black

i’ve come to accept, but maybe not yet embrace, that i can feel multiple contradictory things at once. i can feel a tightness in my chest, but laugh in the same breath. i can cry in person but be joking around in text. i can miss you terribly, but want to protect my peace. i look at photos of us and one picture can feel both sweet and bitter. i remember arguments that feel inane but also significant. 

i think i can feel upset and disappointed and angry at you but still feel the love and care and happiness you’ve given to me. i can need you in my life and out of it. i feel free but empty at the same time. time is slipping faster than i thought it would, but still hurting like a slow knife. 

spectrum of emotion

i watched a video and laughed out loud. then i really wanted to show it to you. then i remembered i couldn’t, and a wave of grief drowned me inside.

grief is love with nowhere to go. 

2,557

today marks a full seven years since i first met you. 

it was the chinese new year period then, and you came in a denim shirt that i eventually stole from you and i now still have in my wardrobe. it was in the old benjamin barker cafe we would have our first hellos, me ordering a water for you before you arrived, but i no longer recall what we chatted about. 

it would be in taka, at the escalators beside where the taxi queue was, that you’d guide me with a gentle hand by my lower back, and i knew i’d love you. and at least two more times in later years we’d take the same escalators and i’d remind you of this simple gesture you did that became a core memory of us for me. 

then there’s the scape skate park. we took away riverside indonesian bbq rice and ate them on the big steps. here we probably spoke of our hopes and fears and pasts and future. a shared future that would last nearly seven years. the big steps are no more now, and neither are we.

at the 313 taxi stand, we reluctantly said our goodbyes. i remember giving you a hug before i boarded my cab. thinking about it now, it seems similar, us sharing one last hug before i boarded a cab downstairs of your house, our final goodbye. a hug to mark the end of our first and last days. 

visitors

i suppose what’s toxic about me is - once i’ve made someone my home, it’s hard to move out. to move on. i think that’s the concept of ghosts - if they were once humans, it’s hard for them to let go of the place they used to find safe, and hard for them to accept it becoming something else. so they stay, grounded solely by the memories. after all, they called this place their own, and to them, it always will be. 

hurts

tired, tired, tired

i don’t want to say bad things about us

the longer time passes 

the worse i feel

and i want to be wrong

healing feels like a burial

making a molehill out of a mountain

perhaps i’m just rotting from the inside

like wood, slowly

only when it bears a load

or when a match is struck

i’ll break

and i won’t burn

the wood weeps for the tree it once was

and the forest it has lost

praying

i’ve always been religious. or perhaps i should say ‘spiritual’, since i don’t follow practices which make a religion. i’ve always believed in a God. it’s purely instinctual, perhaps a mental/emotional crutch, or perhaps a sixth sense humans can’t explain with science or logic. 

in these tough moments i have to lean on God. i think He’s real; and maybe i need Him to be. there’s no one who understands otherwise. and no one i want to explain to.

fever

food makes me sick and i constantly feel lethargic. i say things i don’t mean and i do things i don’t like. my soul feels outside of my body. a box of tomatoes made me cry and run home. it feels all very pathetic.

one final plea

kill me, said the jester. take my life and body if it may so please you, the jester said to the king. may my hair dip in your finest inks to paint you a classic, may my sturdy bones hold the weight of your dreams while you sleep. my blood could wash your robes a burgundy satin. my heart, still beating, you can sail to foreign seas, a testament for all to see, the loyalty a mighty king commands from me.

twice bitten forever shy

this is the second time in my life i’m experiencing such pain. the last time i attributed the severity of it to having to keep it all down and buried, but this time, even being able to share and having loved ones by me and loving on me, it hurts. it feels like a part of me has died and been lost forever. and every person i tell is another nail in the coffin, a shovel of soil, the tightening of the noose around my neck. the pain shivers my core and aches my bones and there is a silent scream i can’t silence and i can’t handle it. 

i don’t want to.

bloat

what are principles? the morals we uphold ourselves to, for better or worse? the standards we try to maintain, buckling under the weight of expectations? the boundaries we draw, a thin line we dance before?

i thought i was upright. i thought i would be happy sticking to my principles, because at the end of the day, who i have to live up to is myself. but since when did i start holding those around me to my own standards, especially the people i love the most? why am i always asking for more, and disappointed when they can’t deliver? if i can, why can’t they? what is this moral high horse i’ve gotten on that’s carried me away, more and more distant from those around me, from my emotions, from my humanity?

am i pretentious? the ladder to nowhere i’ve climbed up - look at me, aren’t i good? - while everyone happily continues with their lives on the ground. 

