19. Dear reader (2023)

(the playlist)

If you're still here reading this, reading these numbered posts inspired by somebody's music and lyrics, somebody else's words, then you should know by now: somehow, I made it. 

But what they usually don't show when somebody has made it is what comes after. Not runners lying down, gasping for air by the finish line. Not critically acclaimed actors getting into drugs at their peak, losing all sense. Not the cleaning of floors and picking of bottles after new year's eve parties. 

Definitely not girls from broken homes spiraling back into nothingness after creating their own healthy families. 

I never read anything about that, so I didn't know what to do when I became one. With a job that I loved and a man who was nice to me and made me laugh and a kid who was alive and perfect and a house that overlooked my expressway of loneliness - you'd think with this success I would have no reason to be sad. But we all forget, when we are at our highest, there is nowhere to go but back down. 

What had to happen for me to feel this way but the erasing of my past. Just earlier this year I thought of a trip to langkawi when I was fifteen; the pictures were on my old facebook account which had been unfortunately deleted from being stagnant too long. I thought of the sketchbooks and diaries from primary school, I thought of 2012 when my father decided to discard all pictures of me out of spite, a gap between my brothers'. 

Then I thought of the diaries from my naivety of fourteen, crushes on tall boys next door and wondering what having a boyfriend would be like. The diaries from my loneliness of seventeen, painstakingly writing about my parents seeing me as a bug and other metaphors. The laptop from the time, I didn't know the concept of hard drives. All gone, not a word or picture or cell left. 

The knowledge of snippets of my past disappearing started collecting like rainwater, until one more memento broke me like a dam. 

Back in 2018, someone gifted me a dreamcatcher. When I started thinking of all the lost memories I had the heart to take that back; I didn't take it with me when I moved out, being a gift from another man after all. But I was slowly losing proof after proof of the adversities I was so proud of going through, and I needed to hold onto every scrap. 

Timing is a funny thing, it's true. The things in my room were left untouched in the almost two years since I moved out in June 2021. But come March this year and my heart stopped when I saw an empty corkboard instead of the one thing I needed to stay upright.

I had to laugh it off in front of my parents, keeping up the illusion of having matured. It was only when I left that I thought of my older brother's room being left alone for longer. It was only the next day that I wondered whether my dreamcatcher giver was still alive. It was only after more vivid dreams that I wanted a dreamcatcher after all, be it against Islam. 

I retraced all the wrong things and made up conclusions about my father still not loving me after all, that the friend who gifted me never existed and that my youth wasn't real. I wanted to retrace further, but now the medals I wore with pride were tainted with the trash of the landfill they sat in.

Afterwards I did what I did every time I had my heart broken. I gallivanted. I wrote endlessly. I listened to music I liked in the past, trying to grasp onto who I was as my own person, neither wife nor mother. And I couldn't find her. I could not find myself anymore, because I was too happy and at peace. 

Friends had to see my unravelling through stories, because I think texting people directly about it would be forcing them to listen or advise. If anyone wants to ask if you're okay, they will, and if not, they can flip past without feeling guilty. 

I went to work laughing like a normal person, I went to social events and talked about my family, nobody noticing the caffeine and confusion up to my neck. Nobody suspected I was drinking four coffees in a day and searching in vain for something poisonous to feed on and spit back out as words. 

If I was religious or have had my heart swallowed by it, I'd have told myself to pray. I still did my five prayers during my mental breakdown, but I was only exorcised by it when I read through whatever of my writing I did have left. 

I read my blog posts all the way to 2012, I searched the storeroom for the notebooks I wrote in at 22, I scrolled up old conversations, I opened up the Word document for a novel I hadn't worked on in years.

I desperately read every single word, and I realised: the best self-reminders are the words you wrote yourself.

I saw between the lines, between the timeline of the young and now me's, a message from myself. A letter to myself. Dear reader...

18. Mastermind (2022)

(the playlist)

I read somewhere how all the eggs a woman will ever carry are already forming within her while she's a 4-month-old foetus. So you were already in your grandmother's womb when she was months pregnant with your mother. If you were pregnant with a girl, you'd already be carrying the eggs that would be your grandchild.

My son has been with me everyday since he was born a year and a half ago; you could even count the nine months before that. But scientifically, he's actually been with me since I was in existence, more than 28 years ago. And somehow that was everything. Somehow that was the start of the plan I didn't know I had, to create someone I would give up so much for. 

During a birthday you only celebrate the fact you were born. You don't celebrate everything else that had to happen for you to be. You don't celebrate your mother going into labour, holding you in her arms for the first time and thinking of all she has gone through before you. 

My life flashed before me when my son was born. I knew everything I did led me to this moment. I thought about the boys who had to break my heart and the friends I had to lose, the hits from my father and the insults from my mother. I thought about the unborn girl whom I still wish I could hold sometimes, and I know it was all steps and shoves I had to take to get here. 

I retrace my steps to the day I endured surgery to keep him, to when I cried for days after finding out it was a boy. To the day we saw a red line, pregnant, to the day we exchanged wedding rings and my husband took full responsibility for me. I retrace my steps to the days I almost jumped off the ninth floor for a cousin and a father and a few boxed drinks. 

I retrace my steps to our engagement day, to the first fights and touches, to the day we first met and the hardships prior. The bottles of coffee surrounding my laptop and the swipes on dating apps. I retrace the days I lost my mind after losing someone I didn't know if I still loved. The nights I cried for someone that I chose to kill. The train tracks that I fell in love with and that I wished I could be dragged across.

My first day working fulltime, my last day at ngee ann before I would drop out without graduating. My first day of year one standing on the platform at paya lebar instead of pasir ris, an aunt paying my school bills instead of my own parents. 

I think about the year 2012, when it all fell apart. I think about my youth where my father nearly kills me with his punches. My childhood where my older brother nearly kills me with his, after buying me the first diary that would kindle my love for writing on my 7th birthday. Where I start to notice being left out of the mother-older son and father-younger son relationships. And I know throughout it all, I was already on my way to my life today. 

When I looked at my son, both of us alive and well, I knew I made it. I burned bridges and paved the way with my mistakes to get here. They say God is the best planner but it was all along hand in hand with my bad luck and stupid decisions. The baby I held in my arms that night in April was the product of our mastermind: a God's creation and a girl's endeavour. It was all planned. 

railway sleepers before/futures [deleted]

Syahir was always the third wheel, the in-between of most arguments, but no matter what he’s still the best friend who knows the both of them inside out. For nearly four years he put up with it, but he finally admitted they were not good for each other and their differences only make it all worse. He thought Hanis will never be as mature as Zhafran and Zhafran’s shallowness will never help him understand Hanis. They were raised so differently and have gone through their own pain. Their expectations for the relationship will turn out separately too, if not now then years down the road.

Well, that’s what Syahir says. Zhafran is convinced he doesn’t know anything. Syahir hasn’t been in a single relationship his whole life, so what does he know? Sometimes contrasts between two people are what make them work the best together. Where Hanis is angry, Zhafran is patient and calm; where Zhafran is monochromatic, Hanis is colour. Just like how he is falling asleep on this bus while she stares out the window like she’s never seen the world before.

Hanis is a flame, with her never-ending hope. Zhafran is wind, for his ability to calm people down when they’re angry. He is the gust in her hair and the storm whose eye she calls home. They keep each other under wraps and for that, they deem their souls intertwined. Again, what does Syahir know? He has never loved anyone, never found something that gets him riled up the way a passion or lover would. While he has fire and storm as his best friends, he will always merely be the last tree in the field.

It is the last thing Zhafran thinks of before he falls asleep, with his head lolling back against the headrest and his girlfriend looking out the window.

Tripping

For a married couple, there's only so little energy you have left for spontaneity. What more a married couple who needs to pack a diaper bag before going on one. Maybe spontaneous trips to buy groceries, or to the drive-through after my afternoon shifts. Wow, how fun.

