I remember the day you first showed me you were with me.

I remember when nobody believed but you.

I remember the times you forgave me.

I remember your goodness and your blessings.

I remember the sound of your voice even in the times you were silent.

I remember the joy of being in your presence.

I remember why I still believe.

Yesterday I told God I was going back to Him and I felt joy and peace that I haven't known for a long time.

At lunch, eating my yoghurt and muesli with a fork and seated beside rows of wines, it suddenly struck me -- this feeling of bliss. There was a couple speaking in Cantonese in front of me, an ang mo family eating a hearty lunch a table away. And I was happy to be alone, to be in my own company, not having to please anyone or to have to make conversation or to eat proper food or to be mindful of table manners. Someone told me once that being alone is a gift, just like any other stage in our lives. And it felt like such blessed freedom as I spent this time reading Morgan's poetry, watching the transformation of the ordinary, reading, and writing some.

Wrote this there:

Alcove of wicker chairs sit ang mo family
Cantonese couple sip from groves of
vines.

Reading Edwin Morgan's poetry with left hand
eating with right fork only and
trawling it along yoghurt so can be seen
thin squiggly lines across
smooth white.
Imagine flying to Iowa tonight
where bus tracks make similar imprints on frost laden roads
less travelled.

Criss-crossing milk trails with Riesling sparkles
amber glow
Louis MacNeice snow --
poetry strolling along the edges,
stained red by strawberry juice
1pm magic.

Have been very interested in questions recently. I like to think of them following me, like strangers, yet already intimate with the details of my life...just like Sophie Calle's detective (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/dec/13/art.art), who followed her under the instructions of her own mother under the instructions of Calle herself.

En route to the Esplanade, there is an exhibition of questions that Singaporeans are supposedly afraid to ask. Questions like How high must I climb?

A random question on blogger:
If you could peer far enough into the night sky, you'd see a star in any direction you looked. When would you sleep?

At the Ethos launch on Friday, the guest speaker said that every story is a response to a question, an attempt to resolve this question and that act of resolution gives pleasure.

Someone told me: we must resist the urge to know everything in this world before we're 30, because that will never happen.

It won't?

Questions that have been on my trail for some time:

When will you appear again?

How long can a person stay in complete solitude?

Will I, one day, unaware, become accustomed to sadness?

Who is writing all this down?

“You are the one who writes and the one who is written.” -- The Book of Questions.

I saw G again today.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, should almost have known, because I was in t-shirt and shorts and worst of all, glasses, and no make-up at all. This one time, I had snuck out to run errands, forgetting my own mantra “always dress as if you were going to run into an ex-boyfriend”. If we were characters in a story, this is how I would have expected to meet you again. Real life manages to be both a lot more prosaic and a lot more dramatic at the same time.

I was taken by surprise.

Once I stepped into Guardian and spoke to the counter staff I knew the sheath of anonymity had somehow dispersed. You were a short distance away, surveying the range of a certain product with almost proprietoral pride. I knew. You half-turned and I, stunned by the revelation, mechanically followed the salesgirl to the back shelves where Vit C was stocked.

I must have looked different to you because you didn’t recognize me immediately. After a while, you strolled to the back, standing at a distance, at the shelf next to me, where you looked at me while I looked at the Redoxon the salesgirl was handing me.

I did not want to talk to you. Did not want to when I stopped answering your calls or when I started seeing someone else. And yet I wanted to talk to you. Our time together flashed past in an instant – phone calls, the first time you held my hand, and then dinners and arguments and inanities. All the time, I was quaking inside. Was that really you? Did I want it to be you? Does this mean acknowledging that things have changed between us, and that this furtive skirmish in a pharmacy (of all places), and not our last date, will be the last memory that I have of you and us.

I never knew that the living could haunt.

There was once when I absolutely refused to be the girl who marries her first boyfriend because I wanted my life to be exciting. And now, taking stock of my emotional life and the list of people I would not want to meet or at least not unless looking accidentally glamorous and totally together, and counting down the days like a hunted animal until I will have to see him or you or them again, I am really having second thoughts.

I know of someone who, after a full day at work, promptly falls into bed and sleeps, until the next sameness.

When I think of the same blanks, I panic and immediately go grocery shopping, draw up to-do lists of plans, annihilating vacant spaces.

Which of us has the correct answer?

I remember that night as I was coming home from cell and singing to You. I told you that even if, I would still love you and serve you and worship you.

