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. 

Hello (and Goodbye)

Whew.

Where had I been? It feels strange coming here back again after leaving for quite a long time. My last post was in March, and it wasn't a happy one apparently. 

Somewhere along the line I had probably convinced myself that blogging is such a childish thing to do because I shouldn't give people the privilege of reading about my semi-personal life. And probably I told myself to adult up because truly these days who the heck reads blogs anymore? 

But I'm coming back, because as how it has always been in the last several years, I've seem to keep a ritual of writing a reflective post to close the year and welcome the new year.

I can't really define 2017 in one word. Just how it is about life, there were moments of agony, there were pure moments of excitement and euphoria, then it all went down again, then up, then down, then well, it isn't supposed to be shocking. That's just the way things go.

And just like any other years, January, February, March, April, all those months up until summer seem so blurry, as if those days were in a whole different year altogether. 

But there's something about this year which made it so special—how obvious it was to me that I was indeed going through some remarkable changes, how things that scared me no longer scares me. And what made it better was that I had the conscious effort to overcome this right from the beginning of the year, so it felt as if a new year resolution was accomplished.

That thing was simply the desire to be courageous and confident to speak to people.

Back in a few years ago I would gladly avoid eye contact but these days it seems damn easy to smile at people. I'm not saying that it's completely not scary to do anymore, but I do realise that I fight my fears more than I've ever done. The old me used to almost always run away from responsibilities and make excuses, but this year I've noticed how being forced to take up a responsibility (or being forced to face my fears) had all changed me into this person that I kind of like. 

And bus rides, oh bus rides. Since summer 2016 I've developed this strange liking towards bus rides, which wasn't something I had expected since I never really liked the routine when it all first started. But as the year ended and 2017 began, I made this conscious effort to view bus rides as something that could give me something, just something, like a lesson, like a paid course in university. 

And so I chose to let my guard down a bit, fought away my paranoia and ignored warnings from friends and family to be careful around strangers. I talked to strangers whenever I had the chance. I smiled at passengers who I felt like smiling at. I began to show a little bit of courage to interact with the bus drivers who had been nice to me. 

The results were remarkable. 

In fact, if there's something I want to give credit to, which contributed the most towards my growth this year, I'd name bus rides as the main cause to all these great stuff. Second would be English Club, which definitely wasn't easy to handle and wasn't always fun, but played a huge role at shaping me this year. But I'm not here to talk much about English Club.

So back to bus rides, I'm not even kidding when I said that it became the main thing that changed me. I could never imagine myself initiating a conversation with grown up men (the drivers), or asking them whether they had taken their lunch, or giving them free canned coffee, but I did all that. I had never imagined talking to other passengers, developing a certain bond with them that some of them, whenever they see me, greet me like a friend. Me, this timid kid who used to be scared of ordering KFC at the age of 18. Me, this person who used to be too self-conscious and afraid of making mistakes because my family always told me I was doing it wrong when interacting with people. Bus rides, they liberated me. They allowed me to become my own self, to let me just do it and laugh at my own mistakes or learn from it, without anyone else being tied to my identity and scrutinising each step that I take, ready to comment on my mistakes. And that's why bus rides had sort of become my escape place.

And the best thing about that? 

I am about to become a published author!

This is probably the first time I've ever felt genuinely proud of my effort in many years. It feels weird to allow myself to feel this excitement, but for may years it had been quite a struggle to convince myself that I'm going in the right direction.

Writing has always been part of me. This blog alone was something I started in 2008, and I had been keeping a journal since 2007. Come to think of it, my manuscript wasn't just something that I produced in six months, it was in fact an accumulation of little things I've collected along my journey since high school. 

But I do realise that if things didn't happen the way it is, I wouldn't have been riding buses regularly. And that means I wouldn't have come up with this story and sent it to the publisher for the contest. 

It feels surreal. I never imagined my 2017 would be this way when the year first started. The days hadn't always been pleasant to begin with. Of course life is still full of shit. And that's why when things like this happen, I feel like weeping. I feel like weeping because it's been a very tiring journey and for once when something good like this happens you feel like you've been given a license to stop for a while and give yourself a pat on the back. 

