Category: being

When I was a young teenager I would save a lot of anime images. After watching a series I enjoyed, I would open a folder with its name and scour the internet for images: official artwork, fan art, manga caps, edits. Sometimes even anime-related events, if they had good enough graphics. I saved every single International Saimoe League card and banner for the years I participated. (Realising again my enjoyment for graphic design is connected to events, to gatherings, and probably always has been. Maybe I should’ve just left graphics editing as a past-time leisure.) Through saving, I would slowly be inspired by these images to create my own anime graphic edits, which formally kickstarted my journey in graphic design.

Other than that, I didn’t even look back at the images much other than to sort. There’s Danbooru at home, basically. I think my main purpose of saving was to have enough images to participate in the act of sorting. I would open subfolders of character names, sort, leave them, then revisit them another time to resort. Maybe this time I’ll sort them based on category, then next time on characters again.

I had so much fun. It was like Tibetan monks drawing intricate mandalas in the sand, only to erase them once they’re done. An act with nothing to show for, a true act for myself. I never showed anyone these folders of anime images. It was one of the rare activities where I felt complete agency over. Saving images was a form of saving myself.

One day these anime image folders got too much to bear for my first ever laptop, always whirring, never shut down. I transferred them to a Western Digital external HDD. I wrote my name in sharpie and the edges would feather out onto metal. Placed it right on the the top shelf above my desk. I would continue this aimless pursuit of mine: save, sort, save, sort, save, sort, transfer when local storage gets filled up again. Until I went on holiday and after my return, decided to continue saving images locally. It always takes a while for a computer to read a HDD. The anime-watching rate also decreased, hence the slower rate of image-saving. That is to say, it remained untouched for a while. Well, I didn’t know that it would be the last time I could access this hard disk. When I decided it was time for another transfer, the HDD could not be identified. It was dead.

Troubleshooting went nowhere. As a teenager with no experience in storage systems, who also couldn’t afford any external storage resuscitation services, I decided the most natural decision was to accept its death. With it, the death of many anime images – my own anime image collection – locked in a silver-cased coffin. Because no one knew about this other than myself, only I could sit with the grief. In the grand scheme of things, it’s such a silly thing. If a HDD dies without anyone to perceive it, did it really die? Did it really exist? The only way to move forward was to live life as if it never happened. So, I did.

Now, I feel as if I’ve always been subconsciously hindered by that loss. I don’t think I could ever feel so obsessive and creative just because I don’t want to go through the risk of losing it all again. Despite knowing about cloud storage or NAS systems now, I don’t think I could do it again. Despite being able to afford repair services now, I’m still too weak. Is it okay to process this now, more than a decade later?

There is an us and we have a compass.

Pigeons are homing. They always want to go back home.

_{– 1000xRESIST (Occupant/Watcher)}

I’ve been back home for a year now and I’ve definitely gotten more comfortable. I still move between houses in two bags, but I am blessed to be home within two places. One cannot be greedy, just like how others have to accommodate to my living patterns too. There’s still no set rhythm I can move my body to, but it inconveniences me less now. We make do. I tend to pride myself in my adaptability, a personality label bestowed to me, but I wish things would stay still. Actually no, that was a lie. I’m always thinking of moving because stillness invites reflection.

I’ve got this bad habit of never looking back at the work I produce, but always looking back at my own memories. Memories are so malleable, sometimes I feel as if they’re fiction, warped and kneaded to self-satisfaction (or self-flagellation). It’s so easy to live inside your past experiences, to be trapped inside. Who am I if not my own memories? Who am I with my memories? Better yet, who am I in your memories?

Recently, I’ve finally made visible this long term project of having all my work housed on a website (still work in progress). Faced with the task of looking back, writing notes on each project has unfurled itself to be rewarding, in spite of my initial reluctance. The main conflict being why am I still sharing on a scrapeable web? Without overthinking, I think part of me still believes in the web. Still believes in sharing something that friends and strangers can lurk, click, read about, anytime and anywhere. Believes in the position of inviting in (posting on a navigatable web portal) instead of sharing out (posting on social media, vying for attention). I think the act of being selectively visible on the web has helped me engage with life a little deeper (let’s go girlblogging days).

