freshly showered with a starving stomach, i’m sat on the couch in the living room of saville, having just swam for an hour and am now waiting for the ginger chicken in my steamer to be cooked for dinner, as foster the people plays from my JBL go. the song is a 2014 relic, yet i feel as present as ever. and adulting lately has kinda felt like that for me – present.
i just got my own car, which means that my grab app has been left untouched for almost a whole month now. i’ve been driving to and from work and classes pretty much everyday, weekends included, for the whole month of january. i am currently halfway through the litigation module of my legal internship, which means that workload has doubled in volume, alongside the concurrent doubling of my own CLP classes. this means earlier mornings and later hours of going home; familiarising myself with the federal highway and coming home to a single lightbulb i’d left on in the kitchen.
i want to say that this foreign and isolating routine feels weird, but it would be more accurate to say that it feels like nothing. and i don’t mean it in a way to express easiness or comfort, but rather an almost mechanical and robotic sequence of waking up, getting from one place to another, going back home, and sleeping (except with the anomalous daily segment of going on ROC and discord lol). but i know that’s how adulting is. it’s only just the beginning. i haven’t even properly gotten into it yet.
and yeah, sure, i’m still lonely as all heck, but i think there’s a certain gratification to be derived from knowing that i am living this day to day life by myself rather independently, and have not gone starving or (too) dysfunctional. yet. and ironically enough, for the first time in my life, i feel like i am allowed to make as many mistakes as i can. things like getting lost in the KL highways and ending up at freaking carcosa seri negara during peak hours, attending a mock mediation session at my firm in a state of severe sleep deprivation, and spending 10 minutes trying yet failing to side park, make me both anxious and a little bit exhilarated knowing that this life in the city that i am currently leading is very much all within my grasp of control. this story belongs to me. i am writing this story by myself. it’s lonely, but it feels present.
the loneliness part – i’m still trying to navigate my way through it. but i’m living and i’m learning, and that’s all that matters.
michelle teoh 