Eleven years ago, I was best friends with a pessimist. I felt, though, that his pessimism was the product of idealism met with too much disappointment: it was a guard against hope. “We are all ultimately alone,” he used to say. That there would never be someone who would be with you your entire life. I always fought against that statement — and perhaps my optimism was, in fact, founded on pessimism. It’s a given that no single person would see us to the end. But allow space in your heart for a few at a time, and perhaps that’s a different kind of full. Different people come to us at different seasons — it is many, many departures, and we grieve and receive simultaneously.

As a man and woman make

a garden between them like

a bed of stars, here

they linger in the summer evening

and the evening turns

cold with their terror: it

could all end, it is capable

of devastation. All, all

can be lost, through scented air

the narrow columns

uselessly rising, and beyond,

a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved.  It doesn't matter to me

how many summers I live to return:

this one summer we have entered eternity.

I felt your two hands

bury me to release its splendor.

-- Louise Glück, "The White Lilies"

air plants

eight years ago, i lay in bed the day before my finals, waiting for a text. it never came. day one of the end of good mornings. something in me already knew it then. debilitated, the sun hitting my face, i couldn't find it in me to get up.

i thought i left that part of me behind, the embarrassing dependency, the pining and insecurity, the utter lack of self-respect. but today, in a quaint cafe, as a bespectacled university student plays the Spirited Away soundtrack on the secondhand piano, i am sobbing into my matcha latte. the unvarnished tabletop drinks my tears. this despair is so familiar. a comfort. for a while i thought i had lost the capacity to feel. it turns out i am still able, just in all the wrong ways.

it’s cold now, and dark

At the end of the day when the fire’s done and through, all that’s left are the bare steel foundations, and the rubble, and the hole in the ground. 

Who would remember now the memories created behind each window pane, each door? A wall of text; ten thousand pictures. It’s your fault. You knew it would crumble. Now you have to rebuild. 

“my independence stems from trauma”

The day before I sold my iPhone 6, I opened iMessage — for the first time in two years — and took screenshots of all our texts, from the first study session to the very last ‘good morning’ the day before my finals. I didn’t even ask for any of it. You asked, and I lent you my space. My library access. My room. My floor. And then you asked for more, and I said no. I pushed your hand away. I drew boundaries. I told us to give it three months. I was as prepared as I had ever been for hurt, and you still took so much from me. For the first time ever, I was wise enough to build my defences, and still the iron gates gave way. In the silence and the self-doubt and the tumult I played your voice memos and wept. 

When I finally wrestled an explanation from you, you said you simply didn’t need it anymore. Didn’t need my library access. Didn’t need me. For many weeks after, I was terrified of being alone. I slept with the lights on. I played music in the shower. I sang to mask the horrors of the quiet. I had no one to turn to, because I had resolved to never need anyone again. Everyone I needed was a two minutes’ walk from me, but I lived in survival mode, in terror, in a self-induced shrinkwrapped bundle of protection. I was suffocating, but safe. 

I don’t think survival mode ever left me — the fire only mellowed over the coals, glowing embers ready to reignite at the hint of abandonment. It’s the reason I feel nothing in the good times, but fall apart in the bad. There is no capacity for positive feeling when your heart is caked in soot, a heap of carbon rocks lining its base. In place of love, though, there is courage, and relief, and perhaps a hint of softness. I remember the day I walked up exactly twelve steps to a friend’s room, and lay in her bed as she practised the guitar. In the gentle humming and the afternoon light there was a melting of stone into flesh.

there’s still time

In another life we would be friends. Best friends, even. Soulmates. But maybe soulmates are too alike to be friends. With soulmates there is no possibility of putting up a façade; it is everything or nothing, and these days the latter is easier, less frightening, less of a burden. I’ve had those friendships before, where there is no in-between; one step through the door and we are lying on the floor, bare-bodied, a face full of tears. It becomes too much to bear. These days we don’t get past the pleasantries. One misstep and we dive headlong off a cliff; it is better to keep to sturdy ground. How are you, the weather’s been great lately, I heard you got a new job. Perhaps soulmates are never meant to be.

