5th March

I saw that date some time ago. It was coming. I’ve been so busy. And suddenly it’s here, that date.

Somehow I still can’t remember the bad things. I remember feeling bad before, but over what I couldn’t remember. It might have been important, but I really can’t remember.

All I can remember are the good things. So clearly and so vivid. The certainty, misplaced or not that wasn’t the matter. The sweetness, the kindness, the sense of immense love.

I might have called it the source of the pain. But it’s not a pain really. It’s a pang. Of missing someone so deep, it’s isn’t saddening or longing or emptiness or pain.

I’m glad there is such beauty left in the memories. I’m glad the good things was held on to, and the unhappy things are so vague and hard to recall. It’s better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.

Oh oxytocin you devious little thing. If you were just a chemical without all the associations I thought you were, I’d have dismissed you as a state of mind. Your power to pull atoms of meaning to you that filled night skies full of stars, sunsets brimming with hope, long bus rides where the smile languished amidst long stares out the window.

I wonder if she became like me today when she was twenty five. I’ve let go of so many things now that would have made me fit into the profile of someone with borderline personality disorder (or so it seems, if I had it or not, or if I’ve lost it or not). If I was with someone three years younger than me, would I leave them, having it up to here with all that person I was, or from physical differences of time and space and social advancement. Romance is still fiercely important, but it isn’t enough. Maybe I’m totally off the mark with these suppositions.

I think I’m mighty promising. I’ve always been super promising, full of potential, but it hasn’t come to fruition, or has it? Or will it ever? I know all my worries will be put away by concentrating on the now, taking things as fast as time passes, second by second. Looking far ahead should not make me fear, fearlessly moving forward however slow will forge the hardest diamonds. Did I say I was promising?

So I’ve come to live with all those naughty unhappy things. They don’t scare me anymore. I can deal with anything. I’ve said that to myself long enough to start to not be able to do anything else. I can’t curl up and die, I can’t be overwhelmed, I can’t give up. I used to worry it’d make me less human, but that’s romantic. Romance is pretty but being thinking romantically holds a tang of bitterness.

Something happened in me when I searched for the answers to why we fell apart. I sought the least painful answer, knowing it probably wasn’t true. She’s deeper than that. But to think otherwise was even more painful. I convinced myself it was that she matured beyond my ability to make her happy because I was still stages behind her in life.

Maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t. This was the least painful reason and the only one that wouldn’t eat away at the poor self-esteem, self destructive habits and masochistic personality I had. I always knew it might not be true.

It made me love myself. I endeavored to be better, putting all thought of wondering what people thought as far from my psyche as I could. I needed to be obsessed to be good, obsessed with the artistry of things, the music of life and the sanctity of pure honest love between friends. I stopped questioning motives. I learned that giving can be limitless, never be stingy with kindness. I learned to let myself be angry and release it at the right times and not be a pent up porcupine of passive aggressiveness.

It wiped my self doubts like a sweep of an etch-a-sketch. I wanted to be strong and good and attractive that way. This uncertainty of career and post graduate transition limbo bothers me quite abit. I want to be stable and powerful and dependable and empowered.

I’ve set myself on the tasks I’ve given to me quite resolutely. If I’m not wrong it was my passion and drive and conviction in things that won her over in the first place. I’m regaining it. I’ve worked my flesh to the bone for the high distinction for my final project, and I’m refusing to compare myself with other people’s grades versus effort ratio. I know I was nearly spent during that time, and I was so worried for my mother who collapsed and was near passing. I didn’t find out until January recently, and it happened in October last year three weeks before my final submission, Karl had just told me she fainted.

I’m proud of myself. I brought her joy through my own endeavors. I learned that in people who loved you, showing them you’d do your best to better yourself was the best way to love them back, for their joy depended on how well you did for yourself. How well you overcame your own adversity, followed by how much notice you took to their efforts of love and kindness. It makes the people who love you glow in pride and conviction that their perpetual thinking of you did not go unnoticed, there is no better way to show your appreciation and gratitude.

If I thought it, I didn’t feel it. I feel it now, that we’re not two halves of a whole. We have to be two complete beings each good and true, before we can choose each other and be of mutual benefit. We’d love each other because we each made each other better, and while it would be hard to be without the other, we’d have to be independent and capable for this would be what the other has wished. We aren’t one as a pair, we’d hold hands and journey forward together, each complete but finding each other’s company invaluable.

Still, it’d be nice to make some oxytocin with someone wouldn’t it?

