why

I didn't tell anyone. No i never did.


It's fall in Boston. I have been told that it's the most beautiful time of the year. I never got the chance to really look into the city until today. It was a sunny afternoon. I was there by myself, witnessing every single encounter, and shouldering every loss that came right after.


You've got to pin me down for me to tell the truth.


I wanted to sit you down and ask you why. Wanted to give you time to explain rather than quitting. I wanted to corner you and look into your eyes, use my harshest tone and ask you why. WHY.


Why. Why is it like that? Why did i try so hard, and yet fall so short? Why am i made like this? How long more do i need to go through Those sessions before i can be well, and feeling normal and adequate? How many times must i stumble before i can get fully recovered? Why do people don't understand? What must i do to make them understand? Why are they better, smarter, faster, richer? What about me? I tried so hard, what about me??

Help

I need someone to talk to. Someone who doesn't need to understand everything but who is willing to just listen. Someone who doesn't judge and offers no advice. Someone who is still gonna be a friend after knowing my brokenness and inadequacy.

Flowers

What do you do when you really miss someone?



I don't quite know what to do, just yet. Sometimes i will distance myself away from the crowd, instead, i will watch people from a corner, hoping to fill myself up with the blissfulness and happiness of those around me, so that i will feel loved enough to chase away the emptiness that is slowly building up in me. Sometimes i will go to sleep, hoping that i will dream about the times we shared together. Sometimes i will immerse myself in the routine of work, freezing the part of my brain which has you in it.



But most times, i do what i know best - look high up into the sky, into the clouds, and send a prayer way up high. So no matter how far you are or which part of the world you are in, you will always be able to see it. We are always under the same sky, aren't we?



So many people walk in and out of our lives, staying only for a brief moment. We are delighted to bring someone in, and yet reluctant to let go when needed. So many tiny, insignificant encounters keep happening to bring some closer together, and others apart. In a world of such confusion, we are spun into the whirlpool of relationships. We dance along the coastline, leap in the softeness of sandy beaches, never quite knowing when the next wave will crash in, sometimes screaming and yelling in joy, but others in exasperation. We are thrown into a zone of uncertainties.



That day when i was walking pass a florist. I saw a young kid carefully selecting flowers, stalk by stalk. The fact that he was wearing a primary school uniform already caught my attention, but guess what, he was choosing the flowers using his nose - he was blind. The receiver of those flowers must mean a lot to him, i thought.



Some say buying flowers is a waste of money, because they all wilt and die. It's the most maddening fact of all that once conspicuous and beautiful, they all will eventually end up in the waste busket. Still, we buy them. Still, we give them. Still, we receive these lovely gifts, with love and gratitude, because of the memory, because we want to keep happy moments as part of our memory. We keep those memories in a part of our hearts, along with other blessed encounters, to prolong the freshness of love and sincerity, even if they last only just a brief moment.



I envied that young buyer. Of all the physical disabilities that could bound him into a sorrowful outcaste, he is strong enough to care for his loved ones - love of the brave and daring kind, the kind that has overcome the fear of getting hurt, the fear of giving too much, too soon.



Flowers are just like our relationships. Most last for seasons which end. Yet, nothing stops us from loving, from daring to love, from daring to invest, from daring to put ourselves on the line - and getting hurt. Just like the way nothing, nothing stops the budding, the shining glory when it's at full bloom and their eventual incandescent. We love, in the way flowers bloom - daringly, abandonedly.



Even though we know everything would come to an end.



We lost people along the way. Few friendships and relationships last for life. Flowers wilt, lives change, and all we are left we are just memories that we store in the deepest corner of our hearts, that these memories we cherish so much are no more than a remembrance of who we were and where we used to be, and that we don't have much choice but to hold on to those memories.



That day, i was just thinking about things, the way i often do - thinking about what had happened, why we stopped being around each other, why it always felt like i had lost someone close whenever people come and go. It sort of came to my mind that maybe, just maybe i put too much faith into believing people that i lost myself along the way.



I mean sometimes you do lose the sense of direction of where you are heading to, right? That despite the clarity of you dreams, despite your determination to get to them, despite your supportive friends and families, your mentality about things change, no? That sometimes you feel like you are running in a circle, that you could feel happy everyday but still you could feel something is missing in your life.



Life is precious, isn't it? That no mistakes, no crimes, no disappointments, no rejections, no difficulties, no problems would be so great to sacrifice your will to live and make all your dreams come true, right?



Or could it be that after so much, after so much of struggling and learning, you realise that you cannot find a meaning to life?



I remember you. We were not very close but you''re just like a big brother to me. We used to talk about life. About my dreams, and yours. We sort of concluded that it's best to have the least expectations of things. But how ignorant i was. It was the last time i saw you.



