barely hanging on

and my fingers still smell, faintly, like the onions we peeled and broke so we could play our fancy games.

School's good. I think I'll make it to the end alive and well.
It's what happens after that that I am unsure about.

I didn't want it to escalate to this. Somewhere along the line, I began to do everything wrong. I fear I have made the worst mistake of my life, and there's no way I'm going to turn things around, ever again.

lyre bird and cameras

Hope and hopelessness. My life oscillates like a pendulum between three magnets; I can't seem to guess which way it will tend next.

I wonder if you think of me. I wonder if you don't. I will always watch from afar, I guess. The answers to some questions are always found by accident.

Love becomes hate; hate becomes sorrow. I don't think I'll save these flowers before they have blackened and died. I wish I could entrap these times when I laugh, even more these times when I cry, and keep them like photographs for a later day.

I wish it didn't have to happen this way. Circumstance can be a monster sometimes; it takes human relation, human emotion, to be playthings. There is no room in Fate for people. We all know that too well. But it's just as hard to accept, every time we realise it again.

Night is day and day is night. The struggles of life are measured now by the gaps between the stars, so much vaster than they seem from where we stand.

I feel it sinking in, the pressure of knowing I can only fall from here. By now, I'm sure they think I'm a genius. They can't see that I'm hanging by a thread. And I can't tell them so, because they will laugh at my 'modesty'. This is what you get for being at the top. No glory or fulfillment, only knowledge that you have a title to maintain, an honour to lose. It's like primary school, all over again.

There is enough of life left for all of us, enough to share around with everyone. But there isn't enough time in each of us to enjoy the life we have been given. Let's seize the day, and the night, and the leaves of bittersweet questioning trapped in the cracks between.

tired once again.

And congratulations to me; today, I ate Pizza Hut for the third time in four days. First before Divertimento (name of the piano ensemble concert), then yesterday with the astro members after Astrigue Challenge, and now for Easter celebration >D SKILLS :D

I loved yesterday. I really did. Yesterday just made me realise that I'm in great lack of real social connection with anyone. I need to sit down and talk with people more. I spend too much time using the computer and doing homework.

Speaking of which...no homework done. PI consultation on Tuesday. Oh someone just shoot me now.

Well, still, yesterday was worth it.

first blogpost from the garden

I just discovered that our WIFI reaches the table in the garden.

I can't believe I let them drag me onstage yesterday! I do not regret it one bit, but still--why was it me! I'm pretty sure someone else was worthier. It's nice to know they think highly enough of my piano 'skills' but I must say I think I failed them. I.e. screwed up onstage T.T

Never mind, I think all that matters to me is that they enjoyed it, and that they weren't disappointed, and maybe that I enjoyed it too. It's fun discovering your performance piece ten minutes before performing, whether or not the part you're playing is ridiculously simple (which it was, enough such that I felt the irresistible urge to improvise on top of it--and did). In fact I'm so very glad that it was simple.

It's also fun performing on the same stage as one of the A levels top scorers, and someone I can only assume is legendary to the masses for his music arrangement ability. And someone whom you've only known through Lanqiao's running jokes about his tannedness omggg xD

And it's wonderful hearing a piece of music that has a special place in your heart, being played by one of your best friends. I miss learning duets for exams! Petite Suite (YYYYY) T.T

Ending the day stargazing was only befitting. Even if we didn't even see Sirius. I really needed to bring myself back down from my excited state (lame chem double entendre ftw) from performing impromptu.

Still high (actually no, I'm always Low xD) even though it's Good Friday morning. Ohhh I need to calm down and read some Campbell!

Wicked: For Good

I've never watched Wicked, but if ever the chance comes, I'll jump at it and grip it with my teeth.

"Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun
(like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea),
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the woods
(like a seed dropped by a bird in a wood),
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you,
I have been changed for good."

gambling with blanks

I feel as if I just lost grip of all semblance of hope, of sanity. It's a different kind. I am walking on a thread-thin interim, impatient for the next moment's arrival yet reluctant to step into it.

The windows are dim, and my fingers are just spaces between shadows. Why are my hands so empty, my heart so full? I'm waiting for something that might not even come.

