Guilt, guilt, more guilt

I feel like if I don’t write I’ll combust into flames and die. I have been hyper ventilating a lot lately, more often than not just for fun to irk Sam, but sometimes because I am really disappointed with how I’ve let things become.

I keep trying to tell myself that I can only do my best and God is the one who gives the increase. But I can’t help but feel the despair. I used to have a plan for the future, but I don’t know where my life is heading now. Do you know how that feels like?

I’ve neglected all my loved ones, friends and family included in the course of this final semester, and have been constantly beating myself over it. I try to reason that it wasn’t my fault that things just got to busy but truth to be told, I just got busy with myself. There is a certain quality and essence about narcissism that sucks you in and keeps you caged like a prisoner undergoing cold turkey, except, they left a pot of drugs and you keep helping yourself to it anyway. (so it’s not really cold turkey) How much time am I going to allocate to myself till I find that it’s enough time for myself? Nobody ever tires of ME time.

How dare I even try to make time for myself when I haven’t made time for anybody else? It’s so crazily selfish and it just doesn’t make sense.

I just want things to go back to the way they were. If I had known, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to even try. Sometimes it’s better to hang on to a little hope instead of no hope at all.

Now God, please tell me where to go. A glimmer of hope, maybe?

(Sometimes I wonder if LA was the peak of all the things I am ever ever going to achieve in my lifetime. Sometimes I wish I stayed and never left. I have gained, but lost so much more.)

–

I hope you’ll forgive me. For the person I have become. For all the things I could do but chose not to. For the things I could have chose not to do but still did. For standing by my independence. For indulging too much in my independence. There is freedom in independence; but there is only so much independence one can stand for until being alone just becomes being lonely.

My insides are screaming: this is still me. I am still here. I am still me. And I am sorry

Suit up in tweed

I’ve been waiting for the sales at ASOS to drop and finally today it dipped and I managed to get this at a steal – almost half the original sale price. Other than that I bought two other dresses too so when the credit card bill comes mum is going to get a shock!

Happy Chinese New Year Eve!

I have got a hundred and one things to do but haven’t found enough time to sit down and finish them all. Everything is due on Wednesday right after the second day of Chinese new year it doesn’t even seem fair or right. Boohoo.

Abidingradio.org

Months ago I took myself off listening to trashy music.

The reason I took myself off secular music was because I saw no point in listening to it. It took me awhile to not pick up the ipod and to want to have it playing in my ears, but it just got so tiring at some point – because for each song I listened to I had to struggle to feel some sort of emotion for, and most of the time, feeling anything (at all) emotionally for such music was just too exhausting. It came to a point where I didn’t want to even feel anything so I took myself off it. So now I am finally free from the clutches of stupid, messy, crazy music that I want to have nothing to do with ever again.

And just today I found something “healthy” to listen to:

http://abidingradio.org/format.html

It’s very strange how after I took myself off secular music all the songs I hum subconsciously are hymns I sang in church the Sunday before. It’s almost like detox.

:)

Last

It just hit me that last night was the last workshop of my book writing and publishing class.

THE LAST!

That thought knocked the wind out of my stomach. I will miss those workshops so much. And before I know it it will all be over and when will I ever, ever get to do creative writing again? (That is presuming, that, any of the universities here don’t offer it) Even if so, it wouldn’t be the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Noooooooooooooooooo. Why do all good things have to come to an end?! IT IS, AND WILL ALWAYS BE, MY MOST FAVOURITE MODULE IN THE ENTIRE THREE YEARS OF POLY EDUCATION.

:(

Remember

How easy it is now to make me happy for now:

“I am not going to hide it from you, I gave you an A for your previous assignment”

Because life is just going to get harder and it will be more and more difficult for me to be happy just so because I am greedy and I always want more but let me never, ever forget that all these come from God. I am speechless. He leaves me speechless most of the time and it’s just so so amazing.

So let me not forget that it can be so easy to make me happy – that it is possible for me to be happy this easily because I am afraid that I might raise my expectations and forget the meaning of happiness as I get older.

–

I think what’s terrible is how I have been focusing and thinking and dreaming of getting to London so much it’s not even healthy. This was how I thought about LA before I went there. It’s the sort of longing that makes me tremble every time I think about it. That my heart even shivers at its desire (but the heart is deceitful above all things). That every single cell in my body is…calling out to that one place I want to get to. I know how crazy these things can be. It. is. not. healthy. There’s only so many As I can get in life, so many things I can have, before I have to hit a saturation point. Because its like a country’s GDP, it doesn’t and won’t make sense for it to keep growing and growing and growing yearly, at some point in time there is going to be an economy downturn and ultimately it will hit rock bottom. Sometimes its not that I am not good enough – I just can’t be no.1 at everything because there is always someone better – this, I have always known. That is something I know I have to concede defeat to. And I hold these people in respect.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t give my best. Because I always do.