It just sets me thinking. What are meaningful relationships to you, in a world of constant uncertainties and regular irregularrities?



It's a loss to lose the once-known familiar closeness. A lot of times, i have yet to overcome the hurt of the first loss before another person walks in or walks out. I realise, the key to a meaningful life lies in us, ourselves. It's easy to love Strangers, hard to love friends, harder still to love family members and even harder to love yourself.



But do we stop buying, giving, receiveing flowers, stop loving, daringly and unabashedly because of the possibility of change, the possibility of death?



You have your answer to that.

Gratitude

How i wished i could blow the candles in front of a house of blissful friends and family members. How i wished i could receive beautiful flowers and small gifts. How i wished there could be real hugs and genuine kisses coming from someone, anyone, even strangers. How i wished i could turn back time to celebrate my mum's love and courage to bear me. How i wished all my dreams would come through.

It's a day of thinking, of remembering the past, and of looking ahead for another 20 years. Today, i was reminded of the life i have in replace of hers. I was bonded to the nolstagia of the past love which appeared so vividly before me, being knot-tied, fastly-connected, and insurmountably linked to the core of the values that had made me who i am today.

I so very often believe that the continuation of life is the key to conquering new frontiers and redefining current niches. For once, our parents and grandparents have been stuck and thrown out of the ways, strangled and deserted, defeated and exiled, have failed and yet overcome, have struggled and yet prevailed, and have been in despair and yet they pressed on. This is a life that we get. With their motherly instints, they guide and feed us, protect and replenish us, slowly losing their grip along the way, till the day when we could pave the paths of our own.

The only regret i would have in this life is i had to believe also that the exception to the supposedly unconditional parental love happened in my life.

Deep in my heart, i would always know, that there is no escape to This, to the one Daddy, one Mummy and one Family that i ever had. I had to walk through the miles, travel the distances, only to find out at the end of the journey that my aloofness and indifference stem from the unique experiences i had at home since i was a child. And sometimes, i am telling you, that sometimes, i really don't feel like associating myself with anyone. It's like a mental barrier that decelerates any unions or interacting activities with other people, and very often i just stop trying to reach out. I just stop There, get away from people. Why? Because nobody understands. Nobody is able to truly understand the feeling of an abandoned child left to fight for a future, alone.

Above is a long awaited message from my 20th birthday, of which i never found a purpose in conveying. But today, i have the courage to tell because i've got a new outlook.

That whenever i feel the need to shift myself away from the crowd, perhaps, it's also the time when i need to be There for myself, to work on my mental strength, to deal with problems which only myself could understand.

And please tell me how strong i have been, because nobody has ever said that to me.

Closure

Since when did everybody start telling me that i have a happy soul, and the most cheerful expressions on my face? That when i started smiling, i could smile from my heart.

It's been weeks or months, of indulging myself in a seemingly meaningful reconstructive process, of trying so earnestly hard to bring my life path back to normality with whatever faith left in me, for me, of seeking a mutual understanding between what goes on inside me and what goes out to represent the inside.





Sometimes i just could not resist the temptation to have a good laugh, for the tiniest joke, and have the brightest smile on my face, when i meet people like you.





It's all part of the process, isn't it? When you begin to drop all your expectations, you start your degree in the pursuit of life's happiness. What's wrong with zero expectations? What's wrong with a Rafflesian working at Fish and Co and get paid $5 per hour? What's wrong with minimising appointments and spending more time on books, badminton and casual stroll? What's wrong if i cannot make it to Boston? What's wrong with having no big dreams, but simple, realistic goals in life?

To say the least, i am enjoying my work as much as i can. Serving people has never been an easy job. Sometimes you have customers slamming straight on your face with harsh words and unmannerly behaviours, and you have the management unappreciative and sacarstic response for your hard work at others. And you think about your strengths and weaknesses, and realise it's all part of growing up, of accepting offensive attitude, of letting go your dignified value of self-worth, of converting complacencies into humility, of reverting complications back to its basis of simplicity.





You've reached the first milestone, where you are perfectly alright with smiling your heart out and not feeling estranged by the way people perceive who you are. That whatever it takes, you have enough faith in you to feel no alienations to how you carry yourself in front of people and the way you really are. You feel a sence of liberation, like you are free of all judgements and criticism. At once, you feel like the biggest enemy is from the crowd, the people, the way things are. You feel like you are not given a choice, all of these, this life, that career path, this family, that university placement, and you just feel like you are living, but in a solemn, unglamourous, shaky and gloomy kind of world. You question everything, and you keep telling yourself there should be more, much more to this dry routine of seeing dreams broken, hopes lost, love departed. And you forget how to be yourself, and have the inner strength to accommodate everything that is mortal, non-lasting and uncertain.






