Snapshot Infatuation

very quickly I find myself falling back into the same patterns. infatuated, got some sort of reciprocation, mildly obsesses over it for like, a day. And then let’s the thought manifest into this gigantic monster without the person I’ve been so fixated on do anything at all. And then somehow my brain psychs itself up with all these amazing dreamlike thoughts and then, no response. Because it was nothing and it was realistically and rationally thinking- completely okay to not reply my message. But then I fall asleep and suddenly dreamt of him being with the girl he was with when I last met them. It’s always the same patterns. People I’m interested in always, always leave me in my dreams and I will always dream of them happier with their exes/someone new. 

It’s  like a mental cockblock and self denial. But also this obsession on wanting them to want me. It’s so frustrating to be stuck in this thought process and I can’t seem to shake it off. 

Fears.

I flipped through my diary that I've kept since the beginning of this year and page after page, I found myself writing about missing you, wanting you... the crazy obsessive need to be validated and wanted by you creeps under all the words I've scribbled across pages. 

The podcast I was listening to this week spoke about how most of the crazy shit / anxieties that we have are fueled by some sort of fear and the sooner we are able to recognise, identify and take action on resolving that fear... the better we get at controlling and accessing our situations. The two most common fears, the fearologist said on the podcast, was the fear of not being good enough and the fear of not being in control. It was comforting to know that these fears were common and that basically majority of the people who walk this earth all struggle with the same crazy shit. We just all process and act upon these fears differently. 

And because we process them differently, we project them onto our relationships, the way we communicate and handle situations in a wide spectrum of ways and methods. So are we truly better than the other person who made a mistake in your eyes because she was also afraid to feel like she wasn't good enough? Or do you think that you're better because you are angry that that mistake hurt you and shattered the illusion that made you think that you were good enough? That you were wanted? We both wanted the same thing from the same horrible person that was also probably fucking shit up with us because of his fear of not being in control. Aren't we all doing things ultimately to make ourselves feel better? 

We're all selfish motherfuckers charged with guilt and more guilt. So why am I sitting here feeling like I'm bearing the weight of all three of our selfish wants that transpired into all the words, anger and hurt everyone felt when things finally burst into flames last week?

Turtles.

perhaps it’s instinct. too often I find myself writing, thinking and saying that I build too many homes in people and the issue is that people often change and they sometimes leave your life. I think about the friends that have been so important in shaping my 2018 for what it was and sadly, today, I have either lost them, ended one, broke another and drifted from the rest. so perhaps it’s instinct. my defence mechanism like how a turtle ducks its head into its shell whenever it senses danger around. the pst two weeks I’ve drifted between work, coming home and working out. Never really attempted at restoring anything in my life. kind of stopped texting. My chats have been the most stale it has ever been. Anything I’ve communicated verbally consists of 90% work and 10% telling my mum sweeping statements about how my day went. 

Last week I dealt with the emptiness. I felt like I lost all my friends and I don’t really feel like being friends with them anymore. I contribute nothing to their lives and it seems like their lives didn’t flinch at all when I’ve been so out of touch. 

This week that feeling of emptiness has mellowed down and the fear of failure has started to loom over my head almost every single day and I nearly went back to Xanax because I didn’t want my chest to tighten so much and feel as if I have disappointed the whole world when in fact I have not. It is only a failure and disappointment to myself. And to think that as the whole world feels a little narcissistic which I also have a problem with. There’s been a lot of problems lately. 

Told myself that I needed to go back to therapy but something always holds me back. Too lazy to verbalise. I’ve gone so long without catching up with friends, without having any interconnection with people that I guess I used to care about. It’s getting okay for me now. I’m better with the silence of everything. 

so maybe that is why I’m trying to say that my mind is finding a way to duck itself away from a lot of problems that are mostly self inflicted by hiding away and refusing to connect, talk and reach out to friends. in the same vein, it feels like I’ve already lost them either way. 

This week I'm attributing my depressive state to perioding hormones. Wonderful, beautiful PMS. I verbalised some of the things I was thinking about unknowingly to my mother thinking that somehow that'd be a great outlet of release but she creeped into my room this evening after our conversation in the car, held both my shoulders and said, "whatever the case is, I remembered you cut yourself back in Secondary school and please don't do silly things like that again. Don't make me sad."

I looked away and told her, "ya mum sure, I won't kill myself."

Essentially I don't think I am actually ready to die, neither do I actively find ways to really kill myself besides the small vices here and there. But then why do I make my head such an awful place to be in sometimes? It's all up to perception and maybe I've just been perceiving things wrongly.

Your Mother.