Louise Glück

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

--- 

Lamium  

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.

---

Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

---

Spring Snow

Look at the night sky:
I have two selves, two kinds of power.

I am here with you, at the window,
watching you react. Yesterday
the moon rose over moist earth in the lower garden.
Now the earth glitters like the moon,
like dead matter crusted with light.

You can close your eyes now.
I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,
and the demand behind them.
I have shown you what you want:
not belief, but capitulation
to authority, which depends on violence. 

---

The Garden

I couldn't do it again,
I can hardly bear to look at it--

in the garden, in light rain
the young couple planting
a row of peas, as though
no one has ever done this before,
the great difficulties have never as yet
been faced and solved--

They cannot see themselves,
in fresh dirt, starting up
without perspective,
the hills behind them pale green, clouded with flowers--

She wants to stop;
he wants to get to the end,
to stay with the thing--

Look at her, touching his cheek
to make a truce, her fingers
cool with spring rain;
in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus--

even here, even at the beginning of love,
her hand leaving his face makes
an image of departure

and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.

---

The White Lilies

As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands
bury me to release its splendor. 

Lead, kindly Light

Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom 

The night is long and I am far from home 

Here in the dark, I do not ask to see 

The path ahead—one step enough for me 

Lead on, lead on, kindly Light

I was not ever willing to be led

I could have stayed, but I ran instead 

In spite of fear, I followed my pride 

My eyes could see, but my heart was blind 

Lead on, lead on, kindly Light

And in the night, when i was afraid 

Your feet beside my own on the way 

Each stumbling step where other men have trod 

Shortens the road leading home to my God 

Lead on, lead on

My God, My God

Lead on, lead on, kindly Light

in pitch black

as a child the sun reaches out to you with all its splendour, and you happily give it your heart. it envelops your entire being and seeps into your soul. it gives you warmth and colour and shows you infinite forests and hills: all yours, all yours to explore. but as you step towards the grass a thistle pricks your shin. deceptive. it had a purple flower. with every step you find hurt in all places: love leaves lacerations and razor slits, rules followed leave a stone in your chest, rules broken a knot in your gut. you learn to dodge, skilfully, expertly. but the bees and the thorns still catch you at every turn. halfway through the first paddy you are panting, broken, sick. you are slowly bleeding out. by the time you are thirty, emerging from the fields to mount the curb of a busy road, you are barely recognisable to those who held you as a baby, your face too full of cuts, the bags under your eyes weighing down your entire being. the sun still beckons beyond the horizon, its arms wide, patient, kind. but you can’t bring yourself to trust it. you think it demonic: only cruel lies behind those eyes.

was I ever happy before? happiness is a big word: a light warmth that wraps around you on a frosty day. am I happy? perhaps I was never meant to be. perhaps melancholy is my state of being, and I was never, never meant to creep above the clouds to achieve clarity and purity of light. perhaps I was meant to dwell below with the soil and the rocks and the quiet stream.

today, in a pitch-dark tent, my heart burst, and out flowed rivers. it made me realise why I had felt so little before: there was no space in that cavity with all those tears. perhaps what I need to do is cry, and cry, and cry. but what lies at the end of all this water? does anything lie at the end? or what cavern will I find?

behold

 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

- 1 Cor 13:12a

At the eternal wedding, I stand at the threshold, white in my hair, white down the path. Through my veil I catch a glimpse of my Lord Jesus standing at the altar, his loving gaze fixed on me, eager to present me to the Father. Slowly, I take a step towards Him, and then another. Every step I take down the aisle is a step of sanctification—joy with one, repentance with the other. Step by step I cross the path of life until at last I am done and I join hands with my Bridegroom. Jesus lifts my veil, and I see him face to face.

words

 When I was young and I was overwhelmed with anger at my little brother or frustration about something that happened in school or indignation at how I had been scolded for something I did not do 

I would write my parents a note and leave it on top of the shoe cabinet. I could never find the words in my mouth and I did not know how to ask for their time. They would make their own time.