There are things that you have been fighting so hard for. Your first car, first 1 Million dollars, first condominium, first heart-to-heart conversation with your teenager kids, first family holiday, even first love. We price them as our purposes of live and set foot on each day to acquire them, brushing off your children's request for support at school performances, substituting cash with time for love for your parents, rejecting your good friends' invitations to social gatherings... and then you suddenly realise you don't know what you have been working so hard for.





Of late, i've had to ask myself the implications for being who you truly are and being ignorant of what people want you to be. It's so challenging to manage that, because we have been taught to set the right expectation for ourselves based on those's whom we respected.





Just ask yourself this : Who is there to be responsible if you fail to meet the expectations of others?





And how can you say you're comfortable with yourself when you fear what others think of you?
How can you expect people to love you the way you want them to love you if are selfish with your love?





I am not hiding anymore. That to play hide-and-seek is a deceitful, cowardly and destroying way of seeking the sense of superiority because you are lying your own life away for an instant, short-lived sense of satisfaction. When in fact everyone who plays hide-and-seek gets found out in the end and everyone loses





-that you must hide in order to win is no longer a way out for a day of freedom, wholeness and peace.





I am bringing this part of my life into a closure, this hiding of self-identity, this masking of emotional weakness, this disguising of stormy weathers with squeezed dimples, because i want to start learning to accommodate myself, so that in time to come i would have a heart big enough to have rooms for one, two, three, four, five, six, sever, eight, nine, ten or more souls.

我的外婆

一直都在寻找...

一直都不断地在寻找，从开始到现在，一直都找不回从前的自己...

一直很想做回自己，只是，后来才发现，原来自己好像很害怕，面对最真实的自己，因为，我害怕那种被遗弃的感觉..

直到昨天，才明白自己要的，一直以来都没有变..

前几天早上起来的时候，胸口在抽搐，在朦胧之间，仿佛看到了过去跟未来。很多时候，越努力抑制自己的情绪，自己就越陷越深，无法自拔。好几次，都尝试去转换自己的思维，鞭策自己凡事都要往好的方面想，就像你们一样，失败了几次都不要紧，还是继续往前走，还是坚持拼到底。

想起我的外婆。她还差十几年就上百了，但她是我认识的人当中，最不拘小节，最勇于付出的一个。我中二的那年，老师叫我们写作文，题目是影响我最深的人。我写了我跟外婆的故事，得到全班最高分，但我很后悔，因为当初我没有及时表达我对她的感激跟不舍，直到她被赶出黄家的门口…

依稀记得，在文章里我这样写到：外婆，其实更像我的保母。小时候，父母都在忙着赚钱，时常都不在家。洗衣煮饭，为我们冲凉，家里大大小小的家务，我们三姐弟的起居，都是全由外婆一个人担当起来。每天在学校里，虽然都会因为有很多其他小朋友而很快乐，但都会不禁期盼下课钟声的响起，因为，就快可以看到你。每一次，下课以后，我都会冲出课室，努力地跑向我们约好的地点。而每一次，在长长的走廊后，都会看到你慈祥的轮廓，正朝向着我，对我微笑。我都会一直跑呀跑的，经过灰暗色的课室，穿过重重的人群，直到跑到您身边，用我那微小的双手，紧紧地抱住您的大腿，我才安心。而你，总会用力地牵着我的小手，就像怕我走失一样，指引我渡过如虎口的马路，踏上回家的路。


小时候，很容易快乐。每次回到家以后，我跟外婆都会坐在家门口，外婆拔着豆芽，或看着马票，而我，则会躺在外婆的大腿上，等她哄我入睡。她会轻拍着我的背后，然后，用我听得一知半解的方言，哼着她熟悉的曲调，让我安详入睡。她总是那么的任劳任怨，总是那么的细心呵护，为的，就是希望我们能在一个有爱的环境里成长。偶尔，在睡梦中会听到引颈企盼的叮当声，那是冰淇淋叔叔的叫卖声。一有机会，外婆总是会自掏腰包买我们最爱吃的零食，让我们在悠闲的午后，手上捧着冰淇淋，笑眯眯的舔食着我们的最爱。小时候的快乐，就那么简单，不需要很多物质的享受，不需要很多人的认同，不需要什么伟大的梦想，更不需要伪装自己，一支冰淇淋，一包零食，或每天放学后可以跑向外婆抱住她的大腿，就可以快了一整天。外婆的无怨无悔，让我在长大后，学会了拥有一颗赤子之心。

