i do not feel like reading. anymore.

for the strangest reasons ever, my biggest headaches in the mornings are now what to wear to school. i can't seem to find anything i'd like to wear out of all the rows of clothes hanging in my cupboard. which is quite worrying cos i dunno... i feel like such a bloody bimbo.

school work is steadily piling up. i'm rather behind on my readings - as the days of illness and unwellness have robbed from me precious reading days. i'm more insecure than ever this sem cos i'm aware of the necessity to do well enough to boost me up from my lowly second-lower honours to a better second-upper. i want to apply for my double major thingy, which i sincerely and fervently hope nus will approve. nus seems to hate me as much as i hate them these days, so anything could happen. look at my sucky 6pm-7pm tutorial slot for new media research.

i used to think that Freud was an interesting guy but i'm honestly quite sick of him. he writes so much, it's almost disgusting, the volume of works he has. i have to re-read him a couple of times cos he uses ye old english which just escapes my modern-literature fed brain. thank goodness for the invention of italics, which the editor of the book i'm reading kindly uses to highlight Freud's main point of the essay.

i have 5 chapters of my media writing textbook, 4 chapters of my media research textbook, and a gazillion pages of Freud waiting for me on my desk to inhale into my brain. i have a lit paper to start working on soon cos for some strange strange reason, i find that the first draft is due in 3 weeks. funny, how things like that are just discovered like that, as though ivle has a mind of its own, making up deadlines as the weeks go by.

&, my finances are in dire straits. after my shopping spree last week, i all-too-suddenly find myself xxx dollars poorer and in desperate need of the abovementioned xxx dollars to reappear in my bank account. i have all of 4 dollars left for this week, and i think i shall have to survive on charity and my ability to have the appetite of a rabbit when necessary.

i shall not even begin to blog about what i owe the ridge. it is far too embarrassing and i can't even bring myself to start thinking about what i owe my editors.

sph still owes me my rather meagre pay. entirely of my own doing - with regards to the meagre portion, that is. not the tardiness. i am hence contemplating whether or not to return there to intern this coming holidays since i will not be going anywhere for exchange and do not need to plan for any overseas stint. i do really want to write for urban, but i also do really think i am not fashionable enough. perhaps life would be a better option, but then i also do think i am not with it enough. so what should i do? i feel like just quitting this sem and going to sleep.

by the way, this is totally random, but we have found squirrels in my garden. hooray for my garden being home to another type of cute furry animal besides cats, cats, and more cats.

irreplaceable.

i'm having a lot of trouble sleeping even though my eyes are DEAD TIRED and i look like a goldfish with my swollen eyes from all the crying. but emotional outbursts aside, i've been enjoying my last few days after recovering from the flu from the earlier part of the week.

shopped a lot yesterday and the day before and got so many new pairs of shoes. i didn't know my shoe fetish had become so bad until i realised how many pairs i got! 5 pairs i think! and would you believe it i still have another pair i want to get. it's funny cos my feet are probably one of the most sensitive parts of my body, blistering reallyreallyreally easily. and i get so many pairs of shoes that hurt me like crap nonetheless, just cos they look good.

walawala last night was actually pretty fun! my alcohol tolerance has increased quite significantly i think cos i didn't feel like puking or anything. but i was super high and was saying all sorts of funny happy things. poor Alison had such a time though! heh.

so allinall, i didn't sleep very much or very well last night.





so you don't make promises you can't keep, so you don't promise me forever when you know you might fail me. so, thankyou for being honest and for not saying things you don't mean. so i say lovely things that make your heart go all a-flutter, but i don't say things just like that to just anyone. so i keep thinking i'll die young and i keep talking of death. so i wish you'd love me for forever.

so.

bloodyhellihatenus.

the nus admin system is a bloody pain in the ass and i hate nus to a million gazillion bits and tiny pieces. i fricking got rejected for my SEP application, and they don't even have the bloody decency to let me know. i have to ASK and what do i get? an automated rejection email from their automated system.


"We regret to inform you that your application has been unsuccessful.

