michelle teoh

Solitude

Of late, I’ve been slowly trying to nurture myself to be comfortable with being alone by myself without feeling anxious. My fear of being alone stems from previous panic attacks that had occurred when I was alone, particularly that one time when I started panicking on the canopy walk. There was no one I knew around and I kept on looking at the faces of strangers around me, students like me walking from Monash to Sunway or from Sunway to Monash, books in hand, bags on shoulders, some with earphones in and some without; and I noticed every single detail with my heightened senses, and all I could do was bear holes into other people’s skulls with my stares, silently begging someone to save me from this thing happening to me because I was already too scared to save myself. Since then, I was terrified of going anywhere/doing anything alone because I was afraid in the event of another attack, I wouldn’t be capable of calming myself down. This led to the vicious cycle of “fear of anxiety itself” (as was mentioned in one of Hank Green’s CrashCourse videos which offers very interesting explanations about the whole deal about anxiety), wherein the fear of having a panic attack actually induces a panic attack. Very ironic, I know, but it put me through hell because there was a period of time when even going downstairs to do laundry by myself made me so nervous that I quite literally ran to the laundrette, threw my laundry into the washing machine, and then ran back to the lifts to return to the comforts of my room.

I found out later on that panic attacks weren’t as uncommon as I thought they were, but people never really talked much about it because episodes of panic attacks were solitary for some people. For me, it became a force of habit to avoid anything that might be anxiety-inducing, even if it meant taking a taxi from Sunway Pyramid back to my residence just so I can avoid walking back to my residence alone through the canopy walk. I was still going to be alone, but avoiding the canopy walk made me feel safer (although honestly, I’ve got a pretty twisted opinion of what is and isn’t safe, haven’t I; the irony of it!). Hank also mentioned about this in the video above, calling it avoidance behaviour, where one avoids doing something in fear that doing it might cause anxiety. At that moment, the avoidance might cause some sense of relief, but in the long run, it solidifies the fear of the action, making it more and more difficult to actually do the thing due to the build-up of fear of fear of doing the thing! It’s all just a goddamn cycle! And an exhausting one at that.

Anyway, anxiety 101 aside, tying back to the title and first sentence above, which is that I’ve been going to the Monash library to study alone for a few days now, despite how nervous it first made me feel. I started out in the most secluded corner on the first floor, where I can trick myself into thinking there was no one around and lessen the burden of stress that stares from other people might cause. I sweated a lot and had to take several distraction breaks (in the form of Youtube videos) before I can return to focusing on my revision.

Progressively, I ventured out of the corner and gradually felt more and more comfortable out in the open. And then I started staying back later, walking to Lunchbox to get dinner and then walk back to the library after that. I’m aware how much of a small feat this is going to sound to, well, everyone, but knowing that I did what I wouldn’t have been able to do last week gave me some sort of sense of power and control over my life, as opposed to previously when I relied on the abilities of others to get my shit together.

I made my avoidance behaviour number one on my hitlist, which was why I felt good and sure enough to take the canopy walk alone this afternoon. It wasn’t my first time alone on the canopy walk since that incident, but it was the first time I felt like I wanted to do it. And when I managed to do it I couldn’t help laughing, out of relief more than humour.

That’s not to say I don’t still feel like running away every now and then, but feeling capable of depending on myself and being comfortable about it (and actually growing to like it) has made this week rather alright, despite my initial fear of another episode of spiralling into isolation gloom. It’s always that universal favourite saying of “being alone vs being lonely” and I think I’m gradually coming to understand that.

This week was an unintended milestone and I hope it grows better from here because slinking back into my previous habits sounds very tempting pretty much all the time. But if I can slay this demon then maybe I can slay all the other demons right up to the boss level. Sorry. 1:25AM. Only analogy I can think of.

it’s a place i’d like to be

I used to make notes on my phone about stuff I want to blog about, and when I went through them just a moment ago, there was only one item on that list last updated on 23rd March 2014: “hashtagging is an art”. Don’t know. Don’t ask. (Although, when I was trying to come up with a hashtag for the Sunway Canon Photography Workshops, I stumbled upon this site which is interesting and also funny.)

I think I first truly realised humans are not immortal when I was 8 and I came home from church crying because I’d learned from Sunday school that Jesus resurrected from the dead and why would I be so upset if I didn’t think dead humans were supposed to, well, stay dead right? Since then, the idea of death has always been absolutely terrifying to me, but of course, it is a universal fear. Where do we go from there? Is it a painful process? But most importantly, why can’t I just stay with my family and friends forever? Why do I have to leave and why do they have to leave?

With the recognisation of the permanence of being absent from a world we once knew and lived in, there arises a a fervent need for many to, colloquially coined, “leave a mark” in this world, to be immortalized in things that last forever, because we don’t. Literature, music, film, politics, literally everything that will last for the next century or so. But all of that doesn’t matter either if no one remembers them; essentially we want to leave a mark in people’s memories, and hopefully we will still be talked about by these people for the great things we contributed to this wretched world. Like many things that we attribute to human nature (greed, self-preservation), wanting to be remembered for our accolades is one of them. Of course, I can’t know for sure without actually finding out if other people share the same opinion as I do, but so far, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to be remembered for the great things they did.

