keep me next to You.

Let's turn things around. It's been an emotionally numbing week. I haven't been feeling like this since I was 14, and hormonally imbalanced. 

 

and just a disclaimer, from the feedback i've been getting from those of you really still read my blog, my recent posts about my granma are when i'm at my worst. I am not always like that, nor am I fragile and sensitive, and you don't have to worry about stepping on my emotional toes :D 

 

With the stress of planning a difficult event, starting uni (and assignments), and trying to hold up and reshuffle a department, and having a spiritual crisis here, I just feel utterly bogged down. The kind where I don't want to get out of bed in the morning, or don't want to fall asleep at night. 

 

okay. actually, I didn't mean to pile on the sad stuff here.

 

I changed my blog layout, and was going through some old posts again. and I thought, in honor of successfully maturing into a reasonably well rounded person, and not pregnant, not smoking, not doing drugs, not drinking and clubbing, not overly bimbotic, not irresponsible with my life, not in debt, and just being averagely not in trouble.

 

what has the world become that being average and normal is already the best thing you can hope for.

 

I did this at the end of 2007, when i was 14. and i cringed at almost every line. so lets see what a 20 year old (actually 19 >:)) version of me can do.

 

 

2013. even though the year hasn't ended.

[PEOPLE]

1. Best friends?

Troubling that I can't say that I have that one or few best, best friends anymore. But I have enough love, support and encouragement I need from the group I have now.

 

2. Lost any friends?

Not on purpose. Inevitable. Form 6 friends, and every year that passes, my usj 12 schoolmates.

 

3. Gained any friends?

Here and there. and at uni.

 

4. Met a new good friend?

I did join SOM for three months. Amazing people.

 

[PLACES]

 

1. Went out of the country?

This year no. Singapore was the end of last year. But had plenty of local holidays. :)

 

2. Moved?

I doubt I ever will. Haha. 

on another note though, 365 did move to a bigger hall. I miss the old one, but, progress is progress.

 

3. New school?

Never thought I'd ever study in Taylor's. and sometimes i still feel like it's a wrong decision. no peace. haha. Let's see how this semester goes. 

 

4. How many times on an airplane?

Langkawi, both ways. First time in a night flight. Sat uncomfortably next to a large middle eastern man. Adrian's shampoo exploded in his bag.

 

5. Have you changed?

Nope.

 

6. Biggest conflict this year?

Conflict? Like argument? Like internal conflict? I dunno howz to answer dis.

 

7. Most depressed time this year?

When my granma passed, and funnily enough, now.

 

[LOVE]

 

1. Did you fall in love?

Not that I know of. I don't know what the feeling consists of. Learning to admire and respect different qualities in certain guys, but love? vat is dat.

 

2. Did you get heartbroken?

So dramatic. Please. No.

 

3. Who was your summer romance?

no summer, no romance. haha.

 

4. Least favorite season this year?

When granma passed.

 

5. Good birthday?

Not yet.

 

[FINAL QUESTIONS]

 

1. Snuck out?

I don't anymore. Haha. It's the sneaking back in that's the problem. My midnight curfew has been re-implemented.

 

2. Met a person who will change your life?

All the people in SOM. 

 

3. Had a first something?

lazy to think.

 

4. Liked someone who didn't like you?

Infatuate over countless handsome guys that don't know I exist. Biasalah. Aaron. Ramsey.

 

5. Got bad grades?

STPM results were good. :)

 

6. Got suspended?

Naw.

 

7. Moved states?

never...

 

8. Got a myspace?

This is an invalid question.

 

9. Done something you totally regret?

Telling people things. Really, the more I keep to myself, the better.

 

 

:)

<3 font="">

blank and blue.

Can't believe that I start uni in just a few days. I've been in a blissful bubble for 8 months, but life must resume.

Took the week off. Haven't had home cooked ramen in a while.

Suddenly very badly reminded of my grandparents cooking. Can no longer request for fish curry, special fried tofu, asam pork, cheesecake, everything. Such tangible memories make it especially painful you know, like grasping for thin air. Such a cliche phrase, but how else to describe it?

I realize i'm especially emotional this week, due to it being the time of the month, so a lot of things set me off easily.

Please see how silly and dramatic my emotions like to be.

Overheard a conversation of a not related aunty having to admit her mother in the hospital, who was 76 years old. Emo.

