full stop.

That is how I feel right now. As though life has come to a big full stop.

Ironically, it is during the Lunar New Year that I feel this way. Yes, it is supposed to be a season of new beginnings, but with new beginnings also come endings. And I suddenly feel the endings more than the beginnings.

I think that the reality of many endings has finally come to me like a big tidal wave of delayed reactions. Perhaps all this while I've been living in a sense of numbness, not fully comprehending the gravity of situations. Or perhaps denial, where I keep telling myself that things can still go back to the way they used to be.

Scrolling through Facebook though, I have just came to realise that... it is true that everyone has already moved on. I'm not talking about the wispy signs of "beginning to move on" kind of move on. It is full fledged, in the face, bam what happened there? kind of moved on. You see familiar faces with unfamiliar faces. You see the pictures of a close friend where two years ago, your face would be right in there among the others, but now he or she is surrounded by a different set of unfamiliar faces. And maybe you are 200 miles away, seeing them from the screen of a computer. A big obstacle separates you from each other, a big full stop. A full stop of time. A period. Of time.

It is the first new year I do not spend my new year in school with my high school friends or five years. It is actually my second, but I guess I didn't realise it last year. It has also been one full year since we were sitting on the mattresses in Teluk Intan, calling Daniel on our phones to wish him a happy birthday. Things were so simple then. It has been one full year since mission week, since JS. Since 25 + 8 hearts became one. A big full stop also separates me from my life at home, and I know holidays in JB will never be the same again. I will always, from this point forth, only be "visiting" when I go back; it will no longer feel permanent. 

If I could go back, I would have tried to live each moment with more presence and more vivid colour. I would have dared more, loved more. You cannot very well see out of tall brick walls, you cannot experience the world if you have put measures up to protect yourself from it. You cannot colour properly if you are so afraid to lose your colouring book. 

Just like how full stops separate preceding sentences from their succeeding counterparts, so do periods of time separate us from our former selves, our former lives. The difficult matter at hand now is to learn how to live without going back. Because you can never, ever truly go back. No turning back.