Yesterday we had another fun one: a spontaneous trip to an acne doctor. I shouldn't have touched my face when I had just one giant pimple back in January. I started using creams, and suddenly I was getting breakouts that lasted for months. Yesterday was my second visit, for phase two they said. 

The doctor's room is full of acne charts and posters; that's how you know they really specialize in dermatology. Only yesterday I noticed a poster at the corner that said: If you find yourself breathing in short pants, try wearing longer ones. That was so close to changing my opinion of this doctor again.

I always thought doctors were quacks, but this one I took quite seriously. He's in a wheelchair, and he has an inspiration poster in the waiting room of him on some snowy mountain that he's conquered. Everest? Wherever it is, you just have to respect him. 

He doesn't talk to me the way other docs do, like you're just there for the piece of paper that excuses your laziness to go to work. He takes me just as seriously, and at the same time punctures it with lightheartedness and camaraderie. He draws a picture of me on my patient card to mark the areas where my acne is the worst. I was about to put back on my mask when he cries Wait! Must draw! and I really couldn't help laughing. But he doesn't draw a smile on my face. 

So he said, phase two. Do you have any intention to get pregnant soon?

I said, God, no.

He nodded, OK, because this medicine is stronger and is unsuitable for pregnancy.

A nod from me, No problem.

He continued, And we also need to make sure your liver is good.

Another nod from me while I was honestly thinking of the last time I'd drank alcohol, Yes, my liver is good. 

He stopped and stared, Oh, we have to take a blood test.

Nod from me, Yeah, sure. 

He laughed and said okay and explained about the procedures yadda yadda, I listened I swear. I signed something and then I stared at the short pants poster again and then suddenly he had a tube and a fresh needle for me. He said, It's nothing, you've given birth before, you're good. 

And I was, but I looked away and closed my eyes and braced for the prick of the needle into my veins. He said I could take out my phone and watch YouTube or Tiktok, but I just kept my eyes shut and pictured my son's face. 

I have gone through worse, multiple times, and for god's sake I have been losing blood every month since I was twelve. He praised me once again for my composure, something I'm always so surprised I have, having been fueled by anxiety my whole life. I laughed, thanked him and left. 

Walked out to the waiting room, where my husband was sitting. My sleeve was already rolled down, but I gestured my elbow to him and announced the blood test I'd just taken. Can't remember the last thing I said before I felt the dizziness kick in. I felt my hearing go numb, then my vision slowly faded. 

Honestly was one of the more psychedelic trips I'd taken while awake. Never had epidural during my labour, and the laughing gas flew me high but I still had some semblance of consciousness. But yesterday in the waiting room, I basically had those long, vivid dreams of mine but wide awake. And it only happened for a minute, I believe. 

I was awake enough to realise a few of my thoughts, first being, I shouldn't have come here today, second being, I hope I don't pee my pants. 

Sadly I was brought back by my husband's voice, Jangan ngada-ngada lah, darah sikit je, and I was almost leaning on his chest when I last remembered sitting upright. Only later on the drive home he said he regretted saying that after he saw how pale my face was, how drained of colour my lips were. I felt better after putting my head between my knees for awhile. 

At one of the red lights on the way home, I called out to him from the passenger seat, Look. And for some reason I started enacting someone about to pass out, with quite a bit of exaggeration. I heard so much pain in his silence before he cried out, See this is why I don't take you seriously! 

Sometimes I imitate the way our kid's eyes roll back when he's falling asleep, and I do it quite often. So yeah I admit, I can see why he thought my passing out at the clinic wasn't real. 

We reached our carpark, and I was about to exit when I noticed the car opposite us that also just parked. The driver had fallen down after leaving their car, and was lying on the ground. I kid you not, my first instinct was to run over and help, but when I saw it was a man I told my husband to do so instead. 

The man laid there for awhile, really looking like he was resigned to his fate, and then I started laughing. My husband told me to stop because we were still in clear view, so I had to look into my phone while my shoulders shook with laughter. 

When I looked back up he was already on his feet, and my husband said, Tak baik seh, orang dah jatuh abih you ketawa. To which I retorted, At least I didn't say Jangan ngada-ngada lah. Think I'm gonna be using this line for awhile now.

So yes, our "spontaneous" trips as a married couple may get lamer through the days but I still had fun. I'm also having fun writing about normal days instead of cryptic posts or past traumas, for the future me to read back and reminisce. 

17. Paris (2021)

 (the playlist)

My wedding day wasn't one of my favourites. You'd feel the same way if you hate having your hair out of your face and a different woman looking back at you in the mirror. I was lucky to be among the few who value the marriage instead, and only when the groomsmen and our photographers left did I feel like myself again. This time, better.

We had to have our honeymoon in singapore, with the borders still not open yet. I couldn't complain, with my everlasting hatred for flights and travels. We spent two nights in a loft hotel and one in a fancy, expensive one in orchard. Both we marveled at, even the loft despite it being significantly smaller. Despite the fancy hotel being walking distance from my own workplace, as if I weren't always in the area.

The first thing we notice when we check in new hotels is the floor we are on. We gasp in pleasant surprise when we realise we're on the highest floor, already excited about the view that is to come. Maybe we take pictures, maybe we share them with lurking eyes or maybe we don't. 

The next place we stayed at was on the 18th floor, and already we wondered about the perspective. Even before seeing the unit for the first time, even before signing our names and taking congratulatory pictures with the property agent. Even before we got our keys to the house and had our impromptu wedding photoshoot in one of the empty rooms.

The view from our new home wasn't much but it was everything. 

At 18, you could see ikea and my old hometown in the distance; you could see our 2017 selves, 22 and lonely on a bus, 24 and free on a newly owned motorcycle. Once ants on the expressway but from our new home, we had a good view of both our past and the future we wanted to build together. The house itself needed some work, furniture to buy and kitchen cabinets to rework.

It was nothing much, but with the right person, it may as well be Paris, it may as well be the whole world. And that was how our honeymoon, though confined to the walls of the country, was extended until now, where he continues to make me laugh, where I continue to hug him from behind. Where our laughter is joined by genuine friends and now, our toddler. Two years honeymoon, and still going.

16. The great war (2020-2021)

(the playlist)

His knuckles were bruised, from the punches he blew all my life. I think the physical abuse stopped somewhere at age 17, but the emotional and mental continued on to my adulthood. 

The war started again the year I was turning 25, two years after finding someone I wanted to marry. The way my father agreed to marry us in front of my partner's parents, but looked down on me behind them. The things he said about me thinking I was so mature, that I'd gotten big-headed since being with this person. 

My mother insisted on a traditional process, which includes a merisik. Something from the olden days, the guy's family comes to the girl's home, knock knock, we'd like to have your daughter as our son's wife. 

My mother insisted on it, my father refused it, and I was caught in between. I didn't want it either, but when the day came, I still wished for him to be around instead of lying about having to work. 

Then circuit breaker happened and the battle was taken underground, behind closed doors. The torment continued, adding on to the migraines I had from screwed body clocks and niblings shouting in the house all day. My father banging things around when I walked into the room, getting up from the dining table when I sat at it, my engagement day when again, he 'had to work'.

Getting engaged was only the beginning, it was a big step forward but it was only getting harder. I know he always saw me as a burden, maybe from the fact that in Islam, as a father he was responsible for my deeds. If so I never understood why he was so angry seeing me change for the better. His words, Dia ingat dia dah ada matair dia dah besar, tattooed on my mind.

After trying to keep silent as long as I could, I finally tore his banners down when I started fighting back. Since he was treating me like an adult daughter not worth respecting, I thought I'd act that way. I was, after all, fighting for a future with someone who actually treated me like a person.

I turned 25 in September 2020 without a single acknowledgement from him. It wasn't my first birthday where he had ignored me, but it would be my last being his responsibility in the name of Islam. Tears on the mental letters I wrote him because deep down, I still felt a little bit sad about it.

