Drawn out by strings

Hi it’s been awhile.

After leaving my last job, every day I have been living in the clouds – afraid of the day the lightness I feel will dissipate and I will descent into reality.

I have been working at my own pace. Company is home and we entertain ourselves in this lockdown with cooking, eating and planning our next mundane activity.

The days go by not without each’ thought and emotion. I feel guilty and greedy. I feel so happy to own a block of time removed from everyone and everything else. Sometimes the sadness creeps in and the anxiousness threatens when projects loom (before I get the chance to break them down to achievable scales).

I’ve not felt like writing nor at peace like I do now.

Drawn out by the classics, the emotions I feel seems comprehendible and melodic to my soul. My own thoughts played back to me.

I miss the world and all its hubbub. But at least I’m far away enough to enjoy my peace of this world where I am.

28 and not needing reality like it needs me.

lei

Just what they were.

You know how certain songs can stir your emotions all up.

Even when you weren’t feeling emo, you are now.

Even if you weren’t thinking of that person, you are now.

I think that’s kinda like how you are to me.

There are some songs that will remind me of a good time in the past where images of my family laughing comes to mind, or a bad moment from when I ran away from a boy I thought was what I thought he was,

You’re kind of like a great tune. Great to drive to, head nod to, the track circles around and its a good vibe. And then the song ends.

I’ll only remember the feelings when it plays again.

Well you have 2 songs.

I looked for someone like you

I used to talk to God all the time.

As a child, I used to pray for my parents, probably as my first prayers ever, and cried to God.

As a teenager, I would lay on the bed and talk out all I had in my head, out loud. Not too loud, just loud enough.

When I went to university, I would stretch my legs across my desk and stare at the mornings while I wrote down my thoughts to Him. Or lay sleepless in the night, pondering, sometimes praying.

I used to play the guitar in my room at home, and strum the same chord progressions because it would soothe my heart.

I remember in my final year, I told God my desire for a boyfriend. With all the specifics.

On my drives to work, I would talk to God. I remember my first day driving to work in Georgetown, so nervous I got lost.

 

Over the years, I laughed and cried and talked as though He were right beside me.

 

The conversations have lessened alot. Though I still feel Him.

 

I’ve missed talking to you, now I realise no one understands me the way I need them to, as much as you do.

 

Where’s what’s Important?

We went to breakfast, I had my coffee and nasilemak.
Upon settling down at my desk this morning, the usual round on my phone (replying messages, the checking what I missed on social media)  my usual outcome, I came to a point, lately more pressed on time, that there is nothing important there for me.

Sadly I don’t receive updates from my friends and families, sharing their lives on the internet–when I can’t reach them. Though the main focus of Instagram has been to showcase beautiful pictures of our lives, it has just come down to sharing beautiful/attractive pictures devoid of meaning or in efforts to gain something.

So much beauty has marginalised and stifled actual good content: people’s actual sharing of their lives. I’ve stopped myself, of want to sound cooler, detached, in stead of my usual feeling and (over)-thinking self. It’s true that there is life outside of social media, where people are actually living.

(A thought one day)

Warmth of pink and spice

Our home used to have pink walls.

My mother would be cooking something in the kitchen behind the big pink wall that divided the hall and the kitchen. Usually an oily smell of chili and garlic and maybe some onions, sometimes curry which I did no prefer.

Our home had rattan chairs. A three-seater, a two-seater and one on its own. I would always opt for the two-seater, so I could nestle by someone. It was best when it was my mum or my sister. Or cramp myself into it all on my own. I did that till before we got rid of it. I was about over one and a half times its length. On it there was a rattan joint kicked out of place and still kicked out of place even after being put back – to my mother’s irritation.

The dining table is made out of wood too, we still have it now. Some of my most memorable meals there growing up were the porridge and fried fish or bread-crumbed (fake) fish fillet or fish figo sandwiched in a fold of white Gardenia bread with a mound of cold sweet coleslaw – just carrot and cabbage and mayonaise.

The place I remember most as a child was the nook under the staircase along the long cupboard that housed the HiFi set. One cupboard on the most right held all our toys. Batman, his mobile, Barbie with her hair all cut off and her accompaniments. I did not like the Kelly baby doll. It was beside where the little table sat, the one where I guess would be the reception of guests if we ever had any. It was also where we would put up the Christmas tree, on a handful of occasions if my little sister hadn’t gotten an eye-allergy or if I was around for Christmas or if my mum had the mood for “all the mess” from the few years we did get passed down a tree from our relatives. It was also the table that had a florally faded tablecloth that reached to the floor, which I often used as my invisible cloak as I hid under there till it got hot.

My favourite CD from the rack beside the HiFi was of Richard Clayderman’s. He played the piano and my dad often put him on while he went about the house.

The lazy chair that sat at the prime spot facing the TV was where my mother used to sit when we had reading sessions. She would read Peter and Jane, which I would have to follow suit and be absolutely terrified. Somehow I wouldn’t be able to do it and got scolded for it. Even worse, when my dad took over with a cane at his disposal.

That cane, and many others; threw behind the cupboard, split in half from its use and reused by me as “cockroach antennas”, was used to chase us (most of the time, myself) around the house with. I got caned alot on the stairs, I got caned alot, generally.

I remember when I was very young, my mum left somewhere without me. She probably went to the market, but I was so angry she left me. My dad was at home but it didn’t compare, it didn’t quite compare at all. I shook the gate, and cried angrily. Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you tell me you were going out?

I cried on my favourite sofa too. Hid my head under the pillow one time a thought was triggered that my parents might die one day and might not end up both in the same place – and I might not see them in heaven. I might not see my family together again in heaven. (Ofcourse hell was not an option.)

We always fought. Parents. Siblings. But we always ended up at the tv together. Maybe silently, maybe laughing after awhile. Still, always watching something together. That’s what I’ve grown to like, doing things together.

I couldn’t tell what it was about my little sister suddenly leaving to start her Foundations in Sibu, what it did to me. All these time, we slowly have moved apart because of time and growing up. But now the littlest is gone. It never occurred to us, atleast to me, that it would happen so soon.

I wish we could go back to all those days together, and relive them for a moment longer.

 

I don’t wish to get rid of those pink walls anymore.

 

lei