5. Bigger than the whole sky (2015)

(the playlist)

On the day I found out I was pregnant, I'd been crying about the time I was pregnant. 

While I was taking public transport home from work, my husband was at a petrol station somewhere buying me a test kit. I was already disliking the purple line, so pale in comparison to my green and red. So different in views and people, so many metres underground just like my identity. 

Without realising it, I'd boarded the feeder bus that would take me to my new home. So many parts of the trip different from the interchange I knew like the back of my hand, back at Pasir Ris. A town I once wanted to set fire to, memories and people all. 

I started thinking about my settling down and finally being happy, and all the points that led me there. I thought about the steps I had to take and the people I had to lose. The things I had to do and the things that had to be done to me. 

And for all the things I'd been through, the only thing that brought me to tears was a pivotal moment of 2015: when I found out I was pregnant with the girl I would come to abort. 

What were the tears back then for? The fear, the longing, the knowing that I only had an illusion of choice? The denial came very soon after, masking the fact I was running out of time. Masking the first time my depressing feeling was more than heartbreak for a boy. 

You know in movies or shows, when someone complains of cramps and then suddenly gives birth in the school toilet? It's true, a pregnant belly tends to compress when the mother is in denial. And that was why halfway through at 20 weeks, I still looked like a girl. 

If I were her I would've felt worse than a mistress; a secret love song, a girlfriend you're ashamed of. A child with a missing arm. You want to tell people you've created a being, but you know you can't. You've done something no one else your age has done, but you shouldn't have. 

I used to write with "us", "our" when writing about this time of my life, but it wasn't referring to mother-daughter. It was me and hurricane, as if we were in it together. As if he shared the same feelings, hand on my belly or not. He wasn't there to see her move, and I once wished he could have been. Only now I'm glad it was just between me and her. 

Only now, I could never deny the second heartbeat I carried. The life I'd been growing for five months. There is no grave to visit, there is no name to pray to, there is nobody to feel the same way I do. Nobody else saw her move apart from me, but I'm enough to know she was always bigger than the whole sky. 

Next: 6. Anti-hero (2016)