My reluctance on looking back at work I’ve produced has always been an issue of avoidance. I’m rarely proud of the work’s end result, not due to the quality of work but because of my own insecurities. I rarely think about outcomes when I create. When the work is done, I feel as if it no longer belongs to me. So, I don’t really feel the need to revisit it. The process however, have always been something I’m eager to share, happily. Is it something about endings? Though, I did say this project of cataloging was a positive act. The oldest project dates back to 2016, ten years ago as of writing. Distance definitely makes the heart grow fonder. I find myself looking back at these works by younger-me with affection and pride. With practice, I want to instill that same feeling for future work, to be a better creator.

During the days up to my flight back, I had Ocean Vuong’s quote stuck in my mind:

What is a country but a life sentence?

Before, I’ve felt slightly disappointed in myself for having a desire for Malaysia that I can’t ignore. I cannot leave her. Heavy on my chest. I cried for days. Why can’t I just feel normal about it? Envious of those who are able to let go of their homeland easier. From conversations, these can be people who have minimal interpersonal ties back home – no family, no friends. It wasn’t as if I was ashamed, in fact, I felt plenty proud to call Malaysia my home. Could I be a homing pigeon? Pigeons always want to go back home.

Now that I’ve been home, it turned out to be such a silly feeling in hindsight. I think the love I expected to receive in Malaysia was so overwhelming, coddling, suffocating that I felt weighted down. Undeserving. Scared. Confused. I was going through the realisation of what it means, to be prescribed a home you had no say in and agree with it.

It feels lighter now. To be homing, to be returning to a new set of rhythms, to know where I should focus on. There is a compass in me, and it’ll always point back home.

on the 27th,

I am the most illegible person in my life and that makes it hard to celebrate.

I’ve never put much thought to the myth of the brain “fully developing” at 25. People sometimes describe it as a moment where the fog clears up in front of them. However, I catch myself having foggier days now than I did 8 years ago. When I was identifying with my suffering that felt sharp and true, atoning for my first sin of being born. I felt mature in my own pain, it was the only thing saving me, while unconsciously robbing myself of joy thinking it’s only reserved for the naive. It didn’t help when those older mistook my immature suffering as honourable development – “soulful”. By over-attaching myself to the sadness I feel for myself meant that I could hide behind it, giving myself a way out from self-interrogation, and that’s my biggest sin. Making myself visible meant exposing myself to risk. I had to be small at all times, feel guilty at all times, because that would prove me virtuous, prove myself deserving of love and attention. I could hide behind my own pain, while escaping the work of knowing myself.

I have read of Le Guin’s quote ^[1] on the banality of trauma. I have. Though intellectualising proved much easier than practising it. I am committing treason, but it was the only way I felt real. Bad habits die hard. Suffering is universal, and so personal. They say it gives character and persistence, but I come to think it only does if you give it the time to marinate, like wine or mold. When suffering is constant, replaying pain prohibits its death.

Truth of the matter is, this year I’ve been surrounded by joy and it makes me uncomfortable, undeserving, scared even, like a deer in headlights. Because joy makes me legible. At 25, I think I want to start understanding joy. I think I want to start understanding myself.

That is enough for death,
now for real life.

This year’s birthday activities have been spread out full and thick. As long as it’s happened around that time, I’ll count it as a birthday activity even if there’s no relation to it. Hopefully, I’ll stop thinking of my birthday as another day to dismiss but another day to be aware of the life happening within and around it.

• volunteered at a soup kitchen that serves areas i always frequent, loved ones came along to teman yayy.
• picnic under the rain at dataran merdeka with M……
• surprise party with my friends and family!!! they got me a lok lok truck in the fucking house and i cried. there was also a DJ (my friend) and it was great. i cried again.
• karaoke of course is an essential birthday activity. i still don’t have a go-to song.
• attended a documentary theatre play part of KL festival – Fragments of Tuah – and it was great.
• catching up with friends from a time where it was normal to feel like dying
• M brought me to a couple’s ring-making workshop, each hand-stamped with “moon” and “sun”. then brought me to a cozy japanese restaurant.
• I got 4 cakes in total to gather people around a table with <33

With all that, I’m learning how to feel comfortable with joy in my body. So far, it’s like controlling an uncanny version of myself. It’s difficult to give joy the same reverence and fuel as pain and suffering. Weirdly enough, detaching myself from the self through joy gives me more room to wander. Though I do admit I am wandering a bit too far and loose, can joy anchor me in place?

Not every intense emotion is meaningful; not every uneventful emotion is useless.

