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During Stage today (The City Remembers is coming up next week) I felt kind of cheeky and clambered around while the others didn’t respond much.

I’d say something or prod others for a neat reaction and immediately feel shame for engaging in such a childish desire for attention. I’d not hear a single instruction and end up being lost the next moment… Not exactly foreign.

I felt alone as hell, and my rationality spat, “This doesn’t fucking make sense. They love you. What are you after?”

There’s been a recent “thing” where I’ve suspected that… I’ve some form of hyperactivity. I’m afraid of slapping a sign onto what was a natural path. Labelling your own problems and self-handicapping are way easier solutions than confronting the fact that you’re imperfect and that it is alright to be.

It doesn’t come easy if you’ve no sense of normalcy to compare it with; I’ve understood my life to be fairly alright. But I get distracted easily. I yearn for engagement. I overthink to a tremendous degree. I realise I’ve always been the one talking in class. I realise.

I’m afraid to even get it tested, because it feels like yet another check in a checklist of excuses.

Where’s the line between a personality issue and a mental issue?

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Things are buzzing. Word vomit ahead.

I’ve my third date later on today. Like waiting for maturity to hit the ripe old age of twenty-one, nothing changes. The drought of a relationship is a desert all the way to the barbed-wire fence… And there’s still more desert beyond.

I’m aware we’re both probably thinking the other is too good for the self. We’re both our first dating partners. I’m keeping things “open”. I’m not wondering if she hates me, which, by God is the most refreshing feeling on Earth.

She’s small and quiet, though, which makes it really hard to hear her at times.

I’ve been feeling more confident in reaching out and dating ever since the Get Juiced incident. That one with the women-loving-women. The confidence had grown to an unruly thicket shortly after, a real fun bit of “will she won’t she like me” with anyone remotely attractive (and, thinking about it, anyone who even gives me attention), which ends up in disappointment since I rarely do anything about these yearnings.

I’m still learning.

I’m playing a grief-stricken husband in Grief is the Thing with Feathers. I know sadness. I don’t know grief that much. I’m afraid of overacting. I’m humbled.

I’m tired. She’s been initiating the last 2 dates (the second one was a hilarious triple date), I should do something too.

“I’m sorry.

I shouldn’t have told you to go away when you… Rubbed my hair to check if I actually blowdried it.

Our house isn’t that small. I was in the corner, I blowdried my hair and I told you I did.

I was angry too because I felt like it was a bit excessive.

I want… I want our relationship to be of two brothers you know? I don’t need another fuckin Mom or Dad, they ask me enough about my grades, my life.

I want a friend and not a second dad.

And I get that you’re still angry. This is probably how you care for me. And that’s OK.

Just know that this talk is long overdue and it was my fault for hiding it.

I’m sorry.”

Rooftop, Science

Yeah, it’s a double bill! Old draft which I dredged up.

After we’d watched Permanence, Gina’s play, we headed over to a nearby capsule hotel to indulge in $5 beers.

I can’t hold my liquor well (makes things that much cheaper really) and started ruminating after 2 bottles.

Guys, don’t you love the feeling when you’ve just stayed the night at a place unfamiliar and it’s the next morning – it’s still dark outside – the irregular sound of bedsheets glide over each other and ruffle their way into your thoughts, while hushed voices and an occasional chuckle echo from somewhere else. People scour through their packs and duffles and messily stuff plastic bags back into whichever compartments they could make out with the torchlight between their teeth.

When I got my own room in a Scottish Airbnb with unfinished flooring, with floor mats literally placed as a makeshift footpath from the bed to the door. The window outside was grey, like every building is. The trees are barren and dusty cars peep from distant roads.

You slide the balcony door open; your breath is a cloud and the air throttles your lungs.

Or how about Amsterdam, when you got a roof apartment that ascended from stairs that are half as wide but twice as steep as you’re used to? When in your excitement in taboo you took several deep drags of the stuff to your disappointment (and to everyone else’s annoyance when you coughed like a fucking amateur) before it hit you all at once fifteen minutes later and you had to be escorted to the doorstep of the coffeeshop with a cup of sugar water?

“Not sure about that. ” They look at you curiously, but you’re smiling to yourself; you’re somewhere else.

Roof of Some Dawson Place

In a fit of perverse curiosity, I went back to the Archives to read my posts from April-Sept 2011. Jesus.