Last week, in a moment of adrenaline rush, I asked my housemates if they wanted to go to the topmost floor of SMR – level 22 – with me to check out if there really was a garden up there or if it was just a rumour. But when I stepped out of the lift, and looked down the balcony while a strong gale blew at us, I immediately regretted everything. I couldn’t even move beyond the lift area without starting to get traces of hyperventilation. In contrast, my housemates seemed like they were on a vacation, and thankfully, with their help, I got across to the next lift area and immediately pressed the down button regardless of whether my housemates were going to follow or not. Despite the assured stability of the building, it felt like the ground itself was convoluted. In that moment of severe leverage, I felt trapped. And fragile. And so, so small. Everything was so precarious, like standing on the sharp pointy end of a pinnacle, about to fall off at any moment if I made a wrong footing, or sneezed a little too forcefully.

How dare I, as a single entity among a seven-billion-figure population, have the audacity to think that whatever I do in life matters to the world? It is, indeed, such a selfish belief.

There are new achievements being rhapsodized about everyday, new records being broken, new discoveries being made; and we hear them widespread through the media. Such big and impactful miracles! The world is a-changing! Events that will be recorded in history textbooks and studied as a compulsory national syllabus by tired sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds in 10 years time. These are the miracles that everyone remembers, including you and I.

But there are also smaller but no less important miracles at work everyday in our daily lives. Parents whom you can call at 2AM to talk about your fears and have them eradicated, friends whom you go on spontaneous road trips with, teachers who don’t technically owe you anything yet do so much for you even though you are just a student among the masses, and even strangers who hold open doors for you or the friendly security guard at the guardhouse who always smiles at you whenever you pass by. No journalist reports these in The Guardian, nor do news anchors on BBC, but these are the immediate things you think of when your life flashes before your eyes. Not the first line in Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, nor even Usain Bolt running 100m in 9.58 seconds. You think about the last time you had coffee (or tea because you don’t drink coffee) with your friends at a dimly lit cafe as it was pouring rain outside, and you think about taking care of your pet puppy with your parents two years ago when it had parvovirus for a week.

And if you are thought about, my friend, you have already left a larger mark than you realise. Because the worst thing isn’t being hated, it’s being forgotten by the people you love.

SMR

It was raining. I was still having writer’s block and none of the writing prompts I googled were helping. So I took my keys and went around SMR* obscurely trying to take photos of the place without getting incredulous stares from other residents or the guards.

Entrance to SMR from Monash. Also, Starbucks.
Block B is where all the single suite rooms are. Gym and pool. The very same pool I jumped into a day before results day. Laundry place aka pretty stressful place. Hidden area behind laundry place aka pretty relaxing place where I occasionally go to hang out by myself while blasting music from my phone. Park at Level 2. Block A where all the less fancy units are (but they have vending machines so I guess that’s kinda nice) Where I’ve called home for the past one and a half years. I’m actually gonna miss this place.

*SMR, also known as Sunway Monash Residence. 5 minutes from Monash University, 15 minutes from Sunway University College, 30 minutes from Sunway Pyramid. Why am I writing an ad for them

Here we go again

A2 starts tomorrow.

Very rarely do I get writer’s block because most of my thoughts flow better when I write but this is one of those instances when I can’t seem to join my sentences together coherently enough to form a complete statement. Even writing about having writer’s block feels very “keh“, as you would say in Hokkien, like desperately trying to squeeze toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube that’s almost empty (although, life hack, if you ever do face a dilemma like that, cut the tube in half and scrape off what’s left of the toothpaste off the walls. Much like scraping the bottom of an empty barrel to salvage what’s left of your dignity as you fruitlessly pray that the toothpaste scraps are enough to last you until your next allowance rolls around). (I’m kidding, things are not that bad but the broke college kid stereotype is very fun to role play as.)

It’s also very ironic because I recently tweeted that I’ve been wanting to write for days now but hadn’t had the energy or time to do so and now, when I finally sit myself down after finishing M1 past years to login to WordPress and properly write, I can’t get my juices going. But I’ll try. I’ll try scraping the “seh sien” walls of my mind.

My UCAS application was finally sent in on Tuesday, after about two weeks of being referred and reviewed by Miss MC, Miss Carol from the A Levels department and MABECS. My email inbox has felt like a ticking timebomb since then. I feel so minute in the whole swarm of applications – I was even given several student numbers by different universities. Student number 15012542. Applying for universities is kinda like being in prison, you’re eventually reduced to the identity of numbers. Being given a student ID number also provides the illusion of already being accepted by a uni; “Hey there! You applied to UCL. Thank you for applying to UCL. We’ll give you a student ID number to make you feel all important and stuff but this doesn’t mean you are a UCL student okay”

I look like this now after having unintentionally cut off about an inch of my fringe on one side and deciding doing the same on the other side didn’t sound too bad, either.

I’ve been feeling a whole lot better about leaving since my last post, although the few days following that post on Saturday saw me experiencing “withdrawals” alone in my room in SMR. And by “withdrawals” I mean marathon watching Parks and Recreation when I couldn’t physically math anymore. Being immersed in a TV show helped to bring me out of that dazed stupor where wave after wave of emotions came crashing onto my shore of consciousness. But last night, the beginning of A2 more or less reminded me of how little time I have left and the feeling of urgency is starting to slowly seep in (although it might also be mistaken for exam revision urgency…or both).

But even I, pessimist that I am, have to admit that everything is going pretty great right now. Of course, once things start to sail relatively smoothly, I start to anticipate the next storm and waver at the edge. But this time, I’m just trying to make the most and best out of everything, and I must say, it sure beats cowering under the imaginary pummelling fist expected to deliver blow after blow at what’s left of my life shreds.

