it's really tiring trying to be happy

It's a lesson learnt today, but also an ironic one, because then the outward and the online happiness presented is manufactured. I'm not saying I'm never happy; I'm saying that maybe 70% of the time I appear happy, I'm not.

But I'm happy I have someone who's willing to kiss my face and listen to me whenever I need it. I don't like the idea of doing things just to placate people, but I wouldn't mind trying, as long I have him.

I don't think there can be anyone who can enjoy doing the things I like to do, from wandering in book stores and visiting museums, to going cycling and bouldering, sometimes two differing spectrums of activities on the same day. And I don't think I can enjoy doing these things with anyone else too.

home is wherever I'm with you

ahh home,

let me come home

home is wherever I'm with you

*

It's finals season! I sat through a paper while drowsy on food poisoning meds and battling nausea and headache! I think this has been my most yolo sem it really has been fucking my body up. But I really feel like doing insanity later to get rid of the remaining bloat haha. Oh well!

Should probably start a blog where I put on a happy persona and document my "very interesting" life with ootds and what I'm cooking and what I'm eating and what not. HAHA what a joke. Let's see how free I am during the holidays. 

Whichhhhh is probably not any time soon when am I ever free, between work and planning for camps and rehearsals WOW I don't even know if I have time to catch up with friends. Is this how I want to live my life in the future? Because it really feels like what I'm going to be like in the future. Squeezing everything into my schedule until I can't anymore. Amanda, you're the best at leaving no time wasted on commitments.

My irrational fears are attacking me again. I want it to stop. I can't sleep, I can't do anything right now but think about the same things, the same apocalypse, about being eaten alive, watching people die, images flashing across my eyes, transfixing images onto the current. I hear it too, the imagined sounds of people dying, of screaming, of growling, of teeth parting flesh.

I know they're fucking stupid irrational fears, but I can't. I just can't.

My love is increasingly measured by how much time I am willing to take out for a person. Is college meant to be this way? Where I dish out time credits for the ones I love and miss? 

I spread myself so thin because I want to show the people who matter that I still care about them. But unless they're in school, it feels like not everyone understands. I can feel my presence fading away from my friends' lives, and I am no longer relevant. Sometimes, I can see the expiration dates of my relationships with groups of people. That's why I hardly have cliques, or hang out in them. I can't accommodate everyone's schedule, and neither can everyone, so what's the point? It's easier to just meet up with one person at any time.

That said, I still feel left out, even though I understand why I'm being left out. Time is limited and precious, and it's a good thing, I guess, understanding this two decades into my existence.

memory//I haven't forgotten about you

I dreamt about you last night and you were back in my life. It was so ridiculously real that I bought it; we were talking again and it was wonderful and I felt like nothing has changed. But I woke up and felt like a stupid fool for believing that we had miraculously patched everything up. It can't ever be the same again, even if we started talking to each other. It just can't, because the trajectories of our lives are moving further and further apart, and the gulf between us never narrows. The physical distance between us is so much smaller than some of my dearest friends, but the metaphysical distance is a sea that cannot be crossed.

Sometimes I look outside my window, and, seeing the lit windows at 4 in the morning, I wonder what keeps these people awake. (And I hope the answer is not just work)

let's (not) call the whole thing off (?)

After the 3 hour long phone call we had, I still don't know if staying together is the best decision. It's not that there isn't any love anymore (au contraire), it's just that it's going to be painful for both of us.

I could have made a decision 12 months back to stop us from progressing, but I was selfish and I liked you enough then to prolong what we had. I knew the complexity and stickiness of the situation that was going to be but I am flawed, I am selfish, I was lonely and I was curious. Curious as to how you would look like closer, curious as to how tight your grasp would be, how safe I could possibly feel in your mere presence. I wanted to put my fingers through your hair, feel all that is both familiar and foreign, your lips, your nose, your eyelids, your fingers, your skin. Skin. The day you absent-mindedly reached out and held my hands lightly left an imaginary indentation I couldn't forget on my fingers and knuckles. And I haven't forgotten since.

dissociation

It's been a while.

I haven't updated for a long time because I felt a little lost in my own world. I'm slowly getting out of it, but it's taking some time. Many things have happened over the past 5 weeks or so, and I've had good experiences and bad ones too, but nothing feels like it should warrant any keepsake on my blog. I feel like I'm just going through the motions of life, even as I hit low or high points in the past few weeks.

