Category: Larger than Lifesize

It appears that this will be the last blogpost that will be filed under this category, Larger than Lifesize – a category wholly dedicated to my whole three years of university in the UK.

And now on to even larger things. Like moving to KL to commence a new phase of my life.

I’ve been back in Malaysia for almost a month now, but my time spent at home in Alor Setar feels like a temporary transit more than anything. Immediately after I unpacked all my stuff brought back from Manchester, I find myself packing again, this time to spend a year in KL studying the CLP, bringing me yet another step closer to a a legal career path that I am still quite struggling to be passionate about. (But lately I am thinking that passion might not be such an important prerequisite in any career I pursue, after all. Unfortunately, the growth of capitalism is almost guaranteed to make us hate our job, regardless of whether it’s in a field we love or abhor.)

I still do miss Manchester terribly, if I allow myself the time and energy to think about it. But at the same time, I am trying to redirect that same time and energy expense towards anticipating a brand new life instead, to alleviate the fear and anxiety that arise with it. So KL friends, hit me up for plans starting next weekend plz 👀

(I missed this blog’s 10th birthday [anniversary?] last month! Happy birthday, Careful Confessions, you’re almost hitting puberty. Kids these days, they just grow up so fast don’t they)

i’m flying back home in two days, and this is probably the last time i will get to write from the learning commons.

AGLC in the summer is a rare sight and an empty contrast to the usual crowd during term time. there are no more familiar faces around, and my purpose of being here lacks any sort of motivation and conviction regarding assignments and/or exams. although i get pleasantly surprised everytime i’m still allowed entry since this year’s term ended.

it would be a stretch to say that i enjoyed the excruciatingly long hours i have spent in this building for the past three years, but it always gets so nostalgic to pass by my usual seat at the couches at floor -1. some of my friendships this year were also unpredictably cultivated here, so that must also contribute to the nostalgia, i guess.

after last night, i realise that i am still somewhat in heavy denial of leaving, even going to the extent of looking up Masters programmes in uni of manchester and asking my dad for the billionth time whether i had actually made the right decision by choosing to go home. realistically, there is no longer anything else that i can do to change the direction i am veered towards. i have paid good sums of money. packed everything up. said all my goodbyes. and that is why this struggle to deny the inevitable scares me more than anything else. i hate to continue fighting against the progression of reality like this, but my mind is still endlessly plagued with what-ifs and any possible last minute turnabouts, wondering why i hadn’t tried harder to cling onto this before.

deep down i know it’s all for naught, and that this is just a tough period of separation that i have to grit my teeth and endure until the pain and sorrow ebb away eventually. so…i don’t know. half of my mind is just trying to distract myself from *waves arms around frantically* all this and the other half is trying to obsessively document everything here as immaculately as i can to prevent any regrets that surface in the future.

this exhaustion and sadness is exactly as i’d expected, and i’m gradually digging my emotional well dry while attempting to be a functional human being in front of everyone else at the same time.

[dated 18 july 2018, 8:23pm]

i think one of the most beautiful things in the world is the coming together of human beings, souls and personalities.

which is why one of the saddest things in the world is the separation of these beings, especially if it’s for a long amount of time.

but at the same time, what remains a beautiful thing too is after said separation, these beings come together again, respectively different in terms of growth and experiences, but still maintaining the same level of care and affection for each other.

and i hope when all of us reunite again, as grown and improved versions of ourselves in the future, we will fondly remember the countless memories of yesterday’s nostalgia, and then move forward to create brand new ones together.

the suitcases are out. my things are in boxes again. everytime i look at a part of my room that used to be filled with books and clothes and see them empty instead now, my stomach starts to hurt just a little because now i can only imagine the ghost of where these things used to be. and if it’s already this bad when it comes to objects in the form of my belongings, what more people?