That’s three sentences that start with “but” in a row. Ancient deceased English grammar teachers are rolling in their graves right now, I bet.

Last Day of College

Sunway A Levels July 2013 intake Group 3; so much love for this group of people

I tried to put off writing this as long as I could by not getting out of bed, procrastinating by looking at old photos again…and right now I have a permanent nausea that’s probably caused by the flooding of gastric juices in my gut due to a lot of thinking when I barely slept last night.

Last day of college.

There was an agreement prior to Friday to dress up as formally as we could, kind of like the first formal Friday we did in sem 1 a year ago. I decided this was the best time (and the last time) to wear lipstick and eyeliner to college after 1+ semester of not doing so.

First class was Econs, and Miss Cherilyn brought a whole box of sandwiches to class so all of us had sandwiches as breakfast in class. No lessons were conducted because after that, we had a photo session with Miss Cherilyn. We also had a group photo at the stairs at the foyer like we did in sem 1, same positions and all. Maths class that followed started with Mr Lee covering the vectors topic a little bit and making a brief farewell speech before another round of photo session commenced. This time, it continued all the way throughout Physics class. Mr Ng was immediately roped into the session as soon as he stepped into class at NWG-3. It was basically like three consecutive meet and greet sessions with our lecturers as everyone lined up to take individual or group photos with Miss Cherilyn, Mr Lee and Mr Ng. After Mr Ng left, there was still time left before Chemistry class, so we dared Chok to do the gwiyomi in front of everyone. He did it, and he emerged from NWG-3 that day a victor of life.

Our last class, Chemistry, was at SW3-9. It wasn’t SW3-8, which was the very first classroom we had our very first class on the very first day of A Levels in Sunway College, but the arrangement of tables and chairs in the classroom was similar, so all of us collectively agreed to seat ourselves according to our seating arrangements on the first day of college, meaning I sat next to Zitian, behind Karu and Ken Fui. Miss MC entered and we continued discussing our Chem test paper 4 until the last 20 minutes, and then we took photos with Miss MC too. The day’s classes ended with a class group photo with Miss MC at the second floor balcony, after which many exclamations of “thank you!”s were exchanged.

After that, majority of the class (approx. 20 of us) set out for lunch at Seoul Garden at Paradigm Mall in several cars. Taliza and I followed in Bellyn’s car, and most of everyone were already there when we arrived except for those who went in Harris’ car because they were caught in the SS15 jam.

Halfway through barbecue lunch, I started to get a really intense headache and it had been going on for the entire week now so naturally, being the extremely paranoid person I am, my thoughts gradually started to drift towards really terrible outcomes and I got so scared that I had to leave the restaurant and call my mum and I started crying so I hid behind the lifts and after the sudden cry that strained all the blood vessels in my eyeballs that I had to wait in the toilet for the redness to subside, my headache felt a whole lot better, which led me to eventually believe that this headache might be purely psychological after all. Not being able to cry and repressing my emotions was manifesting itself physically and that was a really frightening thought. But still, I felt worlds better after that as I rejoined my friends at the restaurant.

After lunch, we had a generally very chill hangout session outside the restaurant where they had an outdoor stage and everything. My camera roll got progressively fuller after that. It was a very nice place with very nice people and the weather was also very nice (it was the drizzling before the rain) and I was very, very happy and contented, but just like the gloomy weather, there was an underlying tinge of sadness to all of it that I refused to acknowledge then and there, lest it cancelled out the laughs and the smiles on everyone’s face. It was kinda the end, but not really, either. It was like a transitioning period, more like. We were just sort of stuck in this in-between, and wasn’t that A Levels was all about? We, as A Levels students, not high school students, but not university students, either. Like a stairwell. And it wasn’t too bad, actually, being in this in-between. It’s the part where you have to move on to the next level of stairs that sucks, as all familiarity and comfort of the routines you’ve had at the stairwell are stripped off, just as you were getting accustomed to the clockworks of the system. And that, not being able to attend classes with all my classmates anymore, made me feel like I’d lost something valuable and precious that I had taken for granted all along and never really appreciated.

We left shortly after that, the three of us again in Bellyn’s car.

That night, Bellyn, Zitian and I had a mini foodventure as we set out in Belle’s silver Viva again, first to Standing Theory in SS2 where the hype over their waffles was justified -it was so good that between the three of us, it was finished in approximately only over a minute. Plus, the owner (we assume) of the cafe was like a carbon copy of a younger version of Taliza’s dad, appearance, dressing, voice and all. We had waffles for dessert first, so after that we headed to SS15 for a proper dinner at Little Fat Duck, which was basically just a black truck by the road that looked really cool and sold RM5 pasta. Bellyn and Zitian ordered pesto and I ordered aglio olio with iced lemon tea and we sat at the mini tables they provided next to the truck by the roadside. We also got bread at RT Pastry (again) (for the fourth time in two weeks).

It was a really, really nice night out with good friends and nice music playing in the car during the entire journey. I don’t want these nights to end, either.

Back at SMR, Zitian and I crashed at Rumin’s room until 2AM when we used the off-peak hour 4GB data quota on my broadband to watch Miss Cherilyn’s videos again. And then Harris’ birthday video. And then Shit A Level Students Say video. And then The 1975 music videos while I scrolled through old photos once again on my phone. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one from my class that was feeling the same way and doing the same thing. It was 4AM when I went back to my room and wrote the previous blogpost and 4.30AM when I finally slept. Or tried to sleep anyway. When I woke up this morning, it felt like I’d barely slept at all and my entire body ached from, I don’t know, emotions? Sadness? Because that’s all I remember feeling as I tossed and turned in the night.