Regards,
Miss XXX"


i spend so much time on my fricking application and they KNOW IT, because the SET THE BLOODY FORM, and WHAT DO I GET WHEN I DON'T GET A PLACE? bloody fricking fools i tell you. who treat those who get their wonderful little exchange places like fricking royalty, whom, if i may add, have been chosen via God-knows-WHAT criteria, and what about poor rejected people like me??

i am so mad i could throw dog poo over someone's immaculate front lawn now and not feel bad at all for messing up someone's precious prize-winning petunias.

i promptly emailed back a tad sarcastically about their helpfulness and AGAIN, asked WHY THE HELL i got rejected when half the world gets a fricking place. if they can't even tell me why, then i will jolly well ask until they get sick of me. i want to know why. i don't care, i want to know. i am so pissed off that they can't even tell me WHY. it's like being killed for apparently no reason. if i were the murderee, i'd want to know why i got killed by my stupid murderer.

okay so i know like i'm acting like it's my God-given right to go on exchange. but i guess i'm feeling sore and upset and extremely pissed off with nus and all their incompetent admin right now because my friends have all managed to get places and i do not know of ANYONE who gets turned down for exchange. ANYONE. i must be the only loser i know who has been rejected from nus exchange ever in history. i haven't gotten lousy grades, my application was complete. so why. the. hell. ARGH.

i am extremely agitated right now and if given the chance would bite off the heads of the people who processed my application. if they can't give me a good enough reason WHY. i know i know there's always next sem. but i was really looking forward to going the coming sem and actually after emailing back what i emailed back, they might black list me forever. cos i was so mad when i hammered in my acerbic mail and hit the send button.

omg i hate nus. right now, right here, i hate my school. i am so mad i want to cry.

Over You.

okay i think i'm sick. i'm chilled and have goosebumps all over me even though it's not particularly cold. my hands and feet are frozen. i can't smell a thing and rahhhh okay i shall not whine anymore. it is unbecoming.

on a much better note, childish adults aside, i've got a lot more figured out and i'm finally happier. it's sad how it's come to be like that in my head, how people cease to exist as the people that they are but become mere concepts.
ie. "Jessica Alba" screams hot babe, nothing else.
similarly, person-in-my-head screams annoying person, nothing else anymore.

but that's the way the applecart falls, i suppose. i don't hate Person, i don't like Person, i feel nothing towards Person except when i get lost in reminiscing, when i feel the twinges of hurt. reminiscing. an activity which i'd like to stop for good, now. what good is it, to me now?

Now that it's all said and done,

I can't believe you were the one

To build me up and tear me down,

Like an old abandoned house.

What you said when you left -

Just left me cold and out of breath.

I fell too far, was in way too deep.

Guess I let you get the best of me.

Well, I never saw it coming.

I should've started running

A long, long time ago.

And I never thought I'd doubt you,

I'm better off without you

More than you, more than you know.

I'm slowly getting closure.

I guess it's really over.

I'm finally getting better.

And now I'm picking up the pieces.
I'm spending all of these years

Putting my heart back together.

'Cause the day I thought I'd never get through,

I got over you.

You took a hammer to these walls,

Dragged the memories down the hall,

Packed your bags and walked away.

There was nothing I could say.

And when you slammed the front door shut,

A lot of others opened up,

So did my eyes so I could see

That you never were the best for me.

Well, I never saw it coming.

I should've started running

A long, long time ago.

And I never thought I'd doubt you,

I'm better off without you

More than you, more than you know.

I'm slowly getting closure.

I guess it's really over.

I'm finally getting better.

And now I'm picking up the pieces.

I'm spending all of these years

Putting my heart back together.

Well I'm putting my heart back together,

'Cause I got over you.

