Watching death

I had a strange day. I visited a family friend who is on her deathbed, sick and bulging with pancreatic cancer. A 73 year old woman, the world at her feet with a net worth of almost a billion ringgit but reduced to a yellow skeleton with a bulging tummy. A woman who once motorbiked across the African continent and the Chinese Silk Road, shared many laughs and cried multiple times with my own mother, a woman who has existed on the fringes of my own life ever since I was a child. I was never close to her but was aware that she had watched me grow up through her close friendship with my mother; never playing a part in it but still existing within it. Curled up next to her was her husband, an Australian man who came to Malaysia to make a home with her, partnered with her in building that billion ringgit empire, drove the motorbike across the continents with her in his sidecar, held her as she wept hearing their adopted daughter had been raped and holding her now as she lies in bed waiting for death to take her.

As I sat by her bed reading Surah Yasin with my father, I couldn't help stealing glances at the two of them curled up next to each other. Seeing her eyes barely open, hearing her ragged breathing, watching her occasionally struggle to sit up but completely failing. Seeing him stare at her with the saddest eyes I have ever seen, seeing him reach over to draw her closer to him, hearing him kiss her cheek and whisper, "I'm here" as I whisper the next ayat. She was curled up like a baby in the womb, her hair wispy and cropped close, in diapers, looking every bit as helpless as a newborn. He was stroking her head and holding her with all the tenderness and affection of a parent welcoming new life, but instead he was determined to deliver that tenderness and affection until he would see the life go out of her eyes.

How beautiful it is to be able to build such a life together and share so much, but how sad for it to end with something as lonely and cold as death. To share every aspect of your life, not existing without the other person only to end up on a path where you can't follow or can't be followed. No person to come with you into the next world. No amount of money, love or memories can save you from the solitude that comes with death. Which is lonelier? The solitude of passing on to uncharted territory without the one you shared everything with, or the solitude of being left behind in a world that you used to share? 

Faith and doubt go hand in hand

Poked around my very dead Facebook profile and found a note draft from 2011, titled "Favorite line from favorite book". Had to look it up to find out what book it was, turns out it's from the Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual". But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. 

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush."

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One of the things I really appreciate about the internet is how it's allowed me to look back on my past self to see both how much and how little I've changed. It's also given me a way to look back on my life and almost pinpoint a moment in time where I developed a principle to live by.

If I remember correctly, the first time I read Life of Pi was when I was around 16 or 17. Young enough to be a blank-ish slate, old enough to start understanding real principles and reflecting on how they apply to my life. The fact that I felt compelled enough by this excerpt to immortalize it online shows just how much I resonated with it 10 years ago. 

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"For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."

I've held onto this for a long time, but it turns out that the small clearing of the heart is pretty difficult to keep clear. You tend to forget to clear it, and it gets crowded by doubts and temptations. You get distracted, your head is occupied with things that don't matter but those things take up space. You start prioritizing things like money, careers, possessions, achievements until the space in your heart gets crowded and God gets pushed aside sometimes. 

I often catch myself when my heart or head gets too crowded and I wonder whether I still have space left. I get scared that I've gone too far, I've crammed so many things in that space that I don't have any more to give which then leads to guilt. Am I worthy? Am I now that hopeless, evil creature I never wanted to become who doesn't have space for God any more? Have I gone too far? Is it too late? 

The thing is, this catching myself when I feel too crowded - this has happened so often that it has become a cycle. A constant ebb and flow between faith and doubt. It's happened so often that I'm inclined to believe that this is just how it is. Doubt and faith go hand in hand but faith needs to be nurtured, developed and grown over time. Every cycle, something different happens but the same principles and faith bring me back up, although in different ways. I can only hope that as time goes by, I'll keep proving to myself that faith is what picks me back up again and again, and each time it'll come back stronger until one day, it'll squash the doubts and I'll be able to live the rest of my life in that faith. The clearing in my heart will grow so vast, wide and powerful that all the distractions that have crowded my head won't get the chance to take up space again. 

Halted time

It's 2020 and the world is in the middle of a pandemic with no vaccine available, leaving something called 'social distancing' as the best combative measure for now. The entire globe has been at a standstill for about a month now including Malaysia.

With social distancing, public events are cancelled indefinitely, public spaces are closed, businesses and schools are shut down, restaurants and bars are not allowing customers to dine in, roads are empty. Everyone is shut into their homes until further notice to prevent the virus from spreading from person to person.

I've been at home since March 18th, not leaving unless it's to buy groceries which is on average once every fortnight.

