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.

i'm sitting on my couch, crying and trying to get lesson plans, presentations, and worksheets completed at the same time. pathetic, is what i feel. even though i know i'm not. im reading up about this artist tatyna fazlalizadeh, she's such a badass wheatpasting portraits of women with statements against sexual harassment all around cities. i wonder if i'll ever do such badass things. cheryl says i already am one.

i miss my family especially much, it's the first christmas im going to spend away from them. i remember i tried to freshmen year and i couldnt do it. i ended up wasting a ticket and flying home. some days i think chicago is home, walking the streets alone - gallery hopping, checking out parks by myself, going to various schools, feeling like this isn't just college, but some sort of life i have built up for myself. yet somedays, it just isn't home. my body feels out of place, a foreignness plagues the apartment i live in, the street which my feet walk upon, the air my lungs inhale.

some days, i am a child. i just want to be home with mum and dad, the sister and bud.

you think you find home in people, in friends, some days it feels like it, other days it feels like finding home in yourself is your safest bet. then again, when you're crazy like that, half the time you are running away from yourself.

weird creaky elevator

joanne and i met up for our yearly dinner last night. it's the second and probably last yearly dinner in chicago. we meet up more in the states than in singapore even though we are both singaporeans. we met in church, when we were both youth ministry leaders. our first conversation was in a long car ride to the airport to send someone off. we hardly knew each other then. i don't remember why i was supposed to be in her car. but i'm glad.

she had a different energy about her that i had not seen before, a sort of joy and lightness of being. and it was refreshing being around someone whom emitted light and joy, and genuinity. we split an ahi tuna burger, and an umami burger. and also bomb af maple bacon fries. i was so excited for her to try the truffle ketchup cos it's so good. it had been a long day/couple of weeks, and somehow meeting with her was some sort of respite, as if everything stopped for a while. maybe it was the intentionality of presence in some sense. i've been trying to do that more. i feel like in the midst of busyness there's been a need to compartmentalize, and not be thinking about everything and everyone all at once, cos that's just hella overwhelming and it'll break you more than you're already broken. she obviously enjoyed the meal, cos i have the best food recommendations, and we were ready to go when our server was like "would yall like some pie" and i was like hell yes to some key lime from bang bang!!! we were so full but so satisfied.

i was bummed that she would have left by friday when the opening of shelby clare and my show was happening, then i realised i had the keys and could bring her to the space then. i laughed. we took the creaky weird elevator up. it's odd to think about space, and how it transforms with bodies. like the idea of an "opening" is a bunch of people, art, alcohol, talking. but bringing her in to a space that right now was just being set up, and incomplete, and just me and her -- there was some sort of intimacy that would be different from an opening. i told her about our work, and she asked questions, and it was nice to be in that space, with the windows facing the intersection at damen, and feeling like everything was kind of under or below us, but we were just there ya know? 

we headed back to mine after, and hung out the couch listening to the milk carton kids, and bon iver, and talked about faith/christianity/stuff. i feel like i havent had a decent conversation about where i am in my faith/belief in God in a way that didn't feel like people were trying to convince me that being a christian is the way to go in a while. she listened and shared her experience, and it was really nice. i love having people over so much. 

i finished the bfa proposal like 5 minutes before it was due, and was basically half asleep writing the last quarter of it, passed out on the couch at midnight, and the next time my eyes were open was 6.45am. i stayed on the couch for another 2 hours, and was late for class.