Since when

..did life get so hard? 

I do know however, it only gets harder as you grow older.

Maria

I have never met someone as kind and lovely as she. That even though she lives in Europe and I in Singapore, we know that we will be friends for a long, long time. The short five months in LA made us family. How do you forget or put away someone who was your sole support for such a while? You can’t. I remember Saturday mornings at élysées, and coming home to the smell of onion and garlic rice steaming, and the smell of it permeating through the air on weekdays. I will never forget the ridiculous smoke detector fighting moments when it would annoying go off beeping and we would pick up cushions from the couch to fan the smoke away. I would sometimes throw my bag in the middle of the living room and start going about how my day went or how bad it was or how I got bullied or how some creep on the bus or across the road tried to talk to me. Or start lamenting that I miss home so much and I wish I could be home right at that moment. Or talk about God fervently and not have someone judge me like I was part of a fan club for Him.

I hope to God that I will never have to forget such a person in my life.

Maria: I just want you to know that I love and miss you everyday. :’)

Novella

Well, I do know how it is going to start.

I will open with a dialogue by Ruth (who is the main character in my story).

And then, where do I go from there? What is she going to say?

I do know, however, how old she will be. 22 years old. She will know not that she is beautiful even though she is and everyone else knows it except her. She eats crazily, unhealthy food.

Her best friend will be Hope. Who drives a nice, maroon coloured Volkswagen. (Hope will be wise. So very wise. Not as wise as Solomon, but still..you know wise.) Visits the gym religiously, and eats organic food cooked with only extra virgin olive oil.

And she will have a weird, cheating boyfriend who does not deserve her.

Half the time I want to make it a twisted, murder, story filled with strange satire and dramatic irony (Cliche 1). The other half asks that I stick with cliche 2 that she will get knocked up by the boyfriend and that jerk will eventually leave her because he is a cheater (duh).

 Do I set it in California or Singapore? (These are the only two cities I know, by heart)

Will they Asian, or American? I will write in third person though.

I have had these questions and the plot only thought out just last Wednesday, but have been putting off writing the story. I am usually worried that I will not be able to write as well as my favourite authors. (That’s why I am in Creative Writing 101 right?)

I have to start tomorrow, regardless of how hot the weather is or how sleepy I may be after church. Because I have to workshop this on Monday!!!!!!! No more excuses for the purpose of procrastination.

Fruitful weekend

My weekend was very fruitful, albeit the fact that I had to wake up really early on both days. Saturday saw me at the day care centre for people with dementia, and I finally understood why it is so important to raise awareness about it. The issue at hand we are facing is very real, and it is not easy to take care of someone with dementia – even if it is for a day, for a few hours (8am – 4pm) like what we did. While I am glad this workshop turned out to be a success, I am careful not to just look at it as an event that went successfully but an event that I want to go successfully so that the participants have a fruitful experience.

I went with Sam and his family for his granny’s birthday dinner that night, and that was nice.

Sunday was horrid. I woke up at 4am hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun rising. I got all my gear ready, including the tripod and the circular polariser, except that there was heavy downpour and Sam, Daniel and I got drenched quite badly, and there was no sun. I felt it constantly throughout the day that the sun was mocking me behind the clouds, because it wasn’t that it didn’t rise – it did and was blocked by the clouds the entire day. If anything, I was angry at the sun, which sounds childish but you’d be if you woke up 4am to see it but it didn’t appear. Like playing hide and seek and realising who you’re seeking doesn’t intend to be..found after all. (So what was the point of playing the game?! What was the point waking up so early for it!?) I went to church after that and had so much trouble keeping my eyes open. I got back home at around 5pm, and then decided that I should take a nap for a bit, set my alarm for 7pm, and only woke up at 7.30am today. I slept for more than 14 hours I think. That goes to say that any work I planned to do last night is still undone.

It feels kind of weird I guess, to sleep through half of Sunday to Monday.

Complexion

Wow the complexion I had when I was in LA. Super…….good. Will kill to have that again. Even the makeup looks…so much better!! Plus the hair. Which I am waiting desperately to grow. Straight hair is still more manageable.