hand being unable to produce letters confuses me. What could have been the first word my mother or father or aunt help me write? I'm sure it must have been my name: the only thing that sticks with you wherever you go.
With the love for writing comes the love for reading, or perhaps the other way around. It was with the hobby of reading that my love for stories came along. I wrote my first book at the tender age of seven, a mystery following a pair of sisters, inspired by the Mary-Kate and Ashley series I was in love with.
It came to be just the first of many more incomplete projects. Between then and today, I have three works in progress that never saw the light of day: that mystery; a magical realism about a pair of siblings with abilities to control dreams, the first ten chapters abandoned somewhere here in my room; and the one I'm currently working on.
I already started writing in a diary when I was seven, probably even before. Nothing but shallow entries, about how annoying my elder brother was, how fake my girl best friends were. I daydreamed a lot even then; I wanted to be everything. An actor, a teacher, a fashion designer. I wrote about it all: everything except a writer.
When I was eight, I had my personal portfolio of short stories and magazine articles. I folded colour paper into half and stapled them at the side, makeshift storybooks. Whatever my classmates and I did, I wrote about it, complete with little illustrations.
Someone invented this game of Bad Luck, a sort of Catching that by default, only started from the girl with the register number 13. When we moved to the new classrooms after the renovations were done, we squirmed from the centipedes crawling all around the new general office. I wrote about all of that and more.
My primary three self turned her encounters into stories, the way I now use my heartbreak to create literature.
That was my only way of popularity back then. Everyone gathered around me in between the changing of classes, wanting to borrow and read my little books below their desks. Our form teacher eventually caught one of them, and ironically she was our English teacher but she hated them, and gave all of us a scolding.
Especially me: she told me I was never to bring them to class anymore. "Such a distraction!", she exclaimed as she snatched one of my books and threw them on the teacher's table.
My primary four teacher the year after that was a stark contrast. She was both our English and Maths teacher, and she did this thing where she gives you stickers for your work and you collect them in a little booklet. I was always handing in my Maths work late or not at all, so I didn't always get them.
But she made us write journal entries every week, and that was my personal favourite. I got a sticker for every entry, still more than any other times, and it was probably the only assignment where I could diligently sit down and do and pass up on time, all on my own accord.
Came the week when the topic was Ambitions. Despite all my previous diary entries of wanting to be an actor, teacher, whatever, I wrote just one ambition in that journal entry: a writer. I included an excerpt from one of my colour paper storybooks, and she gave me three stickers for it, and even read it out loud to my classmates after she asked me if she could.
Before she read it she was just mentioning about how it was the best entry she read that week. My classmates were monkeying around, shouting out What? What she want to be?? and making wild guesses; but my teacher said "She wants to be a writer!", and she never looked or sounded so proud, just a little hint of disbelief at the fact that a nine-year-old wanted to be a writer.
I guess that was the moment it was set in stone.
Move on to the next year, primary five: I still sucked at Maths, and only knew how to write. Our form teacher told us about the blog she made for our class, and I was like What's a blog? She wrote on the whiteboard: web log. And that was everything started.
My very first blog came in the year 2006, with some anime shit for its link. I made many more for different things; one for my dreams, one for the things that happened in class, one for my 'fanfiction', etc. They all came to be deleted when I started getting bullied again, for the stories I made up and published online.
One of the girls I knew made a blog especially for me, what an honour: whodoeseindahlyks.blogspot.com, centering around my love life and all the gossip about it. Who was my lover, who was my next crush? I don't really need that from her anymore, since I've been writing about my love life on my own accord for five years now. I took that girl's concept and made it my own, the way Taylor is taking all the criticism from the media and creating her art from it.
The next blog I made afterwards came to be my last: what you are reading on right now. Blogs continued being popular in my early secondary school days, until 2009 when everyone else started deleting or neglecting theirs.
I remained loyal to mine, even throughout the two years when we didn't have internet at home and I couldn't update it anymore. In the meantime, I continued writing in my diaries, shallow entries about getting some guy's attention and how my parents loved my brothers more than they loved me. My aunt got me my first laptop at the end of 2010, and my life changed.
My blog was revived, although my writing style remained cringey. It was just the same problems all over, parents and boys and school, but heated up. I blogged about my father's burning words and hits, a first kiss from a crush who got a girlfriend just a week later, the kids at school disliking me with every breath I took. It's true that I've died in the town of Pasir Ris enough times already.
That same boy came to be the subject I revolved around for the next two years. We actually got together in November 2011, but he went to ITE and of course abandoned me, three months later. He was starting a new life somewhere else, and I was just a high school prop that had to be left behind; I couldn't accept it at the time, and spent the entire year struggling to get over it.
The only thing I had was, you guessed it: writing.
For my entire O Levels year, I wasn't focusing on my studies. I concentrated more on myself, the process of healing that I took so long to realise. I kept getting class suspension, not school suspension, so we just had to sit outside the general office during our lessons. It was a great arrangement, because I spent the entire time writing in my diary.
The whole world was against me, but my diaries and blog were there for me the whole time. As well as my English teacher; she wasn't really a teacher at that time, but an assistant in the classroom. Every Wednesday and Friday morning we had to do spontaneous writing instead of silent reading, and of course that was my favourite.
This teacher always seemed to love reading mine, and when she saw how I ostracised myself from everyone, she decided to take me under her wing. During one of the lessons this one day, she caught me writing in my diary and made me give her whatever I was writing. It just had to be some masochist shit about killing myself, so she brought me out of the class and talked to me while the main teacher continued with the lesson.