As soon as I heard the keys in the lock I would rush to my room. I would hear the feet shuffle out of their shoes, and then a pause. By the time the even footsteps came plodding down the corridor I would be all curled up in a ball so tight that they wouldn’t be able to reach past the railings of my bunk bed to give me a pat. I remember the day they were able to reach my feet. I had grown too tall. I felt defeated. 

Words command a space of their own. They draw you into quiet, into a conversation. I never like to talk. I can’t think of the right words fast enough. I spend the next ten hours replaying the words after they are said, scorning their inadequacy. 

The thing about writing is that you need to be in your own space to do it. My flow of words are hindered in the presence of another. I can’t write to you if you’re in the room. 

As I move from one to two, I will have to find my own space, or you will never truly know what I think. I would never know. 

roald dahl

But what about the old ugly hag? Wasn’t she tender and lighthearted before? There must have been a time when the light shone on her face and the flowers grew where she went; what, then, caused her heart to turn cold? When did her love turn to suspicion, and then to fear and fatalism? Wasn’t she simply trying to protect herself? What does she dare not believe now?

If inner beauty cannot be fabricated, how does one attain it? How does one grow soft? How do you hope in the world again? 

Easter

 I used to think I only cried in God’s tangible presence when He came down in the form of a miracle, a tangible, observable supernatural. Like the time I had a vivid vision for a friend. Or the recent time the pastor laid his hands on my head and I fell without him saying a word. Or the times He comes to me in a revelation of His goodness, His love. I thought it would only happen in a Spirit-filled—a “Charismatic”—environment. 

But the first time I stepped into this white-walled hymn-singing brightly lit conservative church, from the Gloria Patri to the benediction and throughout the expository sermon on Ecclesiastes, I was a mess of tears. Today, during the sermon on the sufficiency of the one sacrifice, it happened again. It was a simple word—our eternal forgiveness proven by the man hung on a tree. There was a simple song. But the presence of God is not in an atmosphere, it’s in His breath, in His word, it’s wherever He pleases to rest. He is also here in this hall, among these pews, and my spirit catches more than my mind.  

my hands shake

I find it very hard to conceal my emotions. When I feel sad, or triggered, or angry, or upset, my whole body feels it all at once. My skin tingles. I once called a friend to hash out some frustrations, and just the prospect of confrontation caused me to cry so badly she thought I was having a panic attack. I could in fact barely breathe, let alone talk. 

I couldn’t conceal my downs if I tried, and even when I think I’m succeeding people ask why I look like death. And when I’m excited or eager, it comes gushing like a waterfall out of my mouth even before I realise. Once I went for a JJ concert and my ex who sat beside me was deaf in one ear for three days. In Year One of college, my professor noted that the soundtrack of our Greek trip was “Karen’s ohmygod it’s so prettys”. I didn’t even realise how often I was using it. It came out with every breath, with every step up Delphi, with every corner we turned and every new ancient rock we found on the floor. 

I like to think of it as my innocence, a childlike purity worn on my sleeve. But that’s now how grown-ups operate. It is wise to think before you speak, to hold on till you cool down, to maintain your tranquility. I try — so hard — to breathe and play it cool but when I’m in a state of excitement or agitation my voice still trembles. My hands still shake. I can’t type properly. I can barely speak. My voice changes, becomes thin, I can’t sing; the pitch runs all over the place. 