Tomorrow, I’ll be doing the final prep for the event in the afternoon, on the date that brought to my attention what other day it made me think of. I’m the master of ceremonies for the opening ceremony of the NCC upper seletar training centre. A minister is coming, I’ve made the plans for the media coverage and during the event I’m the voice that blasts to the audience. If this hope isn’t fulfilled, I won’t be sad, but it’d be nice to receive an sms that said she saw my facebook msg, and said a little thanks for remembering her birthday. I took the best years of her youth, but she was the best years of mine.

JB

ok I think I've taken a vacation from this site long enough to not be noticed anymore. Let's see if I'm reset, anyone still knows. For now, all the self-consciousness has fallen away. I'm writing for myself.



ok looks like it ain't all that clear. There are things I dare not type out. I'm afraid that people would know, but I want them to know too. ah well, it won't be hidden forever. I am willing as long as anyone is interested. Everyone's preoccupied with their own concerns, my own will never be important to them as much as theirs are to themselves. no point fishing for some comfort, I'll have to dish it out to myself, for who am I to live with but myself the rest of my life?

anyway, Guru and I had a bright idea for an adventure on saturday night. At 11pm, we decided we should do something exciting and clubbing wasn't it. We decided to walk across the causeway to johore and have an adventure.

Sam couldn't come. Everyone else I knew... I didn't think they'd come. They'd have other commitments, or just won't be so game. We met at woodlands MRT and made our way to the causeway with our passports.

I was so excited. I haven't been to malaysia in my conscious memory. There are flashes of moments i remember from my childhood of short trips, but these memories last seconds and have got no depth. it's almost as if I've never been to malaysia.

We crossed the boundaries of the two countries with the soles of our feet.

I felt like we stood out like a sore thumb. I couldn't even figure out the price of things when shop owners/keepers stated their prices in malay. I've learned to count to ten and even that knowledge is vague now. I'd blindly hand out a ten ringgit note and hope I don't get cheated. Malaysians are lovely though. I don't feel so different from them, but seperated by language. We have so much in common. we're not better than them, and we;re alot more spoiled.

Guru and I ate and had some beer near the causeway, asking for directions to money changers and the nearest club. The cab we took to the nearby club area had a meter that said RM$3.60, but the cab driver said it'd be ten dollars for us coz of midnight charge, and I didn't want to argue. I was somewhat miffed with the sense of being ripped off, but I didn't want trouble. It was a little less than five bucks in SGD, I didn't want to make a scene.

We got out near New York Hotel, and walked down the road to look for the club Eskimo Joy that guru's friend recommended. I dropped 55 ringgit on the street.

We reached the club after clusters of hawkers and car washes amidst a derelict street of hotels and trash on the road. Young chinese malaysians were showing up in tuny boxy cars for their night of debauchery. We found Eskimo Joy among a cluster of pubs and clubs largely frequented by malaysian chinese.

I realized I had dropped my money and I went to to search for it. Guru was sure I wouldn't find it, and i must admit it was rational, but I picked the notes off the pavement we walked past 10 minutes ago like nothing happened, and my relief was accredited to the dice boxer shorts I wore beneath me jeans.

I had really wanted to go into Eskimo Joy, but Guru preferred to sit at the pub nearby, nursing whiskey tonics. I was excited to be in a new land, and really wanted to check out the place, but I didn't want to push him out his comfort zone for he didn't seem to want to party, and he was morose over his recent turbulence in his life. In consolation, I got to play with a really cute kitten that made it ok to hang around the cluster of clubs/pubs without going in. The kitten was really cute mind you, enough to sate any noisy club environment desires.

we had supper after enough drinks to cull a bull (by then, considering we started before we even entered malaysia). The bakso was good, but the chilli was amazing. The satay was soso, the sauce pretty mediocre, but the bakso chillie made up for everything.

walking back to my home country fully sobre but sated with the excited of the journey was so nice. We'd sen the malaysian skyline walking over, now walking back looking at just 4 pint block flats in woodlands, the straits waters passing by us with every footfall, was serene and contemplative. In such a short distance us Singaporeans were in a different world. My complacency had fallen away, everything i took for granted was alertly watched after when i was in malaysia. yet all the fears and tension I had in singapore fell away as well. Malaysia was so much bigger and less controlled, It was such a sense of freedom I felt.

I'd like to go back again, longer than the feeble four hours I spent in the wee hours of the night. I'd like to have days there, meeting locals and stop being the idiot singaporean we all are (trust me, we're more idiotic as a nation than we think).