monologue in my head

tuesday night: i allowed myself to lie in the grave of consuming insecurities - soil by soil they were tossed upon me. i could do nothing but lie there as waves of apathy hit me, clung onto me, pulled me, away, out into sea. just consume me, i said, as if i don't already know what you're telling me. all my life i've felt like i've been constantly struggling to keep it all together, as if, as if i was not trying hard enough to make everything work simultaneously. dance? i didn't want to dance. i just wanted to lie there, to sit in the silence, throw my hands into the air & give in to the flow, just for that night. but dance i did, & being around positive people was exactly what i needed to feel like i could rise again.

a little setback is nothing - & i will be able to pick myself up again. if anything i will build my definition of self on being able to rise after the fall - after countless falls.

wednesday night:

the mirror in the gym is my best friend & my battlefield. 

"invest? so much for investing, when sometimes hard work just doesn't pay off."
"the world runs on a wholly different tangent from what you want it to be."
"this is stupid, why am i trying to hard again?"
"the world thinks you have your shit together but you actually don't."
"give it up."

"shut up. you're a fighter. now pick yourself up & fight."

"work. all the more you should work doubly hard." 

"don't let one inconsequential stumbling block get you down."

"failures & feeling like a failure are necessary in life." 

"what's more important is picking yourself up, so stand up now, & now & now"

"you can do this denise, continue to invest, continue to hustle." 

"now who was the one who successfully took on new york alone again?"

"me!"

"now who was the one who successfully made her nyc boss really happy with her work?"

"me!"

"now who was the one who got stranded in hong kong for > three nights, 

but managed to handle everything by herself, just like a true adult?"

"me!"

"now who was the one who was resourceful enough to navigate herself to visit even out of reach tourist places while stranded in hong kong, even without a cell phone connection/data?"

"me!"

"now who was the one who successfully claimed insurance for the 

typhoon episode in hong kong & thus have an additional five hundred in her bank?"

"me!"

"now who will believe in herself bc these experiences just point to how kickass she is?"

"me!"

"now who will continue investing in herself?"

"me!"

came out of the gym with this reverberating line in my head:

"believe in yourself bc no one else would. invest in yourself bc no one else would. sell yourself bc no one else would." 

i am inherently a sloth, but ending the day feeling like i've given my best & sweated out all the 'mopeyness' of life remains one of my most favourite feelings ever. 

flux

this makes me feel like i'm in a flux, a good kind of flux

想通了

just returned from the gym after a two week long hiatus bc the past two weeks have been (i think) the craziest academic season i've experienced thus far from this college & i have missed this feeling so much - tucked in bed after a hot shower with sore limbs knowing that i have ended my day investing in myself through & through - health, beauty, confidence etc.

i am slowly owning my name & making it mine: 凯励 - the former a character for victory (& glory); the latter for hard work. i know good names are given in hopes of becoming prophetic destinies, but to think it encapsulates perfectly my mindset for this season of my life. i will constantly strive towards victory, with nothing but pure, unadulterated hard work. i am twenty, & twenty is prime. 

walking back from the gym, my heart could do nothing else but soar from its chest. i have a far from perfect life, but life now (i can't speak for the future but at this very moment) feels so, so right, & i am content. i have a loving family, & parents who look forward to my homecoming every weekend / i have mended the relationships i thought i was ready to give up - & if one day (god forbid) i ever lost the chance to, i know i wouldn't beat myself up over being too petty, or too naive to think that life is predictable & people live forever. death is a sobering thought, & it teaches me & the people it leaves behind how to carpe diem the shit out of life / i survived writing a full-blown chemistry lab report involving something as complex as nmr spectroscopy when i hadn't taken chemistry since i was sixteen / i can finally tell you who the heck tocqueville, durkheim or weber are - heck i can even tell you who khaldun is & explicate his philosophy of social organisation, or tell you why marx is actually not as crazy as the future leaders who took & warped his philosophy make him sound. knowledge is such an empowering thing - studying for mst was crap but finally seeing the light span from a tunnel into an entire spectrum remains one of my most favourite feelings ever / i exceeded my laughter quota today: miks came over & we all had such a great laugh as old friends; charis' shoulder is still as sturdy as ever for an exhausted me (who ran from classes to classes/work for seven consecutive hours) to lean on, & soh has been over so many times she already feels like an honorary member of our college / i had a good workout at the gym / i am independent, with nothing to weigh me down, i am free to fly & do as i please, i am free to be myself, free from having to curate my actions for the sake of someone else, or make myself any lesser, or pin the way i perceive myself on a counterpart