Since being shut in, time has sort of blurred. I wake up late in the day and only fall asleep deep in the night. Weekdays and weekends have almost no distinction between themselves. Most of my work is accomplished after sundown.

Earlier in the year, I wrote about the tangibility of time - of having meaning assigned to days, dates, months, years, and being able to count the passage of time. How hopeless and exhausted I would be if I truly felt that every day were the same, with no end or beginning in sight. How strange it is that the world has given me exactly that.

With everything at a standstill, my days are almost always the same. Time feels frozen when nothing in your environment changes. The calendar says the world has been in this state for around a month and yet, I feel like I have been living the same day over and over again with no foreseeable end or beginning. I could close my eyes right this instant and I will see these same walls when I open them, right up until I close them again. When I glance at the date and time, there is a sense of disbelief.

"It's only Tuesday?"
"It's already Tuesday?"

My perception of time no longer matches its passage. I am not moving with time, I am stuck with time.

Time.

The first few words of this post were typed out at 2.50am on 2nd January, 2020. 

The past week has felt a bit strange. Being off work means that there is no structure to how I spend my time. I sleep when I want, wake up when I want, eat when I'm hungry, shower at 6pm; wiling my time off from work with books, TV shows, movies, going out with people and it has all seemed to mold into a giant time blob. My day starts at 1pm and ends at 5am, making me lose count of what day and date it is. The sun sets at its' usual time but I'm often caught off guard ("How can it already be dark? I just had lunch."). Hanging out with my friends at our usual mamak at 1am on a Thursday feels perfectly normal. The friends who are still working on the days between Christmas and New Year's leave at 4pm without guilt because time and professional conduct has seemingly come to a halt. Suddenly no one cares if you're skipping out early because, hey, it's the end of the year. On Twitter, people are joking about how time is a construct and yes of course it's okay to spend all day on your couch watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one sitting. Who cares when the year is ending, do whatever you want! 

Time truly is a construct, but it seems to be an enormously important one. People seem to be so eager and willing to abandon the usual routines and expectations at what is believed to be the end of a year because it feels like something has come to an end. A 'thing' has passed, but all that 'thing' is is a certain number of days. 365 days, that's all it is. But come January 1st, the past 365 days magically evaporates and we are granted a beginning. A fresh start at life, even though your circumstances have not changed at all since December 31st. Everyone is charged with a bounding sense of optimism that THIS is when I change. This is when I become better, try harder, get stronger. The characteristics of time doesn't change; it's still the same second, minute, hour, day of your life. 12.01am of January 1st isn't very different from 11.59pm of December 31st. Nothing's changed except your sense of time. A deeply human trait of assigning tangibility to something intangible and unchanging. 

I don't see my cats joining me lighting fireworks and wearing little party hats just because the date has changed. But as I watched the fireworks last night with my friends, hugging each other when the clock struck 12am and talking about our hopes for the new year, I'm grateful to have been born a human being. To be able to assign this tangibility to time and to feel a beginning, a middle, and an end. How hopeless and exhausted would I feel if I truly believed that every day I lived were the same. To feel my life stretched out ahead of me; a never ending line of moments, one the same as the other, right up until the moment I die. 

Time might be linear but it feels like a circle with a dot at the top (wow, Nadia, great job of describing a clock). 

Each moment we re-arrive at the dot at the top, we're reminded of the illusion (?) that we're somehow not bound by the linearity of time. We're given a sense that we can start over, do things a little differently, make a change. Bend the line. 

But why wait for 365 days to pass? That's the big circle, but there's the bonus of even smaller circles. 30 days, 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds. Each circle is an opportunity to change and to bend the line. 

It's now 3.45am, January 2nd 2020 so I'll start bending the line tomorrow. Who cares, I've got all those little circles, all those little chances to change and make something of my life. All I have to do is pick one dumb little circle, I guess whichever one doesn't matter. Every moment is the same, they all offer the same opportunity. It's all on me, not time. 

Writing about trying to write

I'm finding it strange how I used to be able to write a lot more when I was younger; and writing was a much easier process as well. Words would flow out of me and I'd pour my heart or my head out onto the keyboard but funnily enough, I never really had anything of importance to say when I was younger and full of words. I'd just write whatever came to mind, even if it wasn't really about anything concrete or mind-blowing.

