Yearning for a day that I wake up without feeling like my heart is trying to claw its way up my throat and hurl itself out of the craigs of my mouth. For some tenderness and grace in some tangible form, instead of receiving it through static spark and blue light.
I am validated, but my fingers are truly exhausted from a marathon of digital conversations. Is it possible to feel comfortable yet stuck at the same time? I am at the bottom of an abyss of a well, but my body is revelling in some kind of plush luxury, sunk deep into cushions I put there myself.
"Your greatest challenge is learning to sit with your own contradictions—the desire for independence and connection, creation and rest, achievement and acceptance. If you embrace these tensions rather than resist them, you’ll find they become the source of your strength, not your struggle."
"Realising that I could redefine who I was going to be, and not get caught up about trying to remember who I was."
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“We had loved people we really shouldn’t have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.” - Miranda July
I've let fatigue embrace me a lot these days, over the past few months, across the years. It's become a bit of a fatal friend that lingers close enough to fade into my peripherals now and then. It's gotten quite comfortable emptying out my insides, leaving behind sharp pangs in my temples, cycloning all my commitments against the corners of my skull.
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Something about the tropical cold of November in Singapore has laid the groundwork for a bit longing. I couldn't tell you what form I yearned for the most - whether it was just a matter of some warmth in my fingers from cradling a tea mug, or just an opposite-someone with philosophies I could spar with.
But I'm not short of either. I initiate turn-based combat every time I start a new email thread with a client, and the sweet caretakers at work often slide a cup of hot, homemade oolong onto my table while I burn a glare into the pixels of my screen, editing shoddy work.
So it must be something in between? Something tactile, something engaging, something with a little fire.
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"You've got to hold on to me. Like, hug me."
It's been a while since I felt what it was like to be a bullet. To pierce through the air at an incomprehensible speed, icy winds licking your sides to cool your hot internal engine. I think at some point I heard my laugh echo back to me from the walls of the empty office buildings we sped past. It was the most unbridled fun I had in a long time. The streets sparkled.
We took turns asking each other questions I used to be overly precious and cautious about. It's a different game from what I remembered, and I felt a gnawing bit of shame realising that maybe, I was the one that was in denial this entire time.
"I love my name."
And then he said it out loud, and it bounced off the mirrors before filling up the whole room. I was happy to let it take the space, because I know we would often give so little time to a name like his. He said it translated to "The Best", and he paused in anticipation, in a well-rehearsed way that made me think he's endured decades of the same reaction. I let him have my incredulous laugh.
