PETTY

Last night, my real dad asked how I was, and how my uni applications were going. I answered honestly and lengthily but there was no response to my answer. Instead, he launched into a monologue about how the two other women who are the mothers to his four other kids are now almost like sisters. I felt more than a little annoyed, because I didn’t feel like he was concerned about me, he just wanted me to be interested in my four half-siblings. I’m so tired, the onus is really not on me to care because you fathered six kids and cannot care for all of them equally. Sometimes I wish I could be like Melyssa and not talk to him at all. It’s not that I’m not glad for the younger ones that he’s a better dad than he was when he raised me (not very well, if you can’t tell how I yearn for men’s approval) but the very least you could do is not pretend to be interested in my life. Jesus. At least my mum with her misplaced religious worries actually takes care of me and houses me in her apartment. I mean, really, I might share my father’s genes but there’s no freaking love lost there.

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I have a petite colleague, who was just a petite colleague, until recently she told me she’s been reading my Wordpress (technically this entire website is hosted on Blogger but same difference) and suddenly she became much more than just a petite colleague.

I have not much value to my name, nor in my life. I currently sell soap for money, which is quite frankly the basis of my job. I haven’t even got an educational degree, and I haven’t written or done anything worth talking about. I mean, apart from growing up into an atheist in a semi-religious family with one parent that had violence and rage issues who eventually left, and one parent who has misplaced ideas of love that likely trickled down to me, and circumnavigating sexual trauma and harassment just because of how I look, and perhaps dealing with my own miscarriage that left me completely unbalanced for a year or so, I have not done much at all.

If there is one thing I hope people see value in me for, I hope it is that you choose to love. The only thing certain in life is death and that everything will eventually end. If you’re lucky, you have at least another fifty years to go before the end of your life. I hope you love, even with the risk of loss and pain. Love, even if you know it will end. Love, even if it is difficult. Love, even if it leaves you mentally unfit for a period of your life. Love, and then let go. And then love again, and then let go again. Because the things you do for work, they could benefit people through their lives and perhaps beyond their lifetimes and your own lifetime, if you are perhaps a teacher or a doctor or whatever your profession may be, but when you love, you greatly enhance your own life, and that matters as much as anybody else’s life you want to help with.

DON’T THINK TWICE, IT’S ALRIGHT

PSA: When things like this are no longer relevant, perhaps I will not feel overwhelmed by too many things enough that I have to write and talk all the goddamn time because I can't stand being with my own thoughts.

"There's nothing quite like a catchy but fairly mediocre pop track about being in love with the literal physical outline of an unknown woman's body, sung by British everyman and erstwhile Game of Thrones cast member Ed Sheeran, taking the trophy for Best Pop Solo Performance at the Grammys to hammer home the values of the world we currently live in. The category's other contenders — Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, P!nk and Kesha — provided fierce competition not only vocally, but lyrically, touching on themes of political division, strength in the face of heartbreak and how to forgive your rapist."

Right, I am crying, properly bawling now.

A WILD NEUTRINO APPEARS

You know what we should all aim to be? Tardigrades. Tardigrades are more resistant than cockroaches, they've survived the last five mass extinctions, and they're also known as water bears, and they're even kinda cute. In a weird, gross way. Oh, they remind me of that weird caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. The one that's always high on hookah or whatever.

So I did not run, nor swim, nor cycle, today. Yet I still had Ben & Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream, as well as strawberries with whipped cream, while watching Cosmos on Netflix. My reasonings are that I have limited time to spend with my grandma (yes I went to the market with her today), whereas even living overseas, I must have some means of cycling/swimming/etc.

Also, I indulged in ice-cream and strawberries and cream for similar lines of thought, to be honest I dunno if I can afford the luxury of ice-cream, et cetera so often if I'm living by myself, especially if I have to convert my savings by 0.76 to their currency. I will be even poorer than I am now, geez.

When we reached the supermart, my grandma proclaimed "macam dah masuk syurga eh" which means "it feels like we've reached Heaven" 'cos the supermarket is airconditioned and we'd been walking for ten minutes in the sun (not technically, because we were walking in shade). Perhaps that explains my propensity for using superlatives, and also my gramma is the cutest.

I wonder if the word for grandmother is cute in every language. I love calling her Nyai, which is like an old Javanese way of saying grandma, and I love how Lin-Manuel calls his grandma abuela, abuela sounds like the ideal word to call a grandma. In Chinese, it is something like "Nai-nai" (I never took Chinese as a subject so I don't know what the hanyu pinyin is) and that sounds really adorable as well.

When my grandma proclaimed the thing about having reached Heaven, I wanted to say I don't believe in heaven, or heaven doesn't exist, but then it might have given her a heart attack, so I refrained. If I ever had grandkids, I wonder what they would say to shock me, what if they say "I don't believe in Netflix" oh bless my dear heart, that would hurt my very existence.

wise men say only fools rush in
but I can't help falling in love with you