I hate this silence. But I feel as if breaking it will destroy all that I'm waiting for.

It always happens like this; I'm not unfamiliar with it. But not at this intensity. Not with this violence. There is no beauty to it. It's downright sickening. And yet I never want it to end.

Why do I find it so hard to speak the truth, when another's happiness is at stake? Why do I hide my opinions for fear of upsetting another? By the time I finally let down my false front and make the truth known, it has become dangerous enough to hurt, to stab.

Should your feelings matter to me? Because isn't it so, that if I speak the truth sooner, I'd hurt you less?

But what if I need to wait until I have no choice but to tell the truth? It's hard for me to hurt anyone's feelings. Until it's completely necessary. Or until it hurts me more than it could hurt you.

triangles

I never want to know what being in a love polygon feels like.

But I have a persistent feeling I'm about to enter one.

revolve

I do not like how this is going. Out of one mire and into another. Is it meant to be never-ending, this inexorable cycle beyond my control? Every week seems a little harder to weather. I come to school with my heart pounding, but why? Is that just a reflex, a phantom from when I was seven years old?

(Un)relatedly, I'm absolutely loving my social life--if 'social' it can even be called. I'm still finding new, shockingly good friends in people I've known, but never really known, for a few months. There are burdening chains I have yet to shake off, but I'll be free eventually. I can't believe I wreathed myself willingly in them, for nothing but blind compliance. But they'll be gone. I'll make sure of it. Because I can't be happy until I take their weight off my mind.

(Tomorrow is 2.4, but I have a good mind to skip. My legs are still aching from Monday. Maybe it'll be good for me to run, but I don't want to spend the break after PE dragging myself up the spectator stands.)

the seconds vibrate

Remind me never use the computer for so long at a stretch, ever again. Remind me to have more self-control.

I'm just wasting weekend after weekend in front of that accursed screen. I know I gain something, but do I gain that much from all those tens of hours?

It's robbing my time for everything else from me. Or do I just have too much to do, too much to fit into the 24 hours in a day, the 168 hours in a week? That's a lot of time. Why am I letting it slip past me like this?

you might want to skip this post.

This post is a much needed detox. Read at your/my own risk.


---

What is gender? Gender is a way of thinking. Gender is not determined by your physiology. Gender is not one-or-the-other. There are shades, tints; there is a gradient. I'm glad we're learning about this soon.

---

The fact that there are males around in school is finally sinking in. I wonder why it took me this long, when I've been surrounded by them, literally, for three whole months.

I'm downright terrified now, about what this means. About what this fact inevitably proceeds into. What if it becomes too complicated? What if someday, a guy will feel for me something I'll never return? I see it happening already, or at least I suspect I do. Or maybe guys are just that desperate for female attention.

I know how easily I can handle heartbreak (not that it's your conventional kind of "hearbreak"), but what about them, whomever I rejected, whomever never meant to reject? You know I'm the kind who hates perpetrating sadness in another. And while I'd do anything not to hurt feelings, I simply cannot force myself to return another's affections.

I hope I'm so unappealing no one even wants to feel that way towards me. I don't want to be caught in all this lying, all this running away. When all I really need to admit is, "I don't want to be with you". I'll never find it within me to say those words.

---

How strange, to think I'm blogging about BGR now. I thought I'd never have to concern myself with it. I wish this weren't life. I wish I could be completely isolated and apart from these issues. But it's happening all around me, and I'm part of it anyway; I didn't ask, it entered my life.

The question that closes the circle: do I like anyone? Maybe. But for me "liking" is just an elevated form of friendship, like what I have with my friends of seven years. Because I don't feel any sexual lust, I'll never have a benchmark on which to judge if this is romantic "liking". If wanting to befriend a guy the way I was drawn to my female friends is "liking", then why, I like a lot of guys. But that puts girls on the same level. Which means I like a lot of girls too.

So, am I straight? I highly doubt it. Am I bisexual? I've been asking myself that question too. And I have to admit this for once and for all: I don't know.

