14 February

..."The day of love"

Lately, if there was one thing that I think about when it comes to love is that, just like the desert sun, it can be extremely unforgiving and that's not always, if ever something we can control.

Nevertheless, I found a rather nice "Love defined by..." on the net and thought it'll make a nice post for this year. 

LOVE defined by...

a 5 year old girl: Love is when he slips me a little note on the playground that says, "I ♥ U"

an 8 year old girl: Love is when he takes my chocolates and comes back with its wrappers.

a 12 year old girl: Love is when we work on a project and he intentionally touches my hand to get a pen.

an 16 year old girl: Love is when we get caught bunking and he takes the blame.

a 21 year old: Love is when he values my opinion above all others and when he sticks by me when the hardest hits.

a 26 year old: Love is when he proposes to me with a rose and says, "You know I love you."

a 35 year old woman: Love is when he cleans the house after he sees that I'm tired.

A 45 year old woman: Love is when he's been faithful to you not because it's his duty to but because you are and will always be the only woman for him.

a 55 year old woman: Love is when he is ill but still cracks a joke just to make me laugh.

a 65 year old woman: Love is when he takes my hand and gives me the same loving smile that he first gave to me 40 years ago.

an 80 year old woman: Love is when he is taking his last breath he says, "I'm happy that I got to know what love really is."

Turning 21

For weeks the day has loomed ever closer and now, in just a few hours (~3 hours to midnight) I'll turn 21. Although I was born at 6.05 pm on the 31st, it is called birth-DAY.

Turning 21

It doesn't feel any different from turning 20, at least not physically. I suppose mentally, it does feel somewhat different. Who am I kidding? It does feel a hell lot different. Turning 20 was in itself a big turning point - it marked the end of an era of being a teen and I got a new first digit after a decade. Turning 21 will be an even bigger turning point. 

21. The first mark that you're "officially" an adult. 

21. The legal age all over the world for pretty much everything. 

21. I'll no longer get away with half the things I would have otherwise been able to before, not when the world expects a level of calm maturity of someone that's 21 (or one would think so anyway).

21. It hasn't really sank in yet. Somehow, I never quite imagine myself at 21. It seems somewhat surreal. I still can't quite imagine myself 21 even now. From this side of the room, it looks like a mighty big number.

21. Twenty one. T.W.E.N.T.Y. O.N.E. - S.U.R.R.E.A.L.

Just like the turn of a new year, at the turn of a new age, I can only hope that it'll be a good next 365 days - that's as good a birthday wish as any.

I wonder what 21 has in store for me.

"Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest" (Larry Lorenzoni)

Final goodbyes and new beginnings

Since this is my first post of the year, I shall officially welcome 2012 with open arms

and also wish the world a happy new year *confetti and streamers!*

Today marks exactly 1 week since me and my sister moved into our new house. I've looked forward to moving for a long time now but still when the time to leave finally came, I was filled with thundering waves of nostalgia. Since the first moment I landed in Australia (exactly 2 years this coming February 16), I've only known one house, one home. Everything that has happened since has happened while I was living here. All the memories (good, great, bad, and terrible) that I've accumulated in Australia I've accumulated while sheltered under this roof.

Final goodbyes

A lot of my memories of my time here in Australia had strong associations with this house I've called home and in some odd ways, leaving the house felt like I was leaving behind a part of my life. For all the rat poo I pooed about this place (not having my own room was one), I really was and am going to miss it.

Me and my sister in front of the place we've called home for the past 2 years - taken right before we drove away to our new house, 15/1/12 (Sun)

Moving to our new house in a new suburb (a good 15 km away from our previous house) also meant that I'll no longer be able to continue my routine of going to Curves everyday as I have since July last year. This is yet another part of my life that I was going to miss. I had some great times here at the gym, met some wonderful people, and have genuinely enjoyed the workouts.

Me and one of my favourite trainers, Lynette - taken right after my final workout at Curves, 13/1/12 (Fri)

Over the course of six and a half months since me and my sister joined Curves, both of us managed to surpass the 100th workout milestone (135 for me and 105 for my sister) and hence making it on the milestones board on the wall.

Highest attendee for December 2011. Got highest attendee for 4 out of the 6 months that I was at Curves - not bad if I'd say so myself.

And finally, got my own balloon on the birthday board at Curves before my time there was up. Can you spot my name? 

New beginnings

Moving to a new place, just like a turnover of a new year, feels a lot like getting a new slate. This moment was as good as any to start anew - new place, new year, new beginnings. Though I have no way of knowing how 2012 is going to play out, how it's going to end, I can only hope that for most parts, it will be a good year.

To us all.

