the other shade of red

Everyone knows my many metaphors that replace the names in the stories of my life. I don't know the exact post where I wrote a name for the last time, definitely years ago. But I know where it began, and the Grass, Fire, and Water Type love triangle wasn't the first. 

2012 was loneliness and confusion, and with it came alot of writing. I brought diaries to parks and terminals, sometimes with a red and black hoodie slung over a shoulder. Somewhere along the way I found significance in the colours of my jackets, and borne were my first metaphors: red and black. 

They were actually the favourite colours of twins, the younger and older, respectively. Two characters who were so significant back in their chapter ten years ago. Sometimes it feels like a distant dream until I look through Facebook memories and see harsh reminders of seventeen-year-old me, the one most impacted by them. 

The colours were so symbolic of their contrasts, and I only got to know this from one teary night with black. So overshadowed despite being older, so burdened with expectations. I could see a bit of what he meant when they were still in secondary school with me, black walking around prim with his councillor tie while red ran around with the other rebels, a cast from a fractured arm.

I never hung out with black much until after he graduated, but I was one of red's rebels I guess. We climbed seashell pavillions and ledges to get onto rooftops in our school uniforms. That was what landed us into detention together, cementing our friendship until it gradually evolved into the three-month relationship that would be my demise.

It was really hard when the breakup was still fresh, but it didn't improve much until I graduated and moved on to poly. You know me, I could still see the ghosts in school and all around Pasir Ris. He blocked me on all forms of social media back then, which was all for the better. I didn't realise, somewhere along the ten years that have passed since then, he had taken the time to unblock me.

Of course I was curious, it'd been such a long time. What got me to stop scrolling was a group picture of red, black and two other boys. What got me to start searching up his name were the words: one is married, the others on their way. As above everyone as I always think I am, my curiosity gets the best of me.

What do you know, red was the married one. Looking at their picture I couldn't help but wonder if she knows everything about his past no matter how insignificant, something like a three months long relationship from ten years ago? I kept nothing from my own partner, even the smallest interactions with the most random of schoolmates. 

I felt nothing looking at him, maybe a little embarrassment that this was the face that caused so much turmoil for a year? My ability to travel back in time leads me to the days when all I heard was it will get better, he will not matter anymore in ten years time. But here I am now, ten years older and it is a shock to see for myself that he means nothing more than a boy from the past. 

10:34

 I think my water just broke.

But those weren't my words. After the December scares of threatened miscarriages, the stitches deep inside me worked too well. Even after untying my cervix again in March, my April thirteenth baby showed no signs of coming out.

I was all too familiar with the cold gel smothered on my belly, the straps around me and the posters pasted on the walls by the bed. The same way my husband might be familiar with the chairs and sounds in the waiting room.

Somehow the both of us were very calm at triage, even when another couple walked in and told the nurse that she thought her water just broke. We exchanged subtle wide-eyed glances, while the nurse cheerfully told her to wait because she was attending to us. As if I was more important than this woman who actually had signs of labour.

I was even able to walk back out to have a late dinner before being admitted. That I did, good-naturedly rolling my eyes when my mother called my husband crying. Bilang dia kita semua sayang dia tau, while I continued munching on fries. 

When I get back into limbo it was already time to be admitted. I was told the process of induced labour, parts of which sounded very similar to what had to be done seven years prior. But I truly did not have any fear, not with the amount of trust in the person sitting next to me this time.

My contractions started out so strong at the hospital, after weeks of unsure tightness when I was home alone. It was late afternoon of the fifteenth, my organs getting twisted. I thought I could handle it, I'd been through so much pain and was the strongest person I knew after all. The nurses kept asking, do you want to take epidural now?, and I kept saying no, eventually through tears and desperate head-shaking, still with the belief that I could plow through like I did everything.

But soon the twisting went to the point of blinding, shrieking pain, my body writhing on the hospital bed. My mother and husband took turns abandoning their buka to comfort me in all my monstrosity. The girl she tried to raise sweet but grew with so much rebellion, the girl who was so negative when he met her but now laughs at everything he does.

