Adulting (For Real)

You know it's funny to think on how back when I was 18 I felt it was already time to become an adult, to grow up, to be strong, yet after all the years, I'm still the same.

Of course I've grown a lot. But I'm still the same.

Take this for instance, this act of blogging. I don't exactly know why I'm here at the moment. Back then I used to write a lot here. A bit too much, in fact. But these days no one blogs anymore. Everyone's grown old.

But I'm here, seated in front of my bedroom window, looking out at the darkness of the night, listening to Passenger, feeling that same mixture of feelings I've always felt whenever I blogged back then. It's funny, how those years are gone, but I'm still here, still doing the same thing, yet in my life, as a whole, I'm a whole different person, doing a whole different thing.

I've stepped into adulthood, worked my ass off for money, paid my own remaining fees required for graduation, spent my money on things like food, toiletries, and entertainment. I've worked until the skin of the palm of my hands split open. I've woken up to the feeling as if I've gotten into a brawl the night before. And within a month, I've closed a chapter by quitting and opened another chapter by running away into a new place.

It's remarkable, how much change can happen within just a few weeks. Impulsive decisions, isolation, emotional roller-coasters, everything just keeps on cycling and cycling and I think I've got what I wanted: To be too busy to even think about nostalgic moments in my life.

To be too busy to feel frightened about the future.

To be too busy to even think about how unfair things are in my life. 

To be too tired to even remember about broken dreams.

It's becoming real, me settling as a mediocre adult. And while I can't deny that sometimes I stare into nothingness and wished that I at least had a shot to keep chasing my dreams and the circumstances were a lot easier in my life, I actually feel that I'm tired of running and chasing. 

I feel as if I haven't really given myself the chance to live up to a certain expectation I've set for myself in the years I grew up, and that I'm really not making use of my full potential, but in the end what's the use? What's the use of running and chasing and achieving?

And these questions make me sad because I know I'm better than this. But at the same time I'm tired. I'm tired of living and that fact scares me. 

Within less than a month I've tried F&B and retail, and that's just a month after teaching, which coincidentally overlapped with the brief period of getting the feel on how it is to be a published author.

That's like four chances in a year to live four different lives, so I know I shouldn't be complaining. I can sort of say that my 2018 has so far become quite colourful. 

Nothing could ever replace my busriding phase which I'm absofuckinglutely sure is one of the best chapters in my life. But right now I'm quite contented with what I'm doing and where I am and with the people I'm surrounded with. It's hard to go around feeling a bit skeptical on building connections with people, fearing that I'm thinking too highly of the people I'm with, but I'm learning. I'm learning to just be in the moment and trust that they genuinely enjoy my presence as much as I actually enjoy being with them. But there's that annoying little feeling of self-doubt that always screams into me, telling that I don't belong, and I hate it.

I hate it because that voice yells at me everywhere I go. I always get the feeling that I don't belong, that people actually don't like me, that I'm actually the only one feeling happy to be 'part' of them. And with the presence of this fear, I already know that in this new place, I'm actually liking these people a bit too much to the point that I can't act natural around them. I feel the need to please everyone. And that is, again, absofuckinglutely annoying because hell, screw everyone, screw everything, I actually want to be an island and not get attached to anyone or anything anymore.

But this is the essence of me, and lately I begin to think that it's a curse to have this feeling. Because actually it's this nice feeling that also makes me feel I want to just isolate myself and not build connections because in the end everyone will hurt you. Or you know, even more accurately, you hurt yourself and you know no one can help you even when they want to. In the end, it's you who doesn't want to be helped.

I think as I'm getting older I'm getting quite good at understanding myself and that's the scary part. The more I understand myself the more I understand what I really want in life and my wants scare me. 

I'm not worried, of course. It's who I am that scares me. It's the issues within me that I never really dealt with that scares me. You know I don't want to be a shitty adult who releases everything at everyone else, but honestly in these past two months I've learnt some ugly things within me that I know I should be dealing with.