Today was different though. As I entered my faculty building, a great sense of dissociation struck me. I realised that, in my mind, I had never called this university my school. It doesn't really feel like the "school" I was so used to. Maybe it's the result of living here almost every day in the past two semesters. Maybe it's the fact that I hardly spend any time in school (other than hall). Whatever it is, I felt a sense of loss, because I can no longer identify with any institution. While I hated junior college, I knew that I could say that I was a "hwa chong" student with self conviction. I can still tell people that I'm from NUS, but what does that mean to me as an individual?

Frankly, it means nothing. It feels as if I'm here just to make use of it's resources. I don't have much pride for the university, but I'm also not dissatisfied. I feel a nonchalance for this place, in the most neutral way, simply because I cannot identify what identity the university has. It's a strange feeling, different from the love-hate relationship I had with my previous school.

It's been almost a year. And I haven't really noticed.

s t i l l

Sometimes, I really crave to be alone. And I am happy, momentarily, for the anonymity and my exterior silence. But I realised that it is an ideal that I am trying to persuade myself into believing. At first, I only notice the sounds of my surroundings, the noise in the stillness creeping into my ears. Then, whispers in my head that I don't understand. I can't tell the difference between thought and noise. Gradually, the sounds get louder, louder. Louder, louder. Until I realise I am screaming inside, screaming and crying for no reason, conscious that everything within me is in motion, wanting to burst out of my mind and my body, wanting to grab everything that can hurt this malleable, soft flesh of mine, wanting to hurl myself off a building, run in front of a ten ton bus, anything, anything so I can bleed, crushed into a heap of red, and my soul shall be free from the ringing and the beating and the racing.

But the exterior stillness remains. Slowly, I get up. I take measured steps. And I walk home.

if you don't cry

If you don't cry it isn't love

If you don't cry then you just don't feel it deep enough

anguished languish

Human beings are not perfect.

It has been said in so many possible ways that it is almost clichéd to say it. But I must emphasise. We are not perfect. We are not made to be perfect. If we were made to be perfect, what is the use of religion, philosophy, and all the other humanities made to study human imperfection in interaction, or the sciences that alleviate the burden of our imperfect knowledge? There is no use in beating oneself up about the mistakes we have made, to the point where one belittles himself. The only way is to move on.

*

On another note, this has been one of the worst Valentine's I've ever experienced. Yes, it is the end of the hall production, I've received many flowers, but there's no point. The person I wanted to see the most has gotten into trouble and hence, couldn't meet in the end, the people I care for are in emotional turmoil, and I sit alone tapping away at 4am in the morning in my room. I am helpless, useless as the dying flowers on my table top. Like these flowers, I make my presence known, I try to cheer people up, but really, I'm no help.

I just want to hold all of you close and wish that I could somehow make everything go away.

all that I know is I'm falling, falling, falling, falling

I don't know about my dreams

I don't know about my dreaming anymore

Watching James Blake live at Laneway was so surreal. It felt like I was uplifted somehow, even amongst the sweaty crowds. I haven't felt so calm and sublime for a long time. 

Laneway itself was pretty fun, even though it was a cluster fuck of people. It just feels great to be away from everything and to be sucked into the music, enjoying the ambience even though I didn't know half the artistes playing. It just felt great to be away.

touch

The warmth of another body on a bed seems always welcomed, no matter the warmest of days, no matter that the bed is made for one. The human searches for a connection in another body so different and yet so alike his own. The devil is in the details; the variations in anatomy, the mildness of scent, the intrigue of a foreign object that is dissimilar yet similar to your own. Even the lightest of touch is strange, yet appreciated. Fingertips dancing on small surfaces, fingers grasping and palms enclosing. The fleeting grazing of skin against skin, the tickle of hair on another's cheek. The smallest touches, taken for granted, are the sincerest and are laden with meaning.

These are the ones that create longing.

absolve/resolve

All it took was one meeting back in the room, the room with so many memories of movement, of voices, of self-awareness and control, to remind me why I continue going for auditions. I have been searching for an old feeling in new places, so it makes complete sense for me to feel this surge of energy in the old room where I had the first rehearsals of my life.

It is with old memories that I try to converge new experiences and to ground them to what I know. I miss the wooden floors where I fractured my wrist during a warm up, I miss the way they creak when I walk across them with slow, controlled steps. I search for familiarity in the concrete floors of my hall by taking off my shoes like I used to, but the hardness of the ground is stiff rather than dependable. There are no creaks and I do not feel rooted or certain of what I do. 

But I hold on to my old experiences dearly. I hold them close in the hope that whatever new experiences I have will be rewarding. Going back to my alma mater has made me consider the lack of discipline I've had. I let my emotions run all over the place during rehearsals. I lose my concentration. I have no self control.

No more. I will do the best I can for this play, and invest all my energies into the alumni play next. I can't wait.

Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old

Park that car, drop that phone

sleep on the floor, dream about me.

I remember listening to this back when I was 15 and falling in love with it. I forgot about it recently but now that it is 3 in the morning where I am at, I remember it again and it is still perfect in every way. Maybe more so, in the middle of the night, huddled up in my quilt, the light of the screen and my fairy lights the only brightness in my tiny room.

I'm both afraid of and intrigued by you, so now I'm just confused. I wish you were either out of my life or completely in my life. I am always confused.

to try

I think I ended 2013 on a pretty bad note and started the year wrong somehow. The past week has been strange and difficult, and I'm tensed up and unhappy. But of course, there's still hope because I've got the whole year ahead of me and many things will change. I will change. I should stop letting the small things bother me, and appreciate the people and things I already have. Look at the bigger picture Amanda. It doesn't matter if you can't get along with everyone; there are bigger things to worry about, always.

bitch, don't kill my vibe

I know what you're scared of, the feeling of feeling emotions inferior

dyeing my hair is also a metaphor

So today I dyed my hair and it wasn't meant to be an obvious colour or anything (was going for a dark brown with purplish/auburn tints) but it ended up looking like this most of the time:

It looks black, basically

Under sunlight it's a little more obvious that I dyed my hair, but none of my family members noticed a thing. I'm not upset at the results; I expected it to be like this and I didn't mind it. But this whole thing was like a metaphor for my life (lol).

Every time I try to change something about myself or my situation, nothing really changes. Small, unobservable and subdued changes occur, but not enough for anyone to really notice. This is why I never make huge new year resolutions like save a thousand bucks. It's just not possible with me.

I am so stubborn as a person to be able to change, down to the tips of hairs. What the hell Amanda. You are always so lame as a person. But it doesn't matter (usually) as long as I like who I am. Why do I want people to notice whether I'm the same or not. It doesn't matter. 

Okay, it doesn't matter as long as I don't care about what people think. And I used to care more, but now I care less. People who know me probably know I am really self-conscious; can you imagine what I used to be like, in Hwach with all those people. Ugh.

But yeah. I'm mostly satisfied. Life isn't good, but it's adequate. Like my not so obvious hair colour. I don't like to be in your face anymore. In other words dyeing my hair was pretty pointless like much of my life, but I still feel good about it so yeah I can probably live with it.

on moving my butt around

Before I even want to start a work out, I always ALWAYS take almost an hour trying to psycho myself into doing it. And this is like, 5 or 6 times a week. And in between the work out I always ALWAYS feel like killing myself. Why do I do this?? Why did I even think I can finish this?? WHAT AM I DOING THIS FOR???

And it's true, what the hell am I doing this for? Not many people are going to see the results, people assume I'm a sedentary blob and I feel like shit while doing it (does feels great after though). It's not like I'm doing it for anyone.

Well, I'm doing it for myself. Is that a little narcissistic? Maybe. Actually, more like self-obsessed and insecure. Wow this is becoming a pattern in all my posts: my insecurity. But it's true. I can't stand going back to being overweight. I hated myself all through the last 3 weeks of the semester because I stopped running and exercising because of studies. All the fats jiggling in the wrong places. Maybe it's to make up for the lack of a chest, maybe it's to just look healthier beneath my clothes but it's all for vanity. Yeah, I do want to be fitter (so I can eat more) but I also want a nicer ass and nicer legs. Not to mention look adequate next to the boy at the beach, since he's all well built and dark and handsome (but not tall).

I hate the ache and the breathlessness while moving. Is this what death feels like? It's an exaggeration, but if effort is pain then am I not closer to death? Okay, that's not true. And the pain is to remedy the convergence of my many insecurities. I complain about it but still do it because I want a nice butt. And other areas.

Yeah okay this has been quite dumb, there are more important things to talk about like Syria and the economy but I can be smart elsewhere and it's usually not here.

When I came back from Cambodia, I wanted to post something really scathing about what happened on the trip and talk about how I am unsure about service overseas.

After Christmas I wanted to post some thoughts about religion and commercialism and all that jazz.

On New Year's Eve I thought maybe I should write something, and on New Year's Day maybe I should have written something.

I just can't get bothered about people reading my shit anymore. Nothing really matters to anyone. My thoughts are important to me, but I don't know if I care enough to post them anymore. Next time maybe. This is such a time waster of a site and taking up Internet space.

Really doubting the way I am living now. The new year has come and I am still the same person. Usually bitchy in the inside but I've been voicing it out a little too much and I'm not sure if I care lol wtf Amanda but you're still insecure and shit.

Ugh.