Through the pain I was still conscious enough to realise, to have everyday things running through my mind. I still had it in me to think of scenes from possession movies, very aware my body was resembling the victims in them. I grasped onto anything, any railing or unfortunate hand I could find. I asked myself if this was my karma for every drop of alcohol I'd consumed, every word I'd yelled at my parents.

I was lucky to already have been hospitalised during contractions, it was a struggle from level to level. I held on to my glasses for life, of all things, while I was being wheeled to the delivery suite. I wasn't exactly ready for labour, but I'd neared the desperation for epidural, anything to get this pain off me, I'm not very strong after all.

My mother had to go because visiting hours were over, as much as she fought to stay, and secretly, I'd wanted her to stay too. I continued moaning for my life on a different bed while random hands changed me out of my hospital gown into a backless garb. 

At this point my eyes were shut tight from so much pain, but I still heard the voices around me and in my head very clearly. Husband can't be here for now, we'll call you later. Calm down, turn around and stick out your back for me, do you have scoliosis?, just hold still for a minute and it'll be over. 

But it wasn't over. I felt a cold, hard needle whispering against my skin and I pulled myself away again, this time crying. I was about to say I wanted to poop, but just in time, a voice in my head said that wasn't what I wanted to tell them. I want to pu.... sh.... and I collapsed back into bed, and that was when panicked voices arise. 

For I was suddenly dilated to four, when the last time they checked it was barely one. I was clutching things so tightly that the drip in my right hand was stabbing me so hard from under my skin. Something that I didn't even realise until later, a large bruise and dull pain with every movement.

Through my closed eyes I knew they'd called my husband back up, and then suddenly I was seven. I knew he had walked across the room to stand on my right, instinctively I reached out, knew it was his hand that was holding mine back.

By then it was too late for an epidural shot, so I had to dive in with no painkiller. I know I had little to no fear, knowing it was exactly what I'd expected, and maybe because I'd gone through worse for lesser. I'd fought so hard meeting the first love of my life standing in this very room, I'd do the same for the second. 

I knew my actual fight was less than two hours, having my mother chased away sometime after visiting hours at eight, being wheeled down and not having an epidural shot after all, and then him being born at 10:34 pm. 

All the pivotal moments I've had in my life, from being on the red line for the first time to having all eyes on me when I walked in wearing a white dress. Washed away by the moment I heard him cry for the first time, shaking his clenched fists, eyes tightly closed and mouth wide open. The moment he instinctively stopped to suckle on me during our first skin contact. 

I started trembling myself before bursting into a fit of giggles. At the same time my husband lost his balance and had to be escorted to sit down from all the giddiness. Our own ways of breathing in relief, after which he was given hot Milo while I had to have my perineum stitched. 

I remember thanking the random doctor before she left, a very happy congratulations from someone who has to stitch up privates for a living. For a while it was just the three of us in the room, almost midnight, the two loves of my life and I. After some deep breaths and some sips of Milo there was only one who was still capable of bustling about on his two feet. He jumped to and fro the tiny incubator and the horror site where I winced in pain with every movement.

The first thing that stood out when I first met my husband was his caterpillar eyebrows, imagine my pleasant surprise when my baby came out with eyebrows just as bold. The top half of his face resembled my husband when he was younger, while his chin and sulk were reminiscent of mine. And I hope he grows with our height, with a father's logical and a mother's creative. 

I forgot about crying so hard when we found out we were having a boy, I forgot about all my troubles and mistakes, I forgot all my imperfections looking at the perfection I'd had a hand in creating. Only now I understand why parents say the best moment of their lives was the birth of a child. The usually weak is at their strongest and the strongest exterior goes weak in the knees with so much relief.

It took me a while to recover physically, with the amount of vaginal activity I've had since December. Since 2015, if you want to count from there. But I was lucky not to have any postpartum depression despite it all, despite my history. I could sleep relatively well even though I began waking up startled again, with panic until I saw the gentle risings of his chest. I couldn't handle babies until I had my own, it comes so naturally. I still fear thunderstorms, but I now cover his ears instead of mine. And I can't wait for the years to go by, to see how much more I can change and grow with him.