Ever had that weird moment where you kind of want to see someone but you don't? This is probably the reason why I have recently been more adverse to going for 9:30am service. Because I don't want to see your mother, but at the same time I kind of do.

I had this huge plan to kill them with kindness - show your mother and your friends how fucking great, smart and funny I am and you'll be reminded of how much you've lost. So one day word will get to you, "Oh I saw Rachel the other day," and you'd be stumped and too embarrassed to tell them that our friendship ended because you messed this up. So she was there this morning, and she spotted me so I couldn't avoid her. My mother nudged me and told me, "you still have to respect the elders. She didn't do anything to you so don't be rude." I went over to say hi and we obviously had to chat about you. 

I congratulated her on your graduation and told her I wish I could be there but I had something on. "You must be so proud, he just started work yeah? He's liking it so far?" She excitedly asked me if I knew that your trip to Amsterdam got pushed forward to next Friday. I said no, I didn't know, how long are you gone for? Two weeks, she said and looked like she wanted to chat more and suddenly I wanted to ask her how you were. How is he? Did he tell you about what happened between us? Is he upset? How was his first week of work? Is he sleeping okay? But the choir started singing, so I held her hands and said I didn't want to disturb her any further and left. 

I honestly love your mum and I wish I had more time with her. One because I wanted to know how you are, two because I wanted to know what kind of family you grew up in and three, for my own self-gratification, I get to impress her and she'll like me and somehow that will translate into something more with you. The third one is a bit far-fetched and irrational, sprinkled with a bit of vengeance after you told me that you liked me but somehow couldn't translate that into a relationship. 

I spent this week relishing in the message that I sent to you to end everything. But somehow I find myself re-reading the messages almost every day. And ever since cheeks read it on friday night, she exclaimed that she was trying to find just a small redeeming point in your message to show that you wanted to fight for this friendship. That you would take some responsibility and then say you treasured this friendship to try to restart it again, but you didn't. You accepted the mistakes I called you out on and then when I told you I didn't want this friendship anymore, you accepted that too. 

You've always been one to run away and be indecisive. You were always selfish since the day I met you- I just never saw it and even if I did, I excused it. You never fought for anything you wanted, always expecting them to fall into place / come to you on a silver platter. You cover everything up with your jokes, but how do you feel when you sit in your room alone in silence? Does the guilt come rushing in? Do you ever think from someone else's perspective besides yours? Don't you ever wish that we could be friends? I think unfortunately the only time we can restart this friendship on a clean slate is when you really own up to your shit, take the fucking initiative to be clear and decisive and put in an effort to restore what you broke. You're clearly not doing that and you only retreat. I am so sick and tired. 

System 1 & System 2 Of Our Brains

Have been furiously cramming podcast after podcast of conversations with people that have gone through so much pain, loss and suffering hoping to find some sort of comfort in their wisdom and the reminder (sometimes painful and alarmingly shatters the construct of your self indulgence) that we all share the same kind of pain- only just different degrees of it. The humanity and interdependence of it all slowly strings together a blanket of reasoning and understanding of my current lackluster attitude towards everything in life. It’s been a couple of days where I wake up refusing to get out of bed, having really bad sleeps and feeling a huge empty void whenever I am alone and silent with myself.

Currently listening to Daniel Kahneman speak about Why We Contradict ourselves and he freaking won a Nobel Prize because of his contributions and research on behavioural economics which had underlying theories and concepts that bled into our everyday decision making - conscious or not. The deep truth that we are all struggling to find logic and certainty in this terribly uncertain world is something that everyone is grappling with. He argues that we try to convince ourselves that there’s some sort of logic and rational understanding behind things that we do and things that others believe in, however, that’s not always the case.

I think what I’m trying to say is that maybe once I come to wholeheartedly accept that everything is uncertain, unclear and any decision made after contemplating, weighing the pros and cons... will ultimately still be a hopeful gamble, an opportunistic action of throwing myself into the great unknown with the mask of thinking I made a calculated risk-mitigating decision to protect myself. No. It’s not. Whether that be in my decisions of falling in love, loving someone, being in a relationship, quitting my job, switching careers etc. It goes on! For someone that holds on so tightly to the certainty of things, relishing in the constant and believing in permanence- wrapping my head around the concept that humans are flawed animals that aren’t as rational as we thought ourselves out to be is somewhat comforting but also really throwing me off balance right now.

