Bleach

I have been doing nothing to help myself, yet at the same time there is no direction for me to trudge towards. Even so, in a parallel universe, it's not an easy gauge. There is too much swirling. When something bad happens, I can no longer muster any ounce of urgency to instinctively find solutions. I don't try, neither do I wait for change no more. But yet, I am still good with sympathy. Is that my redemption? I sound exhausted. I think I am. I've lost my patience to recover from the fatigue. I've learnt how to sit around with discomfort. I've learnt how to hold my bite.

There's a kind of pinched mindfulness.

I want to erase it all.
It's funny, my emotions are starting to feel like cardboard.
Like the trashy bits that stick out of the recycling doors downstairs.

I want to go back to swimming: it teaches me how to breathe. It's easier to listen to myself in the silence of the water. It's the easiest as you drown.

I've lost all I relied on,
    my heart


          won't settle.

Soul Meets Body

Another wet morning over the Jubilee weekend. I began my long break yesterday with some chill buds over coffee and shakes at Tolido's while the rain poured outside, dampening our plans to shoot. Nonetheless conversation flowed as easily as we sipped the drinks down our throats. I love it when friends bring friends, and everyone starts knowing everyone. That just makes existing so much easier. I've never really thought about it too much but all my groups of friends are mutually exclusive. The probability for a Venn diagram to form is essentially zero, each group/individual just happens on their own. But sometimes I like it that way.

Tie The Red Ribbon Round The Tree Bark

I feel liquid. All I want from another person is to be the vessel that holds me and dictates the form I will take. I would cling to each curve and crevice, yearn to fit and slip into corners of others. I am limp. My identity is clouded. I can't navigate myself. This isn't healthy. I shouldn't need to want this. But the self-doubt has never been stronger. What do I really want?

I'm Running Out Of Feelings

It's true, I really am. I would like to believe I am one that invests in intangible (no)things as much I do materially. Take life in itself in such a perspective: it actually tends to play out as a carefully created portfolio of investments. The compounded experiences you get in return, however, is not always so much dependent on the beta you have chosen to sensitively be analytical of. To put things simply, what I'm trying to say is that there is a lot more considerations and turns in life that we actually make out of. I'm suffering from a splitting headache from almost sleepless nights so I will go ahead and excuse myself of legitimate coherence.

Has anyone not realised that to be happy, you actually are being vulnerable? Because you are at your least guarded when things get high high (bad Big Bang pun intended). You're in the sky, you're light-headed. But this unbearable lightness of being takes off as quickly as it comes, and we're all aware that this will soon pass. Sometimes I feel afraid to feel anymore, hence why I think I'm running out of feelings, because the death of a feeling I'd been so enticed to would cripple into nothingness, and I've had enough with emptiness. There are days I love where I am, other days I just wished I would...know. Know where I'm taking myself to. But I don't think anyone really does, on days like this.

I wish there would come a day I could watch myself through another lens and understand what is it that other people see in me, or even just simply the way I am portrayed when I come into their vision. I'm always looking outward, always observing other people. I want to watch the way that other people behave--how they speak, or carry themselves, make conversation, do the things they are passionate about, the way they love--as if I'm trying to absorb bits of them to make myself into a completed person with whatever I have gathered. Often times I feel inspired by those around me, but I never have the energy to reciprocate. When I meet people, I feel like I am vastly more interested in them than they are in me. Call it an inferior complex maybe? I have a green eye for those who can be fearless, who aren't afraid to get themselves out there doing things they love. I don't feel like I can channel myself that way. I try to share myself with those around me as much as I can, because I still strongly believe that's the least you can do to feel genuine about yourself.

Bashodo

I have a confession. 

I don't even know where to begin. 

If anyone had asked me about first loves, this would have had to be it. 

I was never struck before this, but it was so sudden and so sweet, it stole my heart away complete. I go soft in the knees. My legs refuse to walk away. You finally came back, from the land of the Rising Sun and like a spitting ball of fire, blinded me from any carby-sugary restraints I was holding back from. 

Bashodo needs no further introduction. Hailing from Osaka, this hundred odd year old establishment has prided itself on using quality bracken and kinako to bring the best to you. I can vouch for that. The soft chewiness and faint sweetness lingers in your mouth in a way that makes you wanting more. A lot more than the 200g box has to offer. This magical concoction has turned into many of my lunches whenever it arrives annually (or is it bi-annually now?) on our shores. It is not often a dessert makes it as a whole meal for me, and I am, admittedly, a very fussy eater. I can't put this love into words. It fails me. 

I put it into my mouth.

But it eats me up inside. 

Try it for yourself. I promise you magic. Take the black sesame, take that willing plunge. 

