There’s this memory I have of a young man early in my 20s whose face I wanted to commit to memory. To run his features, forwards and backwards, as if they were lines that could be read and stored away in the depths of my mind. I wondered if the more I saw him, the more I’d remember, if time and memory could function as sinews to become something that’d make a part of my being instead of turning into something that’d fade with time. There was no way I’d forget the asymmetry of his mouth, the darkness of his brows, the freshness of emotions. But I knew that forgetting would be eventual even as I was living through it.
There’s this memory I have of when my grandmother died in 1998 when I was eight. I remember hearing the loudness of my thoughts in the quiet of the night. Days after she passed, I was afraid of forgetting the sound of her unabashed laughter and the way she smelled like talcum powder, Tiger balm, soft fabric and sweat. In her absence, I’d cling onto the things she gave me – the pillowcase cover she sewed using the fabric from one of her old blouses, the wooden comb we picked out at the mall together that one time I slept over and my mom had forgotten to pack me a hairbrush, the bar of expensive soap she gave me from England that felt too precious to use up. The impermanence of things made me wonder if there was any point in loving any material thing too much, if maybe part of savouring something is in not taking care of it too carefully but to instead love it abundantly and even recklessly.
There’s this lip tint I used to wear when I was younger. It tasted like rose syrup and coloured my lips and cheeks a shade of pink. Whenever I wore it to class it felt like a new part of my identity, that dry sensation on my lips, that hint of colour on my cheeks, letting me be how school never let me be. It was a sense of hope in a colour. I could carry that sense of hope along with me in my pocket, wherever I went.
What a strange sensation it is to be alive and to still live through the grief of losing, even decades after. What is forgetting – relief, or loss? And what is writing, if not to commemorate these fragments forever?
I wish I could say how much too much feels like, how on some days living feels like a non-negotiable choice and waking up is a reminder to get through yet another day I’m not too sure how to feel about. I wish what I’m going through has a fixed timeline and that some clarity could be gained by the end of it but I guess it’s the uncertainty of life that also keeps us plodding along. I wish it didn’t have to feel this selfish and personal and how, at the same time, it feels like mental health is exactly the thing that you can’t share with others because nobody would completely understand the trappings of the mind as much as you’d understand it yourself. I’ve started going for therapy and I think (hope) that it’s something that will eventually help me.
These days I’ve been getting a series of strange dreams. In these dreams, people I barely talk to in real life have conversations with me. Sometimes, animals appear. These people talk about their jobs, mundane things, and what to to look out for in the future. At this point in my life, I’m no longer invested in the idea of a clear future simply because I can’t visualise one. Growing up, I never had the maternal fantasy of becoming a homemaker. Each time I thought about marriage I’d cut myself short to instead think about what it means to be as a person. Always, this strange determination in wanting to make something out of nothing, to carve a name out for myself and to feel and talk and write about things that are real and alive to me. I used to be so in love with the world and have never wanted to drown in the definition of the other, of solely being somebody else’s person or to cave in to the pressure of fulfilling society’s standards of what a woman should be. But now, at almost thirty, I can’t help but to feel like I still can’t tell left from right, even when it comes to the simplest things. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so non-negotiable, maybe it’s normal to feel this lonely and disillusioned and unfulfilled but still want to try to find a space to belong in out there. Maybe, maybe.
What am I bumbling towards for in this life? All these lamentations feel so futile, even if I know a lot of sense has been made out of writing and really solidifying these thoughts out.
I tried to take an objective backseat with how things have been since the end of my recent relationship. The relationship was the longest one I’ve ever had, long enough that I really thought it’d be more permanent than it turned out to be. What I wasn’t prepared for, aside from the initial liberation and then the sinking in of the heartbreak, was the complete physical reaction. Days where my mood would completely dip out of nowhere only to improve so suddenly in the evenings. Days where taking up space almost felt offensive and I wished that I could just drown myself in endless work and endless sleep. It’s a phase, they say. I myself have told a loved one that getting through a breakup is like going through an illness; you just have to let it run its course and there’s no fast forwarding the damned thing. But now that I’m experiencing it myself, I can’t help but to wish that the year is over and done with already.
Maybe getting older is realising the scary truth of how much dependency is involved in being in monogamous relationships. The relief of having been liberated is in reconnecting with my individuality and not being too attached to this collective definition of what it means to be when you’re with someone else (even though, as a hopeless romantic, I always hope that there is a someone else in my story, but only if that ‘someone else’ makes sense in the grand scheme of things). The more I think about it, the more I realise that choosing to be with anyone at all takes a lot of courage.
People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right, it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something weak people do.”
Hot Priest, “Fleabag”
So much about growing as a person is about becoming more certain but this trajectory isn’t always linear either. Perspectives change as we change and it feels like there’s always new ground to discover or navigate. It’s possible to regress as much as we also progress though I suppose it’s all about having courage in the journey to trudge along.
I don’t know what I’m trying to get at here, if not to just shed light on what it feels like to be a mess and how the fixing of the self doesn’t alway have to be a clean journey. I’m scared to hope, but I wish that there’s some assurance in greater things out there, eventually.
This is where I sink & float 