2025

this new year i resolve to nag less. not because i care less - i care equally if not more, but i put this burden of care on the recipient when i nag, when i remind. this makes them less of a person and more of a prisoner, constantly under my surveillance of a watchful eye. 

independence is a valued trait but to stand on your own also means to be on your own. it is a lonely being. and i find myself choosing this because i can’t live with myself otherwise. i don’t want to be dependent, to be a burden, to shamelessly ask for things i’m fully capable of doing myself.

i hate it when other people do it too. so i should stop being a hypocrite and stop nagging, when i believe people should be capable or at least try to become capable of taking care of themselves.

if they can, everyone is happy. if they can’t, the burden is for the people who cares to bear. could we have done more? should we have done more? should i have reminded them?

no. this year i’ll try not to overthink and we’ll see how it goes.

躺平

several things are bad right now. i’m not going to talk about the worst one because i’m not ready, so let me just talk about some of the others and some thoughts.

- i’m coughing so much. it’s been over three months and still i can manage to wheeze and hack and cough out phlegm. what the fuck.

- my neck and shoulder injury was almost fully healed after tcm sessions costing over $700 and me lying there terrified during acupuncture, bearing with the pain during tuina, and yesterday, they said i could do some bone setting for longer term benefits, and it felt euphoric and i felt painless after and almost like i was floating. but because i was feeling like shit from other ongoing events i just mindlessly chose to roll around on the floor doomscrolling my phone without a pillow to support my head, and within the same session, my neck/shoulder went back to feeling freshly injured. i’m so angered by this and i don’t know if it was my posture or if it was the bone setting, or what. fuck man.

- the coughing motion hurts the neck/shoulder and i’m miserable. and my head hurts too because i’m so tense and unwell.

- last night after my injury going back to square one i attempted to stick medicated plasters. i struggled so hard to stick it on the spot i wanted by myself. and then i remembered: 1) how impatient and mean i often was to my mom when she asked me for help with sticking the plasters, to the point that she would struggle to stick them herself even when i was in the same room; and 2) how i’m no longer home to help her with it anymore, even if she wants me to. i ended up wasting a piece because it stuck together to itself in my struggle, and i felt so helpless and lonely. but when it happened to my mom, i was always completely apathetic and honestly just uncaring. what the fuck? i am so selfish.

- these few days on reddit there have been several suicide or death related posts. i was sad for one person in particular who was suicidal and i shared what i could to dissuade them, having been on that end before. but that was manageable. what shook me most was a question asking if we could choose how to die, how it would be. i immediately had an answer in mind, and as someone on reddit does, i scrolled through the comments looking for my answer so that i could upvote it. but, i couldn’t find it. i think my answer is that i would like to be wiped from existence. when higher dimensions can be entered (like in Three Body Problem), i want to be wiped across space and time. so it’s like i’ve never existed, so that nobody has to mourn for me. i don’t want to be remembered, i don’t want to be forgotten, i just want to cease to exist. that would be amazing, but chances of achieving that scientifically or technologically in my lifetime is near zero, so…

crash course in gratitude

was recommended to watch "Crash Course in Romance" on Netflix and although I wasn't that drawn to the synopsis initially, I gave it a try and it turned out pleasantly surprising. it's like a comedic Sky Castle of sorts, centred on the private education system in Korea and the accompanying elitism and class divide.

what struck me enough to make me want to write a post was one of the characters, a student, Nam Hae-ee. she's the daughter of the main female lead, who runs a humble banchan store. two points:

1) Hae-ee is constantly conscious about her family's struggles and finances, which makes her an overthinker and less expressive of her own feelings and worries. 