Nina Montagne mentioned in a video that the “self is such a small container for a meaningful life” and I felt compelled to incorporate that into how I viewed my self and the world when possible.

• I am too afraid to give myself away. Do I need to?
• I enjoy more when I dislike more; I enjoy less when I try to enjoy everything.
• I am connected to everything else. Sometimes that is overwhelming = paralysing.
• Living a life is also deciding what I want to exclude.
• Though ideally, I am side-quest maxxing. I suspect this will give me a career crisis.
• What do I actually want?
• I create too slowly for my liking. I am urgent when it comes to sadness.
• Back in the question-loop of: “Graphic design here is so limiting” and “Actually, what the fuck is graphic design?” and “How do I make graphic design something I continue to enjoy?”
• It’s still a little tricky to untangle my feelings from coming home. I tell people I’m living it as I go. The process is the product.
• Perhaps the sad truth is I currently feel so small and unagentic at home, it’s difficult to exist in a place where it doesn’t need you to function.
• I am learning how to conquer my fear of driving with good, slow progress. I believe this will save me.

Anyways!! 25 was a blast, let’s do it all again and hope it’s different than the last. I love my friends and my family, they love me too so I know it’s all real.

I have to come to realise that I can be quite a resentful person. Small things would piss me off and I’m too cowardly to even say it. Though I find it easy to forgive because I wasn’t forgiven for my mistakes when I needed them the most.

A drunk stranger told me I’m too smart for my own good. That one day I’ll be face-to-face with a barrel with my finger on the trigger. One cannot linger. Embarrassed at 24, I am unable to let go of resentment. I am walking on the path of a spiral, moving with time, yet that doesn’t negate the fact that my feet have arrived in the same spot from the past. I feel like I’ve hit a wall that I can’t even see.

When you play games do you seek out boundaries of the world? Prodding at invisible walls wishing there was something more? For you, who tries to pay attention to things that avoid it by design? I do, to desperately seek out a reward, a sick salvation. The problem is, I can’t seem to find anything yet. In the end, a spiral path is still a well-taken one.

Many are familiar with resentment as it turns into spite. I am unfortunate enough that spite can never fuel me, no matter how hard I try to make it work. Envious, to see others being able to burn a bright flame from oil doused onto them. A flicker in the dark is always attractive. I turn to gratefulness as a motivating factor, but on the other side of the coin, what then also makes me move is guilt. Truly, what guilt wields is self-destruction to a soul!

I can no longer deliver a fatal bite for I have ground my canines down to flat nubs. But I am good at chewing, and chewing, and chewing, until anything rough turns to wet muck, transformed into pieces that I swallow. Yes, what the mouth does is transform the state of everything that passes through it. Does anyone stop to think how it would feel to chew yourself down? Does anyone stop to think about something else?

Most of my life, I was praised for being easy. An easy baby to care for, an easy student in class, an easy daughter, an easy chat, an easy partner (at times). I wish it was easy for me to not be.

Bah, but this is all so boring and annoying coming from someone who’s well-fed & sheltered. It’s disgusting, really. No one likes to save the self-pitied.

Formication is a sense of touch hallucination that feels like bugs in, on or under your skin.

I lay on the marble floor, belly down, to feel my flesh pinch on top of its cool, hard surface. There is the tickle of air currents that flow around me. The sensation traces my limbs like a wave. Who does it meet when it crashes?

Ants crawl on top of me. I’ve not seen an ant in ages. The tiny, black ones; ones that taste sweet when they drown in water, or perhaps it was because the water itself was sweet. It doesn’t matter, I drank it anyways. They stray from their path, lost, having to reckon with the fact that I might…swipe them off without even looking. Right now, I feel lonely.

I’ve been back home for a week, and I’m forced to face a phenomenon that has bothered me growing up in Malaysia: living in the peripheries. I’m to assume being an adult is understanding that everyone’s main priority is their job, filling whatever space around them with it. I find my way around the gaps, in whatever’s left. It is childish and selfish to ask for more attention, when the reason of them working this hard is for you, and the reason you’re feeling this way is because you’re not working. Well, that’s projection, because I only feel bothered by the people I want to spend time with, the people that matter to me. And they are all extremely busy.

