dwelling

On every platform I express myself with, everything I have ever written about is an outpouring of how much I love and who I love.
And you may find that a girl's dreams are simple and girlish. With no ambition or anything that supports it.
I guess I pride myself in being a lover.
I love life, sure, but I love romance like mad.
And that's okay.

I talk about love and relationships a lot, because I've always been so mesmerized by it. Not the kind of love you see in movies, just real fighting and real making up again.
I've always been this way since I was young. I've always wanted a companion who could understand me inside out and live life with me in this way.

Realised that I date to marry.
I really do want to put my trust and faith in this man whom I hope to have a long-term relationship with or even possibly marriage, and perhaps I may even have the ability to worship this man..
Unfortunately, I have let that happen - and it has destructed me and brought me to a state of where I am so discontented with everything around me because I have shifted my focus from loving the Lord first.

Things have changed.
Because I finally and firmly know what I want in a man, and I will rely on this man to be the head of my household and a leader of my family. Who loves God, who wants to know Him more, and to be self-aware to the point that he knows when he is doing wrong.
I will never marry a man who lies to me or watches pornography behind my back. Yet should I fail to "assess" this man-of-my-dreams' qualities before I am engaged to him, then I will fight this battle with him.

But if, if you ever betray me, don't expect my love for you to be whole again.
Because I am imperfect and I do not wish to be known as noble for being the lover who forgave or anything of that sort - I just want you to know that I am a responsibility all on my own, and if you cannot handle me, give it up.
You think that it is unfair. I think that I love you enough not to do it, to not see a need for it anymore.

porny thoughts

"Pornography is OK if you need knowledge, but masturbation is unnatural sex."
My dad said that and he is nowhere to becoming a Christian any time soon.

I wonder if Christianity has changed my perception of pornography to think it "unnatural".
Then again, if I had never chanced upon this topic and material, I would have thought it pretty strange (though innovative and definitely indulgent) to create something for men or women to climax to.

I have half the mind to make a documentary about pornography in Singapore and how it influences us as a society.
But... I'm a pretty preachy person.

I wonder if I can have the same, trusting love if I never had this perception in my head and was okay with my boyfriend watching pornography.

Pornography has hurt me before - it made me a person of addiction, and it made me look at men disrespectfully. No matter how the general population of men perceive women or look at them lustfully, it doesn't matter - it's the way I looked at them.
And it scared me, because it was vicious.
If you judge me after reading this, you're funny.

So when I can fully accept the fact that I allow my future husband or boyfriend to watch porn, does this mean I am conforming or giving in to the "secular" world in a way?
Then again, I feel that the "secular" world has shown me so much more love and acceptance than at church sometimes.
The church is not a bad place. I just don't feel comfortable.

I always think what I'd be like if I had abandoned Christianity and not held onto it, just like last year.
I'd never know when I'd be hurting myself, and I'd never be more self-aware than I am right now.

Maybe I've fuelled my own idealism all too much with what I expect of in a husband or lover.
I don't know. I am a pretty extreme person, always absolute and taking sides.
When and where may I find someone who can handle me and understand me, to let me rely on them emotionally while being independent?
This doesn't mean I don't appreciate my current boyfriend.
I have a feeling I may be a biased parent. I hope I won't be one.

You don't have to move

A poem for a video Ken and I may collaborate on when time is on our side. To choose the home or our current family state we are living through right now, above any other escape or self-pampering we may have in mind:

We must want to be somewhere that makes us feel like home.
Not a country that makes you gasp and moan and claw walls for - but home.
Understand that it is perfect.

Perfect because it is imperfect.
Imperfect, because, it is home.
Where lust and greed and pride reside
Where charm and labour and silent suffering are bound to hide
Hide, in the quiet of your father's violent nature
In the chaos of your mother's warm, nurturing womb
And where home is,
There your heart will be also
There your bones will ache
For your treasure is one that will strike you
And never redeem you from the sacrifice you have made

This love -
It is a real one
And reality will lash its whips in your face
But use the same, porous kitchen towels that smell of sunflower oil to wipe the blood off your face - Face it -

Again it cuts
Again it soothes
Again it moves,
It has to move
But you don't have to.


In this country we have both called restrictive and lame and angry
On this land we have both deemed haunted and boring and repetitive
But I trust you, and I trust me,

That perhaps we may find this facet of us in a cold forest abundant with lush undergrowth and sweet, stark berries - which we call Iceland and Paris or London or romantic Rome
Find one's self as a god and chosen daughter of the universe, when the beams of the aurora borealis pour down upon me as hero, like the yolk of the sun of the City of Atlantis that once thrived and will forever be reborn again in your soul
But there can only be one hero.

And this trust we have in the countries that the mystery of being human has led us to want, to smell, to lick, to break into two -
Yet when I am a screaming demon,
Cursing my deserved quality of life,
The standards I can never again achieve
The free songs of a bird I may never again sing -
Life tells me to trust it.
Because:

Again it cuts
Again it soothes,
Again it moves, it has to move
But you don't have to.

Still, should you be on your way,
Run home.

Penang

The current state of my toe started to piss me off as the day came to an end.
My crew was so nice to send me home in this teh-peng-filled-long-kang rain.
Just read that MSG could possibly trigger a gout attack in the midst of finishing half a bowl of korean cheese-flavoured noodles.
Die liao lor.