He also mentioned that beliefs are fleeting and values can be edited, changed and restructured - as we have seen over the course of humanity throughout the centuries. Which makes me think that if someone at the moment can so boldly and with so much certainty proclaim their love for someone else, but in the next moment become so cold and distant to the person he claims he loves, then can we hold them responsible for their declaration of love but lack of action? Feelings change, after all. What we don’t realize is that we don’t know how long it might take for the feelings to change. A day, a few months or many years later. I guess mine just took a couple of weeks and here I am, scurrying through all these podcasts, trying to find comfort, reason and the science behind people saying things that might be their truth in that particular moment but completely going the opposite way and losing these feelings in what feels like a snap of a finger. And what I’m slowly coming to realize, as cliche as that sounds is that words, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs are all mostly temporal and they’re subjected to change. I cannot consistently blame the other person for confessing his feelings for me at that moment but then suddenly switching off. There’s a feeling of betrayal I guess and maybe that’s where the anger stems from. But the comfort from this podcast highlights that the irrationality, illogical sense of the mind mostly triggered due to the fear of uncertainty causes us to say and do things for ourselves without much consideration of the consequences in the future.

It’s a lot to take in and pretty much something that’s hard for me to swallow because for a while I kept holding people responsible and accountable for their words. But in true fact, we often say things in “the heat of the moment” and not recognizing that perhaps they will hold so much weight to someone else. The dealing of this small death of a friendship is excruciatingly painful because I never thought this day would come. But through the year, I’m slowly coming to realize that I’ve been seening people through rose-coloured glasses and it’s about time to take them off to see them for what they are.

1 Week Of The Movies

I got introduced to this really cool place where I can log all the movies I've watched and I'm trying it out. And I'm slowly curating a list of movies that I've always wanted to watch but never found the time to. 1 movie a night, that's what I'm telling myself to try. Also starting my days with a very interesting set of podcasts and I'm so excited to learn more about these things. I've been consciously trying to dig out new information and learn things that I'm interested in my free time. But most of the time I'm constantly finding myself excuses that I'm too tired from work or wanting to just take a break and not do anything with my free time so I don't learn new things.

And I'm always filling this blog up with all the sad shit.

Well this post isn't a post about sad things and about losing friends/people that I love.

Last night I rewatched 500 days of summer and I felt like there were more lessons that I've gotten from the movie compared to when I first watched it when I was 13 and idealistic. I mean, I'm still idealistic and I probably romanticise the fuck out of situations even though I try not to.

Tonight I watched 10 Things I Hate About You and I am absolutely in love with Katrina Stratford. She's smart, witty, doesn't give a fuck about people. And the whole film had punk rock girl bands and 1999s fashion! Heath Ledger was also great ideal boyfriend that any girl would fall for like wtf! that huge moment where he stole the mic and sang Cant Take My Eyes Off You with the band...!! Every hopeless romantic would swoon at that scene. Was cute.

And so we'll continue with the podcasts and movie watching and trying to force more information and knowledge and conversational topics I can have with different people because I'm honestly sick and tired of knowing so little and being so boring.

"We should stop only having these catch ups at the back of the cab" / "Hang out with me more la"

So Cheeks and I were discussing on the movie "To All The Boys I've Loved Before" and she brought up a really good point - where she said Josh was confused and initially wanted to entertain the thought of dating Larna Jean and then he focused on how he was losing her as a friend. And there was another scene towards the end where LJ was talking to Josh and told her that before she met Peter he was the first person that she really liked because of who he was, and when she met Peter the feelings for Josh disappeared and she realised that she was in love with Peter and not Josh. That scene where she was trying to confront her feelings for Peter and she said if it wasn't real and he didn't want her then that's fine. But if it was real and he didn't want her... Josh then cuts in telling her that at least she will know and we have to tell people how we feel when we feel a certain way.

I don't know. It's a stupid romcom that's probably perfect for 17 year old me but there were some good scenes in there I guess. I was just thinking... if LJ met Peter and realised that her feelings for Josh were only platonic, like best friend platonic... I wonder if whatever happened this year just made me think how I still always wanted the same person after all and if anything - I miss the friendship over all the physical things. 

I love both my best friends and I'm starting to realize that maybe because I'm so dependent on people, I find too much comfort and built too many shelters in the people I love. I can't decide, I can't decide. 

But one thing I know for sure - you always have my heart in so many ways, A. 

Making demands.

Tell me you miss me. Tell me you miss me like crazy and then say you're sorry for hurting me that time when you weren't honest but defended yourself and completely invalidated my feelings and made me feel like I was the psychotic one. Tell me you want me, that you are certain. Say you're sorry for going back and forth. For not taking this 10 year friendship into consideration and willingly let everything crumble and not fighting hard enough for this. Come down to my house in the evening, not at 3 am to tell me you like me again. Tell me over and over again how much you want me and not only when we are in bed, almost always intoxicated with fumbling hands trying to undress each other in the dark. Tell me you how I make you laugh. Ask me about my day, don't just drop a few coherent texts after days of ignoring me and then continue to talk shit again. Ask me about my family, and I want to know more about yours. Ask me out - you haven't done that since Artbox. Have better conversations with me - we used to do that. Call me on random nights to check in like you used to. 

