hm.

writing has always been a form of catharsis. it's 2.43am. i am sitting on my bed, unable to fall back to sleep. or am i afraid of falling asleep because of the dreams that i have that come so close to reality, that i switch between my dream world and reality when i wake up, questioning what really happened.

tomorrow would mark 6 months being home in singapore. it's been good mostly. i really enjoy spending time with my family, waking up and knowing when they'd be home, coming home to hot meals, knowing that if i needed anything, they are only a call away/a short drive from me. i've learnt a different kind of independence i think - one that involves dependency, maybe it isn't that lonely after all to be in this world - that being independent does not mean total lack of reliance on anyone at all - that people do try to understand what you feel and support you in the way you best know how. and all you gotta do is say thank you.

i really enjoy working with children. they have such an authenticity that is refreshing. their desire to really share with you about this new sticker their mom gave them, or something that happened to them the day before, or their excitement about going to a playground after class. i'm thankful to have found something i love doing, and am excited for january to come, fingers-crossed all will be smooth sailing, or even if it's not i'll have the capacity to adapt and cope well.

alex and i went to a book fair the other day. we reached there just as the rain started pouring outside. it was a tiny room packed with books and people who loved books. we were mostly trapped until the rain stopped being so heavy. we both bought books, and were very excited to read them. there was also a craft fair nearby, so we went to that too. it was really invigorating being surrounded by makers and other creatives. my bag making has kinda slowed down - both due to work, and also maybe laziness, and also exhaustion. i want to have the passion to make again. i think it's just something i have to keep being persistent about in spite of everything else happening.

i was sick for the past two days. i hate being sick. it just confines you to the bed, and your body is just like limp and smells gross and cant do anything. health is always taken for granted. thank you for coming and accompanying me as i drifted in and out of sleep. you make me feel safe and i am thankful.

It has been past the three month mark that i've been home. chicago now seems really far away, and college like a distant memory. Though, some days, i remember moments like it was yesterday. it feels all a little bit more like a dream that i woke up from. i'm here to stay, i suppose. the sister is leaving to go back to edinburgh for her second year. home's going to be different without her. it's odd to be on this side now, being "left", instead of leaving. leaving was initially rough, but as the years went by, it was leaving, but also returning to another version of familiar.

chicago pals

chicago pals came to hangout today. it was very familiar and comforting, yet strange. the last time the five of us were in the same space together was three years ago. four years have flown by and here we are, here i am. i exclaimed, "senior year!?" to cat and liz, with the same amount of apprehension, excitement, exhaustion, and anticipation as i felt, the last few days of summer a year ago. i appreciate the way relationships form, at times due to similar interests, other times, opposing opinions, and this group of friends - friends of circumstance, yet i would choose them and seek them out all the same, should this circumstance had not happened. 

jokes and sass were thrown across the table, as we each carved our linoleum plates. cat worked intuitively and quickly as she does, her work felt playful and enjoyable. there is always a certain wit and intellect in her studio practice. i felt today, it was simply her, making. and i truly enjoyed watching her process. liz came with an almost finished tiny plate, of a lamp in a flowerpot. conceptual as always, subverting functionality of household items. she printed not with relief inks, but with stamp pads. her prints were whimsical, and a little sinister, yet friendly in its approach. it's on my wall now, the colors seem a little too happy to be true, like something is about to happen. tricia was excited about her cat bebe finally being out of quarantine and back home with her! i'm really glad she's back. she worked out on a sheet of scrap paper how to write her words backwards, and started carving letters and what looked like her room. ryan focused on the precision of his "architectural print", making sure to get the lines as straight as he could. he asked liz about her trip to korea, what cat had been up to, how being back felt like to tricia. it was a really lovely afternoon together. 

ryan and i were the only ones standing (just kidding, the rest had to leave for various reasons) at 5ish when he finished carving his block. he asked what the next step was. i demonstrated rolling out the ink, and he took the breyer from me to roll up the block. i saw his eyes light up as he inked it up. "how has no one showed me linocut before?!". i watched as he lifted the paper, and saw his first print. the gleam in his eyes held the excitement of artmaking that i haven't seen in anyone in a while. it caught me offguard to be honest, but in a very pleasant way. i feel like art school/being in art environments/struggling to "be artists" can sometimes be exhausting, yet these moments are so rewarding, and reminds me why i make. 

