the junes before you

Once in a while I share my diary entries from months or even years ago. I'm always amazed at how I could physically write so much in the past, how I even chose the traditional method of writing in a notebook when there's so many other ways to convey my emotions.

05/06/14

Honestly I've never realised we've already hit June. Feels like I'd completely lost track of time. I've lost track of how I'm growing up, of how often I'd fallen in love.

My precious diary, I'm crazy. You knew all along but you never told me. I'm...

I can't say it...

I am my own asylum. In me, there are mental patients, each with her own need, each with her own desires, selfish desires. A part of me denies my insanity, a part of me wants out, is screaming to be free, rattling the bars she's locked behind. Another cries all day, uncontrollable sobbing each time she looks out the window. Another, the loudest of them all apparently, or for now maybe, laughs at the slightest things.

A part of me wants to be loved.
Another wants to die.

Why does he make me seem like the villain? He was the one who left me because "I just don't love you anymore". He was the one who stopped trying, sat back and relaxed while I did all the hard work for us. The times he'd had to comfort me; it was simply because I'd crumbled from the exhaustion of doing my best.

Sure, I'd made some fatal mistakes here and there, but I've never been short of true with him. I felt neglected, I said so. Lonely, I said so. Angry, showed it. Appreciated him, said it.

...I don't even know why I came to reminisce.

Point is,... Don't bother doing your best, don't give anyone your all, because it'd all end up in flames, up in smoke in their hands. I don't know why I had to go through all the bullshits in life TWICE before I learn my lesson. Just like stupid engineering Maths.

20/06/15

So far, so good. I've got my strength back, my appetite - the only thing I haven't gotten back is all that money spent on medical bills. I don't think I'll get it back anytime soon though, because we still have some remaining fees to settle, seeing as I'd stayed a day and a half longer than intended.

It's horrifying, my bank account balance. I haven't had less than 100 for a really long time, let alone 30... Yes. I have a grand total of 20 in my bank account, thanks to the 3 days in hospital.

At the same time I wish the whole episode hadn't happened, I'm glad it did because it's brought my other half and I closer. I really appreciated him being there the entire time, even though I hadn't felt like talking much. Or doing anything for that matter.

When we met last Friday for Jurassic World, he'd told me he was feeling the guilt. Perhaps even more so than me, but either way I am trying to put up a good show, trying to look okay for his sake. I'd let him be upset about it, even if it means sacrificing the truth of my own feelings. He hates it when I lie to him, but it's for his sake.

I cannot stop thinking of 3 things right now.
1. Having to give out flyers later
2. Money
3. Her.

These 3 things have been bothering the shit out of me. At least a few weeks now, with the exception of #1. I hate how nobody understands the word FEAR. My manager's more than about FORCING me to do it. Can't sue me if I come back crying and about suicidal.

But whatever. My ego is definitely eons stronger than my fear. I'll do it even with tears in my eyes and quivering lips.

I keep daydreaming about the day I earn back all the money gone. From here on out, I need to have a minimum of $1000 in my bank account at all times. I'm glad it's Ramadan, because I'd get to skip a few meals without upsetting anyone.

Perhaps I moved back to Paya Lebar solely for this. I'd save transport fees if I do go home there instead of Pasir Ris. It's really selfish of me, but I really need to think twice before spending a single cent now. Bus fares included. And we still haven't settled the hospital bills, and my phone bills have accumulated to $200. Oh god I need all the money I could save/earn right now.

Lastly but definitely not the least: her.
I miss her to bits.
She was definitely in bits, the day I pushed her out. Hours later, when I'd left for surgery, ***** said he'd seen not only loads of blood on my hospital bed, but also bits of meat.

I am 100% more cruel than the wind. May she forgive us.

18/06/16

Wouldn't it be nice to earn money on the side while working a full-time job? My passion since forever is to write. I have been writing my whole life but it's been for nothing since I don't get anything out of it. It's just not fair.

What I would do to get a few dollars out of every blog post or book review I write. It is the best thing because I don't need to face customers for it. I don't need to have looks for it. Just read my books, say what I thought about them, and I'll have money. Wouldn't it be nice...

In the meantime, I can't stop thinking of the possibility of other jobs. I'm not happy in ******* anymore, because I just hate being unappreciated. Maybe it's partly why I don't have the balls to do what I truly want, I'm so afraid of being disappointed.

What's a girl to do? Everything requires looks. I loved writing, making videos but they're for nothing if I'm not pretty. It's why I've resorted to thinking of other jobs, of 'real' jobs. Receptionists, office jobs, a factory worker. I don't know what to do.

I want to have fifty thousand dollars in my bank so fucking bad. And I can't do anything to get that.

16/06/17

Falling, but there's nobody to catch you. Maybe the ones who are there below you with their hands out for you aren't the ones you were expecting. While you fell for a hurricane, you didn't notice the rose growing at your feet. After four years you finally see it, but maybe it's just a little too late. It's been taken by the wind.