buildings that i used to pass by and streets that i used to walk on feel more and more precarious, and i know there is only so much that i can do to drink in my surroundings with my senses, but i want all of them imprinted so hard in my mind’s eye because i know there is no way to prevent the erosion of memory with time. i want the urgent immersion now, and i’m afraid of anything less.

there is nothing i can do to stop time, nor change the inevitability of what is coming, and thus i can only make a checklist of doing and saying everything that i want to do and say before leaving with no regrets. and then, and only then, can i allow my heart to mourn in peace before i pick myself up from leaving a significant part of my life behind, to start a brand new one.

this is dramatic but at this point, everything is dramatic.

i woke up this morning with a foreign zest to start packing, and i thought that the easiest and most obvious place to start was by taking off all the posters and photos and postcards off my wall. everything really was fine until i was 50 percent done, blue tac remnants dotting my walls; i properly looked up and realised there were echoes by these surrounding blank walls, and felt my mental energy drain instantaneously at the reluctance of it all.

i was dismantling three years’ worth of familiarity, and tearing these away felt like i was ripping off my turtle’s shell that i call home.

i don’t think i quite know how to deal with this yet, so obviously i gave up on packing and played splatoon for the next ten hours.

i’m really sad and scared. i don’t want to feel as empty as these walls, but i feel like that day will come soon.

when it’s late at night, and there’s almost a sense of deafening silence piercing the stagnant air like needle-like icebergs, or maybe iceberg-like needles. there’s a lull in the air that makes me feel detached from my surroundings in a disturbing way, like i could be the only soul existing in this humming astral plane.

idle days aren’t really idle, are they? when the sky turns dark and my slouch increases inwardly a few degrees more, wanting to be released from the captivity of tedious obligations but also fearing the mirage of freedom even more. there’s nowhere to run, really. there’s nothing i can do, except to meekly bow my head in submission to the cruel passage of time and the bristles that come with it, and hope that these wounds don’t leave scars at places where healing will be impossible.

sometime during this week or month or maybe even year, i was branded with an expiry date. it’s the most arduous form of torment upon one’s psych, but it is precisely this urgency that made me pledge to document this process as best as i can. i want to write more. at least this way, i won’t find myself losing these emotions that are important to me.

for someone who strongly abhors the very concept of change, by the cruel mechanics of fate or some poetic universal shit like that, you somehow find yourself hit by wave after wave of impending and inevitable change.

and at this crucial junction of your life, here is a reminder to yourself why, based on these very precedents of your own history, you will eventually be okay.

it seems way too far away now, but you entered secondary school alone. none of your friends from primary school ended up in the same school as you did. and despite the initial struggles you had, you still graduated fine. you were okay.

no one from your secondary school went to the same college as you did, either. you were luckier this time, and had a few old friends that you managed to reconnect with, 400km away from home. you made new friends too. it was one of the best periods of your life. you were okay.

university in manchester started out similarly rocky. you found yourself in intimidatingly foreign waters at first, but three years later, you’ve built a home away from home, together with all the friends you’ve made here. you were okay. you are okay.

in two months, another huge change will befall upon you again, a change that requires you to pack up three years’ worth of possessions and memories, and start a new life yet again in yet another huge city, away from the friends that you’ve made here yet again. but at this point, this change is no longer unique to you anymore. you are a hypothesis that has been proven through timely experiments conducted throughout your whole life, and that is why, your honour, based on the precedents listed above, it is only natural that the conclusion that the jury has come to is: you will be okay.

it happened mere minutes after i finished typing up my previous blogpost. i was in the learning commons, attempting to concentrate on studying about UK constitutional reforms but continuously failing to focus amidst the heat and its consequent drowsiness. and so, hopping on the summer bandwagon, i impulsively texted the group chat, “lets go for a picnic”. you don’t usually get such nice weather in manchester and i was already counting down my days. due to its suddenness that came out of nowhere sans pre-plans, i was not expecting a lot of affirmative answers but one turned into two, two turned into three, and in the end there were seven of my friends in total who was on board my impulsive idea and minutes after sending off my first text, i found myself creating a whatsapp group and planning an impromptu picnic outside the learning commons that very evening.