Then again I'm not really sure whether at this age I'm already old or still too young or somewhere in between, or something that people can still label as a 'work in progress.' If that's the case, if I'm still allowed to feel like a work in progress, then again I think I shouldn't worry much about this adulting thing. 

For now, life would revolve around working my ass off for money. I know that sounds pretty boring and meaningless, as if I've lost all ambitions and hope, but that's the only accurate way to describe it. It also sounds like a tragedy, how the most-likely-to-succeed back in high school is now a minimum wage paid worker in the retail line, but again I'm just trying to keep myself alive without troubling others. 

I guess in the end I'm just walking my way towards living my own prophecy in my song 'Canned Coffee,' sipping away that bitterness and living life as how it is. 

I'll probably die as another no-one, but everyone's a no-one anyway. I'll probably just end up as a boring adult working my ass off until the day I die, but everyone's doing that anyway.

Farewell to a Friend

Things like these are easier to type out if we're talking about a dead person. A living thing that has lost its life. A friend. 

But I befriended buses once upon a time, and 22 days after the passing of STC buses, I'm still here feeling like a lousy friend who didn't get to revisit my dying, sickly, friend suffering of a silent terminal illness. 

This year's summer marks the summer where I could sing the lyrics to one of my favourite Thai songs, which simply goes

Standing looking at the sky,

it's not like it used to be

This summer I don't have you like before, like in the old days

And I can't help to not think of Summer 2016 when I first felt the true joy of busriding, when everything slowly turned into a crutch because life went spiralling down after that summer. And bus rides was the thing that saved me. Specifically, Spaceship and Creeks saved me. I remember dark early mornings on Creeks, feeling cold and alone but belonged, always excited to see the driver's comforting, fatherly smile accompanied by his jovial remarks that made me feel I was cared about. I remember going back in the late afternoons on Spaceship, sweat dripping at the back of my neck, and I'd refuse to take my hoodie off until it became too warm for me to act cool anymore. And on Spaceship I always felt welcomed, like the bus was mine, and since every single adult around me kept on losing their shit at that time, the driver became my silent teacher, teaching me the ways of patience and calmness through his actions and expressions.

It's not hard to see why I can't move on. I had high hopes to tell my favourite drivers that I managed to get a novel published, that I'm graduating first class honours and that I'm genuinely thankful for their presence in my life throughout my university years. It may sound odd that I have this inexplicable fondness towards them and their buses, but those were the things and people who were there for me when I thought of jumping off a building. And the sad thing is that they'll never know how much of an impact they have truly left in my life. And worse still, after this news, I'm pretty sure I'll never get to see them ever again in my lifetime. I never really had the chance to say thank you. And not being able to say thank you pains me.

As for the buses, I'm just disappointed that I never knew it would be this fast, this year, this moment when I was away being busy with a routine I couldn't escape and worse still, I actually did have a chance to come back if I knew but I didn't know it was about to happen. Hence, it felt like a lost chance although I had tried to let go since February, preparing myself for the possibility that this could happen when I was away. But the difference is, I was pretty sure I had more chances to go back and sit and hop on another creaky ride. 

It's a really hard time for me but unfortunately there's no one who can talk to my about it and make me feel better because I'm like the only one feeling this way. I can't imagine the next few weeks and months trying to cope with life and realising that one of my crutches is really gone out there. And every act of looking back just hurts me. I'm supposed to feel happy about the good memories but nostalgia leaves an empty hole in my heart right now and I wish I can just forget it all as if everything hadn't carried any meaning at all for me. At this rate I'm also beginning to worry that if I could feel this intensely towards the death of buses and farewell to strangers, then in the future surely a breakup or death of a loved one will wreck me even worse. 

And these feelings, everything, every thought, every reaction, just made me realise that I haven't changed a bit after all. I'm still weak as ever, still missing a lot of things in the past, still hoping for a hope to continue living, still finding that something that can fill in this constant void that refuses to leave me. 

