Author: Fangjie

Another year comes to a close. Another reminder that time truly flies by; good times come to an end, and so do bad times.

This year, I turned 20. It marked the end of my age starting with the digit “1”. Most of my memories were formed during those ages, and so were most of my lessons learnt. This year, I have many things to be thankful for.

This year, I’m thankful for the opportunity to represent my university in a sport I loved since I was 4. I’m thankful that we made it to third place, one position up from last year.

I’m thankful for my roommate, my Best Friend. I’m thankful for all the goofing around in the room, and thankful for all the support rendered when I was in despair. I’m thankful for my classmates, my lunch buddies, people who took classes with me and who helped me when I was confused with work. In University, one thing I quickly learnt was that people come and ago all the time. There’s no fixed group of people, and it’s your own duty to find your friends. I’m thankful for these friends who have supported me along the way.

I’m thankful for finding a work opportunity during school term to have extra cash to spend. When money is tight, a spare $200 a month can really help a lot for a poor student. I’m thankful for nice supervisors, such that I’m able to continue the same work in the next year because I have been re-hired.

I’m thankful for all the random people I’ve encountered who have touched my heart in one way or another; the boy with an amazing talent to speak, the girl who struck a conversation with me just because she knew my Best Friend, the supervisor who talked TOO MUCH but is a joy as a supervisor nonetheless.

This year I have celebrated an amazing GPA for my standards, and I have despaired over my struggles to love myself and those around me well. I have learnt that love is patient and love is kind, and love is not manipulative. I have had a taste of what true love should feel like, and I have had a taste of God’s saving grace when I thought I was done for. I have had a taste of pure kindness, pure sincerity, and warmth from total strangers.

This year, I have reached out to some I have not reached out to for a long time. I am reminded that everyone crosses your life for a purpose. I am learning to appreciate good memories, but not be crippled by the loss of them. I am learning to love myself, so that one day I can truly love someone else. I am learning to not be envious of something that others have, but to appreciate what I do have and to work towards the things that I want.

This year, my heart has soared, been broken, and saved again. I have regained a faith that I thought I lost a few years ago, and this faith is only growing stronger by day. And in this faith, I know that every following day will be a brighter day. I know that challenges will come, and that I will be strong enough to overcome these challenges. I know that I will be watched over and cared for, and I know through it all I will find Eudaimonia.

I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.

I haven’t felt fear like this in a while. Maybe something will happen, maybe it will not. Maybe I am overthinking, maybe I am not.

I need answers; I need comfort; I need reassurance. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay.

Everyone has days like this. I need to be brave. I need to keep my head high. I need to fight on. And most importantly, I need to believe.

I’m scared, but I need to go on.

Recess week has been quite a painful week.

I didn’t do very well for my test, got rejected by a job, and messed up intrapersonally and interpersonally.

What makes it all so painful is that every time I harbour resentment for things not going well for me, I am also digging my own grave. Fists thrown are thrown back at me. Once upon a time, good sweet memories are grey and slowly dying. And nothing will be the same from now on. There aren’t many more opportunities to just completely lose yourself and pick up again; or at least, I don’t want to.

Routines are becoming more and more volatile. I’m still used to a 12-year routine that the government has made me go through, and now this routine lasts around 3 months each, then a break where I have to go find my own routine again, and then another 3 months, and then a break again, and then ultimately I am completely on my own to decide my own routine for life.

This is what I am afraid of the most. A routine that I will not be happy with. Familiar faces that I don’t connect with beyond their facades, a routine that does not nourish me soulfully, a feeling of irreversible emptiness. Like eternal darkness, but with the lights turned on.

Some familiar faces have become strangers, and I fear that more familiar faces will become the same. But I need to live my life like water on a rock; slow, smooth, and always open to change.

The idea of loss can be quite crippling. Even now I sometimes wonder what an ex-best friend is doing, whether I should send them a text, and how I still remember them by their 10-year old faces, even though they’re now 20.

Time is like a constantly flowing raft down a river; you don’t notice how far you’ve come until you turn back and look. Most people will be stations you flow past in your life, some will overturn your raft, and even fewer will decide to hop on your raft and flow with you.

With every person and event that I tip my hat to, with every building containing many memories that I leave behind; an expired student pass, a terminated access card, they remind me that it is these little deaths that make me more alive now.

It is the school term, and once again I am away from home on the weekdays. I come back home on Friday night, and return to school on Sunday. I spend much more time in school than at home, and for these four months, my hostel is my home and my roommate is my family.