 - there are so many little things to be thankful for. 

if busyness has taught me one thing it's that i get stupid thoughts in my head when i am idle. decided to take on the final project before calling it quits, & i can foresee how much busier i'll become but i am actually beyond hyped to put myself out there again, even if it inevitably entails feeling out of my element again. feel the need to scream this out but !! how liberating it is to no longer give a damn about something so inconsequential like blue ticks that used to peeve the crap out of me !! or whether my messages are being reciprocated with equal intensity !! how liberating it is to be freed from pining itself, even though half the time i could never put a finger to what i was pining for. a hand to hold? the prized sensation of two separate lips fusing into one? i don't know. i was constantly finding an idol to pin all my lost affections on, but of course idols never satisfy. though this is not to discount the quality of the company - they were all good while they lasted, & i am thankful for all of them. they were all nothing, but while they were happening in real-time they made me feel pretty damn alive to be able to feel again. 

interests are fleeting but education leading to self-empowerment is forever. i don't know what took me so long but it's this realisation that education is the only thing that will be unwaveringly for you, in multiple senses of the word. love will come when it comes, & i will wait for it - but i am done pursuing it. 

i know my worth, & i will not let the world determine it on my behalf. 

processing

the way we trivialise "bye" and "see you" in our interactions with one another, taking them as given - bc how can there be any finality when the contrary is never at the back of our minds until past the breaking point?

the way i close my eyes & all i can remember are the little, inconsequential things that i didn't know i even picked up from when i saw you last, on monday; the way i'll always come to class & you'll already be there, black windows laptop & all with your black charger plugged into the wall, giving me a smile (that now it makes sense, it was a sad smile, it had always been a sad smile but i had simply thought it was tiredness, like we all are to different degrees) as we exchanged "hi"s & prepared for yet another lecture.

the way we hardly interacted but i still did (secretly) consider you as one of my closer friends in that class bc you were one of the few who would acknowledge me with a smile if we did bump into each other outside of class, & bc it became an unspoken standardisation of some sort that we would always be sitting at the same table for almost every single lesson - & how i remember specifically last monday it was just you and me at that table bc j sat at the back for the first time.

the way i find it so sad that we as a community - so capable of warmth and love in the aftermath, have retracted into our little shells & chosen the easier way of indifference in our interactions with each other - the way i have been guilty of choosing indifference over kindness bc it is just less tiring to detach emotionally than be caught up over whether your smile to an acquaintance was reciprocated or not.

the way i am so moved & proud of the strong support system we have here - was tearing up last night at every single email either from the administration or the professors who all genuinely understand the need to drop everything & just sit with processing it as a human being dealing with loss, tearing up at how our rector spent the night sleeping in a sleeping bag in the common lounge just so anyone who didn't want to get through the night alone could have someone - a physical being, there for them (how powerful a symbol that is); yet even with all these support systems in place how much of them were enough? will they ever be enough?

the way this made me realise you'll never know how far reaching an impact you have on people until it's done - how everyone here has been shaken in one way or another, just to varying degrees.

the way this hits so close to home bc this college is just too damn small, & more so bc it's a startling realisation that it is possible, & that we are only & merely three years old.

the way i really hope you found solace in that moment, in that choice.

hello recess week

when the world tells me i'm not enough, in so many different ways
i will say: to hell with you all
& invest, invest, invest
in making myself stronger, better, smarter.

thankful for feelings

have always been a feeling person & i know sometimes when things get hard i always wish i didn't have this thing called feelings but "be careful what you wish for" bc if one day i really awoke without the ability to feel anything i know that is when i'll be truly gone.

this morning i know i am still saved bc plugging into tame impala still has the ability to make my world feel brighter than it already is, & for that i am thankful.

¿por que? porque

"sí, corté mi pelo para marca una nueva dirección en mi vida." 

am being ambitious but i'm going to start practicing conversational bahasa melayu again while picking up spanish, even though they (sometimes) overlap with each other in my head.

i will only hold on to the languages worth holding on, para mí.