I said that because I knew that I could trust you. These three years...the many things you have taught me, the many people you have brought into my life, the many times you picked me up, the words you spoke to me again and again and again. And that one truth, repeated in the classroom where I was having lesson obs, repeated in the interview rooms of HCI and MDA, repeated in the smiles of students, repeated in the constant reassurance and care of close friends, repeated in the words "I am with you", a hundred times over, at the book launch, in church, in school, in cell, in DEW. Over and over again, you said: be strong. I believe in you. I love you.

Even in the times I was feeling most insecure, inadequate and frightened, you were near. Even when I was unjustly angry with you, you were there. In November, in March this year.

Your love gives me strength. Apart from it, I know no other way of breathing, of living, of surviving. I want to be so much more for you, want to be always joyful, always peaceful, always thinking how I can be a blessing to others. I want to glorify you in all that I do; regardless of what is happening in my life, I want to glorify you.

I'm sorry that I have allowed other things, other people, to distract me, sorry that I'm still so painfully weak. It was only by your strength that I was able to get up again and make small steps towards you.

I was telling K that I don't want to keep saying I'm sorry to you. I know I must, but I don't want the only thing that I say to you to be forever starting with "I'm sorry". That's not the way I want my relationship with you to be like. I want to say thank you. I want to say I love you. I want to sing your praises, to speak of your goodness in the spring of my step, in the smile on my face, in the confidence of my identity.

I am the Daughter of the King.

I want to let people know, just by my being, my existence, my presence: my father is the King of Kings, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and He loves me dearly.

And because of that love, I shall say, I will no longer be afraid, no longer be anxious, no longer be worried. I will not let anyone steal my joy.

I will not be afraid.

I am not afraid.

It’s 6:24pm and I’m sitting in front of the computer, eating sweet rolls and thinking about H’s message on face book. It brings me back nine years when we were both competitive in some ways more than others, each wanting so much for our lives. That was the year we both fell for the same guy.

Nine years and countless guys later, we’re still friends. And she has just sent me a long congratulatory message telling me how happy she is for me, when she is going through yet another breakup herself. At this point, I am moved to the point of tears. Because she has just affirmed my theory that the best friends are people who manage to be happy for you in times of your successes as well as loyal in times of need. I felt truly blessed. I remember Z, who, when I was going through a difficult breakup, immediately put on her rescue cap and spent so much of her time helping me to build up my self-esteem. She was the one who taught me, together with E, how to swim. And not just literally. And S, who cancelled his lessons and drove down all the way to my place just to listen to me cry. Many, many, people, who listened to me, stayed with me, celebrated my successes with me.

If I am stronger today, it is because of love.

Just spent the day in the library, reading autobiographies...and a keen sense of fear and anxiety gnaws at me through the words. People seem more vulnerable now, compared to the past. A consequence of modernity, of modern life (cf. Giddens) How ironic it is that with new and improved forms of technology, we have come to feel more fragile than ever.

When I was a child, my dad used to tell people that I was afraid of nothing. I was always the one who wanted to go on rollercoaster rides, the one to laugh at my mum and sis, telling them there was nothing to be afraid of, while I went on the rides with dad. When I grew up, however, I lost that inexplicable bravado and became afraid of a whole host of things, real or imaginary. I wish so much right now that he were still around to tell me that there's nothing to be afraid of. I wish I were still the little girl who wasn't afraid of anything.

I am still holding on too tightly to the handbar, daddy. It's just that you're no longer beside me.

I don’t want my life to be a series of dashes, followed by full-stops. Waiting for messages, waiting for smses, waiting for weekends. I don’t want to constantly flash-forward, second-guess, flash-back; don’t want to only truly live one day out of seven, counting down to the next time I see him, counting the number of days since we met, counting my eggs before they hatch. Oh, what have I become. I have become that kind of person I know I would despise should I happen to meet them in person.

Impersonating me.

Who are you and what are you doing here?

What happened to the girl, who, just two months ago, wrote “This is me and I no longer want to care about what you think” or even one month ago, “I would rather lose you than lose myself.”

What is this emotion that threatens to paralyze me? The psychologists explain it like this: increased levels of dopamine in the blood make you more restless and unable to sleep at night. This I understand in a way I would if it were happening to someone else.

I still have so much I care so deeply about, so much to live for -- work, students, writing, ambitions, books, family, dreams.

I want to live. Every single day.

Please remember the person you were.

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, you strolled in. 

After a good lunch and superb conversation, I’m loving my life again. Went to Cellar Door with J. and talked about work, meaning, writers, feelings (I’d rather feel pain than not feel anything at all because then I know that I exist, she says) over very good walnut bread with hummus and basil pesto, white wine, minted lamb and muesli with yoghurt.

Does it take more to love yourself when you’re alone than it does to love someone else?

This is the seventh day you’ve not called and I no longer want to care anymore.