It’s funny that a certain mezzo-melancholy gives your art that special spark, that x-factor, but push the needle further and the overdrive causes your performance to break down. And then push it even further, till it goes to the extreme — when I’m too sad, or too angry — and I can no longer write or sing at all. Instead I freeze up and go quiet and have to lie down, and the only language left is tears. These things always get the better of me in the worst of ways. I must take those meds. Soothe the heart. Learn control. But my hands still give me away. 

childlike

Companies like it when you think like a child. Not that they would like you to be immature, of course, but that your brain reaches far and wide like sprawling vines into places that are unconventional. Strange places, forbidden places: the brain of a young child wants to reach into them all, climb through every hole and weave through every garden fence. They haven't been pruned. They haven't been told that you cannot link this and this together, it doesn't make sense. There are rules to being mature. You cannot tread these grounds. Cannot assume that these webs are connected in any way. Keep quiet! Don't grab. Don't gape. Don't wonder. Put on a smooth smile, be placid like water, with the gravitas and immovability of a rock. That's what they teach you to do when you're older, and that's how they communicate - from one placid smile to another. But they secretly still reach out under the table, stealing looks at the children.

an introvert’s crisis

when the flies create a chaotic storm around my head and mess with my thoughts with buzzing white noise static, when the dust gets into my eyes and my mouth is parched and desperate for a reprieve, i trudge climb and clamber towards the pool of water; as the midnight blue comes into the clear i feel excitement grow within this sack of exhaustion. i plunge, a rapture of relief. all is still, enveloped by cool and quiet. 

as the noise in my head clears, a sole mermaid’s song rises within me and calms my mind into a single thread. 

i sit awhile with the water and the exhaustion slowly melts away, leaving me hollow. the occasional ripple breaks the monotony, reminding me i’m not fully alone. this is the closest i can get to being in a weightless void. i’ll savour it. 

empty again, i get up. i must move on. tomorrow we start over. 

finding my voice

 I haven't really been able to write since year 2 of university. That year, I put my voice out to people, and it felt like they betrayed it. Other people gave me their voice, and they felt like I betrayed them. I grew scared of my voice - and scared of giving of myself to others. I learnt to burrow. I wanted to appear cool, calm and indifferent, and so I was, for a while.

A few years ago, I had to learn how to use my voice again. A friend taught me that it was okay to say no. To me she seemed rude - overtly aggressive. I had been too used to saying yes all the time for fear of disappointing people, and the fact that she could express herself so candidly and unapologetically grated at me. She simply was comfortable with her wants and not-wants, and wasn't afraid to express it, in a manner that could be rude or tactful, perhaps depending on what she felt like doing, or how the recipient took it. Those years, it seems I had to learn to talk again, clumsily, like a toddling child, breaking things and bruising knees along the way. I was jarring and rude because I didn't know how to use my voice so freely - to me, passive-aggressiveness always meant aggressiveness, and to be overt was to be unkind - and in the process of learning how to speak again, I hurt that one friend. She was my guinea pig, my experimental space, because I never dared to speak that way to anyone else, ever. But she made it look so easy, like a teenager drinking beer by the roadside. Just do it. It isn't that hard. 

I stumbled and fumbled and I guess I've made a tiny bit of headway, but not much. I only use my voice when I'm given the space to - you can say no if you want to / ah in that case, maybe I'll decline for now, thanks. But I've also come to realise in recent times that I am not always sure what my voice is, either. It seems it's been buried so far deep I don't know where it is, or what it is, or what it wants. I'm afraid to use it - I'm afraid it'll set off an avalanche. And so I don't see it. But the more I don't see it, the more I feel like a vestige, a shadow, a mist. I need to be real again. Solid, opaque, substance flowing through my veins. I need to know me to be me. And so I must try to dig inside, find the little ball of a voice inside my depths, and ask: what are you, really? What am I?

I've been asked why I want to go to therapy. It's not that I'm suffering from mental issues or that I think there's something gravely wrong. I've just... lost my voice. I want to find it. It's easy to go through the motions of the day, but hard to interrogate, and I barely know who I am or what I want anymore. I want to be me, freely, fully, confidently. I trust that what I uncover will be precious, and liberate me to be the person I was meant to be - one who loves truly with the heart and partnership of God, who trusts enough to open my heart, to be unashamed, to inspire others to do the same. 