Watching adrian's videoshoot about losing a parent. Imagined my dad and uncles. Emo.

Using leftover alcohol swabs from my grandma's stash to clean some of my jewelry. Emo.

Saw an older person in a wheelchair. Emo.

Wake up. Emo.

Hahahaha.

Okay. After this week I'll be more stable. and normal. Goodness gracious.

just-say-no moments.

Hello.

Well, i think it's funny that in the midst of my work and holidays, i managed to forget about july 11th, until the family trip to camerons few days later. this july 11th would mark 4 years since my yehyeh passed away.

just how. did we manage.

and since july 29th just passed, that means 5 months without my granma.

it's not that i mean to dwell in the loss, but it's just so hard to get it out of my thoughts. sometimes when you're not really doing much, just being idle, memories of them are the first things that pop into my head. how much more worse it gets when we pass by their empty house everyday, or see their stuff lying around the house, or in church or pictures.

sometimes we go into the house to clean it a bit, or just to get the mail and whatnot. can't imagine that some of the best memories of my childhood and the worst and strongest memories of my grandparents will no longer be just a 2 minute walk away. i mean, yeah, it's physically there, but it's not the same.

so weird that starting from next year, every chinese new year won't begin with a visit there.

and yeah, practically one quarter of my house is filled with something that used to belong to them. my grandparents were medium level junk hoarders, bless them. lots of stuff. okaylah, it's lifetime of stuff. even over all the birthdays and christmases over the years, their gifts seem to stand out even more now. my everyday handbag was a gift from my granma. HOW NOT TO NOTICE? :(

charm bracelets, nail polishes, sweaters, notebooks. just everywhere.

also, i don't know how long more before going to church without them will feel normal. not having to fetch them there, and fetch them back. their seats preoccupied by somebody else. can't go to my granma every friday night to ask for sweets.

even where i'm working now it really sucks sometimes. at sunway medical. it's so much fancier compared to UH, and less depressing. which makes me hate UH even more. and working with a pediatrician, i have to see kids with their grandparents. and i can get a bit jealous sometimes.

and the many wake services/funeral, and cancer cases that you hear about.

and still having so many dreams about them. every week i can say.

you can't help but feel like it's too much. too unfair.

then sometimes i think about people who have it worse, you know?

my grandparents were such a blessing in my life, like a bonus not everyone gets to have, and my family so lucky to have them.

but imagine people who have lost their parents at a younger age. someone you also have to depend on for your livelihood, someone you thought would be with you till you graduated and got married. and have to be reminded of it so often by just looking at the people around you. how to deal with fathers day or mothers day.

or if you lost a child, someone you've invested so much in, and placed so much hope into their future. someone who should be outliving you instead. seeing other children around.

such a feeling of loss must be so overwhelming right? makes you look around and want to slap yourself for being so caught up in shallow things.

sorry to be so depressing. after this, you can go visit a happier site. :)

don't cross your arms.

Well, it's already the end of July. And I've just officially registered at Taylor's. In about one more month, this honeymoon period of my life will really end. :( and time definitely does fly when you're having fun.

From December till now, I've been really having the time of my life. (of course, funnily enough, losing my grandmother during that time would be the worst).

It's a rare combination of circumstances that somehow aligned for me to enjoy these 6+ months so thoroughly :') having enough money, time, freedom, and the best company who so happen to have the money, time and freedom as well. yes, our holiday phases align, how very rare.

Let's see. When stpm ended in december, I've had my holiday to Singapore with my family, Genting with my form 6 classmates and then Youth Camp at Port Dickson. And of course Christmas and all that.

Yep, sitting on a plane for a very first time, shopping and sightseeing at Singapore. and then first time squeezing into a tiny hotel room with 7 other girls, walking in the cold in the middle of the night to a mamak in genting. Camp, of course, is never not fun. so. yayyy. :)

And then working for about, three weeks I think, at Empire, earning myself enough money to survive quite well throughout my holiday. and then I started my SOM Bible Course at church for three months. Which was really fun and enlightening :) and made really good friends.

