Dear Dom, 

I know we were never particularly close. We’d share the occasional joke, we’d share the occasional laugh but that was it. Still, I’d treasure all the times we’d bump into each other at Siglap. I feel so blindsided by your passing, and strangely mortal. But still, I know how much you’ve brought into the lives of others. I hope you’re in a better place, and I know you’ve lived life to the fullest. You used to joke that your funeral would be one where everyone would enjoy themselves. But all jokes aside, we all knew deep down that it wasn’t going to be the case. You will live through all of us now, and one day, down the road, I might bump into you at Siglap again, where time knows no boundaries. 

Yours sincerely,

Nat

Different variations of the same life. I’m simple, I hoard my past, storing my memories in bubble-wrap and keeping them close to my heart. Now and then, I carefully unwrap these precious gifts, and surround myself with their glow. As hard as I try, they slip through my fingers, smokey tendrils leaving my fingertips, until only silence remains. A single laugh punctuates the concrete silence, and emotions rush back into the empty void. Your smile, your hands, your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your layers, peeled away by time, until all I have left is the memory of how you made me feel. And even then, nothing is certain. 

The taste of loneliness, you never quite forget it. It lingers, on the back on your tongue, like medicine, which no amount of sweets can get rid of. Even when you’re happy, truly happy, a look in the mirror reveals a sadness that you wear so well. Soon, you begin to crack, your porcelain features fractured with an ache you cannot feel. An ache which seeps through the fissures and settles itself on your skin. You wear makeup to hide it, you wear a smile to fight it. But you realise that you look best with this sadness you wear. It becomes you. It haunts you in your dreams, it shadows your laughter, it lines your face. Soon, sorrow trace the lines of your face, each one telling a story of sorrow. Still, opportunities come, to shake off this menace, you refuse it. You choose to wallow in your despair. You build up more layers. You get hurt. More layers. And again. You are nothing but numb.

I might never forget how my heart skipped a beat when you kissed me, I might never stop loving you. But whether this loves brings me joy or sorrow, remains an untold story. Love is the kind of sadness we’re addicted too.

annamagic:

Start with a word. ‘I love you’ is never quite as powerful as when somebody stops saying it. One night, forget to call them before you go to bed. After that, choose not to call – say you’re tired, or out with friends, or just busy. Pretend you do not hear the stagnant disappointment on the other…

On this day, I found myself engulfed in the literary scenery of 1Q84, contemplating and inadvertently scaring the shit out of myself with the ideas of a parallel universe.

What if we were nothing more than creations of imagination, belonging to authors who are very much like us? Maybe each of our lives, fate and destiny are controlled by a single author, who has been tagged to us, responsible for us just because his imagination created us. Very different from a world where we are all under the guidance of a single omniscient, all encompassing being isn’t it?

So many different layers to this universe. I worry. I hope the author of my life isn’t sadistic, I would very much like my author to be someone like Dr Seuss. All I would be is a cat in a hat, and I would be satisfied like that. None of the melodramas of Jodi Picoults’ family feuds and deaths, none of the sexually charged and tragic tales of Shakespeare and none of the philosophical, factual and religious devotion of Immanuel Kant.

I’m afraid that my future has already been set in stone, carved and solidified with no room for change. But then again, imaginations flow like water, eddying, ebbing, receding. I hope my author is me, or someone like me.

For you, I’ll stay strong. For you, I’d do anything, because I know you’d do the same for me.

You’re my pillar of strength, you offer me courage I do not have. When you falter I do too. I won’t laden you with my worries, and I will take on yours. I have no power over the world, I cannot control the forces which govern us. We are from different worlds, different lives I know, woven into each other by the whirlwind of life. I am a guardian of your hopes, dreams and fears. My silence is my sentinel, my faith, my patience my lord. 

You asked me what was my definition of a relationship. I think I have that answer for you.

I try, but loneliness is a taste you never forget. It lingers on the back of your throat, your tongue, your teeth. Everything you hear, see or say, is a reminder of the has beens. 

You are handed a blank cheque, a clean slate to the future, limitless possibilities, endless choices, what do you do?  Go.

I don’t normally cater to my need to pen down my thoughts, but tonight, with emotions and thoughts cascading through my body, I yearn for the release that writing offers me. A blend of two schools of thought, emotions and thoughts. Emotions advocating irrationality, and thoughts, whose religion is logic. Put those two together and you achieve a convoluted, discombobulated mixture within you. I thought that I had it covered, with thoughts policing emotions, what could go wrong?

I resent those who let emotions get the better of them, but now I realise that I have been too quick to judge. Life has taught me that feelings are a dangerous liberty, let it run loose, prepare to pick up the pieces in the wake of its devastation. Not that I am going through any heartbreak or anything, but I feel an impending sense of inevitability. A choice has to be made, and I’m not sure I’d be able to go ahead with either. Either way I’ll lose a little of myself, but that’s just part and parcel of life eh? 

You make me happy, you make life worthwhile. Maybe I never knew how to live before you. Oh but I did, in a different way. The rush of electric you send through me I can’t explain nor understand. I question nothing about our decision, I just cannot help me envision parallels, and alternatives. Would it be easier? Would we have been happier? So many questions, so little answers. I wish that school had taught us the ways of life, had taught us to explore ourselves better, understand our wants better, unsullied by the tyranny of other perceptions.

I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. When you have too much time on your hands and too little to do, self-reflection is inevitable. I don’t know what is it about self-reflection that leads to self-improvement, but it apparently does. So, seeing my future branching out in front of me, I find myself reverting to the past. I figured that I could perhaps use my past as a guide, just in case I lose myself in the convoluted pathways of the future. But, maybe I’ve already lost myself, to another me. I try my hardest to elude change, but your life’s trajectory is intertwined with it, no matter what. I watch the ‘past’ me, while trying to figure out the ‘now’ me, and I see a dearth, a gap in my life so big I’m lost. I wonder how I leaped from ‘then’ to ‘now’, how I failed to confront the in-betweens.

Escapism, I’m an escapist, I won’t lie. I revel in comfort, I shun malaise. I think I’ve been bludgeoning my way through life. I have deep-seated issues which I refuse to explore. Issues I know that when reflected into the literal, would ruin me. 

Anyway, I’ve been a horrible person. But I’ve found what I’ve wanted. And I’m happy. I just wish Karma has other plans. I’m just waiting for it to all screw up.

Its 22:40 and I am in an extremely lucid situation. I am jet-lagged but I can’t sleep. Its 4:40 in the place where I call home. I don’t exactly miss home, but I can’t wait to get back. My life here so far has been somewhat disappointing. Ok, its been pretty awesome actually. Just that I can’t stop thinking about my weight and about how pimples keep popping up. I overdosed on potatoes today and I ate about twice my weight in rice. Thank god there aren’t any weighing scales around. I’m tired. This is such a weird post. Guten natch.

Life is being a damn bitch. Ok I’m being a bitch. I have it all but I want more. wtffffff.