Allotransplantation

I walked back to Weston alone this evening after having a subpar ramen dinner at an underground Japanese diner with Yee Lin and Ee Min and the weather was perfect, the route I took was quiet and clean and the view of the evening sky was picturesque. I felt absolutely serene and tranquil. And happy. Despite the terrible ache in my legs and scraped knee from playing handball the previous day, I was happy. I’d survived week three and I will continue to survive, was what I told myself as I took the now familiar path back, deliberately taking a slow stroll so I wouldn’t reach my halls so soon just yet.

And that was the first time since coming here that I wanted to not go back yet after the day’s work was done.

I get these bouts of feelings of success and triumph sometimes, like I did this evening or when I managed to get my laundry done or stock up on all my necessities or make rounds meeting people to buy textbooks from them. They are all small victories, I know, but I feel so accomplished everytime and I’d tell myself: this is it. This is me being an adult and doing things on my own and being adequate enough for myself and everyone else. I can overcome my anxiety and I am ready for university life and adulthood. There is a next thing I can look forward to and anticipate for, a rising light in the horizon that doesn’t make everything look so bleak anymore.

But sometimes it also feels like a one-step-forward-two-steps-back thing wherein on the very same day itself, I’d lie on my bed or sit before my desk and a stray thought would slither through the cracks of my mental gears, bringing back memories of home, of Sunway, of Japan and literally anytime else that I’d felt were the highest zeniths I’d experienced. Because there is no need to mask the fact that I still cling very desperately onto these pieces of regalia, making a shelter out of them to promise myself of better things to come and to reassure myself of their continued presence, despite them being very far away both physically and metaphorically. The creature of habit in me oftentimes still find it difficult to place complete faith in things that still scream foreignness at me.

I imagine currently, at week three, I’m experiencing that phase of change akin to the period of time post-surgery when a body is trying to make up its mind whether to reject or accept a newly transplanted organ (a crude image to use as an analogy but I feel like the appropriate situation warrants this accurate comparison) and it’s like just as you start to think that the transplant is compatible, a complication pops up and you have to fix it quickly before the next complication appears and then before you know it, the entire transplant becomes a complication. So what this translates to is that sometimes I’m “I am a capable and responsible adult : D” while other times I’m “what on earth am I doing why am I here D :”

But just like the definition of the word “phase”, it will eventually arrive at a solid conclusion and maybe that will be in a week’s time, or a month’s, or a year’s, but I really hope when it does, it will be one of acceptance, and one wherein I can start to call this place home.