Over You

Chris Daughtry

blow blow blow

oh i'm veritably dying from sinus problems. i kid you not. i was up practically the entire night sneezing my throat out of my mouth and trying to breathe through my periodically very stuck nose. right now as i sit here to type this, my eyes are watery and there's green icky stuff threatening to come out of my nose. for some strange strange reason, my stomach aches too and is uncomfortably turning around. i couldn't sleep very much, only falling asleep when the sun had crept through my window and jolting up at 10am with a gigantic sneeze from deep within me. sigh. class later. i have a good mind not to go and to try to get my nose in order again, cos class's gonna last till 8pm today. and i have to get well by tomorrow's psychoanalysis seminar cos attendance is very much taken.

sigh. i'm dead tired but i can't sleep. my nose is itchy, my throat is scratchy, my eyes are watery, my head's achy.

i hate my sinuses. i want to have them drained so i can live like a normal person and not have to blow my nose every few minutes and have the whole world turn around to stare at my trumpet-blowing cos that's what it sounds like.

gripings of a student.

i've taken the last few days easy, catching up on sleep and alone time. and listening to my music. i've been neglecting me a bit lately, i think, which has resulted in me being uncharacteristically sticky to the boyfriend and uncharacteristically vocally insecure about a million and one inane things - from my weight to my brains.

spent the last two days at home just doing my own thing. sleeping a lot, reading a lot, playing my favourite games a lot, and catching up on some prayer time. i do admit that God's becoming increasingly distant these days even as i try my darndest to find Him in prayer. i'm extremely disillusioned about the way certain things have played themselves out, but at the same time, rather resigned and getting used to the way these certain things have played themselves out. perhaps a part of me cannot reconcile how God would allow these things to be like that, a part of me wonders at what game God's playing at - but then a part of me feels bad at even thinking this way cos i know God didn't plan for any of this to happen cos hey, we've all got free will after all. but knowing how God doesn't ever plan for me to be stuck in a discomfitting situation doesn't really help much when i'm actually right smack in the middle of it. i feel bad for blaming God, but at the same time i feel mollified cos it would seem that things are beyond my control anyway so i might as well suck it up the way it is.

and exchange. where do i even begin. there i was, so excited about going on exchange at the start of it all when i began to do my applications - that i didn't even think of the possibility of me not being able to get a place. and there i was, worrying about financing! everyone's gotten their offer emails already, and what about me? i'm still checking my nus email 30 times a day hoping to see some mail with any smell of the word "STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMME" - but to absolutely no avail. there was this once last week when i got an email about the Singapore Exchange and i was so fricking excited. then when the mail opened after an excruciating 20seconds of loading, i remembered to breath again when i saw that it was some mail about the Singapore STOCK exchange. right.

i didn't even think that i mightn't get a place on exchange. so much for being cocky eh. that's a crash landing for you. of course, my application status still says "PENDING", but i'm not kidding myself anymore at this late date. of course, there's always next sem to apply, but i feel so deflated at the moment that i wonder if i'll be able to summon up enough energy and excitement to apply for the next sem.

i can't even begin to imagine about my second major in lit anymore. so far, all i'd been concerned about was getting my cap up to 3.5 so that i could apply for the second major thing. with last sem's miraculous results under my belt, i thought i'd nail it. but now, i'm not sure about anything anymore. i mayn't get it after all - very possible.

and cors has screwed up my week. i now have a stupid tutorial on fridays from 6 to 7 pm. so much for doing my research project with Jerome and friend. there're just too many people taking the module. kick some of them out, i say. give second years priority in tutorial balloting, i say - cos we're older and more senior after all. why won't nus subscribe to the Singapore government's ideology for once of a flawed meritocracy? but ALRIGHT, because i have several good year one friends, i'm glad that there's equality la. somewhere in me is glad, anyway.

saddd. :(


it escapes me how some adults behave like children, too. adults of all ages, from 25 to 50. go figure, really. but upon reflection, i realise i shouldn't hang it over their heads for choosing to behave this way. it's their prerogrative, as Britney Spears sings sultrily (when she was still young and passably hawt).

i will not be pushed to behave in a way that i don't think is right or befitting of myself. even if these child-adults do it to me, cos really, tit-for-tat behaviour is really so unbecoming. grow up, let loose, life's really too short to be so uptight about everything. i don't mean to come across as being sarcastic or holier-than-thou, reallyreally. it's just honestly what i think.
cos i know we're cool.

