Goodbye, Goodnight.

One day you will realise that the infallible will fail you. And when that one day comes, you will want to burrow deeper into the depths of your duvets and never ever emerge again.

Happy Sunday to you.

Fighting Battles

It feels a little lonely tonight. Just a little. Maybe the air is two and a half degrees too cold and the night sky four shades too dark. Maybe its six and a quarter decibels too quiet and three minutes too fast. Maybe there are no reasons to why I happen to feel alone tonight, just like how there are no reasons to why I shouldn’t.

I have somehow or rather accepted the fact that I won’t be getting any sleep tonight, and I still don’t get why I’m still trying so hard. I am desperate to leave this mess , and this desperation seems to escalate with every case I am forced to dissect and every word I am forced to burn into memory. I am lesser of who I am, and more of who they want me to be. I don’t try anymore, I don’t fight.  I have possibly given up on most of the things that I thought were extremely important to me, but now seem to be of no value to anyone, or anything here. I am desperate to leave and to reclaim the things I have lost. I am desperate to leave, but afraid that this mess extends further than what seems to be.

Sometimes people will make you feel worthless. They will make you feel like you’ve been relegated to the bottom of the food chain. And for 6 weeks now, I’ve been swimming around like krill, my sole purpose of existence to fill the bottomless, souless bellies of these whales that surround me every single day. And for 6 weeks now, I have failed to retaliate. But soon you will realize that, when cornered, desperate people can achieve even the most unbelievable feats. And right now, this is me.

I am messed up, I admit that. I have no solid plans for what lies ahead, neither do I have any plans for now. I am about to throw away what seems to be a blindingly bright future and walk the unknown path in the search for happiness. I am not sure if it even exists, or if its too elusive to belong to someone like me, but unhappiness is something you should never get accustomed to. Happiness may not exist, but you should never stop searching for it. And if in this course of forage brings broken noses and scraped knees, count me in. There is never a losing battle, because every time you put up a fight, you’ve already won.

Hungry For More

I’m starving. Logically I know I am. I can feel my stomach clawing for food, I can hear my head telling me to fucking eat something, but I can’t.

The empty space has become my best friend. Everywhere I go, I know I have company. It fills up the voids between our conversations and it plants itself in the gaps between us on the couch. Sometimes, when I feel like I am truly alone, it creeps along the edges of my feet, tickling the very tip of my toes like a salutation from a friend that never leaves, a compellation from an enemy that never goes.

I cannot feed myself, because I am feeding it too-this emptiness that seems to grow every single day. In good moments, it cowers away in fear, its normal composed disposition undulated by the positivity of my laughter, the warmth of my toothy grin. In others, it consumes me from the inside out, like a fetus trying to break free from the restrains of what used to keep it alive, like a predator discarding its carcass after a full meal. I am its full meal. My good thoughts, my better thoughts, my sanity, they have all fallen prey, willingly. But there is beauty in this distress, not unlike how there is always beauty in death, in burial. There is beauty in this course of putrefaction because there is weightlessness in being empty. Hate rushes past you, jealousy walks through you, anger dissolves within you and sadness evaporates around you. And love, love leaves you. The love we spend our whole life seeking and hating leaves you, because it can no longer manifest within your warm body of soul. You are barren land, and love happens to be the crop. Dearth and famine replace the empty space as your new best friend and you will be hungry. You will always be hungry.

I am starving. Every piece of my soul is breaking from the hunger and I want to eat. I want to feed myself until the throbbing goes away, until the hole in my chest is filled. But this is a hunger you can never quell, this is a hunger that will never wane. Because it only grows stronger with every bite.

Death Shall Not Part Us

“You know I’ll always love you right my unicorn? I have to go now, but I will always love you.” Your warmth was leaving me, as was your scent. I clawed at you desperately, my fists making little balled clenches around the fabric of your shirt. “But I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here with me. Please?” I felt hope, joy and happiness slowly crawl their way out of my life. You were leaving me, and they were bent on guiding your course. Despair seeped out from the corners of my eyes, stained my cheeks and soothed my burning skin, as though mocking my naivety for trying to bridge the distance between life and death. “Baby please. Baby please don’t go. I won’t make it without you. Baby please please please stay here with me. Please.” What was a well formed argument aimed at trying to keep you here had become nothing but a string of hopeless pleas. My thighs were next to yours, my hands on your shoulders around your neck and I, the entirety of I was placed upon you. The weight of me, placed upon the firmness of yours. Just like we had been this morning.

