Allison's Archives

There is something very wrong with my room. On the surface, things are just as I had left them; upon closer inspection, a layer of unfamiliarity had nestled itself in every nook and cranny, claiming what was once mine for itself.

The pale mauve of my walls is no longer the shade of the insides of my head. The guitar, whose strings are undoubtedly out of tune, looks as if some skeleton had been bringing it to band performances. The edges of my books have yellowed in a most shameful manner and, upon reading them, the stories don’t speak the same. There are posters doubly taped to the wall that I thought I had taken down two summers ago. There is a staleness to the atmosphere as if the air had ceased to flow ever since I was nineteen.

As my bags hit the ground unceremoniously, the realization creeps up on me like the humidity: Perhaps it is not the room that has changed but me. 

Just as unfortunately mentioned in the previous blog post, the winter of ‘23 did not agree with me. Usually when I say this, it is understood that I simply lack tenacity in the face of single-digit weather and shorter daytimes; this time around, the trials and tribulations surpassed mere climate to puncture my emotional and physical well-being.

Despite it all, I planted my previously two good feet in the belief that once I returned to my home country for winter break, things would be good again. “Good” as in I could temporarily trade my issues and tissues for freedom behind the wheel and food seasoned with more than just salt. And so prior to my flight, I dealt with my emotions as best I could and slowly developed a routine I was proud of. I woke up early, did the crossword, cooked balanced recipes, got my ten thousand steps in a day, spoke up in tutorials, caught up with friends at work, spent evenings at the gym, and wrote like I could run out of ink at any time. I thought I was finally recollecting the pieces of my life and polishing them, that all the healing I had been practising was budding. 

As every reflective article goes, I was wrong. I can’t seem to stop being wrong lately. Worse yet, I can’t seem to stop thinking that there is something wrong with me, like I swallowed an inherent flaw during a premature Christmas dinner that has since lodged itself in my lungs such that every time I inhale, I am reminded of its splintering existence. 

Coming home did not solve any of my problems. I wasn’t meaning for it to; I simply hypothesized that I could momentarily leave said problems in the United Kingdom while my body gets transported to Malaysia. Quite the contrary, it is safe to say that if I had to wake up every morning and see my problems in the bathroom mirror while I brushed my teeth in Manchester, I now sleep right next to my entanglement of issues in Penang. 

Talk about character development and doing things for the plot, two phrases that I enjoyed throwing around to lighten up the mood last year. But exactly as the second digit of my age ungracefully morphs from a 2 to a 3, things have come back to bite me. 

du sel 

Most Southeast Asians might so cordially agree with me that the worst thing you could strip from us is our appetite. To be sat in front of plates upon dishes of delicacies beaming with every color and spice imaginable yet not feel the urge to bring a bite to your mouth sounds like a twisted torture method. You know you miss the food and there is only this short window for you to savor it before you’re tossed back to the land of the salt again, but the very idea of ingesting sends you spinning. 

It’s not normal, but it happened to me. 

No thanks to my ankle injury that has rendered me bed-bound for three weeks and counting, my stomach seemed to have shrunk in size so anxiety could take root and assume control over my entire being. I have dealt with my fair share of stress before, but this was breaking new ground. In an effort to understand this intruder that has taken the door to my life off its hinges, I have taken the liberty to record one such instant when I was out of the blue anxious: 

“Breathing is supposed to be a no-brainer for most people most of the time. Right now, I am finding the task to be laborious. I keep a conscious reminder to breathe. It’s hard because I am convinced that if I do not inhale, the anxiety doesn’t have any way of entering my body, which is funny because I know it’s in my head. It doesn’t ring the bell or knock or leave a note, it just comes as it pleases. I cannot pinpoint what I am worried about. Sure, a great deal is attributed to my injury, the fact that this is the first substantial physical injury I have sustained in two decades and the uncertainty of when I will walk normally again, but I have a feeling that it is more than that. Every time I get close to figuring out what might be causing these feelings, my coherent thoughts get scattered in tumultuous waves. Worse yet, it feels like I am the cause of these waves. My fingers will not stop shaking, as if they are committing mutiny, preventing me from getting a grip on reality. It also feels as if I cannot turn off the faucets in my eyes until the tears leave a permanent indentation on my skin. I think about how terrible that would look. I think about how terrible I would look. I think about all the questions I would not be able to answer. I cannot eat. It’s not that I do not want to, I cannot. If it were up to me, I would not eat anything at all. I only do it because the pain medication for my injury has to be taken after food. I try to do something small: read. I like reading. Reading has never failed me. I just need to move my eyes across the page, and again, and again. I cannot. My vision goes blurry as soon as I