2) when given the opportunity and resources to learn, she's eager and earnest, putting in the effort and being thankful to her mom and tutor throughout. 

this is a superbly likeable character with relatable struggles, and it made me reflect hard on myself. I too come from a family which used to have its struggles, but I remember being ashamed, maybe bitter, and still being spoilt. my parents, like Hae-ee's mom, did what they could for me. I never lacked care and the basics. what I was salty about was the inability to partake in luxuries my friends could have - someone fetching them, going for expensive tuition classes, going for trips to fancy destinations, having pretty bags and clothes. I always felt like I was an overthinker because I had to think for my family, but really I was just always thinking for myself and how to reduce the inferiority and jealousy I felt. but in fact, I already had it all - parents who doted on me the way they could, brothers who always had my back, home cooked meals every day, a careful consideration to make things conducive and comfortable for me whenever I had to study for exams. and perhaps that's also why I was spoilt. I had it all and I took it all for granted.

but now, having taken a hard look back at my life, I'm ashamed not of what I lacked but of how I wasn't more appreciative and how immature I was. I remember speaking to my second brother years ago and we both felt like we were forced to grow up in tough circumstances and that made us more aware of what we had. but we had blind spots. we thought we had it worse than everyone else, when really we had a lot to be thankful about. 

I never took my studies seriously growing up. I was that classmate who was always late, copied homework, slept in class, and then somehow still had the audacity to cry when I failed my exams. that just shows how entitled I was, that I blamed the system and circumstances for my failures when I didn't put in the needed effort. I honestly don't know how my friends put up with me, lol. 

I see it now though. somehow, I became hardworking once I received paychecks for my work, so I guess back then it was just that I didn't see and appreciate the less tangible benefits of working hard. I turn 30 this year, which is too late to change my studying attitude, but appreciation of what I had and have, and gratitude to my family and friends are in order.

a rant tonight.

holy shit I can't fucking sleep!!!!! I've been on a sleep-early-streak for the past weeks and all of a sudden the mistakes of my past are HAUNTING me tonight and I've been tossing and turning but I. can't. sleep. oh my god. and I'm hungry. 

not even mistakes really. just choices that have caused me some inconveniences and waiting, like cancelling my driving test because I was in such a goddamned bad mood previously I would've off-ed myself if I failed /again/, but for some fucking reason deciding that I wouldn't immediately book the next one but instead drag until a whole two weeks later and now the earliest dates are in October. and I might be at my new job by then so Idk the leave situation??????? I think my fatigued brain is also blowing things up because as I type this out I find it no big deal but ALSO fuck-me-fuck-me-fuck-me at the same time. like wtf why is this completely trivial thing fucking my emotions up!!! kmn. 

"I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki"

E and I saw this book on the bestseller shelf in Popular the other day and I found the title relatable and hilarious. the opening quote in its prologue I found slightly morbid, but E said it sounded like something I would write in my blog:

'If you want to be happy, you mustn't fear the following truths but confront them head-on: one, that we are always unhappy, and that our sadness, suffering and fear have good reasons for existing. Two, that there is no way to separate these feelings completely from ourselves.' - Martin Page

I realized she was quite right, so here I am quoting this as well. honestly, I found it morbid because I was fixated on "we are always unhappy". but there is a silver lining to it - this line is said in the context of how to be happy. I'd like to beg to differ that we can be happy without being always unhappy, but I think for myself at least I can't. and the author, Baek Se-hee quotes this from a perspective similar to mine as well, with diagnosed dysthymia while feeling like logically, we were actually doing pretty damn well in life (disclaimer: I haven't read the book but I'm considering it), so I have even lesser grounds to dispute it.

so, big news: I got let go at work. it's not personal and not due to my work abilities, rather it was due to a redundancy issue with our launch being pushed back by over a year. it was no surprise, and I don't feel hurt by it thankfully. financially I'm okay too, though I'm erring on the safe side and pushing back some spends. 

if I must be honest, it sort of makes me feel better? it makes me feel better that I now have a legitimate reason to feel blue. I don't always feel that way, but sometimes the depression hits me out of nowhere and although I often know what triggers it, the triggers are also things which I've worked through and embraced much more than before. so to still feel uncontrollably blue over them bums me out sometimes too. like I'm feeling sorry for myself over things of age old. so I'd rather there be this one huge thing I can blame my feelings on, at least for a while.

in recognizing this, I also need to realize I could be prone to self-sabotage. actually, I know I am. sucks, because in addition to the mental capacity I allocate to my emotional regulation, I should be putting effort into discipline too, to stop myself from that self-sabotage. I can be living better if I pushed myself to. but I also risk pushing myself too hard, the way I've heard I can be a little extreme sometimes. I need to be less all-or-nothing and be more a-lil-something every day. 