A thing called Hope

"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness." (The Architect, Matrix Reloaded)

While I was living through the aftermath of a breakup, which was needless to say an emotionally scarring experience, I had a couple of people recommend that I read Eat, Pray, Love - possibly a good avenue to take my mind off things and also perhaps pick up a thing or two from Elizabeth Gilbert. The book's popularity spiked with the release of the movie late last year and after hearing countless mentions of it, including one from Koothrappali (The Big Bang Theory reference), I thought I'd give the book a go - why not.

Despite the many positive reviews and testaments of how the book changed people's lives, I must say I didn't care much for it. Don't get me wrong - I think it's great for Gilbert to have had gone through what she went through in the beginning and by the end of her journey, managed to "find herself" again. However, others (like me) don't have the same luxury of going through eat, pray, love periods in Italy, India, and Bali. I couldn't have packed up my bags, leave everything behind, and go anywhere let alone go on "a journey of self discovery". I had no choice - I was smacked right in the middle of 2nd semester. I had to live through what I did exactly where I was.

In the month that followed, I've never been more acutely aware how cruel hope can be when it's the only thing I had to hold onto (directly relating to the relationship/breakup), the only thing I had left at my lowest point. What do you do when your last beacon of hope is hope?

"In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments." (Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human)

On hindsight (or to anyone looking in) that may seem like a stretch and could be construed as blowing it "over the top" but I certainly did not think so then, I couldn't have thought so then. After it happened, I hoped that it wasn't permanent, that he would want to make it work and that he would have cared enough about me to not let it all slipped away. It was hope that tied me to him for as long as my mind would refuse to simply let it go. It was literally the only thing that was left - hope. I felt like a drowning man clutching on a straw. Although I knew it was fruitless, although I knew that it wouldn't make a difference of me trying to reason things out, I still hoped. It was then I faced hope with a bitter resentment because I knew that while it was the only thing that I had left to cling to, all the hope in the world couldn't change what's happened.

"Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity." (Robert G. Ingersoll)

Sometime later, I chanced on another book, "Annexed" (Sharon Dogar) - a historical fiction based on Anne Frank's diary. It wasn't until 2 months later that I finally got my hands on "The Diary of a Young Girl" (Anne Frank).

These 2 books I would call a life-changing. "Annexed" and "The Diary of a Young Girl" delved me into a another world, into a different time. It made me see and realise how much we take for granted, even the simplest and littlest things like running around under the sun and the ability to step outside for a breath of fresh air.

"An empty day, though clear and bright,
Is just as dark as any night." (Anne Frank)

"Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier." (Author Unknown)

It would have been easy to have let thoughts of doubts and an unhappy ending consume the lives of those living in the secret annex but Anne (and everyone around her) was very hopeful until the very end. They had no control of what was happening and all they could do was get on with their lives as normally as they could while in hiding, hope that the war would come to an end and that they'll be free again. Right until the end, the residents of the secret annex were hopeful and they clung on that hope of freedom. They didn't survive to see the end of the war (except for Otto Frank) but hope (on top of everything else) kept them alive for the duration that they remain hidden.

"Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark." (George Iles)

When I read these 2 books, I saw life in a different perspective and I realised that there were things far larger than us, how simple we have it now. It was then the monstrous weight of the heartbreak slowly begin to fade - such a thing felt somewhat insignificant while I was reading about the 8 lives of the secret annex.

"Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route." (Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld)

HOPE

We cling to it in our lowest moments and when we have nothing left.
We turn to it when we want things to go well, whether it's something in our control (outcome of an exam - depending how well prepared you are) or not (a war).
It gives rise to a dispirited nation. When the world says, "Give up," hope whispers, "Try one more time."

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wit and watch and work; You don't give up." (Anne Lamott)

"What if..."

24th December - Christmas Eve. Funny how I couldn't have been further away from where I was a year ago today and yet still be in the same place. Yet another mention of how much things change in a year. Nevertheless, I'm here now.

If there was one thing I'd want for Christmas (not necessarily Christmas - anytime would be good seeing that this is something I've been thinking about for a long time) is a device that shows the different outcomes to questions of "what if" (like the What-If Machine from Futurama). 

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could see how different our lives would be had we chose a different path or what would the world be like if we did/didn't...or what if the world was different from how we know it to be like today? Telly (among other things) tells me that I'm not the first one to have thought such a thought (quite obviously).

The following list of shows all explore the different scenarios of "what if": Anthology of Interest I and Anthology of Interest II (Futurama) - "What if Fry hadn't fallen into the freezer-doodle and come to the future-jiggy?", "What if Bender (the robot) was human?"; Road to the Multiverse (Family Guy) - "What if Christianity never existed?"; Turn Left (Doctor Who) - "What if Donna never met the Doctor?"; The One That Could Have Been (Friends) - "What if Rachel had married Barry?"; It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (The Muppets) - "What if Kermit (the frog) had not existed?"

