safe shores

有没有那么一种永远 永远不改变
拥抱过的美丽 都再也不破碎

I really resonate with Mayday's 转眼，知足，如烟 etc, because they talk about the desire to grasp at what will pass. How do you own a rainbow? How do you embrace a summer's wind? If I fall in love with your smile, how do I keep it, own it? 转眼 goes, I don't need to live forever, I just want not to forget my memories. I'm not afraid of death, only of forgetting. Our memories are where we live.

Somewhere inside me, I, probably like many other Singaporeans, fear that what I have will be lost. Maybe it has something to do with growing up with a sibling and having to share. Maybe it has to do with my snacks disappearing if I don't eat them quickly enough. Or my stuff never coming back to me if I lend them.

Hmm or maybe not. Maybe, rather, my fear makes me extra jittery when that those things happen. When people take things that are mine, even if they're replaceable, I tend to get a little uncomfortable or annoyed. I'm very protective over what is mine. I don't expect others to share and I tend to keep my stuff to myself too.

Maybe it's a money issue. I'm not as thrifty as your average auntie but I do think I spend rather frugally when I'm not with other people. I usually get grumpy when I end up spending more than I need.

Either way, I've come to realise that I have what Lance would call an unhealthy sense of ownership. He once said, "when a child has a healthy sense of ownership over something, he or she will be more willing to share something when given the choice."

That struck me a lot. When one always gives readily, they probably do so in the reassurance that they'll always have enough for themselves. If one refuses to give, it might be because they think that if they give you, they won't have it anymore. I'm comfortable with giving when I know it doesn't require me to compromise, but when a treat costs more than I expect or someone takes even just something small that I like, I can get pretty grumpy. This tells me that there's something wrong with the way I think about what I have.

I am terrified of forgetting. I have terrible memory, which is why I document everything. If I had a particularly good or bad day, or an important thought, I have to journal every bit of it. And that's great, because this year I got to look back at my 2013 journal and things that I would've forgotten came back to me vividly. I could suddenly remember, for instance, the day he cried and grabbed my hand and apologised, and then she opened the door, and I awkwardly left and ran down three flights of stairs to my room, leaving my slippers and phone there. Later on I wanted to know if they were done so I ran back up into the adjacent room, opened the door because j wasn't in, pushed open the window and stuck my head out. The top of a head, and a shoulder. So I ran back to my room. Later on I realised I wasn't sure if I had turned off the light or closed the window, so I ran back up to the adjacent room, but out of instinct opened his room's door instead. Two heads turned to stare at me, tear-filled. Oops. I left, still leaving my phone and slippers behind. Later she called me down to her room, and my slippers and phone were with her, and her cardigan was off. Too much mucus, she had said. I was the second person who'd ever seen her arms.

Anyway, all that I would've forgotten if I hadn't documented it all in such detail. Every single thing I fought to capture, because time turns my memories to dust. This June in London, Kevin and I had a good conversation after visiting the Sky Garden. About morality and what made that man in the glass box / a drug cartel leader / Matilda's father so evil. An hour later, we concluded that Kevin's base standard, the ultimate consideration of life, was morality. Morality was important because people needed to learn how to live with one another, and so everything in life revolves around how to live life morally. Religion was constructed because people were too lazy to think up their own moral system. My base standard was that God was God. Everything revolved around that, mattered because of that -- morality mattered because God was God, self-worth and self-love and dignity mattered because God was God -- in other words, how we treat ourselves and one another (and God) mattered because of that base standard. I was going to document that conversation down in as much detail as I could remember afterward, but I never got around to it, and now I've forgotten most of the details.

Anywayyyy. Unhealthy sense of ownership. Deep down, there's always this sense of instability. That the things I have and my memories might suddenly disappear–not all at once, and not in an overwhelming way for my material possessions, but just every time it happens I get a bit triggered. Say I bought an expensive snack for a party and it didn't get eaten, so I brought it home. It's usually something I wouldn't treat myself to, so I leave it in the larder for a particularly good day. Next thing I know, it's gone because someone ate it. It's a really small matter; it's not like I can't buy another one, but it makes me feel like there's a hole in my wallet and money's just falling through when I'm not looking. Recently I had finally reached my goal of saving a certain amount of money, and was really happy about it. Comfortable. Not worried anymore. And then things happened and I had to lend a few thousand to a friend to save her from a desperate situation. Money also went here and there–charity, my uni loan–and then soon I was left with a fifth of what I had amassed. I was really pained. I want to save up what I can because in the future I *might* have/adopt children, and I want them to not have to worry about their university fees or learning journeys. My parents always provided for me, and we were never in lack when it came to the essentials; we always had enough, although we were also conscious not to spend unwisely. And when I realised that not everyone's parents could provide for their families in that capacity, and their kids–my friends–had to find their own way to finance their education, afford their school trips, etc., I wanted to make sure that I'd be able to provide for my future children, too.

Instability. So many things aren't constant anymore, and when things change for the worse it's a sad thing. Backsliders. Breakups. Miscarriages. I don't know who is and isn't in church anymore; I've learnt not to assume. I don't take the initiative to bring up people's relationships because I did that a couple of times and the response was "actually we broke up a while ago". Miscarriages–recently I made small talk with a colleague and deliberately didn't explicitly mention her pregnancy because I was afraid she might have miscarried and it'd be taboo to talk about. What a weird thing to fear, right? Yet I've heard about it happening so many times that it seems rarer to actually have a successful pregnancy. I dare not assume anymore. The things one has might vanish in an instant. It's safer to keep hope at bay.

I realised how absurd my unhealthy sense of ownership was one night, when the moon was particularly beautiful. As I usually do with beautiful moons and sunsets, I took a picture and went wild about it on Instagram, getting people to look out of their windows. And I was unnecessarily anxious about it–like, GUYS LOOK OUT THE WINDOW!!!! YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS. And then I thought, the hell, the moon is going to rise every day for the rest of our lives. And we're going to have beautiful sunrises and sunsets for the rest of our lives. Why am I anxious about it?

Even with natural phenomena, I fear losing them.

In Shirahama last year I sat at the edge of the rocky cliff for what must have been at least twenty minutes, staring in astonishment at the waves that crashed again, and again, and again. Each time was full of force, but it was never the last time. And it was going to continue being that reckless, that full of energy, for years and years to come. It'd never end.

Yesterday the waves were calm and it was lovely listening to them. And I had to remind myself, again, that they'll always be there. That I was free to appreciate them, and not have to worry that they'd go away, that I had to grasp at them out of insecurity.

It's so strange, realising that I fear losing even natural phenomena. That's how bad it is.