anyway. small wins for today: one, 377A got repealed! though we're still a long way from same-sex marriage, we thought we were a long way from the repeal too and yet it just happened; dropped outta nowhere by LHL during the National Day rally, along with a further reduction in mask wearing lol. two, I went cycling whoop. explored the Simei area and found this private estate area around Sunbird Circle/Road, and at night it's kinda creepy. if Stranger Things happened in Singapore it would happen there, I think. 

broker

"I had a dream. it was raining and I hoped it would wash me clean of the things I did. but when I opened my eyes, the rain was pouring, and I was still the same me of yesterday."

insomnia and amnesia

during down times like these I fantasize about bad things happening to me, which is telling of how I still cope unhealthily. I can't sleep, I'm hungry but I feel sick, and I'm so tired my heart feels very far away, floating out of body, like I'm looking at the day's events through a fog. the future feels uncertain and my actions and thoughts don't feel like mine. like two days later I'll completely forget, forgetting having written this at all, a sleepwalk caught on cctv. 

fake it 'til....

yet another year has gone by, and I'm happy to report that I think most of my negative feelings are under control. for the most part, I feel much more comfortable. comfortable with who I am, both the good and the ugly. negative feelings are still around and they'd probably never go away, but I've finally learnt how to kinda process them healthily instead of burying it all deep inside. it's not always successful but I'll take the wins.

life is pretty good -- I'll always remember having a convo with Shiqi maybe nearly 10 years ago about how drama free our lives were and how we liked that. looking back, I had no idea how much drama I would later get myself into, and how bad the drama in my own head would become. yet, thanks to the drama here and there I've also learnt and grown. still a long way to go, with how irrational and illogical I can be sometimes, but we can never be perfect. I just hope I'll keep getting better at being me, and become a better person all around.

I still get surprised every time I remember I'm already 29 this year. I started blogging more than half my lifetime ago, and though it comes once a year nowadays, I'm pretty thankful for it, to look back at snapshots of my thoughts in the past years, and realizing how far I've come. it wasn't that long ago that I couldn't see myself living in this world for long, but now I can, and I hope I'll continue leaving posts every year until I'm elderly. who knows. 

good job on living so far, me! lots of love. 

sandbag

looks like I'm here again, with nobody to go to. or rather, I do have people to go to but it's the same old shit with me and ain't nobody wanna be hearing woe without reason and listen without trying to fix. if going to someone means I have to pretend to be okay after then that makes me feel worse, so better not. I feel like my mind craves a good cry, a self-beating, something to validate the emotions. emotions are valid, but how do we process them properly without rhyme or reason? I've come to realize I'm quite judgmental; or did it come as a defense mechanism? or with age? haha, as I type this I find myself wishing it's something I can explain away but truth be told it probably isn't. 

I am judgemental. I should acknowledge that. 

I judge people I think are good, and I judge people I think are bad. I judge people close to me and I judge people through the screen. I judge and I judge, I judge me harshest and the worst. no need for self-preservation for a walking corpse, an empty shell, a programmed psyche for smiles and lols. 

this is a good beating. 

revisiting

i have a penchant for blogging with the passing of every year, it seems. it's currently a week into February, but it might as well have been one day into 2021. it feels like the past month flew by, relatively peacefully i think, but also without much thought or reflection.

today i found myself feeling lows lower than i logically think should be. all things considered, i should be quite happy with where i am, yet emotions are something that i've always struggled to manage. i've made strides but sometimes i find myself again caught in a bubble, feeling how i felt during my darkest moments. it should pass today, tomorrow, maybe even the next hour, but in each of these moments they feel as if they'd never end, as if they'd plague me till the end.

someone in a show i watched said that one of the sad things in life is to yearn for something that's actually common and ordinary. barring from devolving into self-pity, i think that's relatable. i do wish i was ordinary. yet, it seems i want to be ordinary in the eyes of most and special in the eyes of a few? such specific expectations are too much to ask for, isn't it? do i care about this because i care about what people think too much? pegging myself to others' opinions and standards? at the end of it all, how do i see myself?

i don't know, to be honest. year after year i find myself being older than i feel, an immature soul trapped in an ageing body. this year, again, i find myself wondering if i'm really 28. i certainly think differently, but i feel the same as when i was 18. and i'm still in a state of conflict between my thoughts and my feelings.