Lastly, be brave to want this enough, because they keep telling me to be brave enough to let you go. 

10 years on

2 minutes ago she asked me if I still remember you. How can I forget? I replied. I'm the oldest grand child and I spent the longest time with him. She told me that I never wanted her to carry me whenever I cried, but would always crawl into gong gong's arms with him soothing me, "shh, it's going to be okay. It's okay, gong gong is here."

How can I forget? He was always the one protecting me, buying me ice cream, buying me the prettiest dresses and always coming over on hot sweltering afternoons with bags of fruits and paos when we moved out of Toa Payoh. 

I don't think of gong gong very often but tonight when she gave me this huge lecture about how my dad's temper is bad but his intentions are good - just like my gong gong. I felt this overwhelming sense of anger, guilt and sadness all at once. I wonder how my relationship with gong gong will be like if he was still alive now. Would I have lost all that biased perspective and slowly realize his flaws that caused my father to become what he is and ultimately project that onto the way he brought Joshua and I up? I don't know. 

I miss gong gong because when I was was younger, he was always a source of comfort. Someone that I could run to, someone that would express his love so outwardly, boldly and with certainty - I knew he loved me. There were no mixed messages, no scolding and then immediately demanding affection. I was taught what unconditional love was from him and as I grow older I'm starting to realize I don't see this anymore. Everything I do feels like a trade, always giving always wanting to take. The past few months I've been constantly giving and giving, not really believing that I have anything mine to take. Not thinking that I deserve anything more than whatever I'm receiving - which in my case is less than what I deserve (that's what my friends say, at least). 

I'm slowly sputtering towards an attitude of resignation where I accept things for what they are, with no expectations and no reason to want anything more than what it is. On the other end of the spectrum, my best friends are back in town and I want to fill myself up with conversations, art and good jujus. 

Anything new distracts the old, but how can I forget. How can I forget. 

11 June 2018: A Love Letter To Rome

So here I am, sitting on the beautiful balcony in our Airbnb in Rome. It's 8:30 PM and the sun is about to set. My lack of descriptive vocab will never be able to accurately convey the beauty and serenity this city brings about, but I am trying my hardest. The city of Rome is filled with so much beautiful architecture, people and skies. My heart raced today when I saw the piazzas, the concrete statues built by the ancient Romans - artifacts that have lasted through decades and weathered through so much. I hope I never forget how this feels like. It shifts things a bit into perspective you know, that I am but a speck of dust in this universe. Being able to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, I guess. People leave. Everything is temporal. 

I look up and I see the skyline of old Italian houses mixed with the silhouettes of domes - churches, basilicas, statues of mythological creatures and roman soldiers defeating lions and octopuses showing signs of strength and triumph.

Never would I have imagined exploring Rome for the first time alone. I went to so many places, took in everything in silence and tried to absorb as much as I can. My feet are sore but this is what I am grateful for: The luxury of time, the fresh air and freedom. I am here! Now. Alive, present and sitting on the balcony watching the sky burst into shades of purple, pink and blue hues. There are little to no clouds in the sky and the sunset is enchanting and I am so in love. There is a breeze and soft beats playing from a rooftop bar somewhere nearby. 

I wish I could capture this moment and keep it in my memory forever. I am so at peace right now. Rome, you're a first for me. I've had many firsts this year and you're one I thoroughly enjoy. I love every alley, every old Italian concrete wall, every monument, every piazza, basilica, temple, church and park that I had the opportunity to chance upon today. You are exploding with stories of the past, historical sites filled with pain, triumph, worship, religion and essentially stories of how the people of the past used to live.

I am grateful I had this time alone out here, forcing myself out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to navigate with just google maps and a paper map. You are a special one, Rome. For now, this is enough. I'm taking in deep breaths and looking out into the skyline. The sunset, oh my God. God has made life so beautiful. I am so thankful. I am okay. I am enough. This is enough. 

I love you, Rome. Thank you, Italy. 

"I forgot that in this process you're also losing one of your best friends hey"

I think it's hitting me in waves - on the walk home on Friday night, my brain finally allowed some sort of emotional capacity to process everything that's been happening outside of work this week to hit me. And then I walked past places that contain memories of the both of us, lowkey annoyed that I let you so close to my everyday places and now I can't seem to look at that playground the same way before anymore. It's the gut-wrenching, heart sinking kind of feeling as dramatic as it sounds. I know I've been outwardly pouring out all my sadness to my friends and they've been nothing but patient, supportive and angry for me. The first few sentences that they blurt out is "you deserve better", and if they're all singing the same tune, it must mean something right? 