Wong Jie

 

"Who did you have lunch with today?"

Wong Jie was my grandma's father-in-law's brother's wife. (Basically my great-grandaunt, I think.) They got married in China, but a few years later he wasn't earning enough for the family, so he came to Singapore to make a living while Wong Jie and the two kids stayed behind in China. 

The money came in monthly for a while, but it suddenly stopped, and Wong Jie had no idea why. So Wong Jie came to Singapore with her kids to find out what the matter was. She came to my great-grandfather's house to see how she could find him. She was told that he was working at a coffeeshop at Gay World, and Ma Ma, the only one along with my great-grandfather who had been willing to meet her at the house, offered to take her there. At Gay World, Wong Jie found out that her husband had married his co-worker in Singapore. His Singaporean wife was childless, but determined to keep him. "He's mine now," she said to Wong Jie. "He married me more recently, so you have to give him up. You give me your children also." According to Ma Ma, this lady literally physically snatched Wong Jie's 4-year-old and 2-year-old children out of her hands. (?!!?!) Wong Jie was flustered, but Ma Ma advised, "You see how she treats the children. If she beats them, then you take them back. If she's good to them, then okay lah, you just let it go." 

This lady, being childless, loved these children as her own. She carried them on her back as she did the chores; she followed them to school and back; she (apparently) never laid a hand on them. Wong Jie attempted to peek at her children through the school gates, and when the lady found out, she transferred them to a different school. This went on for a while. Eventually Ma Ma advised Wong Jie to "just let it go lah. This lady took your husband, your children; you better go and work." Ma Ma offered to let Wong Jie stay in her shophouse in Chinatown (at Upper Cross street, where my dad shared a room with his 6 sisters, sleeping on a mat on the floor), and tried to find her work in the meantime. 

One day, Ma Ma approached a Malaysian man selling wares on a small mat in the street. He was from Ipoh, selling what little he could to make a living for himself. "I have a China girl, you want she help you to sell some of the things lah," Ma Ma offered. He couldn't offer any pay, but that was fine; all he had to do was feed her, and return her to Ma Ma at the end of the day. Day by day Wong Jie and this Ipoh man sold wares together, and eventually, their little business expanded, and he could afford a van from which to sell the wares. About a decade had passed by now, and they went around in their new van going about their two-person business. 

At this point, Ipoh man offered, "we've been working together for so long, we're both still unmarried, why not you get married to me lah." Ma Ma was happy with the arrangement, and Wong Jie got married a second time at 38, the Ipoh guy a couple of years older. When Wong Jie was 41, she gave birth to one son - "no more, cannot already". Decades later, this son now works at PSA, and has earned enough to buy a condo near Great World City. Wong Jie stays here with her son, his wife, and their child, who has just graduated from university. (At this point my head started spinning. Only then did I realise that Wong Jie was around my grandmother's age, and this entire story spans about sixty years. How much can happen in a lifetime.) 

Wong Jie often takes Ma Ma out for meals, and her son and grandson treat Ma Ma as their own. "She rescued me," Wong Jie emphasises. Ma Ma won't give them her address, because she fears Wong Jie would come by too often - my grandmother is not comfortable taking too much from people. She tells them she lives too far away, and today after lunch, she insisted that she had other errands to run so that they wouldn't send her home. But she stresses that Wong Jie is extremely kind, and treats her very well. Wong Jie took Ma Ma out to eat dim sum today because it was a public holiday. "Does she know it's your birthday?" I ask. "No lah," Ma Ma replies. "I don't want to tell her. Later every year she bring me go eat."

poetry on skin

Falling in love

is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart 

like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.

Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

- Carol Ann Duffy, “You”

Words are futile. We spend so long trying to craft them a particular way, anxious to do justice to the breathtaking, mind-blowing, heart-exploding beauty before our eyes, our only tool a string of squiggles. A sunset. The lapping waves along the beach at five-thirty. A look in someone’s eyes. A kiss. How do you put words to an embrace? 

You gaze at me in your bed, receiving the gift that lies before you, and one by one you list every body part, every part of me you find beautiful, starting from my feet. My calves. My kneecaps. My thighs. My hips. My waist. “Is this the new Song of Songs?” I quip cheekily, just before you mention the one I know is coming. “I can’t go into that much detail,” you confess, before continuing. My boobs. My neck. My face. My eyes. My hair. You never stutter when you speak from your heart, and you keep your eyes on me. 

Falling in love is the greatest poetry. There is no longer a need for words.

2017: CG mission trip (Malang)

Was doing my year-end review and realised there was too much to say about the mission trip, so I'm putting it in a separate post. There's so much more to say about the trip, but I guess I have most of it down in my journal already, so nevermind. Maybe some other time I'll edit this post and add more stuff.

--

Towards the end of September, I was due to go for a mission trip with my cell group. I was totally not feeling it. I also didn't feel like I could fully trust God yet. Despite the big turnaround moment God had just given me during my KL trip, there was still the whole year of doubting God's goodness and withdrawing my trust in Him since Dennis' death. I told Yang Hong about it after church one day, on a sofa at the Hotspot, and he simply said "take your time." I love how his responses are simple, light, and liberating. There isn't a need to strive to be okay. It takes time and that's just how things are.

I realised that I was afraid to pray for anything because I was afraid it wouldn't come true. So I took a step of faith and prayed for just one thing: that as a result of the mission trip / God's work through us, one person would give up (a specific thing I shan't say here), and dedicate him/herself to (a specific thing). This I did not witness during the trip itself, but two weeks later one of the people I had met in passing felt led to contact me (she got my number from someone else; I hadn't even given her my number, and why me specifically?), and through a phone call and subsequent texts God's work was done through her. God was faithful indeed.

Anyway, that was after the trip. So when I left for the mission trip itself, I was already jaded and not expecting much, not trusting that God would impact me or work through me during the trip. As soon as we got out of the airport and met the leader of my church's missions arm, he looked at us and said we were going to receive much on the trip or something like that. Then he looked at me specifically for a bit and said, "you too, but you need a bit more faith." And for every single person that I prayed for on the trip (except one as far as I can recall), I got a prophetic image. On Day 2 I prayed for someone to receive Tongues and she got it, just a little bit. (When I received Tongues it took me a couple of weeks to get it fully also. And previously another person I prayed for also had the same result, only in part at first. I think it's not a very good anointing I'm passing down ah maybe someone else should pray HAHAH) We also followed a bunch of homeless ministry workers around, walking through the streets giving out coffee to people around and inviting them to the service on Sunday.

On Day 3 I was scheduled to share a short message. I had prepared something about Ezekiel 16, about God as our Husband and our intimate relationship with Him. And WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT, as soon as I stepped into the church I noticed a big banner across the stage that read "INTIMACY WITH GOD". The church was called BETHEL (the name I want to give my future child–"House of God"–we are all temples of God) and they had a lot of Jewish elements–the menorah, the star of David somewhere, and someone even blew a shofar. Day 3 was also the homeless ministry service, where Siyi shared her testimony (so blessed by her courage and vulnerability) and Jer shared about her own story of self-destructive behaviour, suicidal tendencies and abuse, and how now, God is fighting her battles for her: it doesn't remove the obstacles on the journey, but there is freedom and victory in knowing that you aren't fighting it on your own.

Many other things happened on the trip, including this one school where the demonic presence was so strong that all of us felt it individually while we split up and prayer-walked separately, eeps. But it was already better than the previous time the missions wing visited the place, and apparently now (a year later) it's much better.