The year I was turning 26, the year I was to be married, our father-daughter relationship still didn't improve. It was difficult not having that bond, seeing that as a father, he had to be heavily involved. He continued leaving the rooms I walked in and stopped acknowledging me completely. 

I eventually did the same, bombs coming closer, until Melonsoy happened. He finally remembered I existed, but for the wrong reasons. I turned chairs over and he yelled at me, I didn't know for certain if he would lay a finger on me one last time, but I left the house before I could find out.

I truly commend my partner for the way he helped me through things. Being the middleman between two hot-headed egos. Nobody else could plow through the situation like he did, so patient and firm. The way he drew up good faith treaties for two people adamant on drawing curtains closed instead.

24th of May, 2021, I told myself my parents still hated me nine years after my teenage angst. I walked from paya lebar mrt to my refuge, my grandmother's house, and I finally burst into tears. Tears that were held in from the past several months, the tears for 17yearold me who thought things between us would get better by this time.

19th of June, 2021, I left my house as my father's responsibility for the last time. To my wedding venue, where people braided my hair and put layers of makeup on my face. Masking the restless nights that precede what should have been every girl's happiest day. The flowers in my hands for the life I was about to start.

From the moment my partner said my name in full, from the handshake my father gives him to seal the deal of giving me away. That was the moment I as a burden was lifted off his shoulders, and he finally loved me again. As a wife, I gained a husband and in-laws who treated me like everything. As a daughter, I gained back my father but it was too late to ever be a priority to him anymore. Because in his eyes, I am finally my husband's problem first.

So I know now that in the great war between father and daughter, I never could've won. 

References: playing victim (2020) https://109blackaxesii.blogspot.com/2020/05/playing-victim.html?m=1 

melonsoylia (2021) https://109blackaxesii.blogspot.com/2022/11/melonsoylia.html 

green light of forgiveness (2022) https://109blackaxesii.blogspot.com/2022/09/green-light-of-forgiveness.html

15. Snow on the beach (2021)

(the playlist)

Early morning, with a long road ahead. It's a very particular time of day where I don't have to switch on any lights, but the entire house will be lit up with sun.

It does remind me of certain parts of my life, after long nights of terrors that make me wonder if I'll live to see sunrise each time. 

But the sunlight that comes in each morning; I couldn't have done it without the people who unknowingly opened the windows for me. 

It is the first friend I had in my new workplace, seven years older but a shared sense of humour. It is our similar complaints from our own partners to the common avenues we walk on. It is the way she has inspired me in religion and motherhood even before I embraced either. 

It is the one year older friend I laughed over crossword puzzles with, hiding behind acrylic displays. It is the way we suffered by the same hand, giggling on our knees amid the magazine stacks. It is the comrade I almost saw as a best friend despite the names she called me.

It is the gem of a friend I'd only discover when our departments were forced to merge. It is the way she laughs at my jokes and listens to my rants, it is the way we help each other out on the days it was just us two, and the way she appreciated me every single time. 

All these friends I unknowingly made after telling myself I wouldn't, the conversations in the pantry and hidden behind counters, handwritten letters and drawings of cats and my favourite pokemon that would be pinned onto my corkboard. I saw flecks of these when I first joined this job, but I told myself to ignore them and not to get too close.

But most of all, it is the group who asked if I would join them cycling. I remember standing by the back door of our workplace, punching in the passcode that would bring us to the shopfloor, when I was asked to join them. And that question, taking me by surprise, would change everything.

They gave me new memories on old routes, they took away the skepticism I had from cycling again after many years. The first time we went was at night, and cold bit into me but I was only feeling warmth from the friendship. 

Again, I reminded myself of the past colleagues I saw as sisters who didn't feel the same way about me. More new memories replacing old ones, balancing on train tracks and walking treacherous trails. More tremors that threatened to break the walls I'd built. 

We were playing by the beach on our second cycling trip when I felt that warmth again, seeing them on the swings and taking photos in the ocean breeze. 

Life was abusive, I'd had an awful flight getting there, but I started daring to call them my friends. They weren't just colleagues anymore, and I already knew I was falling. So soft and quiet, I was the only one who noticed the falling of the snow on the beach that blazing day.

14. Question...? (2020)

 (the playlist)

I remember. 

Your hurricane wasn't confined to the country, stemming from your parents' house in johor and sprouting towards the sky. Ivy around my house and the planes that would be your second home. Your rental unit in the neighbourhood I wanted to burn down. I finally wanted to settle for you but you had an underlying sadness. 

By then it had been five years of knowing you. Your handprints imprinted on my soul when you walked me home, singing the songs we played on our phone speakers. Even with the many abandonments and reconciliations it was enough time for you to paint me into the mosaic I was in 2018, that I would never be again. 

Two and a half years later, about a month after I turned 25. Chocolate ice-cream thrown, old friends texted, angmokio waiting. Conversations around a table dripping with condensation from our rounds of iced drinks, and he casually mentioned you. One thing led to another, and I was in the cab after midnight when you texted. 

It was about the money, for a computer whirring to life and a soul being put to death. Some back and forth until you relented when I said, I'm still bearing the emotional cost until today.

I thought it was the end of it but you asked about my family, something exes don't ask each other. You always agreed with your friends that I played victim, yet you always agreed with my writings that I was victim.

How's your grandma, your family scares me, I read your blogposts once in a while, you left an impact on me. And then a picture of your bunny and a video of it doing zoomies. 

I had years-old questions, from fears that fed on my imagination after you left the last time. I thought of all your friends cheering when you said you were single again. I thought of your marsiling girl coming over to your room after another night at the club. I thought of your feelings for a fellow flight attendant that overlapped with our relationship.

I couldn't ask any of them, so I never knew if my thoughts back then were ever true. I don't think it'd be wise to know. The same way your mother would never know the alcohol you serve and the girls you bring home and the sin waiting confused in heaven. Would you ever tell the truth or let your whole life remain a question...?

You'd know.

13. Lavender haze (2019)

(the playlist)

The first part of my new life already started 2018, with a new romance. At that point I was content with the still waters, the same routine of bus 21 and a dead mall on tanjong katong road. 

It was a job that kept me as happy as occupied, maybe from the familiarity. I was enjoying the mix of customer service and putting racks and shelves in order, even in the departments that weren't mine. I thought it was exactly where I was supposed to be.

But the year I was turning 24, things began to change. I'm not sure if it was my outlet's closing down that finally opened my eyes. I'd like to think it was my own indifference that led to its downfall, when I, the one person running things, finally stopped caring. 

I'd applied to my current workplace somewhere in February 2019, and four interviews and less than a month later I got it. I was a little bit proud to be told the position I'd applied for was only for minimum diploma holders, but that they valued my experience. 

People like me would usually be under scrutiny for our lack of education, but I really felt appreciated when mine was glossed over. Also when comparing bookstores, the company I was from is completely different, vibes and clientele. Alot more heartland and rugged. I was pretty sure of already being defined by these things.

I finally tendered somewhere in March, a few days after my grandfather's passing. My outlet was already having its closing sales, and I spent my fourth anniversary of the job overnight, packing products away to be given chances in other branches. 

It was surreal looking at the racks and years of effort stripped down like nothing. The glass windows were burning red from the company poster that stuck on the outside. The length of the entrance was already boarded up, and it was bittersweet seeing the inverted logo and name hanging lonely.

I still had a week left, so they assigned me temporarily in bedok. It did leave a bitter taste in my mouth, to know that I wouldn't 'finally be appreciated' because the colleagues at my old branch didn't have to work in my absence. After four years working so hard and being in love, I didn't even get the mandatory call from hr asking why I was leaving. 

I told myself from the start of my new job not to get too attached, not to get too close and to guard the old me. To stay in my own department and never see my new colleagues as family. I wanted to stay in the lavender haze of my meagre pay and humble position, no matter what people say, and never leave the bubble of the newness. I'd learned from the last time. 