You looked so calm, so serene. On your face was the same smile I loved so much, on your cheeks the dimples in which I lost myself. Nothing had changed. You were here with me. Everything that happened was nothing but a bad dream. You were here with me. So was your touch, your breath, your scent and your heartbeat. “I have to go now baby. But I will always be here for you. Always and forever remember?” You reached across the little distance between us and placed a warm palm firmly against my chest. “I have to return you this for the time being. I ‘ll see you soon alright? Keep it safe for me? I’m sorry I couldn’t let you keep mine for longer. But I promise to let you steal it back when I see you again. For now, take this.” Then, I realized my heart was beating again. “But I don’t want my heart, I want yours! Don’t go please. Stay with me.” This was a battle I couldn’t lose. When it came to you, I never settled for less. I never gave in. “I have to go now dear, but I’ll see you soon. I will always love you. Always and forever right?”

Dealing with loss is never easy. Your lingering scent on my pillowcase, your clothes in that little compartment I gave you in my closet. Trying to remove you from my life was like trying to remove a sticky price label from a clear surface. No matter how hard you tried, some of it remained. You had grown and manifested yourself in my life like a parasitic organism. You left yourself in my milk cartons, in my candy jars and breakfast toasts. You left yourself in my thoughts, my words, my memories and my love. You were always with me-in the air I learnt to grasp thinking it was your hands, in the corners of pillows where I would leave kisses, thinking it were your cheeks, in the clothes I learnt to wear, thinking it were your hands around my waist. Every day, I miss you. So much more than I can bear. But I have also been enlightened to the fact that every day, you are there with me, that you will always love me, even if death separates us. Always and forever.

Inspired by a dream I can now only vaguely remember, in which words uttered hit me like a particularly harsh November rain-painful but oddly comforting. I hope you never die, but everyone does. I hope you never die, and live on infinitely.

Blurb: Not Today.

Today, I feel vulnerable.

Today, I feel like the light shines right through me, baring all my flaws. Today, I feel as though the stranger walking outside my door can see right past the wooden gates and into my crooked soul. Today, I feel as though every strand of my hair is out of place, and that every breath I take is an abomination to this world.

Today I feel small.

Today, you could hurt me with the delicate touch of a feather. Today, you could hurt me with the melodious ring of your laughter. Today, you could hurt me with the warmth of your love. Today, you could hurt me. Today, you would hurt me.

Today, I am not the girl who breaks down walls. Today, I build them.

Too Close For Comfort

Sometimes I wish everything were easier. That toothpaste magically capped themselves back after use and that tissue boxes never emptied. Sometimes I wish everything were easier. That hearts didn’t get broken and friendships never faded away. Sometimes I wish everything were easier. Maybe sometimes, more than sometimes. Every moment, I wish things got easier.

I can still hear the familiar tone of your laughter reverberating in my ear. The high pitched, semi laugh-semi giggle that erupts from your tiny frame whenever you’re amused. I remember how you used to lie on my shoulder and tell me your darkest secrets, as though my reputation as the class loud mouth were nothing but a lie, and that you were able to see through the layers of my shell and into my loyal tightlipped core. There is a photo of us on the corkboard hanging on my wall. The one where our hair was still short and your head was so close to mine we could pass of as Siamese twins. The one where we were both lying on the table, the one where we were both smiling like we had everything we wanted in the world right next to us. The one where we were actually happy together.

But like to every happy thing that happens in life, something happened. Oh wait. I’m wrong. Nothing happened. There was no spark between us anymore. For some reason, you stopped running to me with the latest gossip, murmuring excitedly about so-and-so who was attached to so-and-so.  For some reason, you stopped exchanging you-know-what-I’m-thinking glances with me when our gawdy looking literature teacher walked into the classroom. For some reason, you stopped wanting to curl up by my side and lay quietly as though my breaths were your favourite melody and my shampoo your favourite scent.

I miss you. I miss the way I was unguarded when I was your friend. The way I can probably never be now. I wish things could go back to the way they were, I wish we never grew up. I wish things could be so much easier such that when I look at your Twitter timeline, I could will myself into believing I was there with you during every update.

Life is difficult. Life is too difficult. You live everyday wishing you were dead, and you slowly die every day wishing you were more alive. Perhaps I don’t even miss us being friends. Perhaps you just happened to be the catalyst in putting together all the negative thoughts and broken relationships. Perhaps viewing your timeline on Twitter just served to make all the feelings of worthlessness, of loneliness, of utmost helplessness collide. Perhaps it was just time for me to realize that things were getting too complicated. That life, this jumbled mess we call life, is too difficult to ever figure out. That we are all just tiny specks of dust scrambling to discover the meaning of life, only to realize that this is a question with no answer.

I wish things were easier. Everyday.