She lectured me, obviously, and told me: "Since you love writing so much, I'll give you something for you to do. Write in a journal for me. I know you have your own diary and everything, but I want this to be for the things that you want to talk about with me. Can you do that for me, E'indah?"
So I did, and she became my one and only drive for school.
It's 1:38 A.M. now and my eyes are tearing the fuck up.
Her efforts didn't change everything, because I continued skipping the other classes and getting suspended for it. The desks outside the general office became my home, where the Principal and all the Heads Of Department walked around, glancing at me and judging me, most probably.
We had our Mid-Year Exams, all of which I couldn't do because I was suspended. For some reason I was actually only allowed to sit for the English papers: maybe the discipline master pulled some strings, because he was our English teacher at the time and he loved me for my potential as well.
And what a great thing it was, because sometime after we got our results back (during which I was in suspension), one of my classmates came over to me outside the general office and told me about the HOD of English coming to class and praising my Mid-Year paper while I wasn't around.
"Madam Kamisah was praising your Mid-year like shit. 'The best 5NA compo I've ever read'!" This HOD never actually taught us, but she always passed by my desk outside the office and never missed giving me a smile.
And it became another drive for O Levels.
I continued topping my class for every English test, exam, prelim, whatever. The other kids got sick of hearing my name whenever our teacher was announcing who got the highest; I remember the boy who later got into the same poly course as me complaining: "Wahlao 'cher not fair sia, E'indah always sleeping also still can get first in class!" Well it was never my fault for having it as my natural instinct.
Even as the national exams were nearing, I kept writing. I ditched all the ten-year series and textbooks for my own diaries and blog, because it truly was the only thing that mattered to me. I was still struggling to get over that stupid boy, but I felt like everything with my writing, with English. The other subjects didn't matter to me anymore.
Come January 2013, when we were finally getting our O Level results. I was worrying like shit about English and the other subjects barely crossed my mind. My form teacher for sec 5 called out my name, and as I sat at the table in front of her she announced, "Congratulations E'indah, you're the only one of my students who got a distinction for English!"
I really wanted an A1. I remember even months later, I kept wishing it was an A1. I didn't even care about failing my Humanities and getting C's for my Maths and Science. I just wanted an Afucking1 for my English. But of course, I didn't. I think even now, I'm still wishing it wasn't an A2.
And then my English teacher for sec 5, who was also the Discipline Master who had been chasing me the entire five years for my grooming/behaviour (it was kind of a big deal to have him know your name and reputation) came over and said: "E'indah! Congrats for your distinction! But too bad, I was really expecting an A1 from you man."
I wish I'm kidding, but he really did say that. It was also a big deal for him to have such a great expectation of me, and it shows how much he believed in me. But damn I sure let him down, and myself down.
Because of my D7 for Humanities, I couldn't really get into any Media-related courses. It didn't help that I only had five subjects, since I dropped Art at the beginning of 2012. Thus, my entrance into an Engineering course. How ironic that I hated Maths all my life and it came to be the foundation of my next three years.
Before I started school in April of 2013, I worked at a bakery in Loyang Point. Remember the HOD of English who was apparently praising my compositions like shit? She must have lived nearby, seeing her like once a fortnight. She didn't teach me at all, but recognised and remembered me, as I did her.
One day she asked me what course I got into. I remember my hesitance, but I admitted that I got into an engineering course. She looked so surprised and then disappointed, and said it was such a waste, considering my 'potential for writing'. She told me to make sure I join some writing CCA or shit like that, "Just don't stop, you have such a rare gift."
That was the first person to have ever called it a gift. I never imagined it as a skill or talent, only labeling it as a hobby or passion, just something I loved to do. It never crossed my mind that it is something to specialise in, something to be good at.
2014 was my second year of heartbreak. The one I called the hurricane, abandoning me at Jurong East one year into our relationship. Again, writing was my only thing, with diary entries and blog posts. It was the year I came up with my Type metaphors, where he started out as Flying Type and came to be a hurricane; where I started out as Fire Type and came to be a flame.
Where would I be without those metaphors, and who would I be without this gift? I literally have a sticky note on the wall in front of me: I can't imagine not being a writer. Whether it's my poetry, or diary entries, or this blog you are reading. I can't live with any of it.
Right now, I'm working on a manuscript. I'm 95 pages in after starting on it more than a month ago. I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, but only now starting on an actual novel. And I think it's fine, because I needed to go through everything I did just to have this idea.
Tomorrow is this blog's 10th anniversary. On the 8th of November, 2007, I created this to rant about a boy I liked, and each year continued writing about boys, boys, boys. To think they are all nothing to me now, to think that now I have a man who's been crazy about me for nearly five years.
He gave me a necklace that says passion in mid-2013, for our sixth month together. It's fuckin' symbolic now, the thought that the only love I was obsessed with shone a limelight on the only love that should matter.
It took me everything to realise that love from a boy isn't all that matters: it's passion that does. Some people have no idea what they'll do after graduating, or after ORD, or what they want to do in life. To think that I have unknowingly realised mine since I was seven? It means everything. I'm legitimately tearing up right now because I'm a fuckin' marshmallow when it comes to this.
Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and just scrapping my entire manuscript. But it's the thought of having my name on the cover of a novel that gets me going. The thought of writing about three Malay main characters being my contribution.
Words are all I have: it's my beauty. My way of making music. My art. I don't have what it takes to be a literary figure, up with names like Sylvia Plath or Edgar Allan Poe, or popular modern novelists. Just a small Singaporean girl who just wants her twists of words to be read.