Immediately after I graduated, I went for family camp at Kampar, and then a short stop to Ipoh, and then Genting, again. :)

Kampar was fun, cos these camps are a lot more relaxed. Every night sleeping late, and hanging out. Regret not going for paintball :/ and the last night being the only girl (again) just talking to the guys in their room. and then followed Gid, Ryan, Joe and Matthew to Ipoh, just to get chicken. and walk around aimlessly. And spending 3 days in genting in matthew's apartment with the chee jack, ben, marcus, matthew, edwin, and clement and joseph on the last night. steph and i having a huge bed to ourselves for being the only girls >:) board games, trying to cook breakfasts, lunches and dinners, going up the cable car to watch fast 6, and then going back down a scary cable car ride because of the rain and lightning.

and then happy weeks of freedom, including doing photoshoots and videoshoots with nick, adrian, kelvin, sam and joseph.

and then Langkawi! with my sis, nat, faya, adrian, joe and ryan. second and third flights ever in my life :) from Monday evening till Wednesday night. nice hotel, walking distance to the shops, and near the awesome beach. first time wading in so deep in the water, having a failed campfire, running in the rain, more board games, underwater world (penguinnssssss), bubbles, really strong winds, and exploding shampoos.

and then, one more one day trip with ryan, matthew, ben and gabriel to genting to join the monash cf camp. met zhi wei there, and a lot of other friendly people. also the day we realized ryan's car has cockroaches. yep.

lastly, went to Camerons with my whole family. haven't had one with the cousins in a long time. the last one was to langkawi after my granpa passed away, and now this one after my granma. sad. first time on a extended family holiday without grandparents.

No one to nag at us to sleep earlier, wake up earlier, drink more water, pick up after ourselves. yah.

It was really cold up there, due to the rain. Underestimated the need for packing anything other than shorts. haha. We went to strawberry park resort. another sad fact, the whole family with grandparents went up there to stay before, when i was about 3? and there are lots of memories and pictures tied to that place. :(

went up on a Saturday morning, stopped by Ipoh first to have lunch. bumped into Alexa, of all people of all places. haha. and then reached up at 3ish. a crazy round of taboo. had steamboat for dinner. really. really. cold. that night. and stayed up playing mahjong. morning had buffet breakfast :D went to the market. and then back down to ipoh for lunch and buying chicken and kaya puffs and soooo many other things. then on the way back, my uncle's radiator broke down, and then we were stuck on the highway for a while, and then carried to a lonely, forsaken mechanic in Gopeng, and stuck there till 11pm. yep. 3 to 11. what an experience.

:)

to add to all these, a lot of nights staying up late and coming home at 4, 5, 6 in the morning especially with faya, gid, ryan and joe. crazy things happen on early mornings.

these late nights have since been banned when faya left :(

and now, working at Sunway Medical just to pass by the time, and earn some money before uni starts. aih. it's also been nice that johanna, yi jan and joel han are back for awhile, and kylie comes home next weekend.

yep, so different from any other phase of my life. I know people expect me to become a vegetable, since I didn't really do anything substantial these 7 months, but there's never been a day where I can say I was bored, or lifeless, or just not content.

It scares me that when I go back to uni I'd just be mess. and never would I imagine that I'd go to Taylor's. yeah. although, the conditions that allow me to go are just ironically sickening.

and now, I'm here typing this, because trying to juggle a full social schedule with work involving sick kids, has left me down with a sore throat, flu, cough and I predict a fever any minute now. great.

also. remember the things I said I wanted to accomplish, here: http://staringmedown.blogspot.com/2012/03/better-than-before.html

well, I still haven't picked up chinese, i've improved on the guitar though. not really fit and toned up, but badminton every week has been really fun. didn't learn the things I wanted to, but i promise I still want to. definitely been reading, though it can be improved. But spiritually? Still baby steps.

<3 :)

reality does more than just bite.

I almost forgot about my last post. And now I'm upset again.

I came here to write about my stpm results. But i'll save it for another day.

Let's just continue on from what happened.

My mama came home from a whole month or so at the hospital on the first week of march. Apparently, she was very happy. Well, in her own home of course.

It was of course much easier to spend time with her at home, and take care of her. And further along we even got her to sit on the wheelchair or the couch, just to look at her garden, or to watch tv.

She even started to regain some appetite and would look at all the food we ate, but she couldn't eat. I remember some days when one of us or my relatives would feed her some ice-cream or soup and she'd be happy.

It was also easier for others to visit her, since the hospital was so far. and you could tell she really loved visitors.

Of course I'd be optimistic for her recovery right?

CNY rolled around, and she even joined us at the table for some meals. Obviously she couldn't go visiting with us, and every house we went to we had to talk about her condition again. um. She was still insistent on giving out angpaos, and could even compliment us cousins for our new clothes.

