Genesis

"God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light; 
and God saw the light was good, 
and he separated light from darkness. 
He called the light 'day', 
and the darkness 'night'. 
So evening came, and the morning came; 
it was the first day."
Genesis 1.1 


This was what happened before light was separated from darkness. There was a rocking ocean inside a pupa. There was a rosy lunula covered with draining magma. There were 9 months named after the gestation period. Then there arrived a new face. And there was no cord attached. There was a place to rest in. And there was a factory to mold this new face. There were labors who worked through words and not by hands. There was a routine. There was monotony. And there was a long haul. There were brilliantly molded faces that once fled a much bigger pupa. There was the anatomy of earth. And there was a God, or so they said, and He said, "Let there be light," and here I am. A part of me was born, and another part of me, too. 

From a very young age, I've been living with the kind of control that can push me to a higher realm of consciousness and achievement; the kind of control that one can lose easily. The kind of control that if once is lost, it takes almost a lifetime, or so that's how long it felt like, to learn to regain. If humans could live to a hundred years old, I would at least be over 200; a century for getting by in darkness, and another for living in light. 

It's funny how ordinary it is when it rains on someone else, but when it rains on us, it always feels like a hurricane. There was a time when I was poured over, and the sun never came out. I lived in darkness, and darkness I became. How inequitable it was, that everyone could bathe in sunshine and yet I was thrown into this giant whirlpool. It made me so angry, because that's not what I thought I deserved. I stamped on the ground, spit on the grass, shot down the swallows; nobody should reap what I couldn't. I threw tempers at my parents, I bade my sister do the things she was unable to, I gave my friends the cold shoulder. I painted galaxies on my skin and gashed myself ruby bracelets. I drank like there was no yesterday and smoked as if tomorrow didn't exist. And that's how much I hated myself. Him. Her. Them. It. And because I sang and danced and smiled, they thought it had done me no injury, and because all that I wanted was all that I kept pushing away, they thought I enjoyed being on my own; I was never really where I was, I was only inside my head. There were times when all that I wanted to do was to tear a hole in my world and escape. There were times when I couldn't hold back from climbing out of the balcony and draw a close to my endless insatiable tendencies of self-destruction. Sometimes when everything falls apart, it makes you want to fall, too. I was out of control, I was losing it. I was drowning in this whirlpool; it was swallowing me whole, and nobody was there to drag me up because I'd pushed them all away. 

I remembered how I was full of love, and nobody wanted it. So I molded it into bricks and built four thick walls around myself, and so, inside was a place where I lived all alone. I decorated these walls with mirrors and hung lousy thoughts all around. It wasn’t a nice place to spend time in, but I was protected. 

All this time I thought I had it good in this safe house. But things that are built on broken things will eventually crumble. I forgot what it felt like to feel, and I forgot what it felt like to be around others. I thought I was better than them just because I've been in the dark, and I poured seawater in their wounds just to watch them cope with the pain I was in, but it was mainly because I thought they didn't have any wounds. I was so jealous of those who had everything they wanted, of the things they took for granted. And I thought I should also be granted what those people had. But it never occurred to me that they didn't deserve any of those, either. 

It took me a thousand sleepless nights to hold myself together. It took me a dozen painkillers last night to kill the earthquake in my head caused by insomnia. And the side effect made me tremble like a puppy in the winter rain, and my world rocked in consciousness and control. It brought me back to the time when there was no light and no darkness. In the time in between, I closed my eyes and thought about it all. I thought about the beginning and the transformation, and how I finally got here. It wasn't the ground's fault that I'd been mistreated. Neither was the grass', the swallows', my parents', my sister's, my friends'. Ever since I was little, I've always asked myself, "What's the point after all?" Well, maybe this is the point. Maybe life is about wandering off to darkness, and spending a long time and a hell lot of energy to finally see the light, over and over again. I always thought the strong ones were the people who could still stand up in the dark after falling over and over again, who could still survive in it, but now I think the strongest ones are the people who can turn darkness into light, and revel in the sanctity of the dual existence of happiness and sadness in life. And how do we do that, how do we see beyond darkness? Forgive. Forgive yourself. Forgive him, her, them, it, and close your eyes and become the light.

This or That

It didn't occur to me up until today that I'm still so strung out on my previous relationship. Two days ago, I was comforting a friend and I told him that it didn't matter how hard we hit the bottom, because what really counted was whether we could float our way back up. After that he didn't miss a beat and asked, "Are you on your way back up then?" I told him I was. I guess that's what you always tell a miserable person; that there's hope, that the sun will shine a little brighter.

But that question kept me up all night, because I was so very confused. "Are you on your way back up?" Am I?

