i know.

i know it's hard.

i know it's hard when you stand alone, sit alone, lie down on your bed all alone, waiting for the screen of your handphone to be illuminated, to illuminate your heart and your downcast eyes, but you fall asleep waiting for an sms that never comes.

i know it's hard, to stand in a crowd of people so joyous and feeling so unsupported, so unnoticed. i know it's hard when the year rolls by and the day comes around again, and it's all deja vu and downhill from there as you feel desperate, grasping at any available straws to prove to everyone, to prove to someone, to prove to YOURSELF that you're wanted, that you're needed, that you're someone's someone, that you can be important too.

i know it's hard. i know it hurts.

my dearest darlings, thank you for sharing. thank God for sharing. and thank God for healing.

i've been through it all myself, too. how many times has it been when i've gone all out, flinging caution to the wind, throwing all sensibility out the window, and so very nearly catching the feathers of my stumbling wings on the traps of the wiondows of life? how many times has it been when i've pawned all my dignity, all my self-esteem, all my rationality, in a wild bid for love and acceptance, only to find that the very thing or person that i've placed the entire soul and shell of my persona on is a bankruptcy cheque waiting to bounce in my face. how many times have i faced the pillow at night, saltily and vengefully asking myself why i'm so bloody worthless and useless. how many times have i banked my entire self-worth on something so fragile, so transient, so visceral, so mortal, so doomed-to-failure, so doomed-to-die?

were they worth it? no, they weren't. was i convinced that i really, really, really could get happiness by clinging on to what the world tells me is the key to happiness? deep down, no. my heart, with each disappointment, turned sour and cynical. distrustful and vengeful. spiteful. wanted to get back at my failures by commoditizing. by compartmentalizing. by returning conscience to my heartbroken Father.

i didn't know. i knew it hurt, i knew it was wrong, i knew it was wretchedly dastardly.
i didn't know that Jesus was holding out His bleeding heart to me, while i flung myself like a cabin-fevered bird against the steel bars of the cage i've built around myself. i've set a dungeon for my hopes, and cast my soul into despair. meanwhile, meanwhile, i turn a blind eye to a love that is faithful and patient, a love that is tortured and in pain, a love that loves me and is not returned, while i lament the lack of return on my own feeble attempts to show love.

how much do you love me?
i love you as much as i would take time out to be with you (but thinking of the many other things i could have done otherwise).
i love you as much as i am faithful to you (but in my heart, i see you as just another girl who can pass away neatly out of my life when another better one comes along).
i love you as much as i am willing to go out with you, even with my friends (as a prize, a trophy, to show off that i am capable of having a girlfriend).
i love you as much as it takes for you to stop asking me how much i love you (so long as you don't come intruding into the privacy of my life, my thoughts and my choices).
i love you, viscerally, physically, transiently.
i love you, with conditions, with inhibitions, with private secrets.
i love you with judgment, with reservations, with embarrassment (when you're dumb, stupid, untrendy, ugly, fat, lazy or otherwise laughable by my peers or family).
i love you til the day we break, and then i'd hate you, i'd forget you, i'd ignore you, i'd say you're emo, you're drama, you're unworthy.

Jesus.
how much does He love us?
He loved us just enough to be torn apart from His Father in heaven.
He loved us just enough to be born as man to a mortal woman.
He loved us just enough to be ridiculed, insulted, doubted.
He loved us just enough to to persecuted, to be dragged away by Judas' lies to a lonely, wretched, accursed place with two other tainted characters, without a fight, struggle or arguments.
He loved us just enough to be filled with sadness to be separated from us, even though we accused him of things He did not do, and we killed Him with our own nails, thorns and hands, for His love.
He loved us just enough to conquer death and sin for us, and to prepare an eternal seat of glory at His right hand for us.
He loved us just enough to be with us every single moment of our lives, standing beside us in every single thing we do, giving us moral support that doesn't quaver with fatigue or end when the EPL matches start, giving us strength that doesn't run away in cowardice or with mortal limitations, giving us a hope that never fades, a warmth that is as close as a heartbeat away.
He loved me enough to stand by me in my darkness, by planting souls so bright and kind and loving that they redefined the darkness into a place lit by love.

i wouldn't even consider giving up this love. nothing on earth could ever exceed it, or even approach it in a tenth of its magnitude. i'd be a fool to think that i could carve my own happiness by bending others' wills to mine.