But I think the pain stems from the fact that while I get over the fact that maybe we can't date / we're not romantically compatible as much as we'd want us to be... I'm also in the process of losing a friend I hold so close to my heart. I think that stings the most. The helpline is gone, I can't cry to you on the phone anymore, and despite you being the first person I still think of whenever I get caught up in sticky situations- like that time I got pickpocketed in Paris, I can't call you anymore. I miss you so fucking much. If this romantic thing is ruining everything we have, I want to throw it all away and reset and restart and we can go back to being just friends, just talking and bantering and you'll still be there for me when I need you and you can still call me out whenever you're having your heartbreaks or when you get that first job. I'm bummed that I might miss your graduation, your birthday, your first day at work. I want to be there for you to celebrate all of that, but it seems like it's so fucking hard to even be able to do this. I hope I can. 

I'm losing a best friend and it feels like a huge gash that I can't stop the bleeding. The more I try to stop it, the deeper the wound. I can't bring myself to say goodbye to this. I want you to talk to me. I want us to be talking. But there's no remedy in trying to salvage this friendship. 

Fucking Marmalade Pantry and Koi

you can't always talk about having freedom and your dislike on being controlled by your ex girlfriends and now i'm starting to realise that they're perhaps not as psychotic as you made them out to be. you probably never gave sufficient assurance, and you just went your way and met other girls and had other conversations with them. your ex girlfriends got angry and you got upset because you said they were being jealous/unreasonable. you said you didn't lie about meeting the other girls, but maybe you just dodged the topics and didn't tell your ex girlfriends. you technically weren't lying. but if you keep hiding behind these technicalities, then will you ever confront the way you've been so inconsiderate towards the people you claim you love? you can't say that they don't trust you enough...! if you're behaving/communicating like this and going behind their backs, how the fuck do you excpect them to trust you? in fact, you've just given them more reason to not trust you. you build trust by telling your ex lovers that you're meeting other girls and you assure them that everything is going to be okay. communicate however you need to to be able to give that assurance. it's only basic respect to the partner you're with. 

you've expressed your feelings but you haven't taken action and that's no longer fair because i've reciprocated and told you what i wanted out of this. if you can't decide and if you don't want to take responsibility and accountability of working on this with someone then why should i bother and why should i care? how can you do this thinking that it's okay? it's extra upsetting because you were one of my best friends, and the more i keep reflecting on these situations, i'd give anything to go back to our once-in-a-while catch ups, with the surface banter and questions. i don't have to think about you constantly and maybe whenever we both feel sad about certain things in our lives, we can fall back on each other for temporary emotional support. you can't do permanent. 

a lot of thoughts are mostly self inflicted and your mind usually sends itself into overdrive. If it’s not thinking about how much grey we were in, it’s about cutting you off completely and missing you. If it’s not replaying what happened those nights, it’s remembering what happened on our almost dates. after we spoke and you told me what you told me, it was relief at first. Then now I’m somehow doing this thing to convince myself otherwise. I’m still retreating even though I thought I’ve confronted my emotions. Is this supposed to be an every day challenge? It’s supposed to be easy. I don’t know why I feel like I’ve put my walls up and I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. How have we been communicating.

Didn't Want To Start A Losing Game

Stop finding things that you lack in people and learn to be self-sufficient.

(I don't think I'll ever be ready.)

London’s Tube

I’ve been formulating sentences and paragraphs in my head this whole week but never brought myself to put them down in paper or in this case, only ever typing this down because I saw a screenshot that she sent in the group and she’s using telegram x and I knew it was you who told her about the app because you told me about it, too. And suddenly, I’m on the toilet bowl at 7am in the morning crying because I saw that photo and got reminded of you and got reminded about how you two are probably still talking, bantering, hanging out more and how you and I stopped talking, bantering and hanging out. And how you’re no longer the top of my Instagram watcher list.

Perhaps it’s really been the case this week where I’ve effortlessly distanced myself away from everyone in Singapore, not only you, but especially you. Thank you, 7 hour time difference. So the distance helped. I still feel extra lonely but I thought it helped because I didn’t feel sad and cooped up anymore. Maybe it’s also because I threw myself into work this whole week. Been too caught up with the stress of this all that I didn’t have the mental capacity to really sit down with my emotions and let myself heal. Funny because now that the tube has no reception? I’ve been forcing myself to read the book of joy and I’ve gotten a lot of inner peace when reading about it. I thought I’ve healed myself. I thought I’m good again.