my sister and i also made a bunch of potato prints, of pineapples, and leaves. i remember carrying our heavy art portfolios chockfull of materials to art class every saturday when we were kids a good 16-17 years ago. :)

we left our feelings somewhere along the drive home

i remember we had a fight in Milwaukee. we were heading to a taco place, and I think I started crying in the car. I don’t think there was anything major we were fighting about, I was starting to fear parting with you and began picking fights. We talked it out, kindof. We reached the taco place, and we both got out of the car. I wiped the tears off my face. You reached out your hand and I took it. i always appreciated the way we would talk things through. 

On the way back to Chicago, we stopped at a gas station. I remember crying, and you held me. We started driving back, and I saw you crying too. I don’t think we talked the rest of the drive back. One of us probably made a joke and we left our feelings somewhere along the drive home. 

on loss.

i feel good right now. i can't really speak for other moments of today, but right now i feel okay, and it feels great.

婆婆's passing is slowly but surely sinking in. i think parts of me are still in disbelief. But i think about her laughing, or copying my cousins and me make cute or cheeky poses in photographs, and realise those are memories. i would not see those moments in person again. at least not in this lifetime.

loss hits you in various ways - it can be nuanced, or at times a huge wave that crashes out of nowhere. i think i've had to experience loss in different ways over the course of the past year. first, was the loss of my paternal grandmother. it was pretty unexpected. i remember being in disbelief and hoping it was not true. however, as soon as i heard my dad over the phone, i broke down. shock, sadness, and horror poured down my cheeks in tears. i remember at the funeral, someone was trying to tell me how i should or shouldnt be while processing my grief. it stirred up so much anger in me. i don't think one should be told how they should grieve. i think we each grieve differently in our own ways.

i remember why i started seeing my therapist early last year. i think a lot of it was processing grief of leaving the states. i didnt/could not recognize/accept that one could grieve a place or a life that one has built, the way one grieves a person. it felt like grieving for sure. the next few months, i allowed myself to process grief - i think i gave myself time then - which i don't think i am giving myself now.

after that i think was the grieving of everything else associated with chicago - mostly people: my roommates, my good friends, people i thought i'd never be close to but end up having many hangouts and lunches at parks. each meeting, i counted if it would be "the last time" i'd see friends. some perhaps will be - i don't really know. who knows these things and what life brings. some people i didn't get a chance to meet up with and goodbyes were exchanged over texts.

then, i experienced my first breakup, with my ex-boyfriend whom i'd fallen pretty hard for. there's this video of the two of us i keep watching. we are sitting on the couch at his place, and his face is right up close to the camera. he blows a bubble with his spit. i laugh. and he turns and smiles at me. you can tell we were happy together. it's been difficult processing this breakup perhaps because it is my first, perhaps i romanticise it because i know it's something i'll never have/will never be the same. i keep thinking one day he'd be posted to singapore and fall in love with the beauty of this land (honestly who wouldnt be. just close an eye to the heat :P it is pretty hot though.) and move. but the likelihood of that is really none. i've been reminded though, how singapore is really home, and i don't want to live anywhere else honestly. it's weird - feeling so sure about that.

the latest loss was the loss of my maternal grandmother. i didn't feel anything initially. i wondered if it was because i wasn't really close to her. that felt like a possible reason. during the funeral, grieve hit me so hard. i wonder if i was so sick of dealing with loss that it was a coping mechanism to reject any feelings like it. as i cut her clothes up into patches for a quilt for my grandpa, i recall her love for me: the moments we have shared, how she's known me since i was born, and loved me until the day she died.

loss is an emptiness within your soul that kinda just lingers. perhaps some losses heal over time. i think some do not. you kinda just learn how to manage the various losses in the ways you know how. even so, sometimes they hit you like a brick. loss isn't very considerate at times.

but there's also gain. i don't think you gain because of loss (i mean i guess maybe sometimes), but i think you constantly gain and lose throughout your life. and there's no point being calculative if you've gained or lost more, thus deducing if you should be happy or grateful or not. it is perhaps simply taking what comes your way genuinely - it doesnt always look graceful or pretty - i think you need to be true to yourself and those around you.