Lowlights

Many nights of heart-wrenching anxiety and panic attacks later, I'm done with my foundation year. The crippling feeling of doubt and groundless worry that constantly crept its way into many dark winter nights. My first year abroad was a synthesis of happiness, growth and depression at all extremes. It was a maddening time, for many months I ruminated with feelings and people that I should never have invested myself in. At some point I battled with the confusing possibility that I was turning into a masochist, because even during the best of the worst, the seeds of the social blight just seemed to root itself further and further into my soul. It was a leech. To a certain extent, we have a choice of what we hurt over. I had a choice and unconsciously (or maybe otherwise), that's what I chose. Again I levitate towards things I can, or think I can control. I can't decipher this strange and strong need for so much control. Is it who I am, or is it some kind of monster in the making?

Most times it's not hard to know for yourself. As clouded as we think we are, somewhere at the back of our minds it is always clear. And yet, so easily we still pursue whatever belief we tell ourselves with so much conviction that there are no questions why. But why do we hang on so tightly to that stake (especially) in somebody else's doings? It was like breathing underwater for months, and then I finally asked myself, why did you let yourself hurt like that?

Pushing the above aside, I'm back home now. I know I'm home when the humidity strikes like a lightsaber waiting to slash me into bits. Upon arrival I've thrown myself into the grind of back-to-back appointments, a summer internship, lunch meetings, wisdom teeth extraction surgery and an unanticipated one-off yoga fling thing at the departure hall of our airport on a Sunday morning.

In these days of my post-surgery MC, I've taken the liberty to sloth around at home. And in this unproductive period I've come to realise that I am inwardly drawn to people with strong characters and sense of being. And when these said people have an overwhelmingly destructible 'knock-over' kind of enthusiasm, I reel them in even more. It feels like so because it seems like I'm that kind of person too. I am hard to convince and more often than not my 'resting bitch face' doesn't do anything to my lack-of-seeming-interest body language. I don't always mean what I show.

Have no idea where this post is going, but it's nice to be back here rambling. Ta for now.

Squeeze

The uncertainty and anxiety I put myself through is something I like to resonate with myself on a day to (sometimes two) day basis. Knowing that no one but myself can pull me out of this wreck, yet there is something so routine about it that it feels like a part of me already. It's one of the things I want to move away from, to feel about necessary things and not worry about unnecessary things but a lot of times, internally I can't decide if what is adequate now may or may not be the same later on.

It's been a whole week since I've been back and I can almost be certain that I am settling back in both physically and mentally. My Mondays for this term actually start only at 4pm, which essentially means I have a long weekend in it's own way, but this afternoon I've got talks and meetings right up till my Math seminar starts so that's no fun. I'm so disrupted from my old timetable that I still can't figure out a gym schedule just yet either. I need to make the most out of my £160's worth.

I came here, actually to just log what I did during my first weekend back. On Saturday I spent the day with the Singaporeans, we went to Sushimania for lunch and only made it to Prime Leaders and realised that all the other letting agents had closed for the weekend so we did errands/groceries and came back to school instead. I had an apple for dinner and called it a night. On Sunday I spent the entire waking day on Skype with my parents and grandma who had came over, basically did work with Mum the entire time and had small talk in between. I used to hate any form of noise while working but that seems to be the only exception I make since being here. I bought a second hand bus ticket and went into town for dinner with Weng, Sharon, Clair and Jo. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I forgot that the whole town literally shuts down on Sundays. We stuffed ourselves in 45mins and went to Starbucks to sit instead after. So that was my weekend. Not a very ideal amount of studying and a satisfactory amount of social interaction.

Also, I want to start writing poetry again. 

The Unbearable Nothing

I don't feel very thankful about being alive today. I mopped about in the morning, spent almost all of it feeling sorry for myself (seemed like the best thing I could do) before I got ready and left the flat to take a bus into town. At least I had good coffee. Here is a slightly contradictory photo of what seems like a smile from this afternoon.

I've poisoned a lot of things that could have happened. I'm interrogating myself: what am I going to do next? My tendencies to question if I should have stayed back has been increasing, peaking at uncomfortably high levels ever since I walked through the boarding gates less than a week ago. I was afraid to be alone and for a while I was scared that was how I'd like to be, but now I'm just scared of the fear. It's a revoltingly twisted issue that keeps twirling around in my head and it's making me dizzy.

[dislodge]

I want to make many things happen. Also I want to give back all I can to my parents. I want to be able to embrace appreciation, both receiving it and showing it without tensing up and feeling awkward. It's nice to feel wanted, and it's very humanistic and I want to be able to remember that more this year. Many things bruised me in 2014, but they're fading like old scars. 

Barely

I've been busying myself very well over the last few days. It's Christmas today, not that it's of any significance to me other than my usual roast turkey meal I get (or am actually making myself this year) at dinner. I barely have 2 weeks left and I'll be back in Brighton again.

Films I collected yesterday, the first roll is the Brighton/London roll

He sells the best sundried tomatoes

 The second roll from circa 2013, bits and pieces in Sentosa and Hong Kong