The biggest "what if" I ponder on (like Kermit did in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie) is, "What if I didn't exist?" 
I wonder how different would the world be. On the grand scheme of things - (dare I say) perhaps not much different. Perhaps. Did I, even if a little bit, make a difference to the world? I can imagine that the lives around me would be somewhat altered. For one thing, my sister wouldn't be living with me now (seeing that I don't exist). Would she be in Perth at all? If not Perth, then where and doing what? The same thing she's doing now? My uni mates would have gotten a different group member for their project. Would they have done worse/better on the assignment? The lives that I've touched and the people I've met, even if for the briefest of moment, I was a presence in their timeline. How much of a difference did I make?

Questions of "what if" based on choices or events that could have gone differently (chronologically ordered from my earliest memories to now):
1. What if dad had chosen to do his Masters in UK instead of US? - Would I be speaking in a British accent and be saying words/terms like "blimey" and "absolute tosh" more often? (not that I say them much/at all now)
2. What if I didn't skip a grade? (having gone straight to grade 5 from grade 3) - Would I still have gotten the opportunity to study Engineering in Australia after high school on my scholarship? Would I be studying something completely different? Would I be somewhere else entirely now?
3. What if I chose not to be a prefect in high school? - How different would my high school life have been? Would that choice have changed the person I am today?
4. What if I had gone to University of Melbourne instead of University of Western Australia? (like I wanted to) - I would have met different people, done different things, lived a different life. How different would that life have been like?
5. What if I chose to not have gone to event A/B/C and I've never met you, you, or you? 

Other questions of "what if's":
1. What if I had 2 siblings instead of just 1? What if I had an elder brother or a younger sister? What if I had both? What if I was a boy?
2. What if they've discovered electricity 100 years earlier?
3. What if the internet never existed? - Well, this blog wouldn't be around for one thing.
4. What if Steve Jobs never came up with the idea of Apple?
5. What if apes ruled the world?

It's an infinite list of what if's and such is life, many of the questions will go unanswered. Because such a device does not exist (yet - that I know of anyway), we can only wonder (until such a device comes along) of what would have been and could be and that's all we're left with - wonderment. 

Labels

Today I spoke to someone I haven't seen for nearly 4 months and for that someone to be a person I used to see every other day, 4 months can seem like an awfully long time. That got me to thinking - this time around it was 4 months but this could very possibly stretch into longer periods of time, an infinite period of time even. What if we never meet again? 10, 20, 40 years from now, will you remember me? And I, you?

"You don't have to be a label. You can just be Celastra."

"You never know. 20 years from now, you might only remember me as the girl that..."

Don't get me wrong - "label" is a terrible word for a person and I'm sure we don't make it a habit of putting people under "labels" but it's one of the ways our minds associate a face with a name - if we remember the name at all in the end that is.

Whether it's a good ("the smart one"), bad ("the one that got caught shoplifting"), or neutral ("the one with the short, brown hair") association, everyone will at some point of their life be associated with one, for lack of a better word, "label" or another and to different people, depending on the impression you've left, you'll be remembered in different ways.

Labels. What an odd word (for a person). I suppose it's not really label per say that I'm trying to get at - just the ways we're remembered. I wonder, how am I remembered? How are you?

Chapter 20 - The Adrian Files

It's the last day of November. 334 days into the year and 103 days since the break-up (not that I was counting - Wolfram Alpha told me that).

I had my worst moments in the first half of 2011 and that took a terrible toll on me. When uni first started again earlier this year, for reasons I may or may not comprehend (besides the fact that I found my units to be terribly difficult), life took a downward dive. I sank into what seemed like a bottomless pit and on the night of 20th August, the night I found out first hand what a heartbreak meant, that truly was the deepest point (if such a thing could exist in a bottomless pit). The thing about getting your heart broken is that you can never (and I say this out of experience) possibly imagine its true magnitude until you're living through it. We hear about it and we see it happen all the time to people around us, we see it in countless movies and we read about it in countless books but it wasn't until today that it finally hit me - this was no child's play. It's as real as it would get and for 2 weeks after, I found myself on my hands and knees (though not quite so literally) trying to rectify what I already knew was unrectifiable, a position I can only hope I never find myself in again.

- Patrick Star (SpongeBob: Valentine's Day/The Paper #1.16)

(Well, I don't really think that and I can honestly say that the thought hasn't even cross my mind once but I came across the picture on the net and thought it was hilarious. For one thing, it's Patrick!)

