Speak to me.

I think I've become incapable of staying awake past 1am. And perhaps that is good.
I seek solace in nusrat ali khan and similar morose melodies of east indian sensibilities. And perhaps this is another externalization. And perhaps it is. I wish to master at least adequacy, at least in all great romantic languages of the world so that I can understand their poetry genuinely, honestly with nothing but sincerity in my heart and naivete on my tongue. I ask for nothing more of now. I just need understanding. Speak to me in ten different languages. Let it not be beautiful merely because of my ineptitude to grasp nothing more but intonation and rhythm. Let it be beautiful because it means so, because I understand it as beautiful, without the incredible incredibility heavily dependant on the incoherence of my heart. And then I will speak.

Sometimes, I get flashes of melancholy – the kind that weighs me down and follows me, straddling on my shoulders for days. These flashes don’t have specific triggers. Maybe they do, the eyes, eyes that make me feel ashamed of my ability to even afford shame, or melancholy. I was riding the bus yesterday. At a bus stop, a group of teenagers were joking and messing around, laughing rambunctiously the way children do. Then I saw him - a chubby adolescent boy, standing in the shadows, less a foot from them, just looking out, looking at me, looking into me. He was dressed in the same school uniform, carrying the same baton as the other kids but why was he alone? Why wasn’t he laughing with them? Why does he look so sad?

Sometimes I tell myself that it’s okay, that it’s all okay, that it will be - these people do have loving families, enough to eat, idyll lives, no worries, but it’s more of a consolation for myself than anything. The reality is, these problems do exist. Maybe not for the faces who’ve triggered my concern, but in others, others I’ve yet to encounter and worry for, to the ones I dismiss, find no cause to care about, maybe even despise. And that makes me worry.

Misery is a luxury. At my darkest I’ve repeated this. That I should be grateful that the worries I have are often fixable, that the only grief and illness that ails me are the ones that are unnamed, inexplicable, often self-conjured, existential, and more significantly, escapable. Granted I find the escape route from my head.

Until I do, I’ll carry on looking out of windows, withstanding and containing my occasional compassion, helplessness-induced melancholy and hope that we both have strength enough to rid the demons that hamper us.

woe is me. babbly is also me. scarlett johanssen is sometimes me.

I am sitting here with my butt numb, from sitting here, staring, crying, laughing, singing aloud, thirsty and fucking frightened of my 2-hour-old can of carrot juice. fucking frightened of its ingestion resulting in death by salmonella (threat of which increases at every minute of warming, especially in the likes of fruit juices, fruit juices much like carrot juice. carrots ARE fruity, let's not get into semantics now, okay?), and of death in general - mainly in fear of not being found till much much later, when my body lies bloated blue, rank and unpretty. noone must see me unpretty. no one. but death, respite, now. yes, please.

I think I know now why people stick with the ones who seem, even remotely, like 'The One'. The old me would attribute this phenomenon to plain laziness. But I've confronted my bitterness, let's be honest here, I understand. THOROUGHLY. You guys win.

For one, the concept is mind-boggling. How does one sieve one through the millions of ones, let alone the tens of 'ones' they encounter each day? What defines 'the one'? Why can't we have 'the two'? Why do we even need 'the one'? Did Hallmark influence this need? Was it injected via television radiation through maternal womb juices? Do I like Kylie Minogue's 'The One'? Yes I do. Am I 'the one'? Why not? What if I don't find 'the one'? When I find 'the one' must we coordinate our wardrobe? Will 'the one' be okay with my obsessive need to listen to certain songs at least 3 times everyday, my hate for apple crunches and safeguard my one and only kryptonite, that word I so vehemently despise I feel like gagging now? Will 'the one' think of me as his one? Will I lose weight?

The process is a volatile, impractical, time-consuming and money-exhausting one, filled with pain, indeterminate variables and heartache, and is just godfuckingdamn tiring. Just thinking about it makes me sleepy. Just writing about it makes me wanna stop writing. Which I will.

