The first time when we met. Seated beside you, I saw that the powerpoint slide for our welcoming briefing had a quote — well now I couldn’t remember whether it was a line in a notebook given to us as a door gift, perhaps it was the same quote lifted from the notebook — which said something about the relationship between the number of languages that one knows and the multiplicity of their souls. I made a comment on that, something about we Malaysians must have at least 3 or 4 souls then, and it fell on your deaf ears. I thought I had hit a cold wall with this new course mate of mine. I vaguely remembered that one day, I guess we were just done meeting our academic advisor and warmed up a little more to each other. We were squat-seated on the mosaic-laid corridor separating the teachers’ offices and the brick pavement when you told me that your lack of reaction was to conceal your disbelief that someone was voicing out your exact same thoughts at the moment.
First time when I was openly flirted with. A straightforward proclamation of fondness that continued on throughout the two years of our friendship. I never knew what was so special of me that gained me access to your inner world, though later in your letter I realised, the unnoteworthy me merely existed in the wrong mix of people that made me become noteworthy to you. I often wondered if I have disappointed you when we drifted apart, when I read about how you thought that it is only apt that you exist as a memory, prettily scribbled (well you have nice and ugly handwriting at the same time) on a torn-out page from a ring-bounded notebook, in a letter that came years after I left university. You left me your number, a Singaporean one. I never had the courage to text you, despite being greatly inspired by your courage to just express your feelings to those whom you like, romantically or not.
I often see you in them, but they are kinder and not at all toxic. Yet of course I was jaded the time I met them, which is what happens when one is pushed through the furnace as a rite of passage to achieving, or perhaps just being tested of one’s capacity to trust and to love. I was the weaker one in everything: looks, popularity, academic achievements, the ability to conceptualise and verbalise thoughts, the ability to be right in the relationship. The intensity in this world of repugnancy and confusion was all too much even for an overly-matured teenager: the first sweet, metallic taste of magnetic attraction; the bitterness of burning jealousy; the stale steam from the bubbling doubt; the pungent smokescreens coming from all the gaslighting. I took a lot of effort to cleanse my palate, yet the experience lend itself to developing my acquired tastes thereafter. I never wanted to experience such emotional and physical pain again. However, the takeaway was that I am able to trust despite the worst of circumstances and to forgive when my trust is proven to be misplaced. People would call this stupid, and I don’t deny the stupid side of it, but it comes in handy, this jaded side of me.
And then I met you.
(TBC)