Now when I try to write, I find myself stuck at the first sentence, almost crippled by doubts and second guesses like "Wow that sounds so pretentious", or "Why are you writing like this, you don't sound like this in real life"; deleting drafts over and over again, rewriting sentences until I'd lose what I even wanted to say. I'd get stuck on topics that have been whirling around in my mind, I want to write about them all and finally get them out of my head, but which one should I write about? When I do start writing it, I stop halfway (as I literally just did 2 minutes ago) and think, "Why am I even writing about this?". I write paragraphs and paragraphs, reread them and think, "What am I even getting at here?" and proceed to delete an hour's worth of writing (which I also just did).

Ultimately, I think this struggle to write reflects well on how I've changed over the years.

Having this blog survive from my high school days right up to now is quite a feat to me. Looking back, I'm quite happy it did because it's helped me somewhat come to this conclusion that I'm trying so hard to write about now. Back in school, I was happy to blurt out anything that would come to mind. Inconsequential, shallow, immature and badly written but I didn't care because that's who I was at 16. I didn't have very many cares, I was happy to mold myself to the environment I was in because it was an easy environment (this environment being secondary school in Kuantan). People were content with themselves, I had friends who were easy going and we all got along really well. My priorities were simple and direct: schoolwork, exams, boys. Very straightforward 16 year old girl stuff. Things were easier to write about precisely because things were easy.

Now that I've "grown up" (side note: I think "grown older" is a more accurate term because most of the time I don't feel any more adult than I did at 17), life and it's problems have become a lot less straightforward. Stress, anxiety, people falling short of expectations, not living up to your own expectations for yourself, balancing work friends and family, careers blablablabla. Each problem presents it's own episode of picking apart, dissecting, rationalizing and takes a long time for me to figure out in my head. Most of the time the problem is abandoned to try and figure out another problem I have in my life, until my head is filled with half thought out problems that seem nowhere close to being solved. I start to lose hope that I'll ever figure out what to do with those problems and I'll just have to stay this way; confused with a head full of problems.

Even so, with my head full of problems, my feelings towards writing never really changed. It's always helped me sort my thoughts out and come to a conclusion, the only thing is that now I have a lot more thoughts that are a bit more difficult to sort through and conclude. It doesn't mean that writing won't help anymore, it just means I need to do more of it.

So to help myself, I'm going to make a list of things I want to think and write about. Something that I can look back on, refer to and make it easier for myself to build, reflect and expand on as I move through this life. And hope to God I don't forget my password or get locked out of this account.

Let's start with 10 first. Here goes...

1) Mortality (I'm wondering why this is the first thing that popped into my head. It still makes me a little scared how much life has changed me, from thinking about boys and exams to thinking about mortality? What happened, kid? ... Life!)
2) Being female
3) Loneliness and isolation
4) Religion and identity
5) Social media
6) Parenting (but I'm not even a parent)
7) My eating and exercise habits
8) Making efforts for other people
9) Making efforts for yourself
10) Being great or being good


It took almost this whole week to finish writing this post when all this post is saying is that my head is jammed up, I want to try and write more and here are 10 things I want to try writing about. Which, in hindsight, is really nothing substantial. I wonder how long it'll take for me to finish writing about these 10, will I even finish writing? Will it take another 10 years? One year per post? I'll be 37 by then. That's really scary. But we'll see, won't we? Or, I'll see... It's just me here anyway.

2016 goodbyes and 2019 goodbyes

2016:

Whenever I watch movies, it's always goodbye scenes that tear me up. Whether it's a boy saying goodbye to his alien friend like in ET, or a little girl saying goodbye to her father like in Interstellar, or an ape mother having to say goodbye to her adopted human son like in Tarzan. Goodbyes are hard to take in without weeping like a baby.

That's because, to me at least, saying goodbye to people you love is the hardest thing to bear. That's because, even though you know it might be temporary, everything is thrown into a change. Things you want to share with the people you love - you won't be able to. Things lose their sweetness. Whether you've had to leave to bigger and better things, you'll miss the people who made it possible for you. You won't be able to help but think "I wish they were here to see this with me." The new things you're supposed to enjoy have a bitter aftertaste to the sweetness. You'll be engulfed in these bigger and better things, building something you wouldn't have been able to if you stayed but in the back of your mind, you'll think, "I wish you were here with me to see this." "You would have loved it." You can record and recount every detail of your newness and joy but you'll never be able to bring that moment back to share it with that person you said goodbye to, no matter how much you want to.

Whether you've been left behind while someone has gone - nothing has physically changed in your life but everything looks different to you. Something as simple as buying bread at a place you once went to together could make you think, "When we were here together, you made a funny joke and we laughed about it for a long time". You could look at your couch and imagine that person sitting there like they used to, curled up in their usual spot.