Here I am, 24, alone and now lonely, with that wakening realization that I am STILL mothering boys, mothering enough confidence in them to leave me. Except that now, I've seem to have extended those lessons to my backbone-less friends who seem to forsake me every time darkness creeps from within me. I don't need to be left alone. I just need to be mothered myself. You guys know how MY mother's like. my mother who e-mails me marriage hints, and open sandwich suggestions, whose idea of bonding includes chain e-mails on bad hygiene practices in F&B. Yes, my mother didn't teach me how to love. So just fucking love me already. Hugs, a few beers, maybe? I think that's reasonable, right? As payment for the coaching, no? You can leave me after, after when I'm too drunk and numb and dazed to keep eyes and mind awake. You don't even have to care, give me check-up calls, no strings, nothing, really! Just don't let me be alone with my thoughts, not now. All those who know me well enough don't seem to be even slightly concerned at these instances when I recoil knowing the shit that goes through my head, knowing me, knowing theatrics, knowing my history.

Sure,
I love you all still.

And I understand. Everyone needs their fun. Melancholy is not fun. Company does not love misery. Misery is desperate and unloved and lonely.

But here I go again 'understanding'. Maybe I should stop being so fucking 'nice and understanding', 'smart and objective', 'caring and concerned'. No amount of smart-mouthing and crass-talking could undo the years of superficial undertones, years of mollycoddling and negative reinforcement. No I will no longer love you regardless. Who am I kidding? I'm a fucking doormat. Just a rather thorny one. I could demand, command, bark, whine and bitch my way through/to things but I'd rather be mum and rationalize myself out of them. Don't I deserve some good, sometimes? Why would I think otherwise? WHO THE FUCK DID THIS TO ME?! Decades of femininity have been built upon the former line of attack, so why can't I rationalize myself to fucking doing it?! Pride? Well, did I lie, at the end of those battles with pride, with anything for that matter? NO. SO WHY FUCKING NOT RIGHT?

yes, why fucking not.

Two. There have been/are two men in my life who came close to understanding me. One, I've lost indefinitely - in the name of morality, sacred binds, conventions and whatfuckingnot. The other, I'm letting go, indefinitely. I've rationalized myself into keeping mum to him. I am keeping mum for his happiness. Because that's what matronly doormats do. WE KEEP MUM. oooo double entendre. And since I am miserable and currently have no healthy concept of self-worth, shall automatically assume that everyone else's happiness triumphs over mine. AND, being a romantic, a tres tragic romantic, will do all that I can (and then some), to ensure my secret love's happiness, even (and perhaps especially) at the expense of my heart and sanity. Also, I'm a coward. A very tired coward. It'll all end the same. Me on the floor, in a fetal position I imagine, replaying Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn' conceptually over and over in my head, with nothing but heart-dust and relatable sad lyrics from equally depressed but more commercially viable artists, with nothing but cigarette smoke for solace and oscar wilde/milan kundera/sylvia plath/charles bukowski to blame. I will also begin a hate campaign against Morrissey in a retrospective epiphany for my aggressive taking-to-heart in his songs and blabber-mouthing comprehensive albeit inarticulate takeaways in the same grain during one drunken albeit romantic whim. KAPOW! So whatevz.

I am demanding my share of happiness right NOW. No arguments around it. Let me mope, let me go to zouk, listen to my weird shit, let me love silently, madly, allow me weakness, grant me a few tears, waive off moments of depravity, lax in bad back postures, increase allowances in rant-minutes, expenditure in CDs, drinks, promiscuity, 'bad' judgment, entitle me some lapses in strength, sociability, logic, let me be sometimes ugly! Just be content that I've cast you you and you supporting roles in this acquirement (of happiness, however apeshit or frivolous). So the least you can do is comply. So fucking comply.

Or leave.

You all can stand on your own now, right?

And to the ones who will never think of me as one, have never thought of me as one, I hope you find one, or are happy with your one.
Cause you're all right. I'm not 'The One'. I think I'm 'The 8', at least. One is the loneliest number anyway. And not even in a fat sense.


In the course of this rant between the end of the first paragraph and this one, I have taken 5 sips from the carrot can. So check up on me in 3 days.
My favourite red lipstick is on the dresser. You know what to do.
kthxbye.

what kind of fuckery is this?

