CHRYSALIS

It is April Fool's Day in Singapore. I have been taking setamol, serratiopeptidase as well as amoxicillin, three times a day, for the past, I dunno what, four days? I think they're working but I have also had a lot of time by myself, being delirious and thinking incessantly, because idle hands (and brains) are the devil's workshop, as if the devil doesn't already reside in me when I'm at 100% health capacity - I kid, I don't believe in the devil. I don't fall sick often, but when I do, it feels like the end of the world, because when my system shuts down, it shuts the hell down. You know how caterpillars turn into butterflies and they don't actually quite know why they're spinning cocoons around themselves and turning themselves into jelly, and they don't even know that their end goal is to become butterflies? Yeah, imma coerce myself into believing this sickness is my chrysalis stage. Is this part of my delirium? Possibly, probably, yeah-huh. I've been taking my antibiotics and I think it's those pills that are upsetting my digestive system/stomach and making me churn and nauseous every time I eat, but if I don't eat, my sister says I won't have the energy to get better, so you tell me. For some reason, all this time to myself/by myself has made me realise how much of a mess of contradictions my mind and I are: I wonder if everybody is like this - I know I am possibly an average of many people I know, so yeah, I would assume most people are a mess, a mass of contradictions. I watched Netflix's The World's Most Extraordinary Homes, and at first, just like anyone watching the show, I of course thought, damn, I also want to build an extraordinary house somewhere in the Santa Monica canyons of CA, or in the gorgeous lush canopies of New Zealand, or in the Catskill Mountains of NY. Then I realised, all the people on the show, all the home owners are white people, they are Caucasian - regardless of which region of the world the episode is filmed in, they are white. Then I think, I cannot possibly allow myself to live in such luxuries whilst developing countries are still called developing countries instead of "countries struggling to recover from being ruthlessly pillaged and systematically destabilised" - I mean, white people make up only 20% of the world population, but from the North to the South, the East to the West of this planet, the richest of them, and the ones with the most ludicrously luxurious, beautiful, extraordinary of homes are still white. Why? Why do I date white men, four out of five of whom will tell me that the biggest problem they see in the world is income/wealth inequality, and yet continue to spend their money on visiting a new country every time, with a misplaced belief that visiting more countries means what, that you're one step closer to reaching nirvana? That they are somehow more worldly-wise? What is the point of recognising a problem that is almost unanimous with everyone else's worst/most urgent problem in the world, then closing both eyes to it? What have you done, that was not inherently for yourself? These questions, they are questions I ask myself because I know I'm a mess of contradictions, but I still find myself attracted to people who have never known it about themselves, nor seemed to ask themselves the same. My sister says I am more irritable because I am sick, and it is possibly true, I haven't been eating nor sleeping properly, and I just want to eat and sleep. Butterfly or not, please let me just be well enough to eat and sleep again.

PRAYER CIRCLE

Let us form a prayer circle for my health no I’m kidding prayers don’t do anything I’m just popping pills like it ain’t no thang. Also chugging water. Also binge-sleeping. Nothing seems to help, so. Just letting y’all know if I die, I would like everyone to share the funniest stories they know about me and not cry at all. Yes, I’m being dramatic. Life is an adventure and the most adventurous of times may happen in sickness, I honestly don’t know what has been going on in my brain.