Month: December 2016

Another year has crept away. So sneakily, stealthily carrying away all these memories. Some events and people from 2016 will turn into memories and history forever, some will carry on their physical presence, and many more new people and new encounters await me very soon.

2016 has taught me the most life lessons, and has been my greatest year yet in terms of self-development. I have discovered so many facts about myself that I never knew, and experienced so many adversities and hardships that really toughened me up. Countless times I have doubted myself of my ability to survive this year, but today on 30th December 2016 I think it’s safe to say that I am a survivor. I have underwent so many changes, both physical and emotional, just to become one step closer to the person I have always dreamt of being. I have loved and I have lost, I have learnt through others that nothing is impossible, and I have learnt to let it go. I have become more satisfied with myself, I have learnt to respect myself a bit more than I used to.

I started this blog in late 2012, after countless previous blogs which I had failed to keep alive, with only one solid goal in mind – to maintain this blog and keep it alive. From a daily diary, to occasional updates, and now finally a more eloquent version of a rant site – I celebrate the (somewhat) success of this blog for hitting the 4-year mark, for keeping the writing spirit alive, for being an absolutely essential part of who I am. This blog has helped me express emotions I could never physically have expressed myself, for being such a great form of catharsis when my mind is a wrecked mess. I have never been good with talking, but I’m thankful that to some extent, I can write. To me, writing keeps my soul from running away, keeps my sanity even on the worst days.

2016 has hosted some of the worst days in my life, but also some of the best, most genuine moments ever. You get up when you fall, and you get up stronger than ever before. My road to recovery was not easy, it was tough as hell, A levels was a monster I managed to fight and conquer all by myself. Of course to all those who has helped me in one way or another this year, I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart. All these mysterious readers who read my blog, I don’t know who you are but thank you for enduring my incoherent rants.

May 2017 be good, and come as you are, whatever you are.

I start my internship next week – coincidentally on the same day as when the rest of the younger population will start school. Last year, this would be me dreading school (as how some of my friends 1 year my junior have complained to me), but this year I await with eager anticipation and slight anxiety at a brand new prospect of my life that will completely change me. Instead of going to school which is a convenient 10 minute walk from home, I will head all the way east into Changi every single weekday. Instead of going to a safe and protected environment, I wander into the residence of convicts and criminals in the hopes of learning more about Singapore’s crime scene, in the hopes of learning the truth behind Singapore’s low crime rate.

I mostly get 2 main responses from people when I tell them that I’m going to intern at the prison. From my family, surprise and a lecture to be cautious; and from my friends, cool. Perhaps, it is due to my personality that I will never be able to work as a waitress or a salesperson at a retail outlet because I tend to feel extremely claustrophobic and insignificant when stuck in a sea of people, and also because I think I will go mad if I must answer the same questions again and again to customers. I welcome nature’s seclusion and the seclusion of a closely-knitted community, but not the bombardment of everyday hustle and bustle.

I am also finally taking up driving lessons, an aspect I’ve been looking forward to since forever. To me, driving means freedom and driving opens up so many part-time job opportunities. It’s one of the very few classes that I would eagerly sign myself up for.

All in all, the end of my high school chapter opens up an entire world of new opportunities for me. I will forget the unpleasant and remember the memorable; the important life lessons from school that will guide me wherever I go.

The best things in life come as a surprise; and I am so blessed to be where I am right here, right now.

There are some things you can never say; things such as falling in love with someone you promised yourself not to; things such as falling in love with someone who is already happy with someone else. There are things the heart may want, but that is where the brain must step in.

2016 has taught me how to do proper closures to seemingly never-ending events. A breakup and a 10-month-old secret that I kept until the very end – I thought I’d shatter before graduation, everyone else who eventually knew thought I would shatter. But I didn’t. Waiting for apologies that never came, you learn to forgive them anyway. You learn that love is not about possession; love is as free as a bird is to fly. You learn that when you love someone, you should let them go – like dandelions in the sky.

True beauty lies in subtlety, the smallest of details and the tiniest of occurrences. You learn that never hearing from someone again is not a curse, but a blessing. You learn that you can still visit them whenever you want in your dreams, as long as you want to. You learn that the image of someone you fell in love with will stay forever, regardless how the actual person will change over time. You learn that all it takes is a smile to change everything you once believed in, and you learn to forgo the hatred you once bore against someone for no good reason. You learn that elegance is an attitude, and confidence can be learnt.

I am built out of nothing but layers and layers of firm beliefs. Someday, some of these beliefs must come true – that I strongly believe. My empire is certain despite being built on blocks of uncertainties, an empire that will someday rise way above all other mountains.

The door will open to the one who knocks.

What does home mean to you, when you’ve been brought up in a foreign land all your life with respect to all the rest of your blood-related relatives, with absolutely no family here except your parents, and utilising an entirely different primary language in your daily life?

