birthday

dear friend,

so this is what it feels like to be eighteen years of age. Not much of a difference from being seventeen, I would say. No revolutionary concepts that I suddenly had the capacity to understand because of my difference of age, no great epiphanies accompanying my "coming-of-age". No sudden apparent wisdom that makes the world look bleaker or brighter. I feel... the same, old and tired.

I know it frightens some people when I tell them I feel old, and ready to die. Funny how in my pursuit for lifelong child-likeness, and in my morbid fear of growing up and becoming one of them I have come to see so many faults and inevitable truths of the world that I have been stripped of naivete and innocence. I feel like I have seen the whole world, because the world, all across, is but the same. The same vicious cycle being propagated everywhere. Evil, corruption and suffering, it is found in every corner and it will continue to prevail as long as there is the sinful nature of Man. Nothing is ever new, every day and everything is but a different variation of the same, monotonous routine.

My week, or month, I should say, passed by in a blur of colours that pale and fade even as I am living it. I am but a lingering spirit of my own existence, a passive observer of my experiences, trying to conjure up meanings and feelings to put myself in my own shoes. 

Thursday night, leading up to Friday and Saturday and even Sunday felt like a dream. I walked through it like a man in a dream, accepting everything because I was still hoping to wake up (cheesy matrix quote right there). It was just too mellow, too rose-tinted to be true. The yellow glow of the lone candle, the birthday wishes I cannot comprehend, the dinner, the movie, the dim stars, the world continues to turn, the night melts into the next morning and we run, we walk, we sleep, we eat, we take car trips, we visit places. And amidst all that chaos, the flashing lights, like the rolling of a movie tape, the warmth, the video, the nebulous collapse, I turned eighteen.

God loves me, and this I know because He provides many inns along my wearisome journey for me to find rest and pleasure. I am grateful to have good friends that make my monotony more bearable, more livable. And you are one of them, friend. You said that you're glad to have me as a friend. Because I make people happy. I hope you know that you brought me great joy too, and for that brief window of my life I was contented. 

And now you have let go, and I finally have too. But now I have new friends. I hope too that all of you know you mean a lot to me, and I live my life to make a difference in yours.

It's sad how we must all live in the knowledge of the impending impermanence of everything. My inns will crumble down one by one, He does that to make sure I don't find a home in any of them. I never thought I would live to be eighteen years. I've always thought I would die, peacefully or tragically, and freeze in the permanence of being forever seventeen. But God would not have me that way. Even being eighteen will not be permanent. Three hundred and fifty eight more days to go. I pray that this year will be filled with shooting stars, with hope and child-like faith, with growth and wisdom, but most of all with never growing up.

"Do not go gentle into that good night, 

rage, rage against the dying of the light." 

Take care, my friend.

Yours always, 
Celine.

eating green tea snow ice in the car, watching the night scenery go by.
The silent company of family,
the peace and the quiet.
is this not good way to be?
does it not deserve more permanence?

how come people change?

People change. Of course. But sometimes, it's a real pity that they do.

Have you ever looked back at someone's old pictures and thought how happy they looked when they were younger, how carefree and smiley? And then you contrast those pictures with their current pictures. They may be smiling and they may look happy, but something's changed. Something is different.

The spark has maybe left their eyes. They smile,  but it doesn't reach the eyes. It is as though, somewhere along the way, they grew up, they had their perspectives shifted, and now everything they see is just a fragment of what they had saw once. Like what's left is just a uncomparable speckle of what once was. How they once saw things. Some people never have to go through that phase, and they live life in a bubble of their own blissful ignorance, and the world is always a good place. And sometimes I do envy them. But more often that not it is not so lucky for the rest of us. I can safely say that most of us are just now a pale comparison of our once more genuinely happy selves.

I do miss that version of me sometimes. O, to be free of the disappointments of this world, free from the boundaries of oblivion and the endless spiralling abyss! So little we see in our innocent child eyes, but as we grow older there are less things to look forward to, and more to dread. As we grow up, more and more people leave, more and more inhumane and cruel truths thrust before our eyes that we have to learn to accept. Stories of war, of death, of oppression and suffering. Knowledge that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist, further diminishing the child-like hope that is in us all. The cold reality that we have come to face. Knowing that nothing is ever new under the sun, and that our days will just be different variations of the same, monotonous routine. The king and the pawn to return to the same box. The sheer boredom and the burden of living. We've been let down, trashed, and these just keep heaping up as we grow older. No amount of "faith in humanity restored" moments can wipe out the evil of this world. Sin is a plague, so widespread and common that nobody resists it anymore. It is no wonder, that the wide grin has slowly faded into a half-hearted smile and that the life has slowly left our eyes. It is no wonder that people change, but it is not, often enough, for the better. How do we live with ourselves? How do we tolerate the world? How do we learn to accept evil? How soon before we go home?

Moving on

It is sad that everyone is moving on without me. I wished things were like before. Mindless chatting with J, we were so comfortable with each other, supporting other during exams, through hard times. Having someone to tell everything to, and now we hardly see each other, and when we do they don't want to spend time with me. I miss being in church, how I am so involved in the activities and everything that is happening there, while now people are planning stuff without me. There is nowhere that I completely feel at home anymore. I feel intruding in church,  I'm hardly at home, isolated from my friends which I have no time to talk to, so it may very well be my fault, and I'm also just a small, dispensable minor at work. Here a little, there a little, never being anywhere,  and no one will miss me when I'm gone. A part of me wishes that KL would come faster yknow? So that I can start anew, to be somewhere where I have never felt these things before, to make a home from scratch, to not be at home, in church, places I've known for years and years, and feel not at home. I see things that I miss, that I am no longer a part of, and my heart, my soul aches to belong. Because how can home not be home? How can something so familiar become strange and alien? Then where is home? That's so messed up. The only place I can think of now that is home is heaven, and I'm not there yet, so does that leave me homeless? Shall i be a wandering pilgrim, staying but not settling, a rolling stone gathering no moss, no close friends no ties, dying old, alone and full of regrets? But no matter what my sorrows, my cries, I know that God has a plan, and I will still praise Him, praise Him, and one day I will go home.

l am aware the world does not revolve around me, I just never thought that it would leave me behind.