why are malay boys so berlapokz? and by berlapokz I mean dusty, viscous and sticky and rank-smelling? I do not want to be near most malay boys for fear of mostly, and in fear of mostly, breathing in their foul smells and their noxious manners, diseases and the like (besides the obvious fear that girls like me are squid bait for these cretins because of language inefficiencies, off-tangent allegiances and socio-economic differences). so why is it such, that when I do meet someone from these bracketss who'd you expect to be as physically distasteful and perhaps even as rank-smelling and mentally-incapacitated too he turns out to only be as distasteful in an emotional sense and whose olfactory unpleasantness can only be metaphorically correlated to his love ethics and bedroom behaviours and whose flooziness proudly matches his kin the same and it hurts even more cause he promised you the idea of white picket fences, proud and content daddy, sembab and sunshiney hari rayas sans cultural/language/social barriers - issues I'd expect from and eventually find novel from my yellow-feverish picks for mate - and it was hard to begin with for you to even begin with to feel this way, towards, on colour alone (own kind notwithstanding), and then grow to even semi-love him, almost finding him as treasureable as those you find cherishable on their being alone - if not for anything, but your own fantastical prejudices (which you attribute are a hotpot of daddy issues, far east fetishes and daddy-don't-speak rebellions) - and this one, this crispy yummy muffin defied that, with pure grit, handsomeness, witties and just fucking darling charm and you want to love him, enough to make you feel worthy enough for normalcy and just less enough to make you feel like you can as easily flutter away and never pang after normalcy ever again but it is festivities such as these and the recency of which it ended (it never really ended. I'm telling you now boba, it's ending) and the duration as such where I fall into morose at every bright metallic shimmery blues yellows mattes and reds, songkok-ed up, songket-ed and ready to impose upon you wafts of rank dreams broken, biased preferences re-revved, hurl you shards slivers splinters of white feather-edged wood, stealing glances from resigned daddy sighing silently enough for it to be deafening and it drives you sweating, thrashing, resenting, then finally relenting - fuck yes relent this - "enough! enough! I am a malay girl who finds having a malay boyfriend novel enough to want it every this-time-of-year regardless of normality-anxieties, mediocrity-impieties and I will colour-match and let you hold my handbag and I will like it and it will be enough." and it will be. because from far enough away, when you and I walk together in our grey black or white handsomely tailored bajus, we might even look like one.

what kind of fuckery is this? the combination of having drank your body-weight's worth in F&N drinks, mindlessly being civil and staring into the pulsating humdrum of too many a lap-lips have driven me to such.

also, stop fucking asking me when I'm gonna get married. NEVER DAMMIT.


ok maybe next week.

I wish you had a 'Like' function, in real life, right below you or floating over you, like a reachable, tangible, fluffy halo I can wring my wrists through, fingers into, escape with me, disappear within you. I can easily 'Like' you. At which clicking, would mean you immediately knowing. No assumptions on that presumption, facebook notifications are immediate and efficient and I'm sure you'd know almost instantly if I 'Liked' you and if you didn't well at least you'd receive an e-mail informing you of this news. And I wouldn't need to sit here with worry. Sit here with my poems and notes and letters and blog entries perhaps maybe secretly wishing you had the capability of speech, thought, lingua franca, reason, abstraction to abstract of this and know, now, know, from the beginning of this, know that I have loved you. Months from this, if I grow out of 'Like' of you, I could as easily 'Unlike' you. At least Facebook acknowledges the volatility of human emotions, the reality being, one can never maintain another's attention for as long as other variables like others' attentions warranting attention is present. I appreciate this consideration in design. This is responsible engineering. Real life, on the other hand, is ironically quite unreal. Likeness is expected to be maintained, at a steady, fat plateau, fed by flowers, chocolates, sex, song dedications, wall-to-wall professions, cheesy haikus; except that when likeness wavers more defensive tactics i.e. romancing tactics are re-assessed, developed, put into motion; to compensate the lack of emoting being put into palpable motion. I can not go back to the 'Home' screen, edit my profile page according to incident (life-changing, personality-altering or otherwise) - I would always have to be known and remembered by some as 'that girl' (according to the time-period), even as their memories of 'that girl' does not coincide with my current profile info (I'm going with Facebook only because of recency). So this is 'that girl' saying this. 'that girl' to 'Like' now. 'that girl' reassuring you, that my 'Like'-ing isn't as mutable as all the 'Like'-ing, 'Comment'-ing, 'Share'-ing and 'Unlike'-ing and very much unlike the variables in this likeness. I 'Like' you.

I also sometimes wish I could caption pictures of cats well and make it funny. But I have trouble letting go of all natural grammatical reflexes and faculties if only for the sake of internet laugh-a-bility and even if I could, I'm just really not that funny.