But then again this morning at 7am, getting triggered by just one fucking lame screenshot she shared... I’m still crying. I still hurt. And I still miss you. Maybe not as much, but I still do. Do you miss me too? Or am I so replaceable that you moved on so quickly?

A First and Last Almost-Date With You.

Sunday we had bingsoo, oreo with an extra shot of condensed milk just because. We had a thought about heading to T2 to check out if they have Singaporean tea to buy for my team in London. We went and tasted the Singaporean special - which tasted like complete shit and we laughed about how it was #1 on their bestseller. Fuckin tourists. We then headed to take the train to artbox and spent our train ride exchanging cheeky glances and laughing at ah bengs speaking obnoxiously on the train. I told you to stop being so judgemental. It wasn't a necessarily hot sunday but it was humid because it was raining in the morning. Before we walked over to Artbox, you pointed over to that huge funnel/flush system outside MBS where people always threw coins to see if they'd get in. I was never the kind to throw coins into fountains/funnels like these. But you did it. It didn't get into the hole. You also asked me what I thought this funnel thing was and I said it was like a toilet bowl flushing system. You laughed and taught me that it was some genius build because if you stood directly opposite each other on the other end of the radius and you speak closely to the rims, despite how far we are, we'd still hear each others' voices as though we were right next to each other. We tried it. 

Artbox was a flop, but it was a first with you because we never went to things like these. Our hangouts were mostly dinners and accompanied by some light drinks. We never went out to do these sort of things together. We queued in with all the basic Singaporeans and walked around the sois aimlessly. You were on your alcohol fast but we kept gravitating towards the beer bar. I hope you're still keeping to your fast till 12 June. After staying there for less than 30 minutes, we ran back into MBS trying to cool down and get some aircon. We were sticky and sweaty but still playing around with each other. It was fun, just wandering around MBS with you. We walked towards the old skating rink and they turned it into some interactive art installation. We could use the app and set off fireworks to a string of LED lights. We tried and you helped me set it up on my phone, and we set off some fireworks. I think looking at the LED fireworks go up and having you by my side was literally the most cliched, unthinkable, undreamable and craziest thing but it was a moment I'd like to remember. You explained to me the technology behind how each string of LED light would get the message after we sent that code to release the particular set of fireworks. We spoke about my plans for Europe, my concerns with traveling with Cheeks after not speaking with her for so long, work when I get to London.. you told me about your friends, their girlfriends and how you were upset with one of them. 

You then suggested malaxiangguo because it was something that we wanted to eat together for the longest time. We walked out of MBS and sat outside the art science museum where we looked at three wedding photo shoots and talked to the birds around us. We spoke about our friends, their stories and empathized with the dynamics of our friend groups. While making our way to Chinatown for ririhong malaxiangguo we played on the escalator and joked around. It was always so comfortable with you. 

We ate mostly in silence because mala. But you queued up and we functioned like a team - one getting the food, the other choping the table. One gets the drinks, the other sits with the food. After we finished dinner, I know we couldn't bear to end the day and we strolled around chinatown and went up and down the mrt escalator a few times. You wanted to walk me to the bus stop and wait till I got on the bus but we ended up taking the mrt instead. 

Maybe looking back at this description of our first and probably last date, I'd think there wasn't anything special. But with the warmth and the bittersweet and the unspoken all jumbled up together, with the small voice at the back of my head telling me to treasure it because it might not happen again, was all it took for me to realise how much I wanted to be with you. 

Before we met that Sunday, I was having coffee with a friend and he was egging me on to clarify things with you becasue of how psycho we were on Saturday night. Event after event on Sunday with you but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I wanted just one perfect day. It was my greed taking over again. I knew if we addressed what we were, we'd have to make a decision - which I know we both didn't know what we wanted and I didn't want to ruin the Sunday. So I kept it in until our night ended and we went home and I told you that we needed to talk on Tuesday. It was the last conversation that we would have in a while. 

I miss you. Everyone tells me that I made the right choice and I know that if I didn't make this decision to not talk to you anymore, we'd still be dabbling with grey areas, having almost-dates and being almost together. I cannot bode well with uncertainty and hesitations. You couldn't make up your mind when it came to the both of us and yourself. I still miss you. Your company, our friendship, our banter, the way you kissed my forehead on the first night and looked at me in a way I've never seen you look at me before in my room right before I left for Beijing. I miss you helping me crack my knuckles when I told you my hands were hurting for the whole week. I miss talking to you. I miss how you were the few people I'd call right away if I was in tears and needed someone to calm me down. I miss listening to you rap. I miss your hugs, your jokes, the way you are able to make me laugh the hardest whenever I felt like shit. Lovers in Japan came on my spotify today and before I knew it, it drifted back to the days when I was 14, you were 15 and you'd put your phone on top of your piano and play that song over, and over again for me till I stopped crying. 