Going back to China has become more of an emotional burden over the years, the more as I mature and grow up. My uncles and aunts ask me if I have anything against Chinese culture, if I have any prejudice against their government and citizens, if I would ever consider migrating into China again after my parents migrated out of China more than 20 years ago. I am an outsider in my own family, I don’t relate to their daily conversation topics, I am unfamiliar with their system of life, I don’t understand local trends and I can’t hold a decent conversation with a local just because our communication stops right there when I am inevitably asked about my school, education, and aspirations. 

I am verbally eloquent in Mandarin Chinese, I understand the dialects that my aunts use, my accent is on point and there is nothing about me on the physical exterior, as far as looks and language are concerned that gives me away as an absolute foreigner in my supposed homeland. But that is as Chinese as I am; skin-deep, barely penetrating any worthy conversation topic because once the conversation exceeds 30 seconds, I am bound to give myself away with my ridiculous lack of supposed obvious knowledge of the Chinese system. I am 18 years old and University-bound, and one of the most popular questions the locals like to ask youths my age is What University do you want to go to? How’s your gaokao results? What major do you want to take? Which city are you from? Of course, I have nothing to answer. It makes me feel incredibly lousy when I get asked these questions because my parents don’t like it when I tell the locals that I am not a local. It’s like betraying your own family by not admitting you’re one of them, yet at the same time, you must then act like a complete idiot when you cannot answer the questions and then watch in silent horror as your interlocutor view you with astonishment as you reply the most awkward answers.

It makes me feel so lost. I am Singaporean at heart, through and through. I have held, and am still holding, a Singapore passport since birth – my pink IC, my Singapore birth certificate all scream my nationality that is guarded by the law. I was born and raised here, taught in English which I was initially very poor at in my early life stages since I spoke all Chinese at home, and completed 12 years of education all the way from primary to pre-tertiary here. And very soon, I will be enrolling in tertiary education, which will probably also be in Singapore. English is a language I am so familiar with, a language that although I do not have as perfect an accent in as compared to my Chinese accent, is a language I am comfortable with dealing on a daily basis, have no struggle reading, writing, speaking or listening to it. I struggle to read long chunks of Chinese texts at times, just because in my mind I am translating it into English. Perhaps, I am a disappointment to my family in terms of struggling with the language that built my empire.

I have no friends in China, only relatives. I see the schoolchildren with their friends after school, only to realise that firstly I must appear weird because I am not attending school when I look like I am supposed to, and secondly because I am with my parents and not with anyone of a similar age group. I can’t bring myself to use Chinese social websites, I don’t understand the popular terms used by the youths, and all the social media that I’m familiar with – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat are all conveniently blocked by the great firewall of China. And it doesn’t help that sometimes my VPN is slower than my grandmother can walk.

We like to talk about home, where we belong, where our loyalty is. We like to know that we are in a place where we feel we belong, where there are people who will support us, where the environment is familiar and warm. We like to know that everyone lives in harmony and share a common language with a common topic of conversation. We like to know that our family is close to us, both physically and at heart.

But I, I am not so sure about the final point. Will family and home ever become synonymous? Am I truly home when I am in China with my relatives; yet completely dumb to the surroundings, or am I home in Singapore where I am thousands of miles away from family but at a place where my heart and body feel welcomed? When going back to China now means visiting the grave sites of my paternal grandparents – don’t you bury the dead where they feel the most comfortable at?

I have an identity crisis.

In retrospect, is there anything I could’ve done to avoid all these from happening? Touch my heart, I honestly don’t think so. If anything, I’ve honestly tried my best. There is nothing better that could be done on my side, all else left is not within the control of my hands. 

Yet, the lump in my throat is not going away. The pang of guilt, even though arguably not my fault, seems to want to stay. Delusions of numerous pre-rehearsed speeches and actions litter the back of my mind, words that I’ve murmured countless times under my breath but words I’ve never managed to say. There seems to be an endless, infinite stream of thoughts racing through my mind every single second, a whirlpool of emotions that sucks me away into an abyss of foreign illusion and a realm of unrealism. I cannot be the same. I cannot be the same. Am I insane?

Last night was one of the nights with one of my most vivid dreams – my throat tightly seized in your hands as I grappled and struggled to breathe. If you took my breath away, this must be the most practical and realistic way to do it. If my knees went weak in front of you, it must be because you took my breath away (literally). I woke up so suddenly just before I was sure I was going to die in your hands, drenched in a pool of my own sweat and my heartbeat thumping away. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to explain my dream, but my heart is so heavy – so heavy because somewhere a voice tells me that deep within, everything that I dreamt was metaphorically true to an extent. Except, you probably never meant to kill me, you probably never had any ill-intentions at all. I trust that you have never tried to hurt me this way. Good night, this is where my demons come to play.

The future is uncertain but I think the lump in my throat will be there to stay. Regardless if I can ever swallow it, every day I’ll struggle to breathe, every day I will keep my knees upright lest they fall and give way.