For the past 3 months, when I jotted down thoughts of you, it was more often than not thoughts and words of reasons why and questions of how and wonderings of what. Over the months, I've lost count of the number of times I've told myself that I was ok only to have something set off my emotions again - a memory...a smell...a song...a phrase...a word. And I didn't want to write anything directly related to what happened before this moment today because I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be able to help it if something remotely resentful came across in my writings (like when I had recurring thoughts of "how could you have not cared enough in the end", which is a somewhat resentful thought and I am not a resentful person). That is not how I want to remember you; with a tainted memory of tragic and despair, not when there was a time in my life when you were the reason behind my smile and I was the reason behind yours. 

I always did take for granted that "forever" will always hold true, whatever happened. It was pure ignorance that I thought I would be above the hurt and the pain and that I would forever escape the knowledge of what it means when someone says "heartbreak". 

The thing about heartbreak or anything of the like is, sooner or later you'll realise that:

Words to live by

And so, even though the world can feel like such a cruel place to live in, realise that there is nowhere else. In the end, it's not really a choice. We can't do anything other than to forge on and live through the hurt and (possibly) take it as a lesson learned. The one upside of being a student at a time like this is that the monumental task of back to back assignments for 13 weeks straight without break forced me to soldier on even when I just wanted to curl under my sheets and lay there. 

If I had the knowledge I have now, I would have been perfectly content with keeping you as my best friend. There would have been less expectations and clearer boundaries but I couldn't have because it was you that gave that knowledge to me.

Through all the thoughts of reasons why

Through all the thoughts that made me cry

I still remember a time once when

You were nothing more than my best friend.

One of the many terrible aftermaths of a break-up is that sleep was constantly being plagued by dreams of you. The first few weeks after it happened, the nightmares that haunted me were enough to make me dread the thought of going to sleep and so, I subconsciously ended up staying up later and later and even when I tried to have an early night, my mind would refuse to shut down and endless thoughts swirled through my head. Even now, I still have dreams where you are a character of either a plausible scene or a pure nonsensical one. The worst thing about dreams is that in the end, that's all it ever is. Your mind conjures up all sort of possible scenarios that is unlikely ever to happen. 

It was easier for you than it was for me

The scars of the pain will always run deep

And although our story did not end well

On those sad thoughts I shall not dwell.

I'm finding it harder to remember the best memories of us now that memories of a heartbreak overlaps it. The moments when it truly did feel like the promises of forever would always hold true - they're memories of a lifetime ago but if I quiet my mind and not think about the heartaches, it's almost easy to remember again.

I’ll always remember our story we’ve painted

I refuse to allow that memory be tainted

So, I put on a smile and got on with my life

And I did everything I could to survive.

I listened to Shadows and A Perfect Midnight last week. It was the first time I've listened to your songs again after 3 months, the first time that your voice drilled itself into my head. I've almost forgotten how you sound like and now that I'm listening, it does bring comfort realising that I'm not listening with resentment, anger, or bitterness; only that I think about the time of what once was and that I miss talking to you, the you I knew last year.

I still think about the roads that we’ve crossed

And I still feel the grief of all that was lost

It was only months after that I finally could see

The one simple fact of “weren’t meant to be”.

We've drifted apart for a long time now and it's always been because I thought you didn't care enough but perhaps that is unfair for me to say. Perhaps you did care. I honestly don't know. Sometimes, even if for the briefest of moments, I find myself wondering what you saw in the last few months and what you were really thinking. Deep down, maybe I've always known that we only had that summer last year and that's all it ever was. I crumbled after that and you pulled yourself further away until you were only but a presence behind the veil. 

When you whispered to me that I wasn't just another chapter, I was the rest of it, I couldn't have possibly known that it would only hold true until you felt differently. Perhaps our lives were never meant to be intertwined for longer than the time it took for us to serve our intended purposes. I was your breath of fresh air when you were drowning in an unhappy relationship of 4 years, a spot of sunshine after an endless streak of cloudy days...you were the person that gave me that 3 months of summer, the person that taught me what the word forever could mean, the person that spoke to me every single line in the book that there's nothing else anyone can say after this that I haven't already heard and so I know better now. 

Adrian, you were both a blessing and a lesson in the end. For weeks after, when I tried to understand and come to terms with the situation, I found myself wondering if I would for a moment wish we've never met so that I wouldn't have had to live through this. 3 months and 10 days on - the amount of time when I can finally say that for most parts, you were indeed a blessing to me, a great one. Of course I would not wish that I've never met you, not when you gave me 2010, not when you gave me a new outlook on so many things I didn't know before and couldn't have possibly known if it wasn't for you. Although the memory of that night of the 20th will never be of a pleasant one, I resurfaced after that - again something that might not have been possible if it wasn't of you and what you did.

Chapter 20 - The Adrian Files. You may have told me once, in a lifetime ago that I wasn't just another chapter but as it turns out, life had different plans for us. We were in the end, just a chapter in each other's book and while that chapter was being written, it was a page turner.