12. Labyrinth (2018)

(the playlist)

From the moment we met, I hardly wrote about him. For the most part I was still hung up on the wrong things and did not believe in my own future, definitely not one with a good guy. But once I was helped out of the years-long tunnel, it was easier letting streetlights shine upon me.

There was where I sat waiting the first time, underneath the dim lights by a Domino's. The least romantic place you could think of, what more with the abundance of ghosts sitting right there, old friends and boys alike.

My bedroom window has view of his block, we'd taken the same feeder bus to school years back, his brother married one of my past best friends' sister. We met for the first time after texting for weeks and living opposite each other for years; and that was how he came to clean the taint that was my life.

I believed wholeheartedly in montages that would never last. I believed the neighbourhood I was living in deserved to burn to the ground for the bittersweet memories given by both family and peers. I believed that the strongest form of love was only for life when you have nothing.

The walk to the beach after sundown, skipping along kerbs and sitting by breakwaters. At the time I felt like it was just a crossover of my new and old lives, that we weren't alone and the ghosts of my past would always be surrounding and following me. 

But the good dominoes already fell into place when he showed up that night, and with it a brighter side of pasir ris. He brought me on a version of the expressway that was less lonely, out in the road with my clothes fluttering and with no choice but to hold on to him. It was the second time I stayed out late, but this time, there was no reason to doubt anything.

He gave me none to doubt or fear, and from the very first night he was always easily making me laugh. Just as well for the other way around, I still think it strange that he finds me funny. He brought me new friends who lifted the dark out of me in their own ways, and he still manages to remain the brightest one.

Of the many things I've said about him, both the bad and the good, this rings the truest: He's everything I never thought I deserved. There was no hesitation to trust him, and he jumped in with me instead of pushing me off first, and that was how I fell in love with someone new after years of hurricanes. 

I always knew my mind was a labyrinth, but it was only when I met him that I knew there was a way out after all.

friendzone

During my recent breakdown I started reading old messages. It became reading old tweets and mentions, then digging up old diaries and now, reading very old blog posts. My past self was very sweet but naive, and she still had long roads to walk and strong currents to swim through. 

Now I'm thinking, I haven't written about something as simple as my day in awhile. Reading my 2011 posts brought me back memories I almost forgot. I'd be damned if I do, seeing as they were the foundation of the person I came to be.

It's been twelve years since the aforementioned posts, of the days in my first parttime job. Almost everything in detail, things that I find myself still laughing about. When did it stop being cool to journal and document your days via writing? I'd be honoured to be one of the flames who keep this alive again.

So here I am now, at the end of a day worth writing about. For someone with traces of social anxiety, I did a good job today. The first step taken was registering for this community event thing, where people in my age group gather to make friends. Something I very much needed during my anti-hero year.

My next obstacle was seeing a friend I haven't seen in ten years. There is still some invisible expectations you hope to meet, that you're still as nice as they remember, maybe better. But somehow it was easy falling back in, maybe from a combination of the old bond and my new outgoingness. 

I kept my friend company for awhile, since we were the first of our assigned tables. After just a little bit catching up, my anxiety already gone, I saw two members of my table arrive. I picked up my food and made some joke about me being accident prone, before walking over to table 7 and saying hello so easily. 

I told them where I live and work, being very careful not to reveal anything weird about me. About my living in the Northeast only recently and having been a pasir ris girl my whole life. One guy was in tech, and the other a civil servant. Add my retail to the mix and we already have three very different people at the table.

After some chatting and our group of three becoming five, we were made to fill in these cards. The guy on my right, the one in tech, he was pondering for awhile and I thought he looked like gurmit singh from his side profile. I told him so, but thank god we got interrupted before he could react. Looking back now I'm not sure if that was considered rude.

So I had to think for quite abit before being happy with my own answers.

I spend my days: daydreaming, writing

2 things I want to learn: 1. How to keep friends 2. Singapore history

2 things people can talk to me about: 1. Anything about themselves 2. Anything about myself

A question I'd like to ask is: Is there a way to have both happiness and identity?

There was some sort of icebreaker, which I thought would make a round and have the spotlight on us one at a time, but thank god it wasn't like that. There was an outline of the Singapore map on the floor, and first we were told to head to a makan place we love.

Honestly I didn't have anywhere to recommend per se, but I went to where I thought pasir ris was, with my mother's house in mind. Everyone seemed to flock to the west, but another girl looked a little lost near me. I told her I think this is pasir ris, and we got to talking very naturally. When she told me she just lived in the block upstairs, I said Oh so that's why you're just wearing slippers. And she laughed so heartedly, the dimple on her left cheek so deep.

Next we were told to go somewhere we want to explore. I went to the North where woodlands was, and I tried explaining to the nearest friends why but I couldn't put it into words. Basically I just see woodlands as an old friend I haven't seen in awhile, and I wish for us to catch up again on our many changes.

I'm surprised I didn't flaunt my northsouth line tattoo at this point.

One of those friends told the rest of us his clementi reason, how he stayed with his aunt since childhood and treated her like his own parent. It resonated with me, but I held back my story. He looked like he hardly talked about it, despite it being a big part of who he is, and I wanted him to have his moment.

The last, we were told to go somewhere we love to hang out in. I went to the central where orchard was, without hesitation, and my tech friend from table 7 exclaimed, Did you really choose your workplace?! I laughed and had to admit that work was one of my favourite places. Then someone beside me told us the magnetic hold that bugis had on him, and I understood what he meant.

We got back to our assigned tables after. I admitted a few things, like the way I enjoy my job unlike many others. I talked about the book I painstakingly wrote and then neglected. I shared the outline of it and the traits of one of the main characters, made a joke like Hmmm I wonder who is she based on. We talked about a post apocalyptic Singapore and the local writing scene, both of which tugged at my heartstrings.

We were given cards with conversation starters on them, but our group didn't seem to have trouble moving things along. We were all so different, jobs and aspirations and places in life, and that was exactly why we had so much to talk about.

One of the cards: What are some of the challenges that are preventing you from what you want to achieve?, something along those lines. And I was the one who had to get the ball rolling. At this point the mp of punggol west decided to sit next to me, telling us to pretend she was invisible. It was still a lot of pressure, but I somehow managed to go through.

I told them about how I really have so much to look forward to and yet I still feel so unfulfilled. Being happily married with a one-year-old son, working in a place I love, knowing what I want to be. These are the things some people wish they could have. And my entire table was single, so I was somewhat steps ahead in terms of these cliche achievements. (But then again I never graduated poly and they're all higher educated, so they're steps ahead of me in that sense.)

Said that the problem really is myself, that the only thing stopping me from finishing my novel and my dreams was me. Then I read out the question I wrote on my own card, Is there a way to have both happiness and identity? Everyone gasped at the question, I tried to relieve the seriousness, but I could see the entire table already pondering about everything themselves. 

After so much conversing, both deep and funny shit, we had to gather one last time with everyone else to share our takeaways of the night. And I learned that I had no reason to panic and get anxious at the thought of being who I am. Nobody is judging, and in a way, everyone sticks out like a sore thumb because we're all just so unique.

I've been having some identity crisis thing lately, feeling very washed-up and faded. Like I'm not very interesting anymore. Motherhood has brought me up in ways, down in others. But now I know, I will always be interesting, the way everyone and everything will always be to me.

I figured that my identity was never at stake after all. That I am still me, 27 versions of myself that have come to be who I am. The 28th version is forming, and I can see that she is made of both the sides of her that have been in constant battle. She is a mother who doesn't have time to write while raising her kid, and because he keeps trying to smack her keyboard; she is also a writer who is inspired by the bruises on her soul and her ghosts that follow her everywhere.

Today was exactly what I needed, laughter over parents pretending to be their babies in Instagram captions; reflections over our places in life and the steps to take next. It's been awhile since I stepped out the triangle that is the two loves of my life and I, and it's okay if you ever need to feel like yourself apart from the people you already love.