But there's something strange--I don't think you can classify me this way, since I don't feel for anyone in the sexual sense. All humans are humans, and my love for any of them is regardless of gender. Does that mean I'm asexual? It should be dizzying, but somehow all this makes perfect sense to me. Maybe I am.

In the end, all "love" is the same to me. Even my parents and siblings are about as much to me as my schoolmates. I know who my three most-loved people in the world are. They're all female. Only one of them is in my family.

I don't "love". I can't find it in me. Or maybe my unspeakable definition of "friendship" is, in fact, love. Maybe I just haven't met someone who can incite such an emotional response in me yet. Someone who can teach me the difference between "friendship" and "love".

Then again, all that matters to me is this: I know there are people out there who care. Who tell me they love me. I think that's enough for me. For now.

calculated boundaries of the window

But I've moved. The window's gone. Your chance has passed.

The sky tonight is perfectly clear, but that only makes me sad.

It's not that I don't know what to do. It's the guilt of knowing what I will have to do, invariably, eventually. It's the guilt.

I've scarcely felt so guilty before. So wrong. So clueless. So hopeless. I never asked to be a part of this, but is there anything I can do but know that I am to blame?

---

I used to let it happen, I used to act my part, because it made some people smile. I'm sure it brought them some sort of happiness, some form of genuine joy that only I could have given.

But there comes a point when you want it all to stop. When it's finally more than you asked for, and a little more will break you. And this is the fact. Literature and storytelling love the people who put neighbour before self, who will suffer for the sake of another. And I've always said "yes" to everyone, for deprecation of myself, for hate of being selfish, for fear of another's sadness,

but I'm tired of living for others, and tired of always acceding, and tired of pretending to smile, and pretending to love, just because it'll make them happy.

I don't want to seem self-centred. But I don't want to hide anything either. And the fact is, being selfless is more painful than you could imagine.

I wish, so deeply, so much, that I didn't care what people felt. That way, I could smash the chains of their hopes, their faiths, and walk away with my head still high and my smile still wide, keep their stories apart from mine. But I'm so afraid of breaking a heart, a soul, a spirit, that I don't even try to free myself. I don't even dare.

---

There's nothing much else I can do, but lament in virtual public and hope the ones concerned can deduce I'm referring to them..

And can I say, I don't want to be entrapped forever, I want to have the freedom to choose--and be forgiven for whatever pain I may cause, consciously or inadvertently?

the worst thing is

(...i can't tell anyone.)

I just realised how much of my life I just screwed up. What a big mess I've just gotten myself into. Oh God...... I can't believe how sickened I feel at the mistakes I've been making in the past weeks. How completely blind I was to the things I was doing wrong.

I can't believe how sickened I feel that I'm calling them mistakes. But I know I did it wrong. I did everything wrong.

I hope no assumptions have been made. I hope waiting silently isn't the only escape. I hope it's just a passing thing.

I hope I don't hurt anyone.

the secret branches of the air

Caged Bird in Springtime

(James Kirkup)

What can it be,

This curious anxiety?

It is as if I wanted

To fly away from here.

But how absurd!

I have never flown in my life,

And I do not know

What flying means, though I have heard,

Of course, something about it.

Why do I peck the wires of this little cage?

It is the only nest I have ever known.

But I want to build my own,

High in the secret branches of the air.

I cannot quite remember how

It is done, but I know

That what I want to do

Cannot be done here.

I have all I need –

Seed and water, air and light.

Why then, do I weep with anguish,

And beat my head and my wings

Against those sharp wires, while the children

Smile at each other, saying: “Hark how he sings”?

Because sometimes, it's worth asking why nothing seems the way you feel and know it should be, whether or not you know any better, or know any worse.

hope...

I think I should congratulate myself.

I love Literature. That is a given. I'm sure it's the only school subject whose love for I've managed to openly gush about to anyone so far.

But I don't love Literature half as much as Biology. Now. Biology makes the blandest lunch taste good.

But my love for Biology can't even begin to compare with my love for Chemistry.

Chemistry is like music, but tangible.

Right now, unsurprisingly, Math is my least favourite H2 subject. But I don't hate it at all.

I'm actually beginning to hope, for once, that I'll do well for the A levels.