thru

not anymore -

gave myself till last night & last night is gone.

the circle is full & now it's closed. 

stared at my reflection in the mirror & wondered how

i could be passed off -

not once

but twice. 

stared at my reflection in the mirror & wondered how

i had thus let myself go.

not anymore. 

feelings fool & are fools,
but i'll be the biggest if i didn't know
truly how much i'm worth.
& i know.

picking up

rested & ready to run again.

spent my night doing up my belated summer reflection - am determined more than ever to not let the experiences & above all the confidence i'd gained from over the summer to go to waste. i will invest in my education, i will be the very best i can be.

here's the familiar feeling i thought i'd forgotten

inches steep in backlogged work but all i can only bring myself to do almost every night is sit at utown green & wish i had someone to hold me in times like these. and to think i thought i had enough happiness to fuel me for this entire semester. giving myself a hiatus before i get my act together again.

don't want to reach out to anyone bc it's not fair but i do, i do, i do.

thoughts from union square

i spent friday night camping at caprice's by sophie with an iced matcha latte vacillating between work i.e. revamping the web / redesigning headers etc. & picking up sheryl sandberg's lean in to read. work won eventually bc i hate loafing on the job (i think i very much operate on reciprocality in most aspects of my life & this in particular stems from having worked with people who were just terrible team players) & by the time i was done it was nearly eight & the cafe was closing but i couldn't find it in myself to return to the apartment & face new people i don't really like / also i couldn't put down the book bc it spoke (still speaks) volumes to me so i headed to manhattan to find another cafe to read in before i left at ten to roam the city's streets at night / soak in alittle bit more of new york bc i will definitely miss this place so much. which is slightly surprising considering how homesick i was in the initial week of being here. i was walking through union square itself & it brought back memories of meeting my homie y for dinner there on my first day of being officially alone (how we had melted into spasms of happiness when we finally found each other & she had exclaimed "it's so good to see familiar people here"). i also remember (in retrospect) how on the morning of the following day i had cried from the pangs of acute loneliness when it finally sunk in that i was completely alone with ten more weeks to go & then told myself to suck it up & get ready for my second day of work.

walking through union square tonight i was in an entirely different place: with my heart expanding in my chest & my mind reeling from what i'd just read, i embraced my independence & celebrated the voice in my head that continues to affirm me this entire summer experience has indeed been the living embodiment of her advice. i have confronted & conquered something that (just thinking about it previously) had scared the living shit out of me i.e. to live & work alone in a big, foreign city (like sandberg points out i will stop thinking i am a scam & also stop downplaying my little victories - i would like to think i've been producing good work, esp if my boss continues to prefer my redesigned documents over the content his own hired graphic designer has been producing). i think it's this realisation that what looks initially almost impossible is in reality much easier to accomplish (this entire living & working alone experience turned out to be so much easier than i had envisaged in my head) that is giving me so much hope for the new semester ahead. part of me is so excited to apply this to fundraising because fundraising still scares the shit out of me - up till now i only have a vague idea of how to go about raising money for the next conference (& i can already anticipate how busy i will get / how much failure or rejection i'll meet along the way) but the only way to grow is to face it head-on & hope i won't die so badly in the process. & i know i'll have people to turn to along the way if i fall so i am pretty excited to see how everything will pan out. maybe i'll actually turn out to be kickass at it once i get the hang of it (just like how i remember feeling nervous af when i was told i would be completely taking over the reigns of all of the organisation's social media accounts - how was i going to shape the org's public image through the content i was churning or reposting /  how was i going to constantly come up with fresh content when i felt like i couldn't design shit? turns out it's completely manageable with practice & there are tools to simplify the process of graphic designing etc. - as a sidenote i remember how i used to spend all 7+ hours at work trying to think of what social media content to post but now i've evolved to spending only the last hour on social media). my boss once told us both interns he thinks college is over-rated; that we haven't even graduated yet but are doing the very jobs people are doing after getting their college degrees. i don't think he realised how big a compliment that was to me. till then i had always believed the workplace to be a scary place where people did corporate things way out of my league or scope of expertise. i didn't realise how i had completely undermined my skills myself, skills that i had gained & sharpened from being on the job. & this is why i must continue to do things which make me tremble: there is really nothing like experiential learning.

i have to skype qt um tomorrow for delegations work - which also reminds me that joining yma was a leap i had taken (& am still taking) to grow my skill set. i still have so much to learn & i will continue to grow until nothing fazes me anymore !!!

empowerment: internal / external

how lucky am i to have days where i am happy with myself - to feel unabashedly beautiful about how i look with that winged liner hiding beneath my very shades that complements the new work bag i'd been coveting for awhile; to feel so at one with myself & with how i am presenting myself to the world, to feel so empowered as i join a throng of other new yorkers under the morning manhattan sun - all of us walking with a sense of purpose to a deliberate destination i.e. our respective offices for work; to feel like i really know what i am doing with my life - having an overarching scheme of some sort & a vague idea of how i'm getting there: a non-profit this year, a corporate next year & a shot for the big fish in penultimate year (along with my career dreams i've also realised how my wardrobe has simultaneously started to evolve, hence probably explaining my personal phenomena of stocking up & chalking up so much $$$ for certain staples - i know it's terrible but i'm kind of a go big or go home type of girl; also my mantra for spending money is money can always be earned back but regret can't - especially in a foreign country - you feel me? ok i kid i just bought not one but two pairs of heels from zalora i'm horrible but yes money can always be earned back next sem !!! ).

