Venice: Palette in the sky at dusk; counting all the shades as darkness fell across the sea, and my heart went with the sun.
31st of December
Standing in the fading shadows of the old year
as the light of the new one edges in
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Sometimes the world is cruel, and it throws whammy after whammy after whammy at you, and when things start to finally finally finally look brighter and it looks like life is finally finally finally emerging from the gloom, it unfeelingly rips everything away from you and leaves you in an even worse place. And it really really hurts, because of all the what-could-have-beens and that broken promise of that brighter future we’d hoped so much for. Get up, breath(e). Move on.
College interviews: Building card towers, molding the world’s worst imitation of a tooth, stumbling over words, trying to not feel too much like a fraud when faux-analyzing case studies, having a new dream and seeing it ripped right back out within the hour, destroying wires, rushing from one end of the campus to the other and back again, discussing gender inequality, chipping parts of the wax block that shouldn’t be chipped, and ‘you know you’re getting interviewed by the Dean, right?’ (dentistry - love that guy). And waiting, and wondering. How do you ever know which path is the right one to take?
27/10/16: This write-up makes my heart hurt. There is nothing worse than that cold horror when you open up the records to trace lab results cuz you can't prance into certain wards to pay social calls, and realise there are no results to trace and get confused and then spot that innocuous-looking red tab at the upper left corner. Not even finding out at 8.45pm that you wrote 3300 words and the doc wants it in 800 the next day. Or breaking the news that very first day because your registrar doesn't speak Mandarin. Or wishing him happy birthday in hospital when he was supposed to be overseas by then. Looking at the same words over and over again as I try to cut down words, at all the step-down care plans I wrote (stupidstupidstupid), and remembering that very first day when he clasped my hands in his and joked that 'uncle scared leh give me some of your strength la', and wishing I could tell him that no, I'm really not very brave or strong at all.
Another person chooses another path: Is it strange that I feel so upset to see people leave? People I never truly knew and never truly spoke a word to? For opportunities lost, maybe. For that fleeting brush in time. For the ifs. If I’d worked harder and gotten better grades from the start. If I applied EA. If they’d stayed a day more. If. And sometimes I wonder - they’re all brilliant, bright individuals that are set for life - who are going to places others can only dream of, and becoming people that the world can only envy. And where will I be in ten years? (Probably in a place I never expected to be, because isn't life funny like that?)
29/10/17: Wore my long pyjama pants today cuz it was a cold day and will be a cold night. Realized that the last time I wore it was in Madrid, before the insane heat wave set in - it still smells like that huge bottle of detergent I plucked off the shelf oh god; I've never regretted leaving it behind as much as now. Things get better over time, I know - those days in Pembroke, all those years ago, are but a wistful memory now. But is that not a loss in itself; is this what it means to travel? To always leave a part of yourself behind, and be sliced and shattered by the tide of memories when a whiff reminds you of those quicksilver days?
Like flames in the sky.
History: How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?
Note to self:
For the moments where the haze muffles the sun
and the world fades
to gray
and it seems so much
simpler to just
give
up.