I hate this. I hate this coming to an end. I hate it so very much. But one good thing I have to admit about things ending is that you tend to forget about the bad things and only remember the good things, which makes things more painful in general, of course, but they were good experiences and memories that happened to you, and they are a part of who you are today, contributing to the good life you’ve led.

I hate things ending, but “ending” is just a word, and as long as we are all still alive, there is no real end to what we have.

And now, to A2 we go.

0404 thoughts

4am thoughts on the 4th of october are mostly about last day of school, which was today. and feeling tired but not tired enough to sleep. feeling like i’m not doing these emotions justice. feeling like i hate emotions and why am i burdened with feeling so much in the first place. and feeling sad but happy, scared but brave, all the paradoxes and contradictions you can possibly come up in the world.

right now, besides lamenting about the end of the routine of college and classes (i fret about the stupidest things), most of what i’m feeling are emotions for people. good emotions, though. mostly gratitude. it’s neverending, and i will never stop thanking the stars for the friends i’ve made. there’s also a sense of urgent need to do something (besides the obvious studying for a2). like doing things with friends. talking to them. just generally being around these people whom i haven’t been around with for a long enough time. and now our g3 story is ending soon and i’m not even finished writing up own epilogue yet. the feeling i’m feeling right now is kinda like when you listen to the last song on an album and you KNOW it’s the last song and you just feel and sense its ending and there’s just a melancholic tint to it. current mood: the last track on an album.

Exclusive Dinner Event with the Lecturers

Second last day of school.

No one really said it, but these past few days, there’s been a lot of hints subtly dropped mid-conversation about leaving, even among our lecturers. But there wasn’t much emotion behind them, rather just a statement of fact. Less and less people turned up for classes, and by the end of classes today, most of us who did turn up for class gathered around to discuss our “last lunch” together on the next day. And then slowly, one by one, people left until it was only just Harris, Bellyn, Taliza and I at the pipes outside of NWG. We were quiet, and I was looking around the school thinking about how I’d probably never step foot into this place again after A Levels.

I’d had several abrupt awakenings in the middle of the night (circa 5 AM) when I’d lay on my bed in SMR just staring at my Wall of Stuff and the photos/posters etc I’d stuck on it in the dark and feeling so sentimental and melancholic and helpless about everything, especially since sleep effectively eradicates all walls I put up in my mind and I was particularly vulnerable at that hour of the night.

I don’t really know how to explain it, but I feel very detached from this form of sadness. I am aware of it, and I feel myself consciously doing everything I can to pay extra attention to every detail of my surroundings and what I’m doing to hold it longer in memory, but I have not been hit with the overwhelming reality of it yet. And I say “hit” because I can foresee that is literally what it will feel like, like a sledgehammer to the face and no room for you to breathe. I suspect that might probably happen tomorrow. Or even if it doesn’t, on the last day of exams. Or then again, maybe not ever. At this point, I’m not even sure what I am or am not capable of anymore.

Second last day of school also carries another meaning, however: an exclusive dinner event with our lecturers at Upstairs Café. Karu made reservations for a 5.30PM late lunch/early dinner, and by 4.30PM, Bellyn, Taliza, Karu and I were on our way there in Bellyn’s silver Viva. Mr Lee and Miss Cherilyn turned up after that, together with Zitian and Chok. And then Miss MC and Mr Ng too. Seeing our lecturers outside of the classrooms, it was like breaking down the walls of the college/workplace habitat and seeing them out of it (at a cafe, at that) was strange, but a good kind of strange.

Mr Lee was especially talkative, and incredibly funny too. Miss Cherilyn and Miss MC’s friendship dynamic was fascinating to witness, not that we didn’t know they were pretty good friends prior to this, but because we’ve usually seen them as separate identities: our Economics teacher and our Chemistry teacher. And Mr Ng’s banter was classic Mr Ng Banter as was in Physics lessons.

The food was as good as we remembered them, and the desserts too. There was a lot of laughing that made my jaws hurt and even my head pound a bit, which was why I initiated a challenge for myself to keep as straight a face as I can even when something was hilarious and I wanted to laugh. So if any of you thought I was acting weird halfway through, it was because of this.

I realised I will miss this, too. Classes with my lecturers, five days a week. Even though there were times when A Levels felt more than unbearable. Even though waking up for 8AM classes and finishing a school day at 3PM felt brainlessly exhausting. I will miss these four lecturers whom I’ve come to appreciate and grown rather fond of over the course of these 1.5 years. Regardless of what anyone might say, teaching is no easy profession and putting up with a bunch of rowdy teenagers like us doesn’t make the job easier, either. And that’s why I am very grateful that, more often than not, we are treated like individuals in class, rather than a whole general student body, as was often the case with some teachers in high school previously. Thank you, Mr Lee, Miss Cherilyn, Miss MC and Mr Ng, for everything you’ve done for us.

After the dinner, we said our “goodbye”s and “see you tomorrow”s and “I’ll be going for Maths class” before waving our lecturers goodbye. We then decided to go on a spontaneous trip to see the World’s Tallest Pencil apparently in the USJ area but couldn’t find it so we cancelled the trip and went home instead.

Overall, it was a really nice day, and it was a really nice Exclusive Dinner Event with the Lecturers and I really, really don’t want this to end.