This is me probably romanticising the fuck out of everything but I have to get it out of my system. 

Reset and Restart

I don't know where to start but I know for a fact that i've been sick and tired of being trapped in a grey area and i am sure my friends are also sick and tired of listening to me whine about the same issue again and again when all there really is to do is to make a bloody decision that both of us are afraid to make. 

I don't necessarily know why we're too afraid to make decisions, perhaps the certainty of giving one option up scares us and we're just greedy like that. But it's a weak excuse. It's also a weak excuse saying that we don't know what we want. Tonight you told me that we had the physical intimacy and the friendship but there was nothing in between to hold it together. Which essentially meant that we don't have the foundations of a relationship. And i agreed. The next logical question to ask was - then are we willing to try? both of us said we didn't know. 

With this much hesitation and uncertainty, the best answer is to remain friends. We both know we want this friendship to work and last for a long time. The way I handle it is to distance myself and revisit this friendship when the dust settles and you no longer stir up so much unwanted and unnecessary emotions where i spend time, effort and tears into something that's been made up and blown out of proportion. 

I keep telling myself that it shouldn't be this hard, you know. If you were certain enough and wanted this enough, you would go for it. But you don't. I guess I'm sad because it feels like you don't want me enough. But in the same breath, I can see why. I don't feel that connection that I felt with the previous person I was in love with. Our conversations are always surface, banter and never in depth. Perhaps we are too conditioned and built our 10 year friendship on a lot of banter, once in a while catch ups about where we are in life and nothing more than that. The fact that we are incompatible saddens me a bit because for the longest time while I was sidelined in your life, I thought any girl would be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend. But I guess that illusion's shattered and I'm a bit sad. 

My heart is heavy tonight but I know that I made the right choice of choosing to not talk for the time being. It puts an end to the grey area and I won't have to lose my mind on what you're doing, where you are and what you are thinking. You also won't have to tirelessly creep around me if you want to hang out with people that you can hang out with. I also won't have to care. And ultimately for the sake of this friendship that we both have been grappling to save but always having the same ambivalent mindset. I am so fucking exhausted and drained from everything. 

It's Always (about) Me, Not You.

Perhaps even trying to overcompensate my denial and sadness by crazily posting/writing on social media about my journey to self improvement, losing weight and striving to the best at work wasn't the best of ideas. i've been so strung out at work, I know I'm not functioning at my best but I refuse to attribute it to my screw ups in my personal life so far. 

my friends have been singing the same tune, but i dont know if the problems really lie with the people i get with. i'm trapped in the same cycle, the same crazy thoughts and they all point to the sign to craving affection, love and validation but then wanting it from the wrong person ie they can't fucking give you what you want. you continue to romanticise, you continue to try to impress (subconsciously, of course), and you continue to be let down. then you start to convince yourself that you are just not good enough, that you aren't smart/pretty enough, and then you tell yourself that you don't deserve that person because how could you have dared to even think that they'd like you back when you're... what you are and they are what they are too. Rinse and repeat. 

i am so fucking drained and tirelessly writing and thinking these thoughts aren't the best. constantly going back and repeating mistakes - they are self inflicted wounds. you wanted the fastest way to feel loved, validated and desired. at the end of the day they were right, the obsession for external validation is self indulgent and narcissistic. 

Empty Vessel

a thought, after you telling me that we should draw the line and just be friends:

physical intimacy is the easiest way I can get validation, comfort and love all at once. to build something emotionally sound, stable and to be interesting enough to appeal to someone - this I cannot seem to do. this month I've learnt that i do not know so many things, i cannot keep up with conversations, i lack the general knowledge and all i've been so obessive with is my work, my work and my career. and even in that aspect i know so little. i lack so much personality, character, interest and substance.

in the end i am just an empty vessel constantly trying to empty myself up for people i love to fill me up. but what i've come to learn is that empty vessels don't attract. they stay empty, and here i am struggling to change myself but still stuck in the same spot. it is truly nauseating and i dont know what to do anymore.

a new familiar nightmare

so last night I woke up at 3:30am in tears, because I dreamt of you leaving. Despite it being a different person I’m dreaming of, the recurring theme still seems to be the same. I’m starting to draw some similarities and maybe I’ve actually lost my mind. I dreamt we were in a dark hotel and I felt really lost and scared. My phone rang and my Mum was on the phone scolding me for hanging out with you and she told me she found out because she’s friends with your Mum. How cool was that? If our Mums were actually friends. I know they do smile at each other from time to time when they cross each other in church and you and I stop to talk. 