eye problems.

my eyes hurt like hell. something is in my right eye and it's annoying me. at first i thought i was some sort of mucus so i tried to push it out. but after trying gently, it seems to part of my eye and i have no bloody idea what it is. on one hand it seems like it's part of my eye that's formed a bubble or something, on the other it's really irritating and making my eyes water. i hope it goes away soon - like all my eye troubles always eventually do. i don't fancy going to the doctor and hearing him tell me that my retina is detaching itself from my eyeball or anything like that. i'd faint on the spot. i even promise not to rub my eyes so scarily hard and fiercely if my eye clears up by itself. looks like i have to eschew the contacts again and put on the glasses for school later. i hate it when my eyes give me trouble.

too many things

i really own a damn lot of things. i always have something to throw away, something to discard. there's always not enough space in my room. i have two options. a) get a bigger room. b) accumulate less stuff. i think b would be a lot more feasible, seeing how it'd be impossible to enlarge my room in any way.

spent the last dunno how many hours throwing out stuff from my room - again. stacked up all the new books i bought and nearly fainted. i have 12 spanking new books i haven't touched. and that's not including all the titles i inherited from Koko Jo when she moved to Vietnam. all in all, i may have 30 books i have not yet read.

so why do i keep feeling compelled to buy more books? it's getting to be like my shoe obsession, except that i actually do wear the shoes i buy, but i don't always finish all the books i buy. but at least the clothes buying has stopped somewhat these days.

i've been thinking a lot about too few things, which then compels me to think about how to stop thinking about them. it's silly, really, how things always seem to pan out. you think that you're in control of it all, you think nothing can ruffle your feathers anymore, when wham - something perfectly innocuous happens and it really messes you up and you think now where did that come from?

and yet i can see something like that happening a mile away. so does that make me stupid, or stupid?

i am not trying to create ripples in a still pond that's calm and oh-so-serene. i'm not trying to mess things up when they seem so prestine and well, neat. but amid my current contentment, i can't help but feel distinctly disgruntled at the way things have turned out. i can't help but wonder sometimes. okay i'm bluffing. a lot of the times. but well, sometimes i think it's all too dangerous, wondering.

first day of the new school term tomorrow. i'm still waiting for Clem to call, but it seems like he's not gonna call tonight. it's so late already. hmm. i hope he hasn't taken me all-too-literally when i said i was gonna sleep at 3-ish or 4. cos it seems like he is. taking me literally, that is. sigh. guys.

screw the new paramour.

certain circumstances

last day of work today. i'm glad to be able to finally sleep in a bit, morning hours just do not agree with me.

even school allows me to sleep in considerably, since i always manage to wrangle a late-starting week out of all the possible modules available. i am thoroughly amazed at my ability to work things my way to satiate my laziness and need for sleep. heh.

met Clem for supper just now. sort of. ended up trooping to his place to eat the taken-away beancurd, and hanging out. which i haven't done in the longest time ever since work started.

during mass today, i realised that i'm only distinctly disgruntled under certain circumstances. very certain, very specific circumstances. that realisation distressed me cos well, circumstances be damned, really. why do things irk me, bother me, rankle me, hurt me still - when they shouldn't? makes no fricking sense at all. i think i need to just let go and breathe. i'm not consciously clinging on to my baggage, but somehow it refuses to be disposed of for good. it's like one of those annoying trick birthday candles - the ones that you blow and blow and blow but the stupid little flame refuses to extinguish itself.

i spent one entire afternoon during work composing an email to person. i typed and typed and typed, reeling things off the top of my head.

Dear ___, my email started, (it really began like that, with no name. i didn't type in a name.)