Things that struck me as interesting:

• Terrible fucking vocabulary
• Melodramatic
• A high-octane (facade of?) love for friends
• Anxiety and depression rearing their fucking heads
• I mentioned being depressed a lot, but I don’t know if I was exaggarating or legitimately in denial
• Very VERY self-dismissive and insecure
• Oddly, somewhat self-aware and introspective
• I did horribly in school
• I would slap me
• Incredible immaturity, might be retarded
• Loads of comments!

Yeah. Just wanted to put all this out there so that you guys don’t have to tell me how I used to be.

We were back on the metal stairs, this time leaning against a wall with a significant pile of ash and cigarette filters, an ornate bottle of coffee liqueur, a mug and two packets of tobacco sitting in the middle of our four-man circle.

“Here’s something I ask all my friends,” Mars raised, “If you could rewind your life to a certain point, what would you have done differently?”

I asked in return, “What would you have done?”

“Well… I told y’all already what.” I winced as she snapped back. “I’d go do science instead of languages. Get into engineering. Become an astronaut. Unfuck my vision.”

I’d go back to Sec 1. Join band instead. Butterfly effect. Maybe I’d be way more inspired. Maybe I’d be not fat. Or awkward.

Gio, in his thick Italian accent, said, “I’d maybe do physics if I didn’t like to make stuff. But I do! So I’m pretty okay with the life I’m having now.”

I wowed honestly and found myself in envy of his content.

“Well,” He continued, “My cousin is coming down to meet me at Bangkok in December.”

“What’s he like?”

“Uh, he’s constantly worrying. Not like me at all.”

I grinned. “Like me, then!”

“You? Nah. You seem pretty cool actually.” The rest nodded in agreement and I grinned harder.

Or maybe I’d dump Com Science for Sociology. They know this. I’ve mentioned it a few times. But it’s OK. Nobody really cares. (They do.) Yeah, you know what I mean.

Joseph ruminated. “I’d go back and take it easy. Maybe less on acads and more on talking to people.”

“I thought you’re doing fine!”

“No, not like that. More like not stress out so much, you know?”

Mars told us stories of her squatting at squatters in Melbourne and Prague, an adolescent spirit spending 7 months on her own, fuelled by her hatred for our country, her family being pissed at her, no finances and social anxiety to begin with.

If you’ve nothing to lose, you’ll end up doing pretty crazy stuff. It’s all about faking it. This kind of thing comes with practice. She had a lot to share with us.

As we chatted through 2am, I wondered and I was right: the question didn’t reach me.

But I smiled and was fine with it, and this time, bathed myself in the presence: of strong tobacco that stuck on my fingers, awesome stories and coffee liqueur.

I returned to my room, feeling loved and eager to dream about our potential road trip.

I’ve been running regularly and lost about 3kg (yes!) ; I’ve also been taking anti-depressants somewhat regularly ever since that birthday episode knowing how deep in the pits I’ve been.

I’ve described the fluoxetine in an older post. Taking it nowadays leads to a variety of side effects and nonsense.

The brain is horrible at self diagnosis. The medicine begins by suppressing something. I think it suppresses the chemicals that make me overthink, because I find myself doing that much, much less after taking it. I don’t feel perceptibly more spright or anything, it just is the absence of too many thoughts.

The void of overthinking is then filled up with restlessness. I can’t concentrate well, if at all. Recess week was a blur, but I don’t know if it was because I was wasting my life away or because I was literally forced into a shit attention span. But it’s fine, because I no longer overthink as much. My attention lasts laughably short and I get bored easily.

Perhaps it’s because I used to use 100% of my brain like Lucy and now with much less thinking to do, my brain’s still on restless overdrive.

The bad thoughts still come, but managbly slowly. But so does everything else. I take longer to decide and comprehend. Sometimes I talk to myself to rally myself together, and also because the weirdness of talking to myself gets cast away as a bad thought.

Sometimes I nap even if there’s loads to do; I’m just bored.

If I were to stop taking the meds immediately, all the suppressed chemicals burst forth into anxiety-central and any little problem launches me into a deluge of discomfort and adrenaline. Perhaps that’s why I thought I had anxiety as well.

Upon taking alcohol whilst under the effects of the medicine, the next day is almost always guaranteed to be sombre.

No medicine casts a dull haze in my vision and I tend to act more rationally, with the painful effect of being sensitive as all hell and sighing a lot.

Sleeping is never a problem.

Starfucker couldn’t come to Singapore because they support marijuana. Sue’s present for my birthday is hereby refunded.