And suddenly when I am back at home over the weekends, it suddenly feels like a vacation rather than truly being at home. My room, my wardrobe, the kitchen. I’ll only be here for two days a week, sometimes not even that, but I have lived here for so long. And suddenly it doesn’t feel that homely anymore. (And maybe after I graduate, soon I will have my own home, who knows)

This brings back so much nostalgia. I’m reminded that I am growing up, and those who have watched me grow up are growing old. I am no longer innocent, and I am starting to understand “adult” topics. I hold on to money tighter now. I think further than just what is beyond me now. I read between the lines because society is not black and white, unlike childhood. And soon, everything I once thought would stay forever, would not.

Every progression into the next stage of life gives me many experiences and teaches me countless lessons. And one of the biggest lessons I have learnt is that you start to lose your childhood bit by bit, the older you grow. Sounds obvious, but it’s really not that so. I am lying on my bed at home now, but somehow I know that I won’t be here for long — I won’t be home for long. Because one day, we all leave home.

And what is Home? It is not just shelter, food, and warmth. It is where your heart belongs. And perhaps in that sense, my hostel and my roommate; are home.

Perhaps, Love

is not so much about holding
you in my arms to sleep
at night, feeling your fingers
tighten around my wrist;
softened breathing
and wrinkled sheets.

is not so much about money spent,
a hundred and fifty dollars
in between days and nights
of angst; bottled up with
deadly silences of unspoken,
unappreciative thanks.

I will miss

moments when we didn’t fear;
when we didn’t think we needed
a plan, when we believed in
a miracle that sizzled away
like water in a frying pan.
when hope was stronger
than reality, like wishful
thinking upon the sand.

Perhaps, Love

is letting you slip away
from my hands, watching
your hair sway in the wind
without my grasp, letting go
because I know I am not
the best.

is realizing I was your
8 month vacation;
and now, you want to
go home,

Knowing that in you,
I have built mine.

Somewhere along the way, I stumbled into my best friend when we were both 19.

19 is a young age, but old enough for one’s character and personality to be more or less finalised. Every baby is born a clean slate, but over the years human interaction with those around them, like permanent ink on a sheet of plain paper, shapes every individual differently from one another. Everyone has different experiences, cultures, opinions, habits, and beliefs. And it is this combination of everything; the bits and pieces of one’s childhood, that forms one whole concrete picture that is one’s adulthood. Like a finalised painting after many, many, strokes of the brush.

My best friend and I clicked like the perfect puzzle piece. We started off as strangers from vastly different backgrounds, but all of our differences and jagged edges fit right in with each other so snugly, like a perfectly fitting shoe. And how rare is that to find, a perfect puzzle piece, when no two people are the same?

I know full well the people who have crafted me from childhood until now, those who created my puzzle piece. Those who have shaped me uniquely me, complete with influencing my set of beliefs, opinions, character and personality.

And which other group of people had shaped and influenced my best friend? Which other group of people had walked with my best friend way before I did, such that we clicked so effortlessly?

Everyone is a mirror of those who have walked with them. However you think of me, reflects about those who have been critical to my growing up. And for me, it’s always rather intimidating to come to see these mirrors, regardless your own or someone else’s. Had these mirrors not reflected, I wouldn’t be me, and you wouldn’t be you.

Today I met my best friend’s mirrors, those who have walked with her longer in years than I have in months. It was an incredible honour, but it was also a surge of emotions. I saw so many aspects of my best friend in another person—a stranger, to me. These mirrors of my best friend are complete strangers to me. But complete strangers come together and form an inseparable person.

I hear stories of my best friend when she was at an age that now seemed too distant for me. What would I have done if I met my best friend when we were 7 instead of 19? These would only be hypothetical questions, but they invoke so much pondering.

How? Where? What? Why? How? Am I trying too hard? Why do I feel this way? Is anyone even relating to this at all? What does my best friend think of this post?

Humans are weird and I don’t deny one bit of it. And language is more powerful now than it has ever been, but today I feel like I’ve done a poor job in relaying my emotions in this blog post. I feel like I’ve not said anything very meaningful at all, and I’m not sure if anyone will understand, much less relate to me. I take a lot of pride in my writing, but I’ve utterly failed in this post at trying to relay the storm in my head.

Perhaps, either it is not meant to be relayed, or only those with puzzle pieces that complement mine shall understand me.

I need answers. And it’s not fair that the questions I so desperately need answers to, aren’t questions in the first place to so many others.

I understand that even then, I am beyond privileged over many others—many of whom don’t even know that their lives need questioning—but still, let me throw these questions out into virtual space today, so I can sleep better tonight.

Why do I always need to run and hide? And seemingly, pull people down to run and hide together with me. This is a choice I have never chosen to make. I have never chosen to always run against, deliberately, the fragile social expectations of how I should behave. How I should act like a person, what kind of things I should and should not do, what kind of things I should like, what kind of dreams I should aspire for. What kind of feelings I should have. Otherwise, I’m wrong as a human. Wrong as a creature who never deserved to associate with society.