how lucky am i that on days like these material goods can actually make me happy, that happiness can simultaneously emanate from both the inside & outside. summer has lifted the cloud that was cyclical, intangible sadness / nothingness that had consistently resurfaced / persisted throughout the entire previous semester. i hope i have stored enough fuel to run on happiness starting sophomore year.

stirring inside of me is a determination to return stronger & more beautiful than ever (in every single aspect of its connotation). & if boys can't handle this bolder version of me i guess i'll just wait for the workplace where a couple of years more goes a long way (i think i've realised how i'm a different breed from most girls esp wrt how i pursue clarity & i used to wonder if it was a curse but why should i change who i am for anybody just to get somebody???) i think i have finally come to my senses: if i have to feel disempowered at the mercy of someone even once again i am honestly better off alone - i've been alone this entire summer with the freedom to do whatever i want i.e. flirt if i'd wanted to & flirt sometimes i did bc i am proud to capitalise on my gift as a woman & honestly it's been nothing short of liberating. also i didn't know it myself but i must be pretty good with guys in this part of the world bc besides my intern bae i've been hanging out with mostly if not only male friends???? from settling into nyc / yss kids / boston to dc if you have been watching my vids or vlogs of some sort you'll know what i mean. realising that the problem isn't with me has definitely freed me from the delusion that it is my fault for failing to find someone i can proclaim i love. but if i ever do you can definitely count on me to say it boldly - it's what i will be waiting for this entire time, until then.

love?

the residue from a conversation last evening - the nature of a thought festering at the back of your head that had hitherto been only privy to you changes form when it manifests from your own mouth and you surprise yourself, surprise yourself at how weird it sounds when vocalised - "i realised i cannot truly say i have loved someone before - no, not in that sense" "oh...isn't that kind of...sad?" "i guess i just haven't found someone i would go that deep for" - to not have truly loved or felt truly loved at twenty - that hit me. fondness had always smoldered away - was always soldered thin under the solder of an overarching reason or inopportune timing, but whatever it was the glue had always been built on tenuous bricks of compromise anyway. maybe this is why memories have a stranglehold over me. for a girl who pursues absolute clarity i think i scare people away most of the time.

this thought, coupled with monday blues (especially after such an eventful weekend), made me pretty blue today, & when i accidentally smashed my earpiece on the table top while trying to plug it into my iphone i told myself f the gym & made up my mind that i was going to head down to soho to get a new earpiece from the apple store. either way i just didn't feel like returning to the apartment so soon - i wanted to sit somewhere alone to write, to think, to be undisturbed in quietness. survived on fourteen percent of battery before it finally died & i had no way of redirecting myself to union square where there are park benches so i had a change of plans - i hadn't properly solitarily shopped since forever (the times waiting for people do not count bc they were incidental / somehow i always stumbled into stores with mega discounts while waiting for people) & everywhere i looked were symbols of consumerism so i caved in - but i am so thankful i did bc it may sound exaggerated now but this romper i tried on & really, really fancied made me feel like life would be well again (don't get me wrong i am so thankful to be here & life is mostly good but when i feel like i'm in a rut it is easy to negate all the good & wallow in the bad) - my point is: this is the power of feeling beautiful, of feeling beauty emanate & exude from inside your system. when i tried it on in the dressing room i felt so chic / i could almost envisage bae jenn wearing something like that & it made me feel so happy to feel attractive in what i was wearing again (my suitcase fashion isn't exactly spectacular - mostly filled with jeans of different shades i don't need). i rmb telling v over the weekend this is the very reason why i adore make-up - the physical act of getting ready & putting on a more defined version of my face makes me feel psychologically put together. i am not cancelling my features - i am highlighting them & giving them life. this is also the predominant reason why i still bothered with upkeeping my appearances at the end of semester one when i had felt like absolute crap - i rmb telling someone who asked "even if i feel like crap inside at least i look good on the outside - can you imagine if both were crap i'll just be a shitpile."

feeling beautiful & revelling in the confidence it brings makes me feel self-sufficient & whole - i may be a half but until i find the other i will continue to feel whole. this entire experience in nyc has just been growing my individuality - the feeling of oneness with myself & the city while walking down the vast streets, the dearth of anxiety in my system even when my battery grows flat (stemmed from the confidence that i do know manhattan well enough to navigate myself back), the entire business of cooking my own lunch/dinner & doing my own laundry in a laundromat etc.

i will keep growing until nothing fazes me anymore. but for now, sleep. for a new day tomorrow.

the world could do with more love

have never been one to be moved by the news ever since five year old me huddled in a bedroom with my family watched a plane crash into the twin towers on the news - perhaps bc the bad stuff had always seemed so geographically distant from my position of perceived safety. but being here & seeing the entire nation rocked by the aftershock of the orlando shooting - i've always been neutral about the entire lgbtq issue (not perceiving it as inherently wrong but not entirely right either i.e. constant confusion about how god fits into this overarching picture & how if he does then is it still biological or shaped by environmental factors??) but this morning i awoke with a heavy heart at the press' release of more detailed news trying to make sense of this entire hullabaloo & shed a tear or two bc the world could really do with so much more love. & replaying the white house's address just to hear president obama voicing out what is so important "the shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live" - to live, how that word rings empty through the vestiges of life itself, thinking to myself, just leave them be, leave them in their place of "solidarity and empowerment"; we are all entitled to our own opinions, just as they (as human beings) are entitled to theirs.  

i'd always loved scrolling through fb to laugh at stupid videos but recently all i see are videos which make my heart heavy.