That aside, you planned for a surprise dinner with the both of us and randomly enough - Glenda and a neighbour I haven’t met in years. When I say down, you wiped something off from the right side of my face. 

The next place we were at was a laundromat. The vintage, hipster kind. The washing machines had this thing where if you put in money to wash, each washing machine would play a different track whilst washing your clothes. We put our money into the washing machine that played Hoobastank- The Reason. And we danced around the laundromat and laughed. 

And then suddenly you told me you needed to go.  I didn’t even get to say anything and you disappeared. I remember feeling lost in my dream and woke up in tears. 

Why do I constantly dream of the people I love leaving me in abrupt, happy situations. There must be a reason for this recurring theme. I’m afraid to delve too deep into the underlying issues that stems from this. 

But I did the same thing as I previously did with the other person I had a nightmare about. I texted you. Groggily, half awake and full of honesty. “Don’t leave” 

Don’t leave, please stay. I cannot imagine my life without you in it even though we were always sidelined in each other’s lives. This month it felt like we were moving out of the sidelines and into the playing field. I miss you and I want you to stay. Don’t leave. 

You texted me the same words she once said. “I promise I won’t leave.” “I’m sorry I made you cry in your dreams. That’s fucked up.” 

My heart hurts. 

Ideas.

I think I keep falling in love with the idea of someone. It's easy for me to romanticise - as much as I hate to admit it. My love language is words of affirmation and touch. And when someone touches me the way I desire it to be like, I find myself losing all sense of rationality and control. Why are you so fucking easy, Rachel. I don't know, I wish I could play games and be hot and cold like some of the other girls. 

The ones that are hard to get are always the one that guys long for. It's tried and tested. I was never the one that played hard to get only because I believed that I couldn't hook the interest of someone long enough for them to want me to play these games. So I somehow always made myself an open option - if you want me, I'm here for you. I just want your love, affection and validation. I can love anyone so easily but at the same time, I get angry for letting myself go so effortlessly. 

Always falling in love with the idea of someone, and then trying to dissociate from that by highlighting flaws, pinpointing issues that might cause a future end to anything that it might amount to if we moved towards being more than friends. I'm always setting myself up for an ending, a bad ending especially because maybe I've subconsciously wired my brain to believe that I don't deserve good guys ie a guy that can love me the way that I desire to be loved and I can love him the same. 

It's also frustrating how 17-year-old thoughts can so obviously show itself again in situations like these and it makes me feel as though I never matured from all the heartbreaks I've gotten. It's always an accumulation of suppressed feelings kept in tightly locked boxes. Opening them up once in a while gets a bit too much for me to handle and now I'm all over the place.  

I think we’re meant to stay in the in-betweens. It’s the best way to keep whatever we would want to keep and distancing ourselves from any kind of tragic ending that we constantly foresee us getting into if we ever surpassed the line of being “just friends”.

When we’re in between, we can flirt without any caution and you’d brush your hands on mine without hesitation because we both know we won’t mount up to anything serious despite us wanting to. We can’t, because we simply don’t believe in it enough you don’t believe that you have what it takes and I don’t believe in being able to love you the way I want to. It’s sad and ironic I know but I think it’s best we stay as “in betweens”.

We don’t have to feel obliged to anything more than friends but we can allow ourselves to feel all the emotions we would want to feel as if we’re together. Loving each other without responsibility. It’s unsustainable and it’ll burn out. Hell, it’s been 6 years and I still love you. There’s never an end to it but we’ve never dared to put a start to our story. We’re constantly caught in between and that just seems to be the only way we can make us work, I’m starting to realise.

So that’s fine, and that’s okay. You can love me from afar and not act on it because you’re afraid. I’m afraid, too. If one day you gathered the courage to ask me to love you, I’d think twice because we’ve always stayed in safe greys and never in the honest truth that maybe, just maybe this isn’t that much of a fight.

of course, I'd pick the worst time to write anything here in this space. I've never been good with timing, anyway. Currently suffering from some mild food poisoning but it's been a reflective past few weeks - probably because of all this rain that's coming this January. It's a bit weird, to have the rain come a few weeks after December. 

reconnecting with an ex lover made me realise how much things have changed but also the irrational part of me will still pick the same person again, and again. I wonder why I'm always choosing them over anything else. objctively, will i advise someone on the same choices that my subconscious mind seems to wander into? I'm constantly closing my eyes with the thought of having a future again with this person. Romanticising isn't something that's good for the mind because it completely disregards the reality of heartbreaks, tragedy and old mindsets that broke us up anyway. 

I'm writing this to remind myself to snap out of this infatuation, of heading back to familiarity just because it's the only thing I have known. 

Wake the fuck up, Rachel. Things ended twice for a reason, and the third time won't be a charm.