SUPERMOON

I think I must have woken up on the extreme right side of the bed, because I'm on a bit of a cloud. I had a very pleasant dream too, I was racing on a bicycle beside someone, I don't know whom. Cycling is one of the activities that make me feel slightly free, it probably has to do with wind in your hair, yadda yadda yadda. Mine are definitely cycling and swimming. Several of the men I've dated, cycled on a regular basis, whether it was on either stateside coast, or even here in Singapore. The man I dated a couple of weeks ago also cycled his bike everywhere, and we'd have to coordinate between my taking the train and his cycling route. I don't cycle much in Singapore because the infrastructure here isn't as well-built for it, but I may cycle more in Nanaimo, a couple of months into moving there, if I can afford getting a bike. It's a slow-paced (anything would be slow-paced compared to Singapore) island so it should be safer than it is here. I also sat down yesterday and thought about my most recent relationship, I was with Lucas for one and a half years, from May 2019 to December 2020. Some people say it takes about half the duration of a relationship to get over its breakup (I don't know what pseudo bullshit studies made it up but I'm gonna go with it), which means it would take nine months, which also means by the time I'm in BC, Canada for my semester in September, I should be right about at that stage. There are men in a couple of places who are shooting their shots, but I don't think it would work out with them. Here are the things I know I like: starting with the shallow, I like a man with longish hair or at least something that is not cropped short, someone who cares about the environment and environmental justice - and by caring I mean actually puts in effort to improve the state of things, definitely someone who's gone to therapy and worked on himself - because we've all fucked up and what defines us is how much work we put in to change, and now we go back to the shallow, I really like someone who doesn't make spelling or grammatical mistakes - I know it's a terrible thing to judge someone for, and there are millions of people who aren't bothered by it, but my brain works very, very systematically, so please, allow me to date someone whose brain functions similarly to mine. 

Last week, I was feeling a little heavy and overwhelmed, because one of my family members has recently come out of prison. He's only a year older than I am, and we essentially grew up together when we were young because my grandma would take care of a whole bunch of us. He has two kids now, and this was not his first stint, and I was simultaneously happy to see him out and on Instagram, and also worried. I have several family members who have been caught up in the carceral system, and it makes me very angry at the Singaporean government. If you haven't realised, I come from a community that's treated in similar ways to how dark-skinned and black people are treated in the US. The policies here are unforgiving, and the government refuses to acknowledge how much of a vicious cycle jails and prisons are. I don't believe in prison, I am all for prison abolishment, because prisons really don't treat the root causes of "crime", as in poverty and discrimination, it simply aggravates and perpetuates the symptoms. I wish we could do better for them. I understand them because I am human, I have desires and I know what it's like to be curious, I have taken more drugs than probably a lot of my family members combined, I just do so in countries that are not Singapore and that have slightly more progressive attitudes. I want to tell my family members, we all care about them, when they are inside, we worry everyday and all the time, even if I'm not close to these people, and I don't know how to convey the message, without sounding like a patronising cunt. I want to tell them that I know it might be difficult to the point of being impossible, but they've only got this one life (or at least that's my belief), and they shouldn't let this overbearing government win by taking away what little freedom we each already have. I think in these terms of it being a game and my freedom being a win, and it works for me because I may be intrinsically highly motivated by competition. Even though I am part of the same racial community, I know I am privileged enough (I know I'm a privileged piece of shit because in this same post, I just said I like people who don't make spelling mistakes) to have kept myself fairly out of legal troubles. I received my fair bit of education and am working to get myself out of this damn country, but I also know that I am not free until we are all free. I want to see a world where we dismantle all systems and forms of oppression.