There are many things that I have done, which I should have done. But no one has credited me, because they are very normal things. I have seen others who have not done these things that I have done out of normalcy, perish and suffer under society’s cruel criticism. Because it’s never okay to not be normal.

But there are so many things that I have done, or with whom I associate with, that I shouldn’t have. And I have been heavily punished for: emotionally, mentally, physically, for these things that I hold very close to heart, even as a form of self identity. Sometimes, I feel like it’s wrong to live in my own skin.

And how is it that these things that I struggle to find an answer to, are so completely irrelevant to so many people around me? But then again, these people probably have their own problems that are irrelevant to me, too.

At the core, all of us have our problems that we struggle to find an answer to. All of us in one way or another are forced to take cover from society’s unforgiving expectations.

Yet who are we to blame? Ourselves only, for we make up society.

At the end of the day, society is a man made fantasy.

We will be sweaty and dirty, but I think we will be happy.

The sad truth is that we are not bulletproof, no matter how we shield ourselves from vulnerability. *Someone*, eventually, will break down our walls. And then break our hearts.

But this is part and parcel of growing up. As kids, in kindergarten a group of us would assign marriage to each other 20 years down the road. He would marry her. She would marry him. (Has nobody considered that he may marry him, or she may marry her?) Anyway, Johan, if you’re reading this—we’re probably not getting married, but wherever you are I hope you’re doing fine.

In many ways, a bittersweet emotional memory is something to be thankful for. Having someone go down forever in your books as a “painful” person to remember probably meant that before they were the “pain”, they were once a great blessing; a wonderful existence that you wished you could’ve done more with, but it did not work out. Maybe, just maybe, in the future we will collide again.

Every person you meet will teach you something, and every emotional collision is not a wasted collision. As much as it hurts one’s ego to know that they would eventually become someone else’s learning lesson, or that they were someone else’s “mistake”, it is only necessary because everyone needs learning lessons, and everyone makes mistakes. As much as we allow ourselves to make mistakes, we need to painfully accept that sometimes, we are the mistakes in someone else’s perspective. But don’t beat yourself up about it just yet; beyond every surface bitterness, there is always a tinge of gratitude, even if it is forever left unspoken.

I always believed in reading between the lines, or reading something that is seemingly nothing at all. As cliche as it is, I truly believe that the strongest of messages are usually not directly said; because words tend to fail us when we need them the most.

And all these bittersweet moments that wake me up at 4am, all these excruciating pains from these memories I sometimes wish I could permanently erase; I remind myself that someone shares the exact same memory as me, of me, in their own perspective. And in this sense, we will always be carrying a part of each other on our shoulders. And in this sense, we have never parted at all.

And maybe, just maybe, if there exists a parallel dimension: then there would be no such thing as goodbyes, because as long as there is a memory of a person, then this person will always be with us forever. Always. Just in another space and time.

I am working at a warehouse as a temporary 1 month stocktaking assistant, and the job is anything but desirable. You can forget about air-conditioning, sometimes I don’t even get a fan. Today, I ate literal dust in a small, dim, secluded walkway without the slightest hint of ventilation, my skin flaring up with rashes and my jeans hugging my legs with sweat. For $50 a day.

At the beginning, there were 30 part-timers. After 3 weeks, there are 6 of us left. Call me what you like, but I refused to quit. I’ve lost 2kg since the start.

Today during lunch, I sat down opposite one of my better liked full-time staffs. I asked her what she was doing.

“Same old. But today I don’t get to do it in aircon, so I’m very hot.”

“Don’t you get tired of doing the same thing every day?”

“Yes, I do. But I don’t have a university degree. You’re studying in NTU right? After you graduate, you’ll find work with a starting salary higher than my current one even though I’ve already been working for 35 years. I have a daughter, she’s doing quite well and earning 6k a month. I could retire and rely on her for money, but she needs to take care of her children so I don’t want to financially burden her yet. Anyway, I’m still healthy even though I’m getting old. When I was your age, it was quite impressive to graduate with even a secondary school degree. Nowadays, if you don’t have a university degree people look down on you.”

“How long has your daughter been married?”

“She married early when she was 18. Initially I was so sceptical because they met online. But I’ve learnt that you can’t restrict your children on the things they really want in life. I’m lucky that she was smart enough to graduate with a university degree. I’m lucky that she’s found someone to marry. If she doesn’t want a university degree, or if she doesn’t want to marry, I’d let her anyway. As a parent, the proudest moment is to see your child succeed. But you should never let your desire for a parental pride hinder what your child really wants. If your child wants to do something you don’t support, then if you love your child you will learn to bend and accommodate. To parent is to guide and nurture, not to guard and restrict. I’m lucky that my child took the route I would have wished for her to. But even if she didn’t, I’ll accept it regardless.”

And this is why I’m staying on in this job, even though I have a thousand reasons to quit.