But somehow it doesn't faze me. To be brought out of my shell and then shoved over the edge without that protective layer; I've done so too many times before and it feels like nothing. Maybe the heart is a little chipped yet again and now it's back to being me against the world, after thinking it'd been a flame and a flower against all else. I am broken, but I'm golden.

I am more than determined to finish my book, be it the poetry compilation or the diary entries from 2015 and beyond. And while my tendency to be a daydreamer is my biggest weakness sometimes, it may be the one thing right now that is pushing me to this lifelong desire. My head in the clouds, but a need to go higher.

The rose is right when he says I could go on all day with my metaphors. However dumb they may get, and however hard they clash with his theories, they make me who I am. They are my fractions that make me whole, the things that I love and the words I say and the memories I remember, the heartbreaks and the euphoria and the laughter and tears.

I know how weird and cruel god could get. When I hated life so much, I tried to get rid of myself but of course perhaps it hadn't been my fate yet. Maybe when my days are finally brighter and I've finally got myself together will He try to take my life away for good.

At least, despite his yet another sudden leaving, I have made it clear enough to him that if I wake up to die today, or tomorrow, I would have died loving this world because he's in it.

It has been a blissful sixteen days this June, and the past 4 years with him has been the best, despite my having been with someone else the entire time, floating through time and space and everywhere except anchored to him.

smaller lives

I've always known I adore trains, but I've never understood why. Sometimes in the middle of admiring them, this feeling starts weighing on me. The uncertainty, the questioning, wait what's so amazing about these carriages, why did god make me like this?

Two years ago I met someone who had a theory. That I love trains for the way they stay on track, unlike me with the plans that fall flat and unfulfilled dreams. That the admiring of railway came from the obsession with having things gone my way. A theory, but still something more than my blaming on our creator. 

But what about the desire to cuddle a cat-sized caterpillar? What of the stray beetle or moth that flies into the house and my first instinct is to say hello? What about the rainy days when I watch my step only for snails and not to ensure my own safe, dry path?

When did insects start appearing on me more often? The moth crawling for its life on the train floor. The butterfly that kept crashing into a glass window at the hotel I stayed at with my cousin. The caterpillar whose green colour made it almost luminescent, like it's glowing in the dark.

Sometimes a moth on my t-shirt, sometimes a caterpillar hanging from my hair. A bee stopping on my finger to say hello as I waited outside Masjid Wak Tanjong. Even a praying mantis, somehow ending up on our ninth floor flat. 

I have few positive memories of my father that have made me who I am today. I know he raised my older brother and I on his loud voice and kicks, but he was the one who taught me to treasure spiders. That a spider helped our prophet into hiding, something like that. He wasn't a very good teacher or story-teller.

He was the one who protested when my mother and I started smacking our hands on ants in the kitchen. Jangan bunuh lah, kesian, and he would mindlessly blow around the counter until he walked away, satisfied. Oblivious to the ants' immediate return.

On rainy days from a family gathering, or dinner at a random restaurant, he was the one who told us to look out for snails. I've always watched him pick one up from the middle of the path and plop it at the side, so it wouldn't be stepped on by other people. 

My mother would always groan in disgust, and she would always ask him, How would you know that's where the snail wants to go?

As time went on I tried to make this into my habit. I didn't want to accept something so good being my father's. I didn't want an affection for snails and insects to be inherited from someone whose abuse is the only thing my older brother and I have in common.

There is a memory of me at 20, walking in the drizzle with my colleagues. A mound of brown by the entrance to the mall, accompanied by other tiny mounds. I stop, fearing them squashed on by the unsuspecting, or the nonchalant. 

But even with my colleagues encouraging me, I couldn't do it. I had a paranoia of pulling too hard and plucking their shells right off their backs. And as much as I loved the little creatures, I didn't know anything about them. I didn't know what would hurt them.

The year I was turning 23, walking home with a boy training to be a steward. We met a huge snail, slowly gliding smack-dab in the middle of the pathway. It was half a cycling path, and I just could not leave it to a messy fate. But of course my inability to pluck and plop it to the side was a problem.

Solution? I stood there, shielding it from humans. I stayed rooted for more than half an hour, ignoring the annoyed looks from cyclists when the snail and I start entering their side of the path. The boy I was with didn't protest much and just waited patiently, one of the things I appreciated about him.

My father made it look so easy, but I just couldn't do the same. In that one way he was better than me, saving the lives of countless snails.

I didn't have to be raised vegetarian to treasure the smaller lives. I just had to be raised the way I am, feeling so insignificant and minuscule. Maybe it is the way I am treated like an insect that makes me emphasise with them. We are small, but I know we're worth so much more. It's just sad I had to learn this from a figure who treats ants like treasures, and a daughter like a bug.