(Date and time on the cards I made on the left were corrected ok) Formal invitation cards by Bellyn and I — (Date and time on the cards I made on the left were corrected ok) Formal invitation cards made by Bellyn and I

Miss MC, Mr Lee, Mr Ng and Miss Cherilyn

I can’t cry anymore

Perhaps I’d made the title seem more melodramatic than it actually is, but there is no other more straightforward way to say it: I actually can’t cry anymore.

Of course, I can still physically eject tears from my tear glands if I assert enough force on them, and that’s what I deliberately did last night to get some frustration and worry out of my system after I thought I’d wronged a friend and became frightened. Even then, the pathetically forced tears didn’t last very long and didn’t help very much, either.

I’M SURE THIS IS RIDICULOUS TO YOU but it’s worrying for me because I used to cry a lot, and there was a period of time when I used to cry everyday. I’m not saying that that’s a healthy way to live, but I knew who I was and how much my melancholic temperament affected me as an emotional individual, and crying was my go-to for almost everything that made me sad/angry/worried/frustrated. It’s not productive, but crying does me a lot of good because somehow, I always feel lighter and more at ease after a good cry. It doesn’t even have to be a long and substantial cry, just one weep during which I let my emotions flush out, and then I feel a whole lot calmer. It’s such a cathartic process.

The whole of today, I’ve been really overwhelmed with emotions. Nothing specific. I can’t even tell if it’s sadness or happiness or anger or whatever but it was just a whole gigantic mess of emotions and it made me restless. There was little I could do to settle down and concentrate at a task enough to distract myself from it. Naturally, I turned to wanting to cry again. But I couldn’t. In fact, I laughed more than anything at the pathetic fact that I couldn’t cry to make myself feel better; it indeed was pretty amusing. So in the end I didn’t know what else to do except write about it so here I am.

The only origin of these emotions that I can think of is going through my folder of stuff that I’d accumulated over the past year here (movie tickets, ice skating tickets, letters, cards, even a fork from A Pie Thing) and feeling the hollow feeling I’d described in my previous post return again. But I wasn’t exactly feeling sad. There was wistfulness, perhaps, and a mighty lot of nostalgia, but the urgency wasn’t at its maximum to feel sad yet, which is also another thing that worried me because I’ve never felt so emotionally detached before. I have only ever felt intensely and thoroughly, and again, while it was a pain in the ass, I knew it was who I was, and I never questioned it (even though I did always complain about it a lot). I realise I’ve been able to deny my feelings a lot lately, which, in retrospect, is probably the biggest reason of my inability to cry. And many might see this as growth, as an expansion of strength, and I think so too, but at the same time it also feels very unnatural and very artificial. It also scares me. There is very little I am not scared of. And it’s horrendously ironic because a few months ago I had to swear an oath to myself to get through the day without crying once and now I’m desperately seeking for catharsis in the form of bawling my eyes out. We always want what we can’t get. It’s a sick, twisted world.

Another frightening thought I had in the shower was: what if I couldn’t cry on the last day(s) as well? I don’t know why it’s scary, just that when I thought of it it made me want to throw up.

Of course, I say all of this now but who knows??? This might just be a temporary emotional block and I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, as always.

Fun fact of the day: I made spaghetti for lunch today and Bellyn said it was worthy of a cafe-standard spaghetti dish and now that’s a compliment I’ve never gotten before! 😀 I didn’t take any photos of the spaghetti, though. Aw. 😦

The End Is Nigh

Miss MC said in class today, “The biggest lie told by mankind is ‘I won’t record this down because I will be able to remember it in the future’.” And she’s right. Not writing anywhere about everything that’s happened for the past few months will come around and bite me in the ass someday, I’m sure of it. Most likely when A Levels end and I’m lying on my bed feeling sad and pitiful for myself while listening to a repeating playlist of songs I’ve listened to during these three semesters. And then a tiny thought would probably snake into my brain cells and feed me with You feel that? That’s the feeling of slowly forgetting everything you did during sem 3 that you didn’t write about because you were too lazy/sad/afraid etc and I hope you’re happy now! I hope you’re happy with desperately clinging onto measly half-forgotten memories and pathetically consuming them day by day like a drug addict with a dwindling cocaine supply!

And that’s why I’m here, attempting to salvage as best I can what I have left here in Sunway with some of the best people I have ever met in my life. And doing so would require delving deeply into that cut-off corner of my brain which has accumulated all these nostalgias and memories and secretions of gastric juices in my gut that I have adamantly coerced myself into, well, cutting off for the time being because as I’d told Harris: 1) There’s nothing I can do about it and 2) It seemed wiser and more appropriate to busy myself with the 487392847923432 things I have to do at the current moment such as preparing for A2 and uni applications etc. But because I can already vividly foresee that ‘me crying pathetically on my bed back at home in Alor Setar while listening to nostalgic music’ image in my mind (and perhaps even feel the slivers of melancholy seeping into my pores), I don’t want to regret not doing anything while I still can before I leave this place for good.

I made similar blogposts before leaving high school, but that feeling of leaving can’t even begin to compare to what I’m feeling or will feel on the last day of college (which is next week) (and then A2 exams end on 25 Nov). I mentioned in a vlog once the contrast between high school life and college life, one of the more significant differences being how I’ve found a second family in my closest friends (and also lecturers) and how much I felt like I’ve belonged, finally, to a group of people whom I feel so comfortable around, how easily I fit into the mould of the puzzle made up of my motley crew of friends. The first few months of college saw me crying everytime I had to leave home to come back here; the second half of the 1.5 years saw me crying everytime I had to leave home to come back here, and also when I had to leave here to go back home. It was a lose-lose situation (or win-win, if you’re optimistic), and it sucked. Transitioning sucks. Moving on sucks. I know leaving is essential to welcome the next best thing in our lives, but god, please, allow me to just wallow in my own misery over leaving this place and the people I love dearly just this once.

