podeam

because lucidity is beyond me.

I haven’t written, in the longest longest longest time. I was intending to do the customary Wrapup for Year Two Thousand and Eight when it died, but something of me died along with it. I was intending to postulate on the hopes and ambitions for Year Two Thousand and Nine, the one where I turn into a Legal Adult, with the possibility (notwithstanding the probability) of a vote, but there have been very little.

Very little hope or ambition, on a deep feel-it-in-your-gut-and-soul way, where the hunger drives you forward, tearing you up as you rip through time and space, hurtling towards your goal. Only what seems to be something that gnaws, gnaws, gnaws at what used to be gut and soul, just tearing you up and I rip through what I thought was me.

Oh, the goals are still there. They’re still being reached for. But that’s.. institutional Me. The Me that has been designed to achieve a goal, that has been in the works for the past half-decade, and that will terminate in another half-and-again.

Two-oh-oh-eight was an amazing year. Finally completing what I might always wonder the sensibility of taking up, and finishing it with a shiny gold medal. Being thrown into the world of International Talking At Lots of People but Not To Very Many People, where I met beautiful inspiring people, and thrown again on an eastern european mountain where I had the pure pleasure of learning and sharing and being Singaporean, being a unofficial envoy of my Home, my Being.

My opinions were morphed, were evolved. Gorgeous long conversations and plans with with a woman I’ve come to love like a sister, and amazing long conversations and plans with people I’ve come to adore like sin. Decided to pursue an unthinkable second major in economics, throwing to the wind all the apprehensions I had of getting into a basic politics programme to begin with (while ironically preparing myself for a full year of rejection, and making plans for another round of applications). Redefined what geographical lines defined me; I am Singaporean, and Asean, and Asian, and Earthian.

This year?

Things look good, things are coming into alignment. Invited back to New York to the CSD as a funded participant; received an unconditional offer from SOAS, and even more shockingly, another unconditional from York. Projects are coming into being, with fruitful work being done with groups and schools and orgs, building capacities and attitudes and general vigor for life and changing lives.

The plan is going good. The plan is going good without me.

Without who I am. Without Me in the driving seat. I’m not even merely existing, I’ve sunk below existing.

Things ground to a halt, with certain epiphanies regarding the hypocrisy of my thought and actions, and the losing of the one thing that was mine and mine alone (running, and running, and running). I hasten to clarify that it has nothing to do with the army, and everything to do with the army. The injury and the processes and the thinking and the thoughts and the everything.

I sank and sank and sank, and I think I might have (hopefully) hit rock bottom. Indeed, I’ve managed to grip myself a little better, and am managing efficient manifestations of a Model Civic Minded Citizen, but I’m as bad now as I was when I gave up free movement to force myself to stop self-destruction.

And I’m too afraid to ask for help. To ask friends, and Friends for help. I probably am doing a great disservice to them by this, but I don’t know if I have any. It’s not because I don’t trust them, because I do. But I also don’t. Simply because I can’t see anything in me that is worth the trouble I am. I don’t need specific anythings, because I don’t know what it is I need, but I think that maybe, just maybe, this choking-gasping-dying might be mitigated by knowing there’s someone I could be a complete wreck with.

Who wouldn’t judge me once they see all the flaws I conceal.

Therapy helps, but only to expedite administrative issues. My therapist thinks I’m a perfectly well-adjusted young man. I’ve played the role too long. I just need to know I can crash, utterly and absolutely, without utter and absolute anomie.

I want the ties that bind us.

I’m too cowardly to speak of this directly. I dread getting the answer I am certain I will receive; goodness begets goodness, and I am as nothing. So indeed, this is here, in this empty space. And away from the Twitter and the Facebook.

I have lived, and I have died, and I will.

darker, emptier, simpler

Existing can be like breathing, belaboured, painful, drawn, claws tearing at your throat and heart and soul.

What happens when you’re so empty that you’re bone-dry, and no one realises you need a refill and you remain bone dry, and you despair, belaboured, painful, drawn, claws tearing at your throat and heart and soul.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen.

Love is More Than Just A Game For Two.

I Wish that love was enough to heal the sorrows, the pains, the bad in this world, and that people realise that love is just love, with no obligations, nor ties, nor lies.
I wish I could love like how you love, or you, or you, or even like they love, just because it would make loving all that less sorrowful, painful, and bad.

we gamboled like siblings in paradise

I haven’t written in here for too long, because it hurts too much to think and feel, but I will just say one thing: I want to throw a party, a huge awesome farewell party. For the people once Friends, because a sudden sharp goodbye hurts far less than this slow choking gasping convulsing thrashing wincing painful hiss. A party, a huge awesome farewell party, after which not another word would be exchanged, for we’re as good as dead to each other.

