Flame

You are
A flicker of a flame
In the dark of a night
When day refused to come

A flame
That might die
Yet a small hope of time
Enough to save me from some

Breathless

Sometimes I feel like shouting at the world. I want to tell them my story. I want to tell them to stop. But I don't want to be pitied. I don't want to have to ask them to listen.

So I segregate myself from the world. Because then at least I can breathe a little.

Side Effects of Being a Law Student

1. Friends asking you for legal advice.
2. Not knowing the answers to your friends' questions so you tell them you're not qualified to give advice.
3. Friends insisting you answer in a friend-to-friend context so you answer something made-up with a million caveats.
4. Realising you don't know bat shit even though it's your third year in law school.
5. Asking yourself how the heck you got into law school in the first place.
6. Becoming an artist.

Black hole

Some people plan their weddings way before they're even eligible to tie the knot. I'm not one of them.

Instead, I've got my funeral planned out - a thick glassy coffin, a huge party and a final send-off by rocket into the closest black hole to be sucked in by gravity and crushed to smithereens....or maybe scare the living daylights out of some good folks in an alternate dimension, if any.

I like both.

Refrigerators

I have this theory that refrigerators cause amnesia. 

Almost every time I open the fridge door, I forget what I'm looking for until I close it back. There's something about the cool air circulating within that feeds on your memories. 

Maybe I'm doing so horribly in school because I study near the fridge. 

What an obscure evil.

Flowers

I really like flowers but giving someone flowers is like saying, "Look how pretty these are. Now watch them die."

Dying flowers make me sad.

Forgiveness

People make mistakes, but people are more important than the mistakes they make.

After awhile, you forget the wrongs. All you remember is the essence of the person, the worth of which far exceeds all wrongs.

Is this perhaps forgiveness? Understanding that the person is worth more than the pain.

Anal

I am so anal (some argue it's OCD) that when I was a child, my mother had to go through great lengths to convince me that side parting looked better than my absolutely symmetrical middle-parted hair.

Now I'm a better looking anal person.

Misanthrope

For awhile, I've been convincing myself that I'm a misanthrope. 

Now I realise I'm not. Not really. I'm just afraid. 

I hold people too close so I'm afraid.

Shadow

I remember when I was first introduced to my shadow. I flipped. Spent a day trying to get rid of it.

It's still around.

Time

I didn't understand a lot of things as a child, but the one thing I could comprehend was time.

I gauged everyone and everything by time.

Time revealed everything to me. Time revealed those I loved and those I didn't; those worth fighting for and those that weren't. Time revealed them all.

I didn't know this before but now I do: time taught me everything I know.

Mentally Ill

Staying up to complete an essay.

You know it's time to sleep when 4 cups of coffee and a Redbull don't lift the weights off your eyelids.

I realise you can be physically tired without being mentally tired but you can't be mentally tired without being physically tired. The mind drains the entire being.

Physical tiredness is easily dealt with. When you're physically tired, you sleep.

But when you're mentally tired, you think sleep would do the trick but it never really does. Sleep only gives you the physical energy to deal with your mental tiredness, which tricks you into believing that you're okay when in fact, you're still mentally drained.

Maybe this is how mental illnesses begin.

Uncertainty

Life is plagued with uncertainty. It makes me feel insecure.

So I try to do something, anything, to tip the probabilities in some direction, that I may have some sense of certainty.

But life is a rebel. It follows no one's plans. It disregards your goals. Its outcome may not reflect your efforts. 

It remains true to its essence - uncertain.

So here I succumb to life's uncertainty, not because I have broken free from my insecurities, but because I am at a dead end. I never had an option.

All I can do is to try to enjoy the ride, even if it breaks me.

The Beast

I woke to the sound of loud drumming. Red lions danced outside my window.

It reminded me of when my grandmother used to bring me around the neighbourhood of my father's hometown to catch the lion dance. Legend has it that the scary lion head, the colour red and the loud banging of the drums were meant to scare the beast that attacked the villagers on Chinese New Year. 

But it scared me instead. Maybe I am the beast.

The Malay Idiom that Describes My Life

I am no longer a big fish in a small pond. I've been thrown into a vast ocean called law school.

Except this ocean is drying up and the puddles are few.

So I flip about for dear life.

Nyawa-nyawa ikan.

Swimming

I don't know what possessed me to go swimming tonight. Something about the calm glistening waters that lures you to jump in.

Struggled through 1 lap then dragged my feet back home.

I was reminded of 3 things:

1. It's rather daunting underwater in the dark.
2. But so magnificent to look up into the glittery night sky as you drift across the surface of the waters.
3. The voice in my head that vehemently reminds me of how much I dislike swimming is almost always right.

Legs be wobbling.

The Night Sky

I dreamt of the night sky again. The stars lit the darkness like spilt glitter. The void surrounded me yet I was comforted.

The planets lined up to greet me. I could breathe in the vastness of the sky. I could breathe. The beauty of it all was so vivid, I was happy. I didn't want to wake up. 

But then I did.

Mean

"Why you gotta be so mean?"

"It's the only way I know how to make friends."

Adults

The scary part about becoming an adult isn't the increasing responsibilities; it's in realising that adults don't know any better and yet, are expected to.

Adults are just better at pretending. They pretend they like things they don't, that they don't care when they do or that they are happy when they are not.

Adults lie too. They just get better at covering it up. In fact, adults lie to themselves more than they do to others. They just get better at believing themselves. 

Adults make mistakes. They are just better at rationalising their way out of it.

Adults make mistakes. Constantly.

Perhaps the only comforting thought is that wisdom doesn't come with age, it comes with experience. At least this way, you learn to forgive adults. 

The Girl Who Chased After Bubbles

"Once there lived a girl who loved bubbles and because she did, she would often chase them. Little did she know, the more she chased, the more they disappeared. She chased and she chased, until the bubbles were all gone. Then she realised she should have just sat back and enjoy the view instead."

"What's the point? Even if she sits back and watch the bubbles float about, they'd still disappear."

"I suppose she realised that she could only make the best of it's ephemeral presence by enjoying the view. After all, some things are meant to disappear. Foolish, don't you think, how people waste their breaths chasing them anyway, thinking they could hold on to them?"