I know this is a blogpost better written with a maximum impact perhaps on the last day of school or exams and I just tweeted that but I feel like my current emotions and words would seem rather invalid if I waited to publish them in the future. And that’s exactly how fleeting all of this is: what I feel now might not be the same as what I might feel in the future. I remember after coming back from MCYDS in 2011, I was so deep in emotions and nostalgia for the next week or so that I couldn’t stop writing notes and blogposts about it. And now, three years later, I read back on my emotional blogposts and I cannot seem to find a relatable link to the emotions I was feeling so intensely back then. And it scares me so much. The prospect of forgetting or losing touch with what I had here in the future makes me so frightened, because how could I? After everything we’ve been through together? We can reassure ourselves in the current moment how we’d always remember to keep in touch and never forget each other, but the future is unpredictable, and the people we might turn out to become even more so. But while this is a proliferating fear of mine, I like to think what I’ve established with my friends here is fortified enough to withstand the passing of time and the influx of new experiences and memories (so cheesy, minta maaf). There’s nothing wrong in turning to optimism sometimes. But then again, drifting apart is only normal in human nature, and even if that does happen, it still doesn’t invalidate our past experiences and moments together, and that’s one of the most wonderful things in the world, because memories live forever in our minds and in physical objects such as writings and photographs regardless of how things can change in the present, that is, until we die and objects depreciate, but I have little care for being immortalized forever for generations to come, I only care to be immortalized among the people I know and love, and that really is enough for me.

I can’t really remember what I’ve done for the past few weeks (how fickle the mind is!) except the general ominous feeling of being burdened by LNAT and mock exam results and writing my personal statement and submitting uni applications. But I’m glad and grateful that these bouts of stress and anxiety were punctuated by occasional road trips to good food places and even the National Science Museum in Bellyn’s silver Viva, and also just generally hanging out with the gang and classmates in college, and also my housemates in SMR. For all my constant whining and self-pitying, where I am right now isn’t a bad place to be in. In fact, if I were to just put aside my habitual pessimism and negative feelings for a day, I’d really see how fortunate I actually am. Staying stagnant in this current phase where we are right now probably seems like the most enticing idea at the moment.

Today, during Econs class, Miss Cherilyn gave each of us a For Fun Certificate congratulating us on “graduating” from A Levels, and also a video which I posted above, a slideshow of pictures of all of us throughout the entire 1.5 years to the song of Rascal Flatt’s My Wish. We watched it on the projector in the NWG classroom. I didn’t cry, mostly because of the cut-off, but I could feel the hollow feeling in both my chest and my gut growing in size, expanding gradually and counting down the days to my departure. And the worst part of all of this is how there is literally nothing I can do about it. Anxiety has taught me how to deal with my problems head-on effectively immediately, but there is no solution to this. This is a passage everyone must go through. And I can fight and struggle internally as much as I want to like what I do everytime before I board a plane, but just like everytime I do board the plane, I will go through with it, and it will feel like the worst withdrawal ever. But life goes on.

There is much more to be written, but I feel it only fair that they are written in much more detail when this phase of our lives closes to an end. Till then, I leave you this phony quote by Holden Caulfield: “I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them.”

0120 nighttime hours

watching snowpiercer for the second time. with subtitles.

god, i wish for everything to be over. but not really too, you know? because once the bad is over, so will the good. kind of like a package deal. but a terrible one.

can’t have one without the other.

Come On, Atlantis

The last time I wrote a post that wasn’t about an event/feelings/some kind of obligatory post about something obligatory was probably last year. That’s a bit. Sad. I looked back on my posts and there is a certain detached feeling to all of them.

Which speaks volumes about how afraid I am to write here. There are so many opinions I have about ~radical and ~controversial issues which, if I wrote here, would be read by quite a number of people that I actually know and talk face to face to in real life. And that is nothing if not awfully frightening. I don’t know. Baby steps. Fear is a crippling beast.

I realise now why I actually do only write about things that people/ask.fm anons ask me to write about. Because if it’s not requested by other people, how dare I write about stuff that no one demands to know about. Who cares how your day went. Who cares how you feel about a certain something. It’s foolish and pathetic how low I’ve stooped, conforming myself to societal pressure. As if the only validation I need is validation from other people apart from myself. I am a fantastic agony aunt to anons on ask.fm (“Who cares what other people think only you decide how to live your own life!!!”) but I should perhaps take some of my own advice that I spew out on the Internet. Talked the walk, so now walk the talk. Or something like that.

It’s almost 10PM and I am so worn out to the extent that these words on my laptop screen are so blurred and I’ve already forgotten what I wrote about in the last three paragraphs (good job mathematical senses still intact in the face of fatigue) but I guess this is truly a post in real-time so I’m going to write this post with the assumption that people actually want to know what’s happening in my life. There’s that other-people-validation thing again.

I am currently in my third semester of A Levels in Sunway College and I will be sitting for my A2 exams in October-November. Mock exams are in 1.4 weeks and then I get to go home one last time for a week before I’ll be coming back here, finishing off my exams and university applications and human adult responsibilities before I finally leave this place for good. On one hand, it would be a relief once A Levels are over but on the other, I don’t think I will ever be prepared to leave this place. And by this place I don’t actually mean the literal accommodation of SMR and also Sunway and away from home in general, but rather the routines I’ve grown accustomed to, the second family that are my friends and the memories we’ve made here. It’s only been a year, but it feels like the longest ass year I’ve ever been through.