(imagine photo of roommates here because we got no good ones)

passion pit came on and it made me think of you. i've been thinking of you less - which is good, but occasionally i'd see something that reminds me of you. (occasionally is an understatement.)

i'm missing the states a lot today - not so much the place itself, but the routine i had established for myself. there are feelings we associate with places that are just different from feelings we have doing the same activity in a different place. i was on the train going home today, and it made me think of commuting on the cta home in chicago. most of the time home from a long day of work or school. there's a certain calmness about looking out the window and watching the city of chicago pass me by. the announcements on the train, the occasional extremely chirpy conductor on the red line at 6am, the feeling of going to a place that i, and a couple roommates, had established as home. i stood in the mrt, packed like sardines amongst other Singaporeans as the automated voice warned that the doors were closing. unlike chicago, when it is announced that the doors are closing, they really do start closing. 

i think about having to force myself to get my butt off the couch cos i have dishes to do, or laundry, or food to cook, or needing to get lessons prepped for the next day. sometimes i don't (many times actually), and fall asleep in work clothes till my 5am alarm rings, and i jerk out of bed. if ryan is around, he'd ask if i want to go to my bed. most of the time, i'd half open my eyes, mumble no, and turn a little in the couch. he'd turn the lights off, put a blanket over me, before heading back to his room.

part of me is glad though - that i don't have to get on a 24-hour flight for a long time to come, nor adjust to the cold winters, nor have my heart be beating so quickly and my feet brisk walking as i walk through a dark alley, that i no longer have the painful, almost tangible ache of missing my family. 

musings upon my return

The familiarities and peculiarities of singapore intrigue me. something i've noticed is the way hearing the singaporean accent still perks my ears up a little, though now it's everywhere. in chicago, it was pretty rare to come across singaporeans that i'd most of the time be listening out hard for that distinct accent.

my body remembers better than my mind which stop to get off at for which train or bus, which corner to turn to get to wherever i want to go. the trains are almost sparkling clean compared to chicago. there are many more elderly people here.

is it weird to feel foreign in the place where you're from? i feel like in the states it was so much of attempting to hide my foreignness - "faking" an accent, dressing differently, and now foreignness is felt so acutely within, instead of outwardly.

i feel myself clutching onto my purse, though there's almost no need to do that here. the wariness of crime in the states has ingrained such a fear. i feel alone walking the streets, maybe because home is always associated with hanging out with people, but i have yet to reconnect with many people yet. my room is still my refuge, as it was in chicago too. and my phone is too much a source of comfort - making distant friends seem so much closer.

i want to be present more, ya know. i feel like everyone kindof wants to but are afraid to. we hide behind our devices. there are the occasional ones that don't. or are genuinely not interested in interacting. i remember a friend telling me a story of her dad helping out at some tree planting event. there was free coffee and a bunch of tables to socialize at. he stood by the coffee intentionally because he just wanted to plant the trees and take off. but people kept approaching him thinking he was lonely or left out. he got really annoyed. i found that so hilarious. part of me wants to be that kind of satisfied with being alone.

dad helped me move the two single beds and bed frames out of my room (technically just one, the other frame we made into a shelf hee), and the queen sized one down from the attic. it took sooo much work but we got it done. i watched this video of a teenager on youtube one of those famous ones that are famous at wayyy too young redecorate her room with her dad, and i just felt like a child again. which is nice, but also weird.

"balanced lifestyle"

sitting down and getting stuff organized is so hard, but so important.

like having a balanced lifestyle.

like that's thrown around a lot, but after just sleeping the whole winter break away, and finally having paid off my sleep debt a little, and having enough energy to cook food and having my brain drive me so crazy that i willingly decided to run 5 miles/8km - like i feel more decent in my brain.

art ed has been so difficult. there's no but. it's been difficult. the friends are amazing and lovely. i've learnt a lot. i'm excited to teach. it's hard to remember that behind wanting to teach a good lesson is loving art and loving people and kind of wanting those to exist together. it's so easy to get caught up in how 'quality' of a teacher i am being. but focusing on that, takes away from the actual task itself/desire. why are things so complicated.

i guess it's not, it's just talking about what i love and sharing it with others.

hm.

we'll see.

having a roommate that provides his presence while i stress about all the crap i'm stressed about has been very helpful. i bribe him with vitamin water and chips and other food.