Life, for the past fifteen seconds, has been hard, since my mother is telling me she's going to cancel HBO and I don't really have a choice- because they watch that darn Taiwanese show everyday.
I associate this Taiwanese show with every sort of evil and brainwashing there is in the world.
I've ranted about how this show has made me distance myself from both my parents at dinner time till late, and I do not wish to fake "family time" over content like that.
Compromise must be done wisely and trust me, this programme doesn't make me any smarter, given the situations I've put myself in before.

On a light, fluffy, almost pass-the-bong note, Wongy will be back tomorrow!!!!!!
Exclamation marks!!!!!!!!
I really want to go back to Penang with Ken and perhaps friends who don't mind coming along as well.
My uncle was here the previous weekend and I told him I really want to be buried / cremated in Penang.
I have always regarded the country as my second home ever since I was a little girl, flipping my long hair obnoxiously and prancing about in my flare dresses and printed pajamas.
I was so well loved, unlike here.
Youth is when everyone clambers for attention but when in Penang, I was simply loved for who I was.
Who gave a shit about competition and being the star? No one. And I want that in a family. (Idealistic, I know.)
My favourite memories are especially when the rain falls and I'm simply passing time playing Pokemon cards with Zi Sheng, talking to Shu Han 姐姐 in her room or reading ghost stories in their home.
Then we have Cheng Beng every year (glutinous rice + my favourite ba zhang that my third aunt makes) and the usual question of "Ma, where are we going next?" and the typical response of "Aiya if you don't want to follow just stay at 'home' or go to Gurney to shop lah, keep asking!"
Ah Ma's funeral was one I'll always remember - because the whole family was there and we were sad and merry together. I burned a hole through my uncle's with a joss stick. That was funny.
And in the wee hours of the morning of Mothers' Day, I thumped up the stairs, waking my cousin up to tell her my grandmother had passed away. I forced myself to cry, because she was my grandmother and I wanted to feel an emotional attachment to her even though I was afraid of what the elderly looked like then. And we just kept silent the whole night.
I had hugged her once. I remember tearing when I saw that she kept a photograph of young me in her cabinet. I'm tearing even now. I never knew how much she loved me till then. And it impacted me very much.

I love every one of them so much even though I have been disappointed because I am too trusting a person...but I never want competition or gossip to break my mom's side of the family apart. They are precious people with a sense of humour I will always want to retain.
I honestly think they are the only reason I want to brush up on my Mandarin and Hokkien - I can't understand Singaporean Hokkien one bit at all.

I want Ken to be there with me to experience Penang.
My uncle and aunt already like him. They called him handsomeeeeeee.
I have been very sad in this relationship but I have been the happiest fool in the world.
Sierra Mulder wrote that a high school love is a smothering one.
May I be with my high school sweetheart forever?
And then there's university.
And my fleeting heart.
To fear oneself is to save the other from heartbreak.
"There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice."
I love you more than anything else in this world at this very moment right now, I'll have you know that.
I have expired for you and found it stupid. I have wanted to leave but always felt a sense of regret - yet had I gone, I would never found the same relief I anticipated at the same time.
Why do you have a hold of me?
I don't know, but you may shake hands with my right paw and kiss my gouty toe.
I love you and miss you very very much. :'(

I trust that the morning light will bathe me in something better, something worth putting my faith in.
I find every single phase you go through a sort of wreckage my body needs to pierce into and I feel splinters lodging themselves into my face and feet.
You shock me, and I do not get a kick from it. Ironic how it is so consistent.
Somebody tell me the formula to letting go and forgiving the people who have hurt you because of tactlessness, because they thought it'd be nothing.
It is my loss.
If you cannot sit through this bitterness and pain with me, it is your loss as well.

I have blamed myself more than I've blamed you.
Everything I've said to you I've said to myself first.
I cannot win.

-

I realise I cry more nowadays because I get frustrated too much.
Perhaps being in a relationship has caused me to become more anxious, to strive for perfection too often.
Even in my relationships with people, I tend to try to please.
But when I don't, I get a kick. And then I am offended when they make snide remarks about me.

How has it come to this - that I care so much about the people I love, so much so that I have forgotten to love myself more than I love my boy?
That when my mother told me fat was ugly, I believed her. I believed the world.
And now I hate it, because you are my world, and you believe the ones who get offended are idiots, the ones who are unable to come up with counter arguments are the unintelligent.
I can't speak to you when you are in front of me, I can only cry and kiss you and talk rubbish because my head is full of you - is this an obsession or am I in love with the memory of what you once were?
For all I knew, for all I knew, once you used to glow, you used to make me implode and yes you still do, but now it hurts my insides and my heart and my head.
And that was all I knew but when you started to evolve, when you started to transform, I started to see you as a monster that I could only let devour and yet stroke affectionately and calm you down all at once.
But then I started becoming the one who had to be calmed down by you.
Jon says "But isn't that the point of loving", to be vulnerable.

How may I tell you that I can be humble, but in the end, I am not humility personified.

Nowadays I cry and make sounds that I am afraid of making in fear that my family may hear me, but I am in deep anguish and you cannot save me.
Is this because I have started to worship you?

And this is the crux of loneliness.
This is the heart of the frustration it has brought me, even when I have a hand to hold or a job that I love.