Once again, you've been beleaguered by one of my lengthy emails.

blahblahblah, then,

I meant and mean everything I said. That I liked you very much, had strong feelings for you and a lot more things I think you've heard more often than you'd like to remember..

and towards the end,

I don't blame you for anything; if anything, I was probably at fault for being so silly about liking you, anyway. Silly, not because you are a silly choice to make, but silly because I was so hopelessly in like with you that I couldn't let go even when I should have, long ago.

and finally,

If I could tamper with our memories, I'd make it such that I never met you and you never met me, that we never knew each other. It'd be so much easier for myself, then. Perhaps not so much for you, since things are okay for you as you told me once. It saddened me, but I know now that not every event has the same significance in different people's lives.



i thought i should hit the trash button upon completion of my wonderful masterpiece. that's when i realised my mailbox is full of mail i wrote that i never sent out. letters that i never meant to send. never mean to send.

i'm too sentimental. writing letters that i don't intend to pass on, wasting my time writing letters to nobody. the keyword here is wasting my time. on more than just inane letter writing, trust me. i think i write letters to nobody to stave off my loneliness and isolation. i don't know if it's just a teenage phase, though i suspect my teenage years have already zipped by me somewhat - but i feel so un-understood. and it's gotten to the point where i already don't even want to bother to let people try to understand where i'm coming from. i don't know why people are so mean to me. okay i lie, i do know. but it's unfair, how people base their judgements on mere, baseless assumptions.



bruise your ego, why don't you. but that's all that's hurt, your ego. 1+1=2 became 1+3=4. lick your wounds, bare your claws. up yours, i say. up yours.

Bizarre Love Triangle.

Every time I think of you,

I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue.

It's no problem of mine, but it's a problem I find -

Living a life that I can't leave behind.

There's no sense in telling me,

The wisdom of a fool won't set you free.

But that's the way that it goes.

And it's what nobody knows,

While every day my confusion grows.

Every time I see you falling,

I get down on my knees and pray.

I'm waiting for that final moment,

You'll say the words that I can't say.

I feel fine, and I feel good.

I'm feeling like I never should.

Whenever I get this way, I just don't know what to say.

Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday?

I'm not sure what this could mean.

I don't think you're what you seem.

I do admit to myself

That if I hurt someone else,

Then I'll never see just what we're meant to be.

Every time I see you falling,

I get down on my knees and pray.

I'm waiting for that final moment,

You'll say the words that I can't say.

Bizarre Love Triangle

when i'm sixty-four.

When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a Valentine?
Birthday greetings, a bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three,
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me?
- When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating your point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
Yours sincerely, wasting away.
Give me an answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me?
- When I'm sixty-four.

When I'm Sixty-Four
The Beatles



i came across the lyrics to this song while reading Love Life by Ray Kluun. it's a really good read - but damn sad. i'm up to the part where Carmen the wife discovers she has breast cancer, and Dan the husband tries to be a good husband but struggles to love his wife the way she needs him to. several times throughout the book, i started to tear cos it's such a human struggle. so real. to love someone properly, unconditionally. to not love the person for his or her youth and exuberence, but love the person for who he or she really is.

i think too many people in this world today are in love with youth. i think sometimes that i am, too. i want to be remembered as who i am right now when i die in 2058. as young, healthy, beautiful - alive and passionate. i don't want to be remembered as old and hunched and sick and weak and grey and toothless. when i die, i want to live on in people's minds the way i am now, not the semblence of me i will become when i age. it's too sad, how aging inevitably strips away life, sucks away life. why can't i die as i am today, without having to change into someone physically unrecognisable in 50 years time? in the end, i think it's all got to do with vanity. if the physical appearance is really just a shell, i should be able to relinquish my beauty and health, as long as the soul within remains whole. God gave me what i have physically, i suppose He can take it back and do what He wants to it in time.

it doesn't really make sense to me though. why would God want to sunder His beautiful creations? i'm not saying that all old people are hideous, but it is a fact that aging is not exactly a pretty process. diseases and sickness set in in old age, skin sags, teeth fall out, hair falls out. maybe there's a lesson here for me to learn, that sagging skin can be beautiful as well, that beauty is reallyreally subjective.

as Carmen and Dan in Love Life i'm reading now, i'm struggling myself, too, with what i can't exactly elaborate on here. i'm tired of being in a perpertual struggle, though, so i stop thinking of myself as 'struggling'. but at the end of the day, everyone struggles with something - and i have to quit lying to myself about my okay-ness.