Blurb: Conditionally Unconditonal

On the first day of Kindergarten, my dad had to physically wrestle me away from my mother. In the first few months of my Kindergarten days, I cried every single morning and ended up crying throughout the entire day till I got to see her again. She gave up her career for me, stayed home to baby me and never let me out of her sight longer than necessary. She was my first friend, and the first person I miss when I’m away from home. She loves me, more than I could ever love myself. She loves me unconditionally.

Parental love is unconditional. They’ll love you even if you had one eye, both, or with four. They’ll love you stark naked and fully clothed. They’ll love you even if it kills them, or you. They’ll love you through anything. But don’t be mistaken. Don’t take this undying, absolute love as a one way ticket. They love you, but it doesn’t mean they’ll always be proud of you. It doesn’t mean they’ll always be pleased with you. Sure, they love you, but it doesn’t mean that your actions don’t repulse them, it doesn’t mean that they won’t be embarrassed when you let out a belch at the dinner table. They’ll love you through the snot and the tears, the blood and the vomit, but don’t ever think for one second, that just because they love you, they aren’t the ones that caused them in the first place.

Ashes To Dust

Coughing with a lozenge in your mouth is a bad idea. Tilting your backward to cough with a lozenge in your mouth is a worse idea. The slippery bugger keeps trying to make its way into the back of your throat and nestle in the depths of your esophagus. Not a good idea. Then again, coughing alone is a terrible idea itself.

In spite of the cough, the dizziness from wearing coloured contacts and it being another Tuesday at work, I am in high spirits. Perhaps it is due to the seventh lozenge I am consuming this delightful morning (in addition to the 7 tablespoonfuls of cough syrup I had after breakfast) that is making me a little lightheaded and ridiculously easily tickled by everything my colleague is saying, or perhaps it is due to the fact that I have come to terms with what seems like my biggest fear in my dramatic teenage life – losing people.

Just this morning while on my way to work, I was autopiloting, watching the trees morph into a huddled mess outside the car window and lamenting about how lucky my pet rabbit was while my conscious mind thought of the friends I used to have, and those I now have left. There are about a million and four ways how people can vanish from your lives. Some, you can pinpoint the exact moment you knew they were slipping away through the gaps between your fingers. Others just happen to vanish, like how you know you remembered your dream just seconds before, yet you have zero recollection of it the next.

I choose to believe that its no one’s fault. That when tea dates which used to last hours, filled with the sounds of clinking teacups, our boisterous laughter and incessant chatter are now empty staring sessions where we try to color the silent void with meaningless bits of information which we already know. “So…how’s the army?” “Same old same old, we had physical training yesterday and I almost died running. Improving though, I am now inching my way to Silver instead of a Fail.” “Yeah, I knew that you told me the last time we met remember?” “…Oh yeah.” “…”But I guess awkward tea sessions are way better than no awkward tea sessions because we’re both still trying right? As much as a cup of Earl Grey and a few butter cookies isn’t going to transform our relationship back into its old comfortable state, it means we both miss us. And perhaps that’s the best funeral for a friendship that is slowly fading away.

I am still using the bottle you gave me for my last birthday, the one you hand drew my crazy ass smiling face and my Chinese surname on it. I still open our group conversation every day and regret the times I muted the updates. I still have the friendship band we bought together on our night coffee dates of Caramel Ice Blend from Coffee Bean. I still keep all of you in my heart and as much as I would like to try to mend what seems like cracks in our relationships, sometimes things are better this way. People are more likely to be careful when they handle delicate things, they make sure they don’t make a wrong move, one wrong step. They make sure they don’t tilt their heads back to cough when they have a lozenge in their mouth, for fear friendship slips away like that slippery candy down their throats and into nothingness.

Hello?

Sometimes, I feel horrid when everyone has some place to go, some dream to fulfill and here I am pretending that I have my whole life planned out when actually, I have nothing.

New Life From Within

I don’t like to think it is true

The distance came between us like a knife and cut right through.

I suddenly miss someone badly. You know how sometimes when you lose that magical connection with a friend, you can never get it back? It is surprising how losing someone you used to love so much could be this easy. That forgetting the way we sat side by side, head on shoulder could be as easy as leaving a hairpin behind on the bus. That letting slip of the looks we exchanged and the laughter we shared could be as natural as losing sight of your childhood. I can no longer see or feel the remnants of that tether we used to share, yet occasionally I hear the strangled call of someone on the other end. I am guilty, because I dismiss it, almost as if I never heard you whispering my name, never saw you reach out for me through the fog that has become our common memory. I am guilty, because despite your repeated attempts at trying to reconnect, I never reached for your outstretched hand. I am guilty, and for that, I am sorry.

Would you stay just a little, my love?

Would you sway just a little, my love?

’cause the hole in the middle of my heart needs filling up

If you stay just a little, that’s enough.