11. Midnight rain (2018)

(the playlist)

The year I turned 23 I was lucky enough to find the two nicest guys on a dating app known for notorious fuckboys. Of course this came right after my being unlucky enough to be dumped by yet the same person for the ninth or tenth time. But well. 

Among the many other matches, the first thing these two had in common was the pictures of cats on their profile instead of themselves. The second was the gut instinct I had that neither of them had an ounce of hidden intention. The third was their taking me seriously and choosing to start a friendship despite my dark humour and negativity. 

If you don't know, I would come to marry one of these two. Here's the story of the other, one of the forms of friendship that I somehow managed to find in a place people usually only found rebounds. 

When you've been shipwrecked you will do anything to survive. Some of us prioritise finding a water source, or building fire. Some of us forge weapons to fend off live danger. But we tend to forget also keeping our sanity intact, there being no sign of humanity anywhere. 

When I was marooned, my sanity subconsciously became my priority. I talked to friends both old and new, I had one-sided conversations with my notebooks, my version of stray volleyballs. Somehow they all morphed into one person, a living, breathing human that restarted my life on a Wednesday night. 

He was the very first from the app that I met in person. Late night conversations that made me feel like we'd known each other our whole lives. He became my best friend in that short timespan, somehow knowing me the way nobody else did. Somehow liking me, despite my negativity I thought would only repel.

I will always owe him for understanding me wholeheartedly, and I know he liked me for me, among all the girls in his life. I will always owe him for the dreamcatchers he twined together after I mentioned my constant nightmares. And I will always owe him for leaving him stranded, for being his hurricane after crying to him about mine.

I ended up choosing somebody else, but he will always be the first friend I had at the end of my years-long tunnel. A friend who wasn't an ex's first, a friend who simply accepted and understood. 

The long walk beneath the train tracks, coping forks from a convenience store for the cheesecake he bought. Petting a stray cat in the middle of people's bungalows and unintentionally making him laugh. Driving home, him letting me choose the music and the flow of the conversations. These are the ways he will always be the sunshine I remember him for.

Saying out loud that I didn't see anything worthwhile in life despite his support. Slow replies suddenly one night, he was sick and I was with someone else. All the laughter we shared wiped out with a few swallows of his whiskey. There is no way to replace his last memory of me anymore; I will always be the midnight rain he remembers me for.

kisses [drafts, 15 Jul 19]

They always make it a point to watch how a man treats other people. From waiters to children to their own mother, it doesn't matter how much he spoils you or treats you like a princess. It speaks more than enough if he is unkind to the rest of the world.

I've seen him angry, at strangers blocking our way or stopping suddenly, making us crash into them. I've extracted that anger myself, teasing him to a boiling point. But he has never lashed out at anyone apart from a click of the tongue. He has never retaliated, just closing his eyes and taking a slow, deep breath that is enough for me to get the message.

I have been in his house and out with his parents enough times to see how he treats them. On the first dinner, I watched him lay out serviettes and cutlery for his family. His mother had laughed that he is never like this, suggesting that it was just for show because of me.

When we first met, he told me that his mother is first in his heart, followed by his nephew and his dad. I'd listened to him go on about his nephew but watching them together was a different story. The kid was so shy hiding behind his mother's back, until he ran to his uncle and jumped onto his lap. Even now he is always looking at me wearily, but never hesitates to wrap his arms around him and kiss him.

He is like me, with a general dislike for kids; but it is adorable when he smiles at videos of babies on social media, softening his voice to coo at them. Even with the power his mother and I have, both of our pleading isn't enough to make him stop smoking, so him mentioning that he will give it up after having a kid is a big deal. It just melts my heart to hear how much he wants his own.

But what makes the wonder is how he has changed me. Before, I would grumble and groan when my mum asks a simple task of me. Before, I would never glance twice at a child even if one was staring me right in the face.

Somehow amidst my hatred for people, I chose the son who kisses his parents on the cheek, who makes funny faces at kids and smothers his nephew with pecks.

Happy first

 A year ago I was screaming and begging for my life to meet you.

Maybe I still am, internally, but there's nobody coaxing or helping me this time. I give myself laughing gas trying to take my mind off the blinding pain, but it still goes through. You're out of me, but I'm still out of it.

I've been in this dark place many times before. From losing a years-long relationship, a couple boxed drinks, a soul way younger than you. I'm familiar with the fire and my mind engulfing each other, me in the process. 

These aren't things I want to tell you, be it now or twenty years down the road. This isn't the side of me I want you to read about. But why would I keep the truth from you? Maybe you'd be the kind to romanticise your mother's struggles for the hell of it.

You'd tell your peers about the wars your parents have fought, joke about their exaggerated trails to school. You'd post pictures of us from the roaring 20s, not a trace of the wrinkles and silver hair. And I'll just be the background in your arc. 

For you to arrive to that point, I need to pull myself together first. I've already lost more than a month with you, breaking down and pining for things that are not your fault. I have to be the one to hold you while you take your first steps, lead you onto the many paths life shows you. Because at the end of it all, I want to be your best person, even when I'm at my worst.

So here my happiness and identity are at loggerheads, the latter being what led me to this very moment of mine. But I have to leave it behind and choose you now, my source of the former. Happy first birthday, and happiness first. You first. I will give you the childhood and youth I am owed, I will give you what I'll never be paid back. 

// foreshadowing 2020

In which I read back some old diary entries, nearly three years ago now, foreshadowing how I feel today.

17 06 20 // 11:30PM

It's been a long time since I've written in that I can't even remember how I used to write my dates. No slashes. Definitely no slashes.

Actually I'd started in yet another notebook in mid-2019 but it was left abandoned after a few pages. It's what happens when I don't practise much. Or when I stop making the effort to sit at a cafe with nothing but music and the thoughts in my head. Or maybe it's just what happens when you're finally happy.

I have a diamond ring on my left finger as I write this. That's how long I've been away and perhaps how far I've come. I'm still the same person who sees love in railway and hope in butterflies, yet I am infinitely different. I look how far I've come, and at the same time wonder about the other two roads.

I wonder how my 22-year-old self thinks things would be today, and what the future me would see in me when one looks back. But at the moment, I am alive and content. A few tiny concerns and some anxiety left, but nothing I can't go through. I have made worse decisions and walked rougher roads.

05 08 20 // 10:53PM

Always had the dilemma of suicide by what you love, or what you fear. While sympathy floated all around me for the two railway staff who got knocked down by an incoming train, all I had was jealousy. That was how I wanted to go. Well, that or drowning. Until now it's a decision to make.

But I always had a hidden fear. The fear of being someone else, of blending in. I do not want to be genetically modified... someone who doesn't stand out. I do not want to change the person I took a lifetime to be. To accept. The first time I voiced it out, it went out the car when his mother opened the door suddenly, asking if I could squeeze in the back instead.

The second time I expressed it was in type. I could not see his reaction and he did not offer any either. Not even the next morning, everything of yesterday basically forgotten. Until the third time, months later, when my expressions finally came accompanied with tears.

I do not want to be someone I'm not. The day I blend in will be the day I die, my past and art and metaphors seeping out of me. I do not want to be prim and proper, to wear clothes I am not comfortable with, to say sensible things. I want to always be the strange artist that I am, never shy to express any differences.

13 09 20 // 1:24PM

Why do people pretend to like rain so much, when it is our version of winter? Cold, dark, reminiscent of the worst of our time. Then again, on the equivalent of summer, the strangers show off their 'sun-kissed' skin to disguise the hatred for the heat, conveniently shown all over the other side of their pages.

I don't pretend. I don't mask my hatred and annoyance of the rain, from the splatter of droplets hitting my face to the sudden flash of lightning, reminiscent of photographs taken without my permission. I don't pretend to like the cold, rising my goosebumps and the puddles that obscure my usual routes, forcing me to find new ways to walk paths that should be familiar.