You spin like a top, heady and giddy and centered on thyself, when you realise that you have no one left, pretty much.

Into the depths.

Friday evenings, I slip my earrings back in. It’s comforting, I can almost convince myself, to feel them slide in place. That I’m getting back, even if for just a little while, who I used to be.

But I can’t look myself in the eye and think that, and say that.

I am tired, I am worn, and worst of all, I am gone.

There’s no more fire, no more passion. I’m not driven anymore to do what it is I’ve been doing, not because I don’t see a need for it to be done, but because I don’t know if I’m worthy of doing it anymore.

My selfworth is zilch. I don’t have faith in myself. I don’t trust myself. And that terrifies me.

Me is all I have, all I have had. Me is what let me do so much, and now I don’t have me anymore. While perhaps a month ago, I wanted someone to hold with, to talk with, to be with, now the only person I want in my life is me.

–

There’s this lump in my soul, this weight. I pry my chest open, with tweezers and fingers and fear. There’s this lump, this charred charred lump; a lump that used to be aflame. It’s just a sad charred misshapen lump now.

Still the tweezers and fingers and fear pry on, scraping at the soot and black and rot. Not misshapen. A definite shape.

It was my flame that burnt, and that was extinguished in a systolic thump.

I’d rather it, the lump, my lump, have been burnt out of existence – but that would have been too easy.

I carry this lump in my soul, this weight. To remind me what I’ve lost. And what I fear might never return.

–

I can’t write, not to open my heart to let out the ache, or to open my soul and let myself into university. The former can wait, but the latter. The latter worries me. Because now, my soul no longer feels strong enough, worthy enough, for the path I’ve been on.

Where have my words gone.

–

I don’t know why this is happening. I lie. I do know why this is happening. But I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve regressed. I’ve gone back five years, my soul, to a place I swore I would never return.

I’m scared and scared and scared, and use little white discs of unconsciousness to keep the scared away.

But. I have to cling on to something, anything. Anything that remains of me. And that one thing that I have held on to, with the very tip of my soul-nails, is faith in the system. The system will catch me.

Else, goodbye me.

There are still no words.

I can’t
write
a thing
.

There are no words,

but there is still life. I haven’t died, though sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like I might have.

Sitting on a cloud somewhere looking down at all the peoples bustling might be nice, as long as I ignore the fact that I’ve a penthouse suite with my name on it, complete with the view of the sea of brimstone and fire.

–

I might never run again, and that hurts. I might not be able to serve my country like how I imagined, and that hurts. But I trusted the system, a test of faith, and it caught me.

And that’s worth all the hurt.

I have faith yet again, and passion yet again, and determination yet again, all of which might have almost have could have disappeared.

–

Tuka lampah,
Check Clear!

Sunscreen

This was important, this is important. I watched it, years ago, and watched it minutes ago.

As I told my dear Anne who sent me the link in the fear that I was worrying about the future too much:

You have no idea how alive I feel;
all this talk about uni, I suppose I sound worried.
But you know,
It’s almost difficult for me to focus on any one thing these days.

I laugh and think and dream
And i never felt so alive, so powerful, so capable.

I look back and am mostly proud of what I’ve done.
I don’t have regrets, and that’s the best part;
it strips away what fear’s left for the future.

It's Ugly Alright.

The Quote of the Past Few Weeks.

Fuck, its real ugly to put people together that they get real good friends and divide them later.

You said it, mister.

padurea fermecata

I know I haven’t been writing, and I have a whole lot to write about. I seem to start most of my recent bits with half-appologies, and I’m not too sure why. I take it back, take all of it back. I’m not sorry at all for the life I’ve been living, the experiences I’ve been having.

It’s just that recollecting them can sometimes be a little painful.

—

I tried something new, a new job doing new things in an area I’m only tangentially informed about. I’m not too sure how I fared, or if I was sane to have tried it, but I’m terribly glad I did it.

It’s a pity that circumstance requires it to be in past tense.

—

Romania, Romania, Romania. What can I say about the ASEF training programme; I learned and lived and loved and changed. I’m still grappling with things that happened, and things that the two weeks in east europe set off.

—

Things like returning to discover change, heartbreak, heartaches, hearts.

—

New projects, new alliances, new news.

—

As the Luxembourger would say, stay tuned to the Vic Life.