YOU ALMOST RAN THE RED'COS YOU WERE LOOKING OVER AT ME

I'm done with one semester in Canada! It has been the longest semester ever, what with all the adjustments I've had to make. During my Liberal Studies exam yesterday, Kaia came over to me and said, "Sarah Mei, double-space" because I'd forgotten to write in double-spacing on my exam booklet. Those are her final words to me this year, until I take the continuation to this module next semester. I took a bath with a really pretty bath bomb today, so life is currently really, really good. My sisters are coming over for a week next week! I'm excited, we'll be exploring Vancouver together, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know, thank you. I'll definitely take them to Granville Island market, I haven't even been there since my first time with Alessia. I had a job interview today, I hope I get it because it would be so convenient for me, although I would still need another job to pay for my tuition. I don't really have much to say, I would like to sleep a long, deep, sleep, while I still can before the next year and semester creep up on me.

HAKOMI

I've had a pretty alright two weeks. This morning, it snowed for the first time since I've been here! I had a lot of fun playing in the snow and walking through it, on the way to school. Just recalling waking up to everything powdered in thick layers of snow, and seeing it through my window, is making me smile now. It's truly such a surreal magic moment. Last week, something unexpected happened, in which I found out the identity of someone I'd been suspecting for a while. It was reassuring, just to know that it wasn't any of the people whom I used to be best friends with, who was having mental health issues or some such thing. I had a counselling session with my therapist in school, a couple of days after that, and I didn't even mention the thing that happened, so I suppose it doesn't really affect me that much. I had a really good session, I'd been telling him (it's the first time I've got a male counsellor, and I'm glad I've got as much trust in him as I've had with my previous therapists in Singapore) about the worry that constantly plagues me, perhaps due to my studies and my general interests, and the fact that I cannot seem to allow myself to relax. He suggested a new form of therapy I'd never tried before. He asked me to tell him the line of thought that would pop up whenever I wanted or tried to relax, so I told him. I said, "sometimes I'm happy with my personal life and when I'm telling myself 'you can rest now', a thought pops up: 'the world is still fucked' and it prevents me from fully relaxing." He told me to think the thought "you can rest now" and to simulate the relief I feel in those moments to myself, while he voiced "the world is still fucked" right in front of me. We did it a few times, and I truly felt myself feeling the relief through those times, because he'd trained me to trace the feelings to their roots, and I also heard him saying "the world is still fucked." After those several rounds, I laughed because his voice really sounded like my voice in my head, he'd asked me to clarify it and he used the exact intonations I would use, and because he sounded like me in my own head, I found it absurd and was amused, but the relief I felt in my body didn't go away. My counsellor said we had a breakthrough, because we'd created a pathway for me to do something new, and to feel something new even while having a negative thought. He said, "both can be true." The world is fucked, and you can rest now, Sarah. I'm not sure why he caused me to feel so safe, but he did, and I think I've been a different person since then. In any case, he's married and older so I have no attraction or transference of feelings toward him, my true love still lies with Kaia, hehehe. I have two research papers and two exam papers left till the end of semester in 10 days, and then it's Christmas break for three weeks. :)