How do I even know which way is up? You tell me. Every night I go to bed with the thought of all the possibilities of him coming back so that I can have a sound sleep, and every morning I wake up trying to forget the late night thoughts just to hold myself together. And in my dreams he always comes back holding my hand bringing me to places I've never been, giving me shivers like it was in reality. In my dreams he always comes back and takes me back to the café where he used to wait for me after school and tutorial classes. In my dreams he smells like Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter. But then in my dreams he's also the child who hides the things he's broken so that nobody will ever find out about it. In my dreams I try to look for all the pieces of me and accidentally wander off. In my dreams we play like children, but not quite, because I seek-and-hide him like the most precious treasure in the world. In my dreams I end up crying desperately because I don't like what I dig up. In my dreams I dig up the fact that I am losing myself in the game.

And all of a sudden I felt so disgusted by it. Which way is up, really? It felt exactly like when you've finished a really nice meal with all the people you like a lot. And he just felt like a plate of its leftovers. You packed it in a doggy bag and took it home. And at night when you couldn't sleep, you sat in front of the leftovers and didn't know what to do with it. Because you thought it'd be such a waste to flush this delicious food down the toilet, but meanwhile you're too full to enjoy it. So you just sat there and waited. You waited for yourself to feel hungry again, and while you're doing that, you're also hoping the leftovers wouldn't turn too cold, even though you knew it in your heart that by the time when you felt hungry, the food wouldn't be as fresh and tasty as before. And sometimes this remote relationship felt like a cup of cold coffee that nobody wanted to drink or chose to remember because a few extra sugar cubes had been dropped into it, and it has become too sweet to drink. Too sweet that it would make your throat feel a bit too tight. And sometimes it felt like sleeping under the thick covers in Summer with the air-con on. It felt so uncomfortably tepid and you just wanted to push the covers away so the cool air could reach your lukewarm skin. But you're also concerned that a while later, you'd catch a cold from this chill. It sucked for whichever choice but you're also better off in both.

If life was made up with dilemmas, I would be the tightrope walker with the shortest balancing pole. The tightrope walker who spent a millennium just thinking about which foot should go first. The tightrope walker who was too scared to make it to the other side. The idealistic, never-will-be too realistic tightrope walker who got stuck between "clinging nostalgically to the last moment and clutching greedily towards the next".

Three Minutes

Would you believe me if I told you there's a dimension where time is elastic and this "place", is on earth, right now, right here?

I went there when I was toasting my bread this morning. It happened as soon as I pressed down the button and waited for the everlasting three minutes of my toasted bread. It happens to some people while they're on a train ride, or in the shower, or on their deathbeds. I was just thinking about random things like the dinner tonight and tomorrow's plan and maybe some other stuff like old songs that I used to like and people that I used to talk to but not anymore. And all of a sudden it really got to me because for a few seconds everything just felt so distant and nothing felt like the surroundings and you wanted to run straight into your mom's arms but it felt a bit foreign and you suddenly forgot how you used to be 12 and now you're here, and this was the first time you'd ever been this old but it just wasn't supposed to feel like this. And nostalgia suddenly consumed you and you knocked on your chest but nobody's home. All I could think of was how it felt when I lived every day exactly the same way, but when you looked back, everything has changed and it felt painless but for some reasons it's aching inside.

I once read a book called The Catcher in the Rye. The main character, Holden, says that his favorite place to visit is the museum because in there, everything always stayed right where it was. I remember the time when I got to this part of the novel, it also felt painless but it's aching inside. There are times when I tried to roam about the memories, both good and bad, and refused to keep walking because it's unpredictable ahead and I'm the ones that never let go. But the sad fact is that the past is kept behind displaying windows and all we can do is just watch. A lot of people do this too but soon enough, they pick up their things and get going because there's no time to waste. I've wasted mine and now I have to remind myself of the brevity of life and I have to keep walking. It's definitely fine for people to stay put. Fine for old people, I guess. Because for now, we are young and we still have the strength to carry on. The people you miss are walking ahead, too and you may meet them on your way, or you won't. But if you choose to sit in front of the window, you'll soon find yourself all alone. For now, we are young and everything in the museum will always stay the same. I was the girl who sat in front of the displaying windows and secretly wished the good memories would live as long as I would and the bad memories would magically turn into something that wouldn't hurt. And I was the girl who fogged up the window with my breath and drew hundreds of smiley faces to make that wish come true, but it never did, and instead, I just watched them fade. For now, we are young and I tell myself that there are better things and greater challenges ahead and drawing smiley faces can always wait.

Ping! My toast was done and it was the longest three minutes of my life. For now, it is the first time you've ever felt this old, but it's also the last time you'll ever feel this young. I picked up my nice warm breakfast and expected a tremendous breakdown, but it never came. And believe me, breathe in and out and you're going to be fine in about three minutes.