2019:

Edit: I saved that as a draft in 2016. Here I am now, 26th January 2019. I revisited this graveyard of a blog because this morning, I said goodbye yet again. But this time it wasn't a physical goodbye. It was a more difficult goodbye. Now I sit here at my usual spot in the office, pretending to work and holding back my tears, marveling a bit at how little my circumstances have changed. Goodbyes still hurt, the pain of wishing you could share joy and happiness with someone who isn't present is still there. But now, the goodbye comes with the sting of realizing that even though you're hurting and upset and angry and bitter, the world still moves forward. Life is still progressing even though you're not ready for it. Things are happening whether you like it or not so you just have to pull your socks up, wipe away your tears and snot, get on with it.

Goodbyes and uncertainties are certain.

Uncertainties

Since I only seem to write when I'm upset, I'm going to write about something that has always managed to upset me for the longest of times - goodbyes and uncertainties. Even as writing this, I realize that this is a somewhat childish thing to be upset about and as an adult, I should be able to accept that goodbyes and uncertainties are part and parcel of life. Nothing is ever permanent and nothing is ever set in stone. I should be able to accept that because most goings-on my life right now is testament to these two things. 

I never thought that I would be working an office job, with a desk and phone and business card with the whole charade of meeting clients and acting professional; yet it happened. I went into uni a blank slate, not knowing what I was going to do with my life but ever so optimistically assuming that whatever it was, I would love it. My first internship at the zoo seemed to confirm this - I had magically gotten a temporary job that I was in love with, that was stimulating, that was 'cool' and I never woke up feeling unhappy about where I was in life. I had interesting conversations every single day, I rarely felt isolated or stuck - I was growing, even though I didn't know it at the time. I thought I would magically fall into a profession that would suit me and that I'd always be in an environment as stimulating and dynamic. It didn't occur to me as literally as it does now, but it never occurred to me that I could one day feel bored and uninterested. 

Now, I work in an office. The most stimulating conversations I have revolve around where to eat for lunch and whether I should offer a mint to the colleague suffering from halitosis. This was far from what I expected from life but - nothing is set in stone. Accept it. You can try to change it, but nothing is set in stone.

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Goodbyes

As a child, I was always a huge blubbering baby whenever it came to saying goodbye to anyone. When I was really young, I'd always feel a little daunted when going to sleep at a cousins' house because that meant leaving home and my bed and my parents and things would be different at this cousins' house. I would be fine during the day and enjoy myself when playing with them, but when it came to night time I would pretty often lose it, start crying because I missed my parents and my bed and all things familiar. It could get pretty bad because I remember my parents often coming over to pick me up from the failed sleepover. As I grew a little older, I outgrew the habit of crying when it came to bedtime and could stay with any relative for however long BUT the crying moved up to when my parents dropped me off and I had to say goodbye to them. I'd cry at the beginning but I learnt how to keep a brave face and go through with spending time away from them. Obviously, when you're that young, your parents are your whole world and whenever you're away from them, every sense of stability and security vanishes. 

When I became a teenager, the family dynamic changed. I was at home a lot less often, my parents would spend a lot of time away from me and I'd spend nearly weeks on end with a family friend. No crying as a teenager but it taught me to rely on myself more and to be self-sufficient when it came to stability and security.

Then when you get a serious partner, self sufficiency becomes a little moot. You might revert back to childhood and assign most of that stability and security to this one being that you love and luckily, loves you back. As far as relationships go, that's the goal. You share and shape your life, your habits and your whole self with a person who wants to do the same - much like how a child shapes their life, habits and self with their parents.   

What will really test your stuffing and your tenacity is when life forces you to say goodbye to those who have that much anchorage with your life. When you've had to watch them leave with no say in it. It could come in any way - death, distance, time, anything. What makes it harder is when you watch other people go by with the privilege of merely having their loved ones around them and life has somehow not granted you that privilege. You will find yourself clenching a hand just to remind yourself that it will be some time until someone else will clench back and that you have to stand strong and be patient on your own for a while. You will find yourself doing something simple like eating a piece of chicken and being a little upset because you're not able to share it with someone you miss. You will not have the privilege of taking a person for granted. It's truly a test of what you're made of, but whatever it is that separates you from a loved one will change you. You might not feel it's for the better, but you won't be the same version of yourself as when you had them by your side. 

By "you", I'm talking to me mostly. Life is full of uncertainties, but one thing that is certain is goodbyes. We will all bid farewell to someone we love in this life, we will all feel this emptiness at some point. The only question is when it will happen. I night as well get used to it?