everybody hurts. i'm not trying to overgeneralise and simplify everybody's pain into that all-encompassing statement. but it's a fact.

i'm on my way to choosing to live with the hurt, to not do anything about it anymore and resolve not to try to do anything. if it's not this thing that hurts, something or the other will eventually. so live with it. emotional pain never really leaves you, but it subsides and recedes into the recesses of your heart and mind. my heart and mind. unless provoked, it doesn't bother me. the only times when it gets to me and makes me want to do something is when i reach within myself to pull it out and talk about it, give form to it once again, breathe life to it once again. it becomes really difficult to chuck it back to where it all came from whenever i give life to my hurts, but i always eventually manage to.

i could let myself stay lost and inundated in my past. it's all-too-easy, and i know i'm perfectly capable of doing that. i see things that people cannot see, faraway in the horizon. i hear things that no one else hears in my own head. okay so i sound like i'm possessed. but isn't that what my past really is - a ghost that haunts me? my past, it floats silently and stealthily in the corridors of my mind and heart, and it bothers me when i face up to it.

many would say that this is a clear sign that all is not well in my life and i have to do something about it. but do i really? the last time i did, i just made things worse for myself. it still dogs me, that particular memory. the shittiness i felt was unmatched before that point. when i think about it, i can feel my heartbeat quickening, my eyes tearing up, my head hurting, my heart breaking - still. it's like falling all over again. who says that this time round, it's gonna be any different? i know it won't be.

i want to run run run, away from it all. but i'm realistic enough to know that running away won't solve anything. staying put might be the elusive answer.

running running, as fast as i can.

i had the most disconcerting dream last night, and i woke up very near tears. i wish i could control my dreams. stop myself from living a strange life in my head. i ran and ran and ran in my dream to rid myself of the grief inside me. and yet it didn't go away. and everywhere i ran, he was there. he didn't leave me alone, even though he was the cause of my misery. in my dream, the weird theatre in my head, i ran along an expressway for an entire afternoon to get away from it all. and i ended up in a church in Jurong. to my dismay, he was there, waiting for me. again i ran, this time to Aljunied. and when i thought it was safe again, stopping beneath one of those shop houses to rest, he appeared again and said he had been looking for me all day.

i woke up with the pain fresh and heavy in my heart, spilled over from the dream. i couldn't shake it off for a good long time as i lay in bed when i woke up. trying to forget everything i'd seen in my head.

perhaps it's cos i spent some time rifling through the pages of my diary last night and reliving some of those experiences as i read them. oh, it was so difficult. i could sense my exuberance, my hopefulness, my joy - and then all the pain, disappointment, frustration, confusion. all over again, the emotions came tumbling over me. everything i'd written about for the last 2 years, it was all the same, i realised. the dates between entries have become larger and larger as the months go on, but when i do write in my diary, i inevitably end up writing about the same thing still. maybe that's why i'm so averse to writing in it now. i don't want to write about these things anymore. everytime i write about it, i tell myself i'm purging myself of the emotions, putting them into a tangible form, putting them down on paper in words. but the release is only temporary, the purging never complete. will it ever be? i can't help but wonder now.

some things stay with you forever.

there're still so many things to be said, to be done. i don't feel like doing anything, i'm too comfortable with the rotten state of things. like wood that's been eaten up by termites and plastered over to hide the hollowed-out bits. i feel a lot like that now.

sometimes, i wonder what it'd be like without all the noise in my head. without all the questions, all the memories. it's so noisy sometimes, all the activity. sleep brings no respite now. it gets even noiser and more confusing in my dreams. it's like all my stifled heart's desire suddenly springs to life every night and takes on a life of its own in my dream universe, then when i get up, i realise it's still exactly that. but it takes me a moment to reorientate myself. sometimes, my worst fears find a life in my dreams and take an awful form, and i run away from them. but inevitably, i can't run and always have to face up to it.

i wish i'd manage to find some peace somewhere for once. find quiet for once. no noise in my head, just silence.