I’m also doing a lot of f*ckiminmy20s-inspired (what do you call them) infographics/drawings/texts???

Jumping Into A Pool

In the world’s comprehensive list of ridiculous things to do, this probably doesn’t even make the cut on the draft list. But it’s the most bizarre thing I’ve done, which says a lot about my life considering the most interesting I’ve done prior to this is wake up at 3AM to watch the Olympics. Haha. Laugh at my life.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when thoughts about results day tomorrow started to overwhelm me, perhaps it was an accumulation of nerves over the weekend, perhaps I saw/heard something that reminded me of what was happening tomorrow. Whatever it was, it’s not surprising at all that results day was the only thing I could think of the entire day in school. During lunchtime, I swapped my carbonara for Taliza’s fried rice because I thought the cream was making me feel sick but in the end I realise food in general was making me feel sick.

And then I came back to SMR and figured the only physical object that could make me happy right then was ice cream so I went down to 7-11 to buy a Cornetto and like the pretentious idiot I am, sat by the pool staring into the distance watching a shirtless white dude type away on his phone. And then I texted Bellyn asking if she wanted ice cream as well and when she came down she said, “Jump into the pool” and I said, “What” and then the “What” slowly became an “Okay, why not” and I was in disbelief of what I was about to do because as I mentioned, I’d never jumped into a pool fully clothed and unplanned before. And there were also people in Lunchbox. And I was jumping into this pool. For real. What.

The moment right before I hit the water surface was a burst of clarity. The entire thing, honestly, the rush of adrenaline, the exhilaration of spontaneity, the just-doing and not-thinking. I didn’t realise how fogged and clogged up my brain was over worrying the entire day, and I seriously don’t know how this works, I seriously don’t know how the mind works or how circumstances of life in general work, but I felt a lot lighter after emerging from the pool (metaphorically, of course, because wet clothes are pretty darn heavy). If I were to use an analogy, it’d be like being trapped in snow globe, and the walls of the snow globe are filled with clouded moss so you can’t look out of the globe. And then as you jump into the pool, the snow globe gives a little shake, and the mosses dislocate from the walls and fall as accumulated sediments onto the ground, still there, but at least not preventing light from penetrating through the glass walls. Kind of like eutrophication.

Thank you, Bellyn. And yes, I agree, the world is pretty amazing.

Post-scriptum: Good luck to everyone getting their A-Levels results tomorrow!

Disruption of the Arrangement of Life

I just finished reading Every Day by David Levithan (3 out of 5 stars, wouldn’t really recommend unless you’re in for a casual, mindless read) and one of the quotes was “There are many things that can keep you in a relationship,” I say. “Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that’s okay, because you don’t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there’s the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won’t change.”

The context of the quote is irrelevant to what I’m about to write concerning exactly what the title suggests, of the disruption of the arrangement of my life.

I don’t know where this adamant belief came from, nature or nurture I really cannot be sure, but I know for a fact that even since young, I believed the existence of a fixed blueprint for each of our lives. And mine was aligned with my ideas of perfection: good grades all throughout my academic pursuits, a professional job with stable income, setting up a family…it seems like a stereotypical path to take but it didn’t seem that way to me then. 10-year-old me believed that everyone’s goals were ultimately the same as mine, the only difference is that some manage to achieve it while others fail. So I was determined as hell to get it right for myself. I didn’t see the end goal as a solid prospect, but rather the entire process as a straight line that never diverges, not a single speck of dust out of line. I guess I was indoctrinated to hold onto these ideals.

I know better about fixed blueprints and paths now, but it still didn’t lessen the strict straight linear path I’d set for myself; it stuck with me until now. That’s why any rule-breaking gives me huge bouts of anxieties. Any out-of-line, unpredictable and spontaneous activity literally makes me break into cold sweat. It didn’t even have to be remotely dangerous or threatening, but if it’s something out of my preliminary agenda, my “fixed blueprint” that I don’t see coming, it terrifies me. I think there is a dab of perfectionism associated with this in the sense that I was afraid that these “outliers” might tarnish the ideal route I’d set for myself to reach my “Ultimate Goal in Life”, capital-U, capital-G, non-capital I because of capitalization rules, and capital-L.

That’s why I’ve always played it safe. Safe choices, safe ideas, safe actions. Nothing too drastic that I won’t be able to change in the near future. Not doing things based on desire and hunches because “it’s not right”. Not in the Agenda. That’s why doing little “rebellious” things like waking up at 3AM to watch the Olympics (when I should be sleeping in preparation for school the next day) and taking a short drive alone in the neighbourhood (when I should be heading home straight away) feels so exhilarating. To anyone else, it might not even bat an eyelid but to me it felt like I was going against currents, for once. It’s weird to talk about this, something I’ve kept to myself all this while, conversations and arguments I have with myself whenever I face conflicts regarding actions to take for or against this “blueprint” and/or going against what I had really wanted to do at the moment. I guess this isn’t entirely a bad thing, and in fact might be applauded by many for being cautious and self-preservative…but there’s also the dissent within myself of not being able to do the things I want just because they are not “conventional”, because they might “disrupt the orderly arrangements” of my life. Like solid to liquid. Packed, orderly arranged particles gaining energy and losing their fixed patterns, dissolving into fluids that resemble nothing, well, solid.