But this summer, surely I am allowed to grieve for a friend I've lost, for a crutch taken away from me while I'm still struggling to walk. I'm not sure for how long I will continue to mourn, but I hope one day I'll find something that will make me whole again, just like how bus rides made me whole again on that summer that has long gone. 

Goodbye Spaceship, goodbye Creeks. 

Thank you for saving my life so many times. 

1

I haven't been doing this in a long time.

My thoughts are scattered, on Instagram, on Facebook, so many places, so many different places but none of them feels so genuine. None of them feels like what I've always written here and on my personal journal.

When I ended my busriding phase I said I'll never be able to write the same way again, and now, four months later, I think I really knew what I was trying to say back then.

Things have been a bit different in my life now. Chapters have ended, familiar faces are gone, days can be so lonely and nights can feel so long. And one thing has been gone for quite some time. My ability to express my emotions in words.

I've somehow stopped journaling and never allowed myself to sit and do nothing but think about what I'm truly feeling at the moment. I don't know why, but I suspect that I'm scared. Reflection involves vulnerability, and being vulnerable is one thing I learnt to leave behind when I wanted to adult up four months ago.

But I miss that feeling. I miss that feeling of knowing who I am and accepting how I feel. And maybe tonight is the right time to get back to it.

My novel has been out for about almost two months now. When my close friends ask me how I feel about it, I really don't know what to say. It's easy to show how excited I am about it on social media but the truth is it's just another random thing that happened in my life. I'm glad that this time I feel that my work is acknowledged, unlike my songwriting project and blog project and my fingerstyle guitar project, but I'm just glad for that reason.

There's some pressure to push myself to never stop but truth be told I really have stopped writing. I tried to get back and write a story last night but I only managed to write about 300 words. I think I don't have any more stories to tell at the moment.

I really don't know where I'm supposed to go from here. It feels like I'm back to my 17-year-old self, just right after SPM, trying to decide on what shit I want to get involved in in the future. While I'm pretty sure I want to teach until the day I die, I don't know whether I'm employable enough and whether I'll have the luck to get into the profession. 

And then there's more dilemma in terms of money and age or maybe it's just because I'm over-complicating things. I really don't want to go into details but I'm at this stage of life where I think I'm done living with my parents and I want to be able to be responsible for my own life but at the same time I want to stay in this suburban part of Kuching. I really can't imagine myself drifting into some other lonely city in this country (or beyond). 

Maybe I've become too comfortable here. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure I've already figured out what kind of life I want to live until I'm old and grey.

At the same time, I'm not worrying much. Maybe because I've gone through so much shit in the past years I find myself in a rather calm position at the moment. I'm being too calm that sometimes I fear all this peace and serenity might end soon with yet another argument, another kick, another thought of jumping off the bridge. 

I miss Spaceship so terribly but I've come to terms with the fact that I can no longer go back. Right now my crutches is just memories and coffee and there's really nothing much to be done. I haven't been out of the house for days and situations make it quite tempting to go back to my old self, but I'm doing my best to move forward.

Do I miss teaching? I do, but the feeling has somehow faded away. It's easier to move on from that phase compared to the busriding phase. I really loved the teaching phase though. I was so happy and I felt so loved and accepted. At home, things were great because there weren't much time for me to feel sad about anything when I returned home at 7pm. Some teachers were very nice, and kids were always making me feel precious. It was a really great brief chapter.

I don't know why I'm telling all this here. I met some old friends but I didn't know how to talk about what I really feel. I've come to believe that I'll never get comfortable of talking to anyone my real emotions and my real struggles. Maybe I'm getting old. 

I have no plans in the near future. I don't want to plan. And even if I have a plan, I don't think I want to tell it here. The truth is that everything's the same despite the changes. People don't just decide to genuinely love you or hate you for things you do or stuff you achieve. Even if they do, that normally isn't a good thing anyway so I shouldn't be bothered.

I think I've come to an ending here. Writing has become so difficult. There's nothing much to say anyway. Maybe that's why I've been gone. There's really nothing much to say here anymore.