& you know what? i knew it - & i was right. though i wish i wasn't.

hello 2008

i've been trying to blog the past two consecutive days already, but to no avail. somehow, somewhere along the line, i acquired a severe case of writer's block where my own blog is concerned. heh.

i'd wanted to blog about my past year. about what i'd learnt, what happened, - so many things. and then, i got stuck at the third paragraph. both days, all i'd managed to type out was a paragraph of my year, then i couldn't go on. which is strange, right? i can type out paragraphs and paragraphs of my day, then when it comes to my year, i have nothing to say.

perhaps sometimes when too much has happened, you no longer have words for them. they're all just jumbled up into a mess of shapeless, formless visuals in your mind's eye. i'm no weary war veteran, not by any chance. i have much to be thankful for in my life yet, and i truly am, thankful for these. but grief, loss, hurt - these horrid emotions have a take no prisoners quality about them in the way that they strike indiscriminately. doesn't matter whether you're beautiful or hideous on the outside, rich or poor, everyone's been hurt before.

that doesn't make my hurt more real than anyone else's. but i guess only those who give form to their grief are able to hold their hurt up by the scruff of the neck and show to the world "look, this is the form my pain takes."

much has happened in the last 12 months to have made me who i am today. the Kelly of 2008 will be very different from the Kelly of 2007. a year makes a world of a difference, and i recognise it only now. i'd like to say i'm the sum total of happy experiences, and i'm only made up of the happy, sunshiney stuff. but upon reflection, i think that truly, those gawd-awful moments in my life were the ones that have made the deepest imprint in my life thus far. i rehash them over and over in my mind, learn whatever i can from them, and yet i don't let them go. i can't let the unpleasantness go, because it's so much a part of me now.

sometimes, i think i don't like the Kelly i see in the mirror these days. where's the optimistic innocent girl of 2005? she seems to have disappeared behind a carefully painted face, a whiff of perfume, bright clothes - all that seems so immaterial in spite of the heavy weight of their visibility. i'm a lot wiser these days, but that has robbed me of my genuine niceness. i'm a lot more demanding these days and hence am more comfortable as a result, but that has come at the price of my simplicity and concern for the wellbeing of people around me.

it seems more often now that a single event in my life has the ability to affect many other aspects of my life. life can't be compartmentalized as i wish it to be. no, the threads that make up me are inexorably knotted up with each other. cutting a knot out would sever another portion of the tapestry of my life. things aren't simple anymore. no wonder adults always say that things are simpler when you're a child. i used to scoff at that, putting it all down to adults' own conflated sense of self-importance. but now i'm beginning to see how there is truth in what they say yet. things WERE a lot simpler when i was a child, and they became exponentially increasingly complicated as a grew up. bah. would it be that i never had to grow up!

i'm also becoming increasingly certain of the possibility of forever. of always. for so many things. for happiness, for secrets. i wonder if i could die holding on to my secrets. or if it is as the Bible says, that everything in the dark will come to light one day. i'm not pushing that one, i don't really want to know, cos the day my secrets are unravelled will be the day life as i know it unravels rapidly. or maybe not.



some things will never be the same again. i know that for sure. so where i am now, just on the thereshold of 2008, there are things i need to decide on. so that at the end of 2008, i can look back and embrace the Kelly who lived in it for having lived as she knew best. i may not like who i've become through 2007, but i do accept me now because i know i've truly lived as best as i could and knew how then.


sometimes i feel like i'm a bird with broken wings. / at times i dread my now & envy where i've been. / but that's when quiet wisdom takes control, / at least i've got a story no one's told. / these days it feels naive to put your faith in hope. / to imitate a child, fall backwards on the snow. / cos that's when fears will usually lead you blind. / but now i try to under-analyse. / is the rope i walk wearing thin? / is the life i love caving in? / is the weight on your mind a heavy black bird caged inside? / i finally learnt to say: whatever will be will be. / i've learned to take the good, the bad, & breathe. / cos although we like to know what life's got planned / no one knows if shooting stars will land. whatever will be / vanessa hudgens.