A New Beginning

Dear Online Blog,

It has been over a year now, and it scares me to think how fast time flies by. It feels like it was only yesterday that I was packing my bag for the first day of school in Victoria Junior College (yea, that happened), but here I am, just completing my Promotional Exams for the year.

I've returned because I hope to return for good. Just recently I reflected on a lot; about how I would like to utilise my time, and how I would like to define my life at this present moment; where it can be defined at all. And I thought a lot about how I used to journal almost every day, even within the year that I had not been on here. I also remembered when I used to blog, just like this, about every single thing that happened in my life– the bright and the dark, though mostly the bright, with pictures to accompany every post. As I scrolled through over a hundred posts on this platform the other night, I was kind of struck by how much I have grown as a person, and how lucky I am that I had inadvertently immortalised the process of my growing into who I am today.

It is wonderful that I had written a lot in my physical, brown-paged (i love) diaries, but it has become apparent that having a diary on me and finding the time to sit down and write has become close to impossible. It is not a matter of pessimism or priority, but more of reality. Please refer to the hashtag #JClife.

Anyways, although the idea of typing things out and 'journalling' on a moving bus or train isn't particularly favourable to me, I have come to accept that you do whatchu gotta do and if it saves time and gets me to write more, I'm up for it. The privacy on this page is also far different from having a personal diary, but I guess the things I do post I do it to share too.

Reading my previous entries I realised that I took blogging to be an intentional and conscious broadcasting of my life and my views. I think when I was most active on this page, I had the dreams of becoming a social media influencer and a famous blogger (those were the days) haha. I also find that when I wrote about more 'inspirational' , 'meant-to-encourage-and-uplift' kind of posts, I always ended up with a sound conclusion. I would talk about the struggles and the hardships but I always managed to find a way to say "but hey, you've just got to... and it will all turn out okay." A part of that hope and optimism definitely still resides in me, but of course as I've grown I've realised that many things are far easier said than done, and that not everything has a conclusion. Not everything has that one-dimension, and one-dimensional methods are more often than not, not solutions at all.

So here's to cliff-hangers and ambivalence; wonder, joy and thankfulness; dejection, anger and confusion. Be back soon. xx

Love,
CLL

You Who Moved On.

It's all only play pretend.

Like the masking of the stars

By cloud and fog,

The sanding down of chopsticks,

It does not rid it

Of all the splinters,

It only reassures,

Makes her feel better.

And so you might think,

She is apathetic.

That she lets go

Like drifting off into sleep,

That you,

You who walked away,

Or you,

You who moved on,

Was bade goodbye

Like a turning page.

But she,

She holds on

Like to all her favourite poems,

Every line and syllable.

You who would never think

You would be remembered. 

You,

You who were only there

For one peak of the generation,

One school year,

One celebration.

You,

You who has forgotten

About her.

But—

She sees you,

In rain and world maps

And all her favourite things.

She sees you,

In the scribbles

On her worksheets

Signed with your handwriting.

She understands.

This,

Is how life unfolds.

People come and go.

So it is okay

That you have left,

You have other places

You need to explore,

Other people

You need to touch

In the way you've done for her.

But see her,

In the scribbles

On your paper

Signed with her handwriting.

See her,

In aged paper

And world maps

And rain.

See her,

And do not turn away

As if you have never met.

Because trust me,

That's the worst thing

You can do

To a girl who can never let

Go.

She,

She who always tends to speak

In third person.

 

 

I know,
When your heart sinks and stays there,
It blocks your air flow.
You survive with the lucky ones
That seep through the crevices.

10/8/16

Thoughts of a War Child

If I could write to anyone outside this cavern of hopelessness, oh how much I’d tell him.

I would tell him about the gravel beneath my feet, crunching under my weight. The long, never-ending road ahead. The horizon only clouded by dust and sand. My shoulders burnt red as the sun beat down on me, on us, relentlessly. Mercilessly. The heat concentrated on my skull that only tries to create an umbrella of shadow for the body below. My lips that peel off each other like Velcro-strips, the walls of my throat that scratch against each other like dragging high-heels on uneven pavement.

My mama always told me, “Life is unfair.” Our lives were decent, we lived on alright. We had at least 2 meals a day and my neighbour taught me Mathematics and Science. I didn’t quite understand my mother, until there came a day. Two weeks before I was to turn 8. When buildings shook, and my drawings fell from the wall. When cement became dartboards for lead bullets. When my neighbour was never to be seen again.

Life is unfair. We see it everyday. Able-bodied, stronger men who entitle their kill for only theirs to devour, snatching flattened plastic bottles or “sandals” made of rubber. While our white-haired, wrinkled, hunched-over fathers bleed through their soles, treading on glass.

We see it though we would rather not. Watching your five year-old sister snatched away by the cursed waves, as hands reached out to grab you from the sinking orange deathboat. Her screams I still hear in my sleep, her screams I want to force into a glass jar and leave in the city where we once lived, where ruin is kept.

We see it now. The sand path that disappears into mirages, the destination we seek but seems to be another myth. It mocks our sanity, and it mocks our faith. The cruel, stone-cold Sun that whips us with glowing red rays. It dares torture us from worlds away. Revenge cannot be taken; even if we reached it we could not touch it.

I would ask him about what it is like where he is. I would ask whether the youthful gave to their elders, whether meat was shared. I would ask whether mothers held their babies every night as if so close to death. I would ask if they see flowers more often than we, whether they ever stopped to peer and caress them amidst the chaos and debris. Whether Life is still unfair.

Thoughts of a War Child // CLL 

When You Are.

When you are so happy,
Sounds of laughter cease to be heard.
When you are so in love,
Weaknesses can no longer be seen.
When you are so cold,
You can no longer feel your feet.
When you become so tired,
Your body can no longer feel fatigue.
When you are in so much pain,
It all becomes numb.
When you cry so much,
Your reservoirs have run dry.

Heart, Settle.

Today,

I managed to describe how my heart feels when it is nervous.

It becomes encapsulated in a bubble,

A vacuum,

Sound-proof.

It feels like it is submerged in water,

Like how you let go of a rock

Slowly,

At the surface,

But it drops to the bottom faster than you'd like it to.

As it reaches the depths,

Feeling subsides,

Like a paintbrush going up your arm,

Like eyes tracing your face,

Chin to forehead.

That happens for a second,

Till it is numb for yet another.

But then you feel a sliver of silver,

Skin on cold metal,

It almost makes your bubble quiver.

Then it settles,

The moment of fear and anxiety washes over you,

You force yourself to think about something else.

These episodes will come again and again,

But they will never feel old.

1/7/16 

I find myself believing in things that don't want to come true.

22-6-16