i started crying on the train back from ipoh yesterday, and couldn’t control the tears all throughout dinner (which probably messed up dinner in itself, sorry about that) and i went to bed with a queasy stomach and numb palms and woke up the next morning way before my alarm rang. i cried even more after saying goodbye to bellyn and then returned to my room and continued crying curled up in foetal position, and then rumin invited me to go to kl for lunch and i saw it as an opportunity to avoid a guaranteed breakdown within the confines of my smr room so i agreed. even then, the first half of the trip i was either crying or sleeping and i felt so detached from the world because i was just swimming (read: drowning) in my own sad thoughts and i couldn’t shake off the wet soggy clothes weighing me down. it kept me down for a good long period of time until i figured i’d exhausted my emotional capacity which led to my current state of feeling nothing at all. i think i still feel sad, but also not really? i don’t think i’m feeling anything. the only slight emotion i’m feeling is perhaps suspicion and wariness that i’m feeling this way, or rather, not feeling any way at all. pinpointing skills had expired for the day. i guess that’s what crying for 12 hours can do to you. it feels terrible not to feel anything but it also feels terrible to feel sad. there really is no way around this.
i’m sitting alone in my almost bare smr room, looking at the half-packed stuff on the floor and the table, the little blu-tack spots dotting the white walls that i’d probably get fined for, and thinking how it’s just rumin and i in the entire unit. and tonight is the last night i’ll be spending in smr, in sunway, in the state of selangor away from home, and how i will never return to this place again. i felt so much pain when all i saw were ghosts of ourselves walking on the streets next to pavilion to head to tous les jours that night after jogoya, or the canopy walk from college to pyramid, or on the lrt clinging onto the poles playing the balance game. we were everywhere. there was no escaping it. we have literally left trails of ourselves all over pj and kl yet now we are nowhere to be found. it left a horribly sour feeling in my stomach, like it was trying to fold itself in with the help of acid secretion juices.
everyone who knows me wel knows how incredibly bad i am at farewells. and this is one farewell all the farewells i’ve ever previously had had never prepared me for.
michelle teoh 