好景不长，我的生命，从出生到现在，每隔一段时间，都需要从新开始。家庭突然发生聚变，或者说，我突然开窍，看懂一切的时候，外婆的大腿与冰淇淋早已离我而去。爸爸说，外婆心怀不轨，可能会放毒药在她煮的食物里，或下降头。我不懂，为什么外婆那么的爱我们，爸爸要这样的怀疑。

在我缤纷的世界里，在我花样年华的天空中，我没有你们那样的彩虹，来掩饰心坎深处的灰暗。我努力地爬出束缚着我的无底洞，我努力地把头往上抬，期许可以从隙缝中窥探到些许的阳光，让自己有前进的动力。我尝试着，我不断尝试着，我很努力地尝试着，我要逃出去，我想要逃，逃离这个我不曾拥有的辉煌，逃离这个不属于我的家园，我想远走高飞，我想展翅翱翔，但，我又可以逃到哪里？




我一直都觉得，会哭的人很幸福。有好几次，我伤心欲绝，我悲痛万分，我都哭不出来。因为，我知道，没有一双手，或一个肩膀，可以抚慰我满目疮痍的心底，所以，没有必要哭，没有勇气哭出来。

有好几次，我都在自己的世界里演练，如果有来世，那我今生一定要做好多好多的善事，把造孽减至最低。

我只想有一个平凡的人生，可以吗？

Overcomers

It began with a conversation, and it sent waves and waves of ripples through my already troubled minds..


I had to go back to the deepest of my memories, and the darkest of my earthly days. Never mind about the pain because at least i felt real and alive in pain.


I wanted to tell you how much you were going so astray and that i didn't quite know whether i have the power to help you. Surely i won't forget that smirk on your face when i invited you into realising how you could still talk to a living being who had gone through such circumstances. I was utterly embarrassed, really, at that instant judgement you made.


Time and time again i gathered up the courage to re-live the most depressing moments in my life. Because i wanted to get it over, till a point where i could be 100% okay with my own history.


And somebody asked me a few days ago, "Why are you so miserable? Aren't you a Christian who believes in God? If He's really up there, can't you pray and ask Him to remove all your problems, since He's all loving and forgiving?"


I said no, you don't undertand. You didn't try hard enough this time.


Who did?


Too many things have happened since the year started. I couldn't help but keep thinking about what drove me or gave me the power to surmount the hurdles life had placed before me all this while. There were times when i was almost on the verge of giving up, losing a battle and putting myself at the cliff, deciding whether to fall or to climb. Of all the numerous struggling and trying moments i went through, i have always emerged as the overcomer. And this time round, i want to do just the same, to win the match and be an overcomer.


I don't want to give myself up just because someone walked into my life, did some irresponsible things, and walked out of my life. I don't wana lose hope because i deserve a better life after so much. Why would i be fighting so hard all my life just to succumb to one silly mistake that someone has made?


And i learnt. I learnt along the way. I learnt the hard way. There were a thousand times when i didn't believe in miracles and there were also another thousand times when i believed in one. I have learnt what it means to be truly free of past wounds. I realised, the hardest thing is not just about overcoming every obstable that comes in your way but maintaining the positive outlook when seemingly similar recurring tragic incidents put you to believe that you don't deserve a better life. I mean why had all this happened? That i have Brokenness everywhere - Friendship, Relationship, Family, Career etc? That i have bits and pieces here and there that i can't seem to bring them together to complete the picture and feel Whole, for once in my life? Is it something that i have to live with for the rest of my life?


Why? Why God? Why can't You remove all my sufferings and allow me to live happily?


Because God has a vision for us. He wants us to be overcomers. For some who have been reading my blog, you should have realised the change of my belief towards God and all. Remember the story about a depressed man who questioned God about His existence during his trying moments? And he had had a dream about being with God on the beach; that when he looked back on his trail, he could see God's footprints beside his during his peaceful and easy time but he could witness only a set of footprints during his difficult and turbulent period. And God said 'That footprints were mine. Because i was carrying you on my shoulders'.


Yes, now i'm a living testament to His existence because of what i went through when i looked back. You'd want to be made of iron or have a heart of stone if you don't feel touched by His love. I'm going to journal it down, soon, because it's so precious. And God doesn't want to remove all the problems from our lives, because He wants to make us overcomers, and because we would only grow stronger in storms under His guidance.


Of all the storms which have tried to failed me, and of all the thunders which have tried to dampened me, i must have something which i have been holding so steadfastly to my heart to bring me through my difficult times. And it was my wish to build a Home, and to be part of a nice Home in which i can feel Whole, unbroken, intact, and united enough to love and be loved. I'm dreaming of a future moment of exorcising the ghost of my past life, of washing away of years of pain, of torture, of loneliness, of crying oneself to sleep, of begging and praying on bended knee, in the hope that a great day would somehow await me at the end of this long long journey.