Some have sad tales to tell.
Others keep them
safe
and
sound
and
forever

muted.

As true as the sunrise

  

  

     

  

Corn Exchange / Salford Quays, April 2016

One day, wherever I stand and whomever I stand with, I will look back and know that I've fulfilled the greatest yearning in my life, and that is, to have held something true.

I am the mountain, I am the sea, you can't take that away from me

Formby Beach / 1 April 2016

I ventured on a spontaneous day trip out with Leti to the cold, lifeless beach of Formby on April fools. It would have been an otherwise pleasant jaunt if it wasn't for the weather that dampened things - both literally and figuratively. We shivered vigorously throughout lunch while having our onigiri picnic amongst the trees in the wild. Guess the joke's on us? I had fun being a joke :-)

I'm worried I won't see your face light up again

Barely into the start of my second semester and I have been complaining like a little wimp about the pile of work I have. Sometimes, I tend to forget about people around me who work even harder.

A stroke can do many things to a patient, like taking away one's movement or one's neurological capabilities; a few months ago, she lost some of the latter. You see, the thing about aphasia is that the inflicted person reminds you of the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers; one week of mental and physical discomfort in the ward is enough to shatter someone's core. She was a very independent and self-sufficient woman, and I saw all of that crumble down. She hated herself, and that hatred was the very thing that could snap the tripwire to a second attack, and every night I sleep with fear that she will never free herself of herself. At times, I felt guilty of having fun because how could I be having it easy when there she was struggling to keep awake from the drowsiness of pills? Even texting her was a heartache because this time I knew that "typing..." didn't mean that she was slow at typing, but that she couldn't find the words to use or that she forgot how to spell. I tried to play her favourite game more often, because perhaps she'd find it easier to move some candies around than to type or speak -- less thinking, less stress. I sent her many 'lives', waiting for her to send me one back. "I don't know how to play already, very tiring," she said. She was about to give up, and so did I.

Today, she gleefully announced to us that she went for acupuncture treatment for the first time and even by bus alone. Today, she sent me a 'life', requesting one back, and this is when I know that I'm not the only one working hard in school.

The leaves will change

I was having a rather casual yet ironically heartfelt conversation with a friend the other day. She told me she didn't understand why her friends back home couldn't understand her anymore. Conversations with them are difficult to keep up with because there's simply nothing in common to be interested in anymore. The funny thing is I agreed every part of it. On certain days, I question if it was "right" to come here in the first place. It is a pitiful thing, that leaves change with the season, yet it is so necessary for the biology of the earth. You see, I learn this thing in school called the set point theory. It assumes the stability of one's subjective well-being, meaning to say people can't do any worse or any better within a certain range because human beings self-regulate to achieve eventual equilibrium. I am suppressing every thought in my head to reach that line, yet lingering in the depths of summer when the wind picks up doesn't feel "right", and striding along as the earth rotates doesn't feel "right".