Don’t be mistaken, I am also a perpetrator of this, guilty as charged. Being so busy that people don’t approach because they only think of me as busy. (That’s not true, please ask your local introvert – me – to hang out.) Nobody’s asking because I’ve made it hard to ask. Though sometimes I wonder if it’s a response to the people around me being busy… what are we even being busy about? The ants know their reason.

Our ceiling fan disrupts the stagnant air for me because I can’t feel the outdoor breeze. I hear the whirring but I can’t see the spin, it makes me dizzy. Did you know that when you crush an odorous house ant, it secretes a distress pheromone? People describe it akin to “piss”, “blue cheese”, or “coconut”, but to me they smell like marker pen ink when you first open the cap. I confess that I enjoy the scent. Am I an ant? I feel the floor tiles grow slightly warmer, thermodynamics doing its thing.

It’s only natural for people to care for their own lives, as much as I have agency in mine. What I’m actually bothered about is change. Change, as I’ve learned the hard way, distresses me a lot, as much as I lie, as much as I seem put together. Preparing for it is the only way I know how to soften the blow. But how much can you wane off the impact of moving countries in your formative young adult years? I’ll tell you a secret: I cried for 5 out of 7 days in the past week, not because I was sad, but because the change was too big for me to handle. Overstimulating, lack of routine, not knowing where the spoons are, disorientated, feeling like a stranger where people expect you to feel at home, lost.

Even the local food that I’ve been very much looking forward to has been causing me gastrointestinal issues and runs to the bathroom. I’d like to imagine that would make even a seasoned hardened heart, cry.

The stressors of change have been compounded by the fact that I’m pseudo-moving out from the house I grew up in Malaysia, and into my partner’s house. Which I’m extremely grateful for, every waking and sleeping moment. This is truly a blessing, I feel so happy, yet my brain still recognises it as a change. On its own, I’m able to process the complex emotions as a regulating adult, but overall all together? There is guilt.

Alerted by the fall of their peers, ants crawl on top of me, probably smelling like whatever piss pheromones they’ve secreted on me. I let them only because in a wicked way, I miss them. Isn’t it weird that you can live in the UK and not have ants swarm your exposed Gregg’s donut after 10 minutes on the countertop? I grew up learning how to avoid these ants – that were everywhere around me – and now I can’t see a shell of them. I pinch myself in the elbow, where I felt traces of a bug. Only to find myself come up empty. There was no ant, all I did was pinch myself.

Despite what’s been written, I’m not doomer about it. Oppositional feelings can exist simultaneously. There have been pillars in this life transition: my family (and however much stress they cause me), my partner (who is starting a new stage in his life too), friends who text me to check in on me (despite having their own lives), a new cat (my aunt’s), my 嫲嫲’s home-cooked food (that my stomach is calmed by). All of them welcoming me back into routine, by being in their own.

It’s all part of the process. One day I’ll have hotpot with my friends at an ungodly hour and I’ll forgive it all. As someone who’s very much impacted by their quality & quantity of sleep, the heinous jet lag doesn’t help stabilise me. So… still laying on the floor, I take a nap, feeling the ants – real and imaginary.

⋆˙⟡☆ ˗ˏˋ ☆ ˎˊ˗  ☆⟡˙⋆

Tangential notes on having an occasional itch under my skin from my are.na channel:

⋆˙⟡☆ ˗ˏˋ ☆ ˎˊ˗  ☆⟡˙⋆

And a note to self, for there is no escaping effort:

⋆˙⟡☆⟡˙⋆

is it okay to be 24 and cry at every intense feeling

is it okay to be 23 and believe you can make a life for yourself

is it okay to be 22 and still reach for a blade

is it okay to be 21 and hold on to hope

is it okay to be 20 and hold resentment to heart

is it okay to be 19 and suffer in silence

is it okay to be 18 and feel like nothing’s real

is it okay to be 17 and overwork because it’s the only way you know how to run from a feeling

is it okay to be 16 and cry yourself to sleep because nobody actually thinks about you

is it okay to be 15 and fall in love

is it okay to be 14 and feel so lonely and self-critical

is it okay to be 13 and believe that you can do this

is it okay to be 12 and feel like you can’t

is it okay to be 11 and think you’re better off somewhere else

is it okay to be 10 and feel happy

is it okay to be 9 and have friends

is it okay to be 8 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 7 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 6 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 5 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 4 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 3 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 2 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 1 and don’t remember

is it okay to be 0 and be given life