musing

so, i was super contemplative last night, and i thought i should just jot some thoughts down, coherent or not.

met with two really good friends of mine, and when i say really good, i mean i would call one of them my best friend, and the other, one of the only friends i've felt that i should keep in touch with. *more on this later

i was really looking forward to meeting up with them and catching up on old times. you know, heart-to-heart and really connecting. i have a thing about connecting. i need to feel intensely, absolutely, purely connected. there is no thrill like that in the world-- the feeling of being "one" with each other, completely and sublimely together. and hey, that can be done with your friend ok, it doesn't have to be just with your spouse. Pan's youngest sister shared with me a quote the other day that she said rocked her world, and honestly, it took my breath away as well. it read "Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleeting, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity had come to enrich time. Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in them, and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn, human life continued to throb."

and that throbbing of my heart when that magical interlude falls upon us, wow. you can literally feel time, your time being etched in crystal for all eternity, yours to keep. it has happened many times with D, whom i would call my best friend, but like in many relationships, time and space seem to have brought us in different directions, and i feel like i cannot connect with her as well. it's like you're probing, probing, feeling in the dark for the other hand to hold on to, only to realize later on that all your efforts were futile because she was somewhere else.

i'm gonna be honest here, i felt like a country mouse next to town mouses D and X talking. while they yabbered on about people whom i have forgotten about/never bothered to cultivate a relationship with/have never met but have heard so much about, i am dismayed by the realization that my mom had warned me that living in the midwest has turned me into a country bumpkin, which i had angrily and egoistically rejected.

maybe it is true. while X had on sexi mini shorts, a see-through blouse and kick-ass earrings (not to mention a totally gangster dragon tattoo around her waist), and D had on silhouette-flattering all-black work clothes, i was in a blue and white summer frock and a grey sweater, looking completely the part of a frumpy FOB. i had nothing witty to say, no important musings to contribute nor idealistic impressions to impress upon them. i had nothing but a orange-scented home-made body scrub to offer as a present to D, that and a beer-drinking gut (thanks, Midwest breweries).

what do I do now? do i bow to the seductive powers of Singaporean society and wriggle my way back in, mascara and sex-appeal in excess? or do i quietly make my way back to the midwest and great danes and my elderly neighbors with whom i have so tenderly made friends with? have i gotten it all wrong? have i misunderstood Singaporean culture? D told me about her group of friends (background: all rich and well connected by birth or marriage, SMU kids, cultured and well-travelled, fabulous and met through SMU cheerleading) (yeah, cheerleading. i'm stereotyping now, so bite me.) who all coincidentally are travelling in Europe now; all the big cities-- Barcelona, Paris, Milan, etc-- and alas! D is there every year for work but this year, what fate-- she is not, so they whatsapp her for her suggestions on where to eat in Versailles. Look, i don't mean to be snarky, D has worked her ass for all her experiences and to get to where she is, but really. does one not see how privileged and utterly frou-frou their lives are? just to be able to spout eating places in Versailles speaks acres about their global conquests.

maybe i have gotten it wrong. D told me how one of those friends had forgotten to bring her makeup bag with her on her trip and i asked, false sympathy apparent "oh no, how was she coping?' and D's forehead scrunched, as if she could not comprehend how i could be so shallow to think that her friends could not live without makeup. maybe i am the shallow one for assuming people live like that? maybe i assume that people make friends through similar outfits and made-up faces?

maybe's aside, how can i identify myself with a group of friends like that? let it be clear, this is not a case of sour grapes. i don't wish to be part of this group, or anything close to it. i don't, i just cannot see myself as being part of a clique.

ironically, that same day in the afternoon, in a restaurant  4 doors down the road from where X, D and I met for dinner, Mr Pan, his mom, said youngest sister and i had lunch, where i remarked to sister "when someone tells you she doesn't belong to any clique, it's usually simply because she doesn't have any friends". i speak from experience because i certainly have no true group of friends. I make friends quickly, but am just as quick to disconnect because (this is where the * would link to) i simply don't feel the ability to connect as sublimely. or the desire to search for that connection with them. when that connection is not there, i feel as if it's not anything i want, that there's nothing much in it for me. maybe i am just greedy.

with D, like i said, there were so many moments, like lying in her parents bed wondering about the future, like walking down the road in the dead of the night talking about life. with X, it was the many nights we binge drink like huge party sluts, and i help her up to vomit in public (i am quite a champ). who else can i feel this unadulterated sense of life with? who else can i connect with to feel the truth of the world and of the universe? how can i make that connection? i am 26, doing research at a university, and waiting to hear back about my phd application. where, how, why, when, will i ever feel the same wild abandon that irrevocably tied me to these random strangers so that i can call them my friends?

i don't know. i just feel a yearning to call them back.

i look to the past so often, many times in my dreams i fall back through time into those days. i can accurately remember my primary school building, my friends' faces as they were when they were 10, i can remember my old homes and fears, feelings and activities. i yearn for those days as intensely as i yearn for happiness. i ache inside for my soul to rekindle the type of emotions i once felt. but does that mean i am not happy now? no, i am as comfortable and happy as i could ever be. i am fortunate for the family i have acquired for myself. acquire, i say because i have worked, i have made choices, i have made sacrifices for them. all conscious, all deliberate; "I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul." i have what i desire, and yet what more i desire, i cannot have because it is in the past.

 Mr Pan told me last night, after i had disclosed some of these thoughts to him, that people change. our goals in life have changed course, people head in different directions. i agree with him, but in my heart i feel defeated by time and space for taking way the ones i love and loved to spend time with. i feel cheated by life, i feel jealous that they have moved away from me, and i am angry that we are no longer on the same planes of thought.


i need to get back to writing-- this felt good. completely self-centered but good.