Even right now as I'm writing this, I still have the struggles with me, as always. They never really leave you of course. The good feeling is there, but the bad one resides the same spot too, so it's hard to describe. And as always, entering into a new year is indeed something scary. It's the path of uncertainty which never makes me feel pleasant. Besides, 2018 will bring quite a few changes in my life which had, in the past few years, been rather like a routine. It had always been the same thing happening over and over again, added with just a little variety, because the time period was all in one same chapter. Leaving this year would mean closing an old chapter. I'm about to graduate, my novel will be published, I may not have the chance anymore to board buses regularly, farewells will happen, farewells involving good friends who had been there in the picture since mid 2014. And of course since the bus people had carried a lot of meaning in my journey as a passenger, I'll miss them terribly as well, as much as I'm surely going to miss my friends. I'll miss some of the drivers who had taught me a lot about life like real teachers in school. I'll miss some familiar passengers who had been kind in their words and gestures, reminding me that when shit happens, at least I have complete strangers to remind me that life is worth living after all.

I'll miss a lot of things in this familiar routine I've been living through in 2017, I really will. But all things must come to an end, I understand. And who knows what 2018 will bring? I wasn't quite sure about stepping into 2017 as well. I had never imagined some of the good things that happened this year. And by that I believe 2018 will surprise me in good ways as well. Sure, there are definitely going to be bad days, as you can never escape from that reality of life. But I'm pretty sure I'll continue to grow and learn as much as I've learnt this year.

And well, there's no use being too sappy because tomorrow's just going to be another day of living. I mean well yes tonight a line is drawn to mark a certain milestone or an ending/starting, but come to think of it, that's basically the same thing about birthdays or the beginnings of each season. It will be a nice thing though to read this in a year and laugh at myself, so I'm just going to post this.

Will I be back here? I don't know. It's fun to write and reflect, but these days I have other mediums, so this blog will probably be abandoned again. I'm still writing, I'll never stop. And my wish for 2018 is that I'll never run out of things to write about. I'll stop wishing to start jogging because that will never happen. And I will stop making unrealistic goals of reading 70 books. 

And well, that's basically it. I'm listening to fireworks right now as I'm sitting in my room. I'm smiling alone, I feel a bit hollow, I feel a bit like laughing. It's that strange mixture of emotions that makes new year's eve a rather interesting night. Hopefully next year as I sit and reflect on this table once again, I'll get this same feeling of gratefulness on how much I've learnt and grown. Till then, happy new year 2018. May everyone feel happiness in the little things each day of the year.

Missing

I'm making myself sad again at 2am and I don't know why I'm allowing this to happen.

I'm suddenly missing my childhood, and missing a life that I'll never have, and that's just kind of stupid, really.

I accidentally clicked on an old folder in my laptop, a folder containing scanned photos of my childhood and I'm suddenly feeling sad of all the missed chances in life.

Hours earlier, my sister shared a picture posted by John Mayer about how sure he wanted to become a musician as early as the age of 13.

I'm not saying that I want to become a musician, but sometimes I wonder about the missed chances in life. What if I attended guitar classes the moment I first picked up guitar when I was 12? There's a kid in church who recently picked up a traditional musical instrument and his parents have been really supportive. He's progressing fast, with all the circles of professionals he's surrounded with. It makes me wonder again about privileges in life and how privileges correlate with chances.

Then as I look at my old photos of childhood I just can't stop thinking why the hell I didn't think of following dad's footsteps and enter the Navy when I finished secondary school. I could've applied to UPNM. But why didn't I do so? These days I keep on thinking it's such a waste that I didn't grab the chance when it was right in front of me. It's too late now. In the past few months I've been thinking a lot of joining the Navy. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of seeing dad getting older. It's very stressful to be the youngest in the family. I live with a constant urgency to become someone, something, a person my parents can be proud of, because I fear I don't have much time. 

At this point I don't even know what I want to do for the rest of my life. I'm currently listening to Ed Sheeran's sad new songs from his new album and it makes me feel worse. I know I shouldn't be worrying, but my heart is aching, aching because I've screwed some pretty good opportunities in life and here I am, barking about privileges and how some people seem to have everything prepared for them. 

I'm not saying I regret anything though. It's just that this year I think my fear has grown bigger. Real fears, not petty fears like the fear of failure and all that. Fears related to your loved ones, your parents, specifically. Is this just one of the thoughts that attack you as you get older? Is this normal? Am I overthinking again?