i packed up my things and was literally running out of the learning commons in excitement. went home to grab my faithful JBL GO and a deck of cards in case anyone wanted to play bridge. met up with yee lin and ash and then rumin and lionel at turing tap to get pizzas and chicken wings. there weren’t as many people on the field anymore when we were there, so we chose a relatively shady spot and started to buka puasa, together with bubble milk teas brought by wilson. ee min and cc joined us too a bit later on.

the whole time, my heart was bursting with so much gratitude and love.

in itself, i was already an incredibly massive fan of spontaneity. add on to that my friends’ unconditional agreements to indulge me in my whimsical needs (a picnic? at 7pm? on a thursday? my friends made me realise it’s more likely than you think). it only lasted for two hours, and ended up with us hopping from foot to foot in cold because once the sun had set the temperature began to drop drastically, but i was so, so happy, and so, so grateful. grateful for the relationships that i have established with the friends i’ve made here for the past three years, grateful for the freedom and mobility that comes so easily within reach here in manchester, grateful for being able to make great memories like this that i will cherish forever and ever and ever.

there is no reason for me to hate summer.

it’s 26ºC in manchester today. for the past two nights, i have woken up in the morning sweating even with the window open. some time during this week, the mancunian weather just suddenly decided to do a 180º from its previous season renewals of The Beast from the East to a sudden pop-up of Coachella right in the middle of my campus.

not that i’m complaining. there is no reason for me to hate summer, after all.

but for the past two years, i have subconsciously come to associate summer with bad feelings of reluctant leaving. the lengthening of daytime hours and the rise in temperature are elements that have accompanied the impending arrival of an expiry date of my time in manchester, and this year, it’s for good.

contrary to my initial plans of staying back in manchester to do the BPTC, i’ve decided to go back to malaysia to take the CLP instead. making this decision felt like a break-up decision (lol); i really didn’t want to, but i felt like it was the only right thing for me to do, and thus i should do it. and so, even though ultimately i was the sole decision-maker in this aspect, i was very anguished over it for quite a long time. still am, but since i also have no plans to make a change to my decision, i can only focus on the path i’d set ahead for myself and be optimistic about it. there is no right or wrong decision in life after all, only compromises. like janice said, every choice can be the right choice with the right perspective. and with all things considered, it would not be the most terrible thing for my third year to be my last year here. and i plan to maintain it that way. as it is, i want to be excited for an expansion of horizons and comfort zones, as i always have been repeating to myself, on here and in my own mind.

i want to make this year’s summer in the UK the best one yet, before i bid farewell to this place that i’ve come to call a home.

i was hit with news of a potential drastic change in future plans this week that made my stomach drop in dread each time i think about it. and that was when i realised that maybe i’ve been immersed too high up among hedonistic clouds of freedom and recklessness for too long that something like this proved to be a rude awakening (read: crashing).

i didn’t like it. i don’t like it. i really, really don’t like it. i’m not prepared to leave, to return to a relatively more restricted environment, when i feel like there’s still a lot for me to discover out there, so many more people for me to meet. now that i’ve had a taste of how huge the world can be and how many possibilities and opportunities are actually within reach, i’m too afraid of having this wide, wide sky snatched away from under my nose and watch as i’m unnaturally forced back into a restricted mould of narrow-mindedness and a suffocating culture of limitations. i’m afraid of reverting back into a despicable version of myself filled with fear, anxiety and low self-esteem. it took me so long to crawl out into this skin that i’m currently comfortable and happy with, and i’m deathly terrified of losing all of this all over again.

but most importantly, i’m afraid of people that i’ve grown to love becoming mere memories, untouched and unreachable. which is ironic because this fear has followed me since years ago and is ultimately inevitable, a noble feat lost to the cruel and relentless passage of time.