No one ever really said it to my face (except for Teacher Noni that one time in front of the whole class and I was taken aback- so that’s what people thought of me) but I knew I was generally labelled as a pretty uptight person. I like to think I’ve changed significantly during my current course of life, namely after entering college. I learned to love and appreciate spontaneity and adventure, but that didn’t mean I stopped being afraid of it, just that I refused to allow myself to linger on the thought too much. It still scares me if I allow myself to think about it, and subsequently the thought expands into worry bubbles and if it proliferates long enough, emerges as anxiety.

But I crave it. Once getting past the hurdle of fear, it was the best feeling in the world. Booking a flight to UK was pretty much an on-a-whim thing I did; I wouldn’t have done it if I continued mulling it over for days. (It’s too dangerous. I don’t actually have to do this. I’m going to go to UK when I go to university anyway. I haven’t been on a flight in three years. The weather’s too cold, I might get really sick. I’m still coming to terms with being nervous a lot of the time, especially on flights. My parents aren’t going with me, what’s the point? It’s just UK! I should be spending more time at home since I’m going to college soon!) On the day of the flight itself, I was suddenly struck by the horror of what I’d done – why in the fresh hell did I decide to fly to a foreign country 13 hours away without my parents for a month? And everything within me started screaming, “TURN BACK! TURN BACK!” but it was too late. I was already on the plane. I had no choice but to accept this whimsical decision of mine. And honestly, it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

After having lived 19 years of life, I should be able to banish the “blueprint” from my mind. And I am trying, bit by bit. The question is, do I want to? Should I? On one hand, it could be a good thing in the sense that I have a direction and purpose in life; on the other…is it really the direction and purpose in life that I really want?

lone drive

I drove alone for the first time in months.

I visited Beneh today on the first day of Raya and was treated with generous servings of lontong (which she took the liberty to cut for me, thank you) and rendang, which satiated my rendang craving since this morning. It felt so pleasant and nice to catch up with her, talking about nothing specific but everything in general. And then it was 7 and I had to leave to buy dinner for my mum who was working today.

I was quite antsy during the drive to Beneh’s house (when am I ever not anxious, sigh) because, as I said, it was my first time driving alone in months. But on the drive back, fuelled by triumph of reaching Beneh’s house by myself in one piece, suddenly, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to just keep on driving forever with STRFKR playing on the car stereo, all traces of anxiety eliminated.

And that’s what I did. I looped around the neighbourhood, basically, passing by my friends’ houses and dropping mental greetings by their doorsteps, marvelling in the possibility that they might just pick up on that. The sun was just setting, I was singing at the top of my lungs to songs that don’t even have lyrics, just music; wonderful, seep-into-your-bones kind of music that made you forget that you were actually making rounds in your own neighbourhood instead of speeding down the deserted lanes of Iceland (or something).

It felt nice to be alone, whilst in control of a powerful automated vehicle. It felt nice to be alone, period, something I must say I haven’t been able to feel for quite some time now.

And then I drove back home and my dad and I went to get dinner for my mum.

Monday Night

We started the evening/night’s adventure with Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’ Roses from Karu’s mixtape playing on the radio in Bellyn’s silver Viva.

Reservations were made beforehand at Upstairs Café, which was fortunate because when we reached the café which was literally an upstairs shoplot, it was pretty much full. We each placed our own food orders (all of us ordered pasta of different varieties) (I ordered putanesca despite not knowing what it was solely because there was a period of time in my life when I was obsessed with the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie and one of the scenes in it was when the Boudelaires had to prepare putanesca as dinner for Count Olaf using a spittoon) and also dessert orders.

And then, we waited until around half past seven for iftar. In the meantime, we played Truth or Dare using an app of Bellyn’s phone as the “spinning bottle”. The last time I played Truth or Dare was when I was 12, but that was the least of the reasons why I was apprehensive to play this game. But in the end, I didn’t go a single round and it actually turned out to be quite an entertaining activity while we waited for our food to arrive.

Not surprisingly, all thoughts of Truth or Dare went out the metaphoric window when our pastas arrived, and in between gulping down our food wolfishly, exclaims of how splendid the food was were thrown around the table, which were met by equally enthusiastic nods and agreements by members of the dinner table. And then the desserts arrived – crème brulee, lemon meringue – and it was so, so good so Harris and I went to order our own desserts as well – lemon meringue too, and a chocolate French dessert. We also secretly ordered a slice of red velvet cake for Zitian, as this food trip was initiated partially to celebrate Zitian’s belated birthday.

Dessert eating was yet another round of happy and satisfied customers showing their affection for the food and now, the place and its ambience in general. And then Zitian’s cake came and we all collectively sang a birthday song for her.

It’s getting harder and harder to describe my experiences with these people using mere words. They really don’t do my emotions justice at all.

We continued talking after that and left when it started to get quite crowded. From there, Bellyn drove us to SS15 where we shopped for bread and pastries at RT Bakery. We didn’t say it out loud, but it felt as if none of us wanted the night to end just yet. Being mobile felt powerful. But it was a Monday night, which meant that there were still classes to attend tomorrow, homework to be done, responsibilities to be fulfilled. There will come a day when none of this will matter anymore, none of this will be top priority on our lists, but alas, Monday night was not that day.

At around 9PM, it was time to head back. Taliza was dropped off at college, and Karu and Harris were dropped off at Pyramid. And then Bellyn, Zitian and I headed back to SMR.

We ended the evening/night’s adventure once again with Sweet Child of Mine.