I think around this time she looked much better already, her skin improved a lot, and her arms weren't as swollen.

It was very different when some relatives visited us at her house instead, we've never done that before.

A week or two after cny (details get hazy), her condition started to decline a lil bit. like very lil. midnight fevers and more aches and pains.

She had to go back to the hospital on the last week of February, due to an infection on her neck, and the color of her skin was darkening rapidly.

On wednesday night, 27th of february, my parents got an emergency call to the hospital, so they rushed off. And an hour later, they called my sis and i to go, because it looked really serious. We went, at about 11pm. Now, this has happened once or twice before, so as worried as we were, we didn't think of worst case scenarios yet.

She was in a different ward, under palliative care. It's a cleaner, nicer ward than lvl10. She wasn't very responsive to us, and didn't seem like herself. She was very active and didn't like the oxygen machine. The doctors and nurses a few disturbing looking tests and whatnot.

After a while, the cousins went to a sitting room down the hall. as we were all tired. funnily, that day was the last of work for me, so my next day was free. Though krystle and eric had work the next day, and jie and marcus had early classes, and shaun had things to do. So we sat and waited in the small dark room.

I have to say, generally we were still very optimistic at that point, albeit tired. it was almost 12am. After awhile, we went to see mama again, and she seemed stable. I offered to stay with my dad, but even he said it's probably just like previously, so most of us went back. The last thing we said to her was, we'll see you tomorrow.

Daddy came home at 2, and said that she's still stable. So we didn't think much. And went to sleep.

The following morning, ties with the day my granpa passed away, as worst day ever.

My mother bursts into my room at 6am, telling me my mama passed away.

I just remember feeling very numb, and laid awake till for 3 hours hugging my soft toys.

After a shower and funnily enough I had to finish some stuff for church, at 11am I went to mama's house, and prepared myself for the worst. I'm sorry if it sounds like i'm dramatizing anything, but this is how i remember that weekend.

The real stupid thing is that because of my yeh yeh's death, I knew what was coming for the next 3 or so days. And i really hated that we have to go through all of it again. So the procedure is to clean downstairs and rearrange the furniture so that we can fit the casket. and we cleaned out the old cupboards outside, most of which still holds yeh yeh's stuff. the nirvana people arranged everything, the tents and the whatever else lah.

I couldn't bear to look into the casket till at night.

Krystle took off from work, and shaun had to cancel his flight back to sarawak. Marcus skipped class. and jie jie came back at about 2pm. she was supposed to have a whole day of class.

Yeh yeh's passing left me a very distraught and teary, but this mama's one just made me very numb.

In a way, it WAS very shocking. Even yehyeh's passing we had a whole day to anticipate it.

Went back to shower and nap and i can't remember. We went back at 6pm, to prepare for the first wake service. My auntie ordered pizza hut for dinner. needless to say, it made me feel better.

at this point i think i only responded to few text msgs. I assumed most people didn't know. i never know what to say in response.

i'd say the first night was the hardest. jiejie's eulogy. when my granma's sisters are so sad.

next day was the same. Krystle's and my uncle's eulogy.
always tiring, coming home at 1am ish, irregular meals, entertaining guests.

Still, i'm so thankful for those of you that came. I don't like being calculative, but i can clearly remember friends that didn't come. not even one of the three days. i won't hold a grudge, but i still wonder.

Saturday was the funeral service. Again really tough. The cousins took one car by ourselves. We had police escorts again. i stress again that this is so stupidly and oddly familiar. The cremation. And unlike yeh yeh's, on the same day we could collect the bones and the urn and put her in the plot next to yeh yeh. Now everytime we visit we will be doubly upset.

We were not emotionally distraught and madly upset okay. We were actually okay, emotional when it came to a point, and mostly tired, but we were okay. By God's grace, we know she's in a better place and all that. We even played mahjong and had cendol and all that.

Sunday I really didn't want to go to church. I really didn't want to face anyone, and go on as if I didn't just lose one of the most important people in my life.

Since there was cell leader's meeting, we decided to go. Inevitably, people did ask. Everyone is of course very nice. Some of course more brash than others. But I know everybody is very nice.

but it just sucks remembering that, that sunday or the sunday before that we were still planning to bring mama to church.

it's been three weeks since. and if mama were around, and well, i could let her know my good results and celebrate with her.