oh God, forgive me for my transgressions against Your will. i submit with a joyful heart, a willing heart, an eager heart, to what You have in store for me. i know that in Your own timing, You will bring the right person into my life. in my own timing, in my own plans, i have tried so, so, so hard to do what You did not want me to, and felt so, so, so tired and destroyed by all of it. thank You for showing to me Your love. thank You for standing there to guide me gently onto Your path. thank You for taking away all the pain and frsutrations that i have heaped upon myself so foolishly in the past. thank You for taking my burden, my stripes, my shame upon Yourself and casting them to eternal damnation with Satan. thank You, Lord, for washing away my tears and soothing my heart with Your words, with Your tender love. i never want to leave You, and i never want to be away from being blessed with Your grace and mercies. so Lord, wouldn't You shield my dear friends, wouldn't you show them the very same love that You have shown to me so kindly. Lord i pray that even right now, You are speaking with them, and You are being heavy in their hearts. That Your presence is so strong in their lives, that they cannot but be compelled to fall to their knees to praise You, to thank You, to seek You. and Lord, You will just be so strong for them, in their weakness, and You will manifest Your will so firmly in their lives, that their eyes and hearts and minds will be astonished by how perfect Your will is for them, and they will never again seek to be anywhere but next to You. in Jesus' name, Amen.

it's been very, very long since i came in here. to expunge memories and things that i tread in, on and about... mundane things that anchor me to the reality of life.

i've already faded where i was in bangkok, so anand ivan and guys, do forgive me for a less than complete trilogy of my very very transient, very very passionate expenditure of life there.

i promise, i will complete it. one of these days, before school reopens and i'm tossed back into the numbing routine of schoolwork, i will.

because, as the past few weeks have shown me, life is, really, quite underrated.

there're people who wish to relinquish their hold on life at this very moment. it's almost as if a tendril of their dark, maroon-tainted-black thoughts travels across continents and time to reach me, because i've feel feeling so acutely the loss of life over the past few days. no, i'm not being morbid... it's rather indescribable. nothing faintly creepy about it at all, either, just a heightened sense of how tangible, physical and visceral life can be. as opposed to what we so-oft take it for - granted. besides the cliche about the beating of the heart and all that, i can also feel my brain and its cohabiting vessels pounding, thudding, being alive. i can spend an hour watching the little polygonal shapes making up my skin and the little hairs poking their heads up like a toddler learning to stand between the polygons. i examine my eye in the mirror, looking at (and past) the little lines on the brown iris. i lie on my bed and feel the various systems housed neatly inside the mesenchymal derivatives (bones and flesh, my dears) operating, pulsating perhaps, along with arterial spurts. it's almost like i've taken to reading myself, savoring every word, like an anatomy textbook. which is really queer, considering that i've never truly liked anatomy for its tedium and onerous memorizations.

and of course, with life comes death. and funnily enough, the concept of death seems to exert itself in a different form in the past few days as well. just last night i had a protracted dream where i was part of a team. i couldn't tell you, in all honesty, if it was a clean, sanitized version of the reception room at the FOC campsite (which had a fridge just like the one in the dream) or an impression from Fast Food Nation's sterile workrooms. anyway it was mostly white, with many fridges. it was a place that was at once familiar and yet a stranger, something like deja vu but not as explicit. i found myself in the midst of many people, whom i know, and yet didn't. i couldn't tell their names, for example. i knew i knew them, but who were they? we were all being held in a very small room. and now i really am rather convinced that it was the SU campsite, because what happened after that was that even though the air conditioning was kept on, people began to suffocate from the placement of airtight sheets over the airvents on the door. and the story zoomed forward after that (i assume) because then suddenly i was again surrounded by a flurry of animated people, many of whom were in pairs, lugging bodies between them. the bodies were, strangely enough, all wrapped in sheets, not exposed. it was a massive case of unidentified bodies, bodies without identities, and mass graves spring to mind. i was roped in to help as a medic, which i insinuated from the next task that i was given: to triage a young caucasian male whose body was horribly curled upon itself and twisted grotesquely from the cold. someone had opened a fridge and gasped, finding him inside. in fact, there was a very certain knowledge that most, if not all, the dead were found in fridges. this one was wedged in the sidedoor, and i recall clearly how i wondered a person of his size could fit into the sidedoor where the bottles are usually kept vertically, leaving a dented and swinging holder. his limbs were not pure white or cyanosed, as would be expected of hypothermia, but retained a beige-ish tinge. he was hairy. but apparently, he was considered to be alive, and i went about measuring his blood pressure with a funny little digital contraption that i have never perceived before in my life. totally not your usual heavy, bombastic, old fashioned sphyggie. i didn't get a chance to see the reading, cos he began to twitch and that evolved rapidly into a full blown fit or generalised spasms; i couldn't tell which. (they're overlapping concepts; spasms account for the characterisitc presentation of fits) and the dream ended there, i think, and my brain began to recount the events that happened yesterday, starting with desmond's meeting.

what a strange... lot of concepts and thoughts to grapple with. i've never thought myself any more sophisticated a dream-interpreter or a philosopher than the average man on the street, but this certainly calls for a lot more ruminating. not voluntary; a compulsion.

i've taken to reading the classics. austen, bronte, dostoyevsky (or dostoevsky, as some may know him by)... in a frantic attempt to reacquaint myself with the english language. i do feel rather ashamed of the deplorable-ness of my grasp of vocabulary, ah, but what can i do but try to read more? many small things that clutter my life must be taken out of perspective for me to regain any semblence of control over myself.

school, alas, draws near.