I don't have my balance, and no matter where I walk my steps are masked by mud and drowned by raindrops. Drops that once flourished, from the moment they leave their clouds of comfort to their demise on the sidewalk. Where they meet their fate of soaking my shoes. 

Where else am I supposed to rest or call solace when the light of my bedroom is louder than the buzzing in my head, a feat I thought impossible. A family and other half I once thought I could belong in, revealing their true motives of blending me into the rest of the nieces and wives? With headscarves and outfits that scream no personality despite what they try to portray?

I don't want to blend in with the lovers of rain and a god I don't quite believe in. I do not want to exist for anyone but myself even if I'm the harshest critic of me. I want to revel in my worst, from my hatred of normal people to my lowball dark humour, I want to sit on my throne of the worst years of my time on earth, not of motherhood and the automatic blessings of submitting myself to a husband and his god.

A loose thread

It's already been more than a month since my unraveling started. I've always had a few loose threads but they only started getting pulled when I found out early March, my dad had thrown away many of my old room possessions.

The thing that made me most shocked were the dreamcatchers an old friend had painstakingly handmade for me. This bad-dreams thing has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. But nobody had ever come close to even thinking of making or buying one for me. Not even myself.

And this friend, who isn't on social media; I never knew if he is still alive and well. When I started pulling this thread I read back old conversations and remembered the way I had left him hanging, the way our friendship was so important to me and I only made it last less than a month. 

I do believe everything is connected, so all my emotions from then are more than the throwing of dreamcatchers. I started thinking about the personality that had reeled my husband in back then, the dark sense of humour and slight eccentricity. The way I think I do not have either anymore. 

It sent me further downwards, forcing myself to starve and down caffeine every chance I could. I forced myself to read old posts and listen to old favourite songs in a desperate attempt to get my old mind back. At home I hid our kitchen knives, I was reaching the point of wanting to cut myself open, hoping I still bled ink like the writer I want to be. 

Where was my husband in all this? He laid beside me in bed, his snoring not as loud as the returning voices in my head. I did find out a long time ago that having somebody to fall back into doesn't make you immune to depression. I still hit rock bottom despite having somebody doing everything he could to prevent it. 

And in the past month, there have been instances I think that is one of the problems. In the past, loneliness was a big part of my personality. It was the loneliness that sat me down to count trains and pick moths up with my bare finger, that made me skip to work and always show up even with migraines and eyepatches. 

It was the hatred for the world and everyone in it that made me read lists of most gruesome deaths and profile myself if I was a serial killer. It was the lack of exterior emotion that identified me as an android and that made my smiles more rare and valuable.

I feel nothing special anymore. I don't spend time alone anymore and I don't write well on the good days. The trains I take now are underground and I am in cars more often than public transport. When I take down customers' names on enquiry forms, my hand shakes like I'm still learning how to write.

Where have all the flowers gone? Is there really no way to have both happiness and identity? 

Maybe I've been wondering this deep down but only the loss of my past possessions pulled and pulled and pulled until I am left naked. 

10. Maroon (2018)

 (the playlist)

maroon /məˈruːn/

adjective: of a brownish-red colour

I'm audibly sighing while staring at this blank page. From the moment we met I've written about nothing but you and the trails you've left behind. I was your fire going mad but you were always my gasoline. What more can I say about you now? 

After your thirteen missed calls I thought your arc was over. No wait, after I moved on when you broke up with me in April 2017, I thought your arc was over. No, wait. After I moved on when you broke up with me in June 2014... No, wait, after I moved on when you broke up with me in January 2014...?

Your story was getting old, but I always found a way to bring you back. As if our relationship was a timeless piece of clothing instead of its stains.

I may have been smart enough to close the door on you the last time, but not enough. It didn't stop me from leaving the room myself every other day, looking for you, talking to you. My feelings for you sat on a spectrum, floating around on good days.

After five years of breaking and reconciling again and again, things get old and colours start to fade. What started out bright red will wash out and rust eventually, no matter how hard we try to prevent it. And after a while we really weren't trying at all. 

I saw bright red walking home from Ikea, carrying new pillows and trashcans for the room you started renting. I saw maroon in the fact that you now lived in the very place I hated after having been separate entities. I saw bright red in the time we could now spend together without you having to rush home through customs; maroon whenever you chose your friends over me instead. 

Red in the night we went drinking just the two of us; maroon in the night we drank with your new friends in City Hall. Red in the time you joined my family for dinner on Good Friday and maroon in the way you had decided that you never want to have anything to do with them. 

Red: the way you waited with me while I was watching out for a snail on the cycling lane. Maroon: the conversation you had with your mother when she called. 

There was a part of me that still thought I only deserved someone on the same level of poisonous. But I'd be lying if I say I didn't have love for you at all. I was at constant battle with both sides of our past, and I wasn't selfless enough to not let it affect you.

You made the choice for us again and finally left for good. For someone who had gone through the same copy of heartbreak like nine times already, I still didn't react well right off the bat. The feeling of suddenly waking up and not having the same person to text anymore; you will always feel confused and lost.

maroon /məˈruːn

noun: leave (someone) trapped and alone in an inaccessible place, especially an island

9. Karma (2017)

 (the playlist)

As a famous songwriter once said: I didn't have it in myself to go with grace. That was why, in all my glory and the universe in my head, I was begging on my knees for a measly gust. Me in early 2017, the year I turned 22, the sixth or seventh breakup by the same hand. 

I had believed wholeheartedly that we were meant for each other, despite the rift I personally put between us. I truly believed there was nobody else for me but someone equally toxic, so beg I did. Every single time. And every single time he walked away, I made knives of his footprints and plunged them into my own chest. 

Of course as time went by those very knives turned into medals I wore with pride. I didn't have to drag my feet to work, played cards with my colleagues at fast food restaurants and barrages. I ignored our 2016 ghosts on my train rides and went to piers with pilots. I held my chin up high when he walked past with his school friends. I found my identity while sticking out like a sore thumb among my cousins.

While I was picking up my own pieces, he was breaking into his. He was trying to commit to the reason he gave when he last left, you remember; the dating experience. He was getting what he wanted, but it wasn't enough, while I somehow made the mess a nice place to live in.

Only three months later, I would get thirteen missed calls from him in the middle of the night. He would send me dozens of messages on instagram after blocking me everywhere, pleading the same things I did when he was leaving. 

This fed my already growing ego, even though I really didn't expect it to happen again. He did practically do the same back three years prior, bouncing back into my life each time he left me stranded. I thought it was time karma strike him instead, that I was finally the one to close the door. 

8. Glitch (2017)

(the playlist) 

The further along we go, the more i realise some feelings aren't felt the same way anymore, if any. It's always been easy traveling through time to find something old to mourn about, to extract and put into new words. You just need music, an old diary entry, a memory brought back to life.

At times it's something to laugh about, at times it becomes regret along the years. And sometimes it's a fleeting moment you're still in disbelief that you caught. 

Mine happened in the june before I turned 22. Someone I'd had feelings for again and again but never got to hold, a dreaded white rose. A phone call under the guise of someone else's behalf became catching up over texts became waiting for him by a wall in novena. He brought down his bag in the crowd of the train, he ordered us pizza to pickup, we laughed over Google translating "lima suku" into 5:15. 

Someone boarded the train with dark glasses and a walking stick, and the station usher called out by the doors for a seat. He talked about the hurricane I knew and his new girl, and I nodded like it didn't break me just a little bit. 

I think he told me about the first time he saw the new trains, about how he thought their flat faces looked abit cute. About how he had never seen them that way and how I was always the person he thought of when seeing any. A thousand little moments that would become my favourite night of the year. 

New memories at an old station; in 2014 it was a staircase hug that threatened my heart to explode. In 2016 it was his twentieth, koi at the bus stop and train depots outside the window. June 2017 it was a hill at the top of the world, I felt like, while the rest of it was sleeping. 

I told him how apart from a rose he was always a moon to me. The way he comes and goes as he pleases like the phases of the moon, the way he sometimes disappears altogether. That night he was full, right next to me, like the one we watched rise throughout the sky. 

I think he'd stayed almost nine hours with me, a once impossible idea. What made it more unbelievable was, for that one night, he was completely mine to touch. Nobody else knew how alive I felt, if I even was. 

And I wish he had kept me a secret; such a contradiction to all the times I'd had to beg my partners to show off pictures of us. I wish he had kept that night between us instead of telling the last person I wanted to know, before disappearing on me altogether. Maybe I hadn't touched him in the way I had hoped after all, just a plaything.

So now I look back to that night, forcibly, just to write this. And I've convinced myself it was all in my mind, no proof of its existence apart from a stagnant playlist. The leftover pizzas have rotted, the coffee flavour we drank are not in production anymore, the tshirt I'd been wearing somewhere in the landfill. All a figment of my mind, all just a glitch in the world I'd typed up. 

7. High infidelity (2016-2017)

 (the playlist)

I've never been shy with my feelings. If I like someone or something, may the whole world know. I was however, really good at twisting them around to hide the truth. Always to the point of breaking, if not me, someone close to me. 

The excessive writing started again sometime after I turned 21. That's what happens when you feel like the whole world is against you. When the people from your schools are fine without you, graduation pictures. When the colleagues you see as sisters don't need you outside work, conversations in the language you don't speak.

I fed the insecurity that came from all the girls on social media and the friends of his who never liked me. I kept it like a pet and gave it our good memories to eat. I grasped onto a rose so tightly I never noticed the thorns making all of us bleed. 

Only years after I was doing it I learned the term emotionally cheating. There is no better way to describe the too-deep bond I shared with someone other than my own partner. It might have been different if it was a girl. Maybe it might even be different if it was any guy in the world other than his own best friend. 

But it's still true that nobody else understood me and put up with me the way a certain friend of a boyfriend did. It was still my year of Ugly and Lonely despite everything else. When you've been desperate for any form of validation and you find some in the deepest, dirtiest of friendships, you take it.

I already knew he was leaving again; the voices in my head told me so. But I never knew why I couldn't have left first, always having been one step ahead. Always waiting until his dust suffocated me first, and even then, worshiping the ground he had walked away on.  

I had reasons to leave. From the cruel words he spoke to the rift growing between us like a flower. Maybe I just had too much delusional love for him and none for myself, and in the end it destroyed three separate parties. Four, if you want to count what we did the previous year. 

He listened to my favourite songs and read all my posts, and I kept tally of it. The same way I kept tally of the few things I did for him, using them to justify the high infidelity that would come to be my third tattoo.

Marinate

Is anything ever random? It's hard to believe in non-methodical happenings. Not when you have almost a religious belief in long trains of events and thoughts. Not when you believe everything is connected, like soulmates through invisible strings and adult personalities through childhoods. 

This very spot I stand in, this very moment I breathe in, everything has led to this. I'm just sitting alone in a cliche coffee chain but it's enough to do me in. The parallels to my past, a Wednesday night in buona vista almost five years ago.

The throwing of dreamcatchers led to reading old messages led to realising the way I had hurt him. Led me here, simply wishing I have my good friend back. The friendship already hit its highs and lows in a short month, and I wish I'd soaked in its average longer. Late night conversations and sharing favourites and revealing pasts. 

I wish I was still nervously waiting for him, and we will ritually take a sip whenever the conversation lulled into silence. I wish I was still there by paya lebar counting trains, and he will ask Why are you doing this? I wish we are staying up all night talking again and I will say, I trust you now.

I wish I was still waiting beneath the tracks and we will walk beneath them to his neighbourhood, stopping to pet any cats along the way. I wish we were eating cheesecake in view of the tracks, and he will drive me home by a deliberately further route. 

It was all this happenstance that brought me to tears on a monday in orchard, and I can't help but to think now of where I would be if I had given it a chance. If it might have been enough to prevent me from feeling this way right here, right now.

Backstroke

Dizzy. I can't believe I still have some bits of me left to unravel like this. It's like picking at old scabs and pinching pieces of cord left on the bed. On the surface it's me inviting old habits back. Refusing to eat, listening to old songs, downing caffeine all day and night, like a cliche drinking problem. 

It's not like anyone has hurt me lately. I still have the life I always wanted, a self made family in our own home. A job I still enjoy, dominoes falling or not. I'm not with someone who makes me doubt everything and I have enough friends to call my own. What's the problem this time?

You don't need drugs to get high when you have enough emotions and memories to bring you there. Despite all this weight on my shoulders and chest, sometimes I'm floating in an endlessness, pictures of my past like clouds. Sometimes I don't realise when sky becomes ocean, promising to engulf me if I'm not careful.

I haven't gone to swim in a very long time, but I remember the feeling of water in your ears. I remember the distorted sounds traveling through the pool, very much like the montage of my life that has played me to death the past week. I remember almost drowning when I was seven, and I'm convinced the water from then is still in my lungs somehow.

So how do i know whether it's safe enough to float or to swim for my life? With the bad memories that comfort and the good times that hurt? My chin is tilted but how do I know if it's to the right direction? Backstroke; I'm breathing easier, but I can't see where I'm going. 

6. Anti-hero (2016)

 (the playlist)

A few months before Taylor released a music video with her selves throughout her career, I myself had been sitting on my own throne of past lives. Her album Red came out a few months after I started calling my heartbreaker Red, and her album of second chance love came out the same year a boy returned to me time and time again. 

My point is, her music always come at the right time for me. Why do you think I'm revolving my blog posts around her songs now? But sometimes it goes deeper than just a song to relate to. Sometimes it feels like she wrote these lyrics for you, knowing you're not talented to do so yourself. 

The year I turned 21 was supposed to be fun, and maybe it was to a certain extent. I was working with people who were more sisters than colleagues, my relationship lasted the whole year, no big family arguments that I can remember. 

Took a trip to Bali with my family, found new songs on Spotify, rediscovered my love of making little videos. Fetched my boyfriend from work every off day, friends with his friends and the only tears I shed were for the characters I read about. I was already living like I hadn't just killed an innocent life the year before. So what else was wrong?

This song may have come six years too late, but I still remember the resonating feelings. It was the loneliness that came on the trips home after work, after sending him off on bus 950. It was having no friends of my own and seeing the girls from secondary school being fine without me. It was the solitary ride after a day visiting the homes of his secondary school friends. 

It was the feeling of towering over everyone just by being taller than the average Singaporean girl. It was the feeling of being an entirely different species just by being born a different year, by being the only one working full-time, by being the only one who hated rain and loved the sun. 

Staring at the sun head-on was so much easier than looking at myself in the mirror. The front teeth and sparse eyebrows so blinding, shining over the bit of love he had for me. The whispers from his friends and the voices in my head, preparing me for the time he would leave again. 

Now I'm her reflection in the mirror, stuck in 2023 and looking out at 2016, wishing I could tell her she's alright the way she is. Wishing I could hold her gaze and tell her only seven years later, non-conformities will be celebrated. Wishing I could tell her she was never the villain in anyone's story and merely the unfortunate anti-hero. 

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)

4. Would've could've should've (2014)

(the playlist)

Some debris turned out to be gems in disguise, like friends made in unlikely places. While others turned out to be sharp-edged wreckage forcing themselves through the windshield of my car. 

Maybe it was my fault for having driven down that road. For getting into a car and letting the wrong parts of myself take control of it. My fault for even getting a driving licence in the first place.

At 19, for someone who played Victim alot, nothing stopped me from drinking with minors, kissing ex-schoolmates and ex's schoolmates on staircases. But I think I still had an ounce of sanity left, or the worse that was to come would have happened so much earlier. 

For someone who thrives on making and keeping mistakes like trophies, there is one I wish I hadn't made and never want to again. 

I met the devil again in the form of a long-haired ite student with piercings and a piercing glare. The same taste in music as my old self, the same rage, only he wasn't shy to spark his fuse on anyone. In other words, someone I would have avoided entirely if it wasn't for his invitation to dance.

The thing is, we all knew he was already occupied by a months-long dancing partner, someone on equal grounds as him. Everyone applauded them as a pair, so perfect for each other in their clothes, music, and glares. The gap between her front teeth and the voice notes of her singing. Everyone loved her, and by extension, they loved the devil. 

It's hard to revisit, for someone who keeps traveling through time to look for something to write about. The feeling of shame somehow outweighs the major pains of 2015, 2017, 2021. But when I stumble upon a certain station or a certain perfume wafts into my nose by accident, I threaten to unravel.

The tickling in my baju kurung, the kissing at the back of the bus; the movements beneath the blanket and hands beneath my clothes by the viewing plaza; the pulling of my arm back into his house and the locking of his legs around my torso. All this, while the girls before and after me were already intertwining with us. 

It's hard to write about, but sometimes it's the only way to let go. And for all the things I've been through, from my father's and older brother's physical abuse to my ex's emotional, for my own murdering of a life; this is the one I deem worthy of the name devil. The one who's shattered my morals and brought shame upon someone with skin so rubbery thick.

Next: 5. Bigger than the whole sky (2015)

dreams, landfill. landfill, dreams.

I've cried in the bathroom of my parents' house over a toothbrush once, and then over boxed drinks. Both times over things that could be replaced, both times badly wanting to die jumping off the ninth floor. If someone else reacted the same over something trivial on the surface, I wouldn't understand. 

But look deeper and it becomes something else. A missing toothbrush becomes all the times your mother threw your tubs of ice-cream and your water bottle, justifying her claims why you didn't need them anymore. The boxed drinks become your parents defending your older brother to death, convincing yourself they still would if he ever brought you to yours.

This time my turmoil revolves around dusty dreamcatchers that I haven't had the chance to collect since moving out. They become the way my brother's room is left untouched more than two years since he moved out. They become a Friends episode where the younger sister's childhood things are destroyed by a father's choice, a father's subconscious biasness. 

Why didn't I pluck them off the wall when I was packing my things before I left? Why didn't I text the same thing to my father when I told my younger brother I'm picking them up the next time I come over? Why didn't I know that my father would start spring-cleaning out of nowhere on hospital leave, recovering from his surgery? 

I was clutching my chest so hard, feeling it tighten when I saw the bare wall above my old bed. My husband had just prayed in the room, my son was sleeping on the floor in the living room, my parents were treating me nicer. Four reasons why those dreamcatchers shouldn't mean a thing to me anymore.

What else do I do, over something so meaningful? Something nobody else ever did for me or had the thought, despite bad dreams being a big part of my personality for as long as I can remember. Painstakingly handmade, unprompted, by someone I can't talk to anymore, someone not on social media, someone whose pictures I never took?

So many people to blame, so many components to be mad about. As I write this I shed the first tears for my lost everything, for my dreamcatchers, for all the dreams that are on the way to the landfill. What exactly do I cry for now? My whole life. The freedom-loneliness that only comes after a bad breakup, a friend that will never see me the same way again, a husband who doesn't do things for me unprompted, a changed childhood bedroom and lost fatherly love.

The first time

Ever since my first full-time job I've had the luxury of liking work so much that it became more than a second home, it became a safe haven. 

But I've also had a healthy amount of unrelated emotional turmoil at work. Someone passed away or someone stole my money or someone broke up with me, or someone broke up with me again. I would cry my eyes out before punching my timecard and my agony out of the orbit.

Before you; crying on the bus rides home, crying on the bench outside the store. Before marriage; crying in the toilet cubicle when my uncle passed away. Crying with my head in my locker after text arguments with my father, and crying by the smoking area when I saw something in my room that morning that made me not want to go home.

Despite all these workplace tears over the years, it was always too easy to collect myself and continue smiling to customers and colleagues alike. To continue shelving and finding racks to rearrange and listen to different colleagues complaining about each other. I just never would've thought you'd be the reason for any of my distress. 

It's my second time wishing I was dead since we were married, and I wish the reason wasn't you. I wish your voice wasn't the weight on my mind that slowed me down while doing one of the few things I love.

I'll have you know you sounded exactly like my older brother when you screamed at me. It was the exact same voice he used before he threw punches, all left to complete the scene was for my life to flash before me. And the more I explained myself, the hotter your blood boiled apparently.

Was that split second of anger worth it, all because I "embarrassed" you in front of your friends, for telling you not to curse around your son who is now learning to speak? Then why don't you scream at me when I post stupid pictures of you, or when I'm the butt of the joke, or when I'm squatting on kerbs talking to cats? Aren't I embarrassing you then too?

And I can't forgive you yet, for the way you had screamed once, taken a second, and then screamed again, louder. Making our son cry, right after we'd had the conversation about babies understanding emotion. Even if I can forgive you for shouting at me despite knowing my hatred of loud noises, can I ever forgive you for scaring our ten-month-old before he should know what fear is?

3. Vigilante shit (2014)

(the playlist)

The fun was fun while it lasted. Then Jurong East hit like a meteorite and I started making friends with its debris. 

First I went back to Pasir Ris after more than a year, stayed up late to avoid being asleep during the witching hour. Having conversations late into the night with any mutual who was also awake. Texts in the middle of classes I would come to regularly skip, with the other stragglers who had to repeat modules with me. I pierced my ear twice more and then my septum, trying to prove something to someone.

I went from drinking alone on waterfronts to drinking on carpark rooftops with people I was meeting for the first time. Infiltrated a years-long relationship, but the girl evened it out by naming me anorexic, and we formed an unlikely friendship. And I taught her how to live without him the way I'd learned the hard way to live without mine. We both have children now, with people we met long after.

Casually became friends with an ex's friends from all walks of his life. I fell in love with his best friend and then with an ex-schoolmate he never liked. Then I walked down his school halls and made myself comfortable in his second home, plainclothes among the uniforms. 

I became close friends with the one who called himself rebel, exploring his hometown, watching movies and beach walks in mine. Long online conversations with a Brit-Thai, about anything and everything except our one mutual. Unintentionally continued existing on the timeline of someone who would rather forget me, wondering why I wasn't still at the spot he had left me.

All this innocent and vigilante shit in colours I hadn't worn, colours sharp enough to blind men. All while hiding behind memories that will remain crystal clear nine years later. 

Next: 4. Would've could've should've (2014)

2. Bejeweled (2013)

(the playlist)

Have you seen these two houses side by side, emitting different aesthetics? One painted completely black, and the one beside it in an obnoxious pink and purple? That's exactly how I see the transition from my 17 to 18. From black hoodies and that terrible one-eyed fringe, to pink cardigans and hair pushed back. You could say I polished up kind of nice.

I really snatched the chance to start anew, unknowingly. Wrote my aunt's address on application forms for school and parttime jobs. A school on the other side of the country I was suddenly turning heads in. A text to my friend, "the girl beside you is pretty", messages from module classmates, "you don't have to glare at me to get my attention". All this whilst having a boyfriend I had too much fun putting in the back room sometimes.

Even my music went from dark bands I pretended to like, to anything on the radio in the bakery I'd worked at. Enough to influence my outlook on the days, so comfortable in school presentations and so driven in parttime holiday jobs. Scoured thrift stores for clothes I hadn't worn before. Scoured friends for things I hadn't done before.

Not bad for someone who'd just got kicked out of the house and was living among junk. Not bad for someone with social anxiety and whose classmates she'd chosen to stay overnight with went back to seeing her as the weird girl.

Saying the words "I live in Paya Lebar" did feel strange, an unfamiliar taste on the tongue. And there were weights on my shoulders the few times I visited my hometown to see the very friends I ignored just the year before. 18 was practically the peak of my youth, and I truly deserved that bejeweled year the same way I deserved the cursed year after.

Next: 3. Vigilante shit (2014)