PERCH

I’ve finally got my appointments booked for my vaccinations. I don’t like physical pain and I’m quite a wimp when it comes to jabs. My first appointment is this Sunday morning and my brain is already in overdrive. I know why the thought of jabs makes me queasy and anxious. It’s ‘cos my veins are apparently narrow, so whenever I’ve had to have my blood drawn, the nurse has always managed to fuck it up, and would then have to repeat the process at another site on my body. This repeated poking and prodding has made me wary of health-related needles. It’s also the reason I’m not even able to donate blood, jeez. The health workers have told me that the amount of bruising I would get for the amount of blood they could obtain from me is not worth it. Hahahahahaha, what the fuck. It’s funny because I’m not tremendously affected by ornamental piercings nor tattoo needles, so I suppose it really is all in the head. 

Today the thought that formulated in my head was how there has been an imbalance of affection in my life so far. I suppose some people have loved me more than I loved them (my first boyfriend, for example), and then I have loved some people more than they’ve ever felt for me (this is probably Joey and Ben K), and I sure hope to whatever fucking stone in the universe, that I will find someone I love equally as much as they love me. I’m not sure why this thought formulated but then I’m not sure why any of my thoughts are formed anyway.

A few days ago, I had someone stay over at my family’s apartment, because she was unsafe at her own. I can’t say who it is because other people aren’t supposed to know. My sisters and I stayed up with her and watched a movie together, and then she slept in my room, on my queen-sized bed with me. I like this person, I think she’s chill and cool and we can vibe alright, but I obviously don’t often get people sleeping next to me in the same bed, with the exception of any of my sisters. I remember feeling a little awkward, and not sleeping too deeply the entire night. I know this because I usually toss and turn and grind my teeth at night, but that night every time I stirred I was still lying on my back, and my jaw had still been relaxed. It reminded me of the time I slept in my Couchsurfing host’s bed (his name was Dustin) at his place on Redondo Beach or whatever, and this only happened because I’d been scared by an experience in the other bedroom he’d let me sleep in and I begged him to let me in. It was awkward as fuck, we did nothing that night. I stared up at the bedroom ceiling and I kept wondering if he thought I was the weirdest ever person he’d ever met. 

This leads me to another story. That night at Dustin’s place, I had washed up and was ready to sleep, but the bed was adjacent to a wardrobe that had mirrors on its sliding doors. So I’m looking at myself in the mirror while lying on my side, and I hear a knocking sound behind me. It sounds like a knock on the window, so naturally that’s what I think it is, right? I turn around, but then there’s no knocking. I move the blinds to check for birds or the branches of a tree, whatever that could have made a knock, but there’s nothing. So I go back to bed, look in the mirror. The knock happens again. I turn around, and it stops again. I dial my sister on FaceTime, and this is when I start getting really freaked out, because it wouldn’t go through even though my Wi-Fi connection was strong. I’d been calling my sister with no problems for the past month, so this really gets to me. It is 1am and I cannot call my sister. I text Dustin, asking if he’s pranking me with the knocking and he says he wasn’t. Then I ask, pleading with him to let me sleep in his bed, one of the most embarrassing requests I’ve ever had to make in my life. (“What the fuck is going on???”)

Fast forward five years. A month or so ago, I was in my bed, in my own room, in Singapore. I hear the same exact sound I’d heard in Dustin’s spare bedroom. The realisation has me feeling extremely alert. I wonder why I’m hearing knocking beside my window, our apartment is on the sixth storey. I Google it, and lo and behold! The results say it could have been the air-conditioning unit (I don’t know what exactly about the unit, I’m really not a Sciencey person) that sounds like there’s a knocking going on. Five years ago, when I wrote about this, not a single soul told me it could have been the A/C. This year, I found out I made a fool of myself thanks to a goddamn temperature-regulating device. All this to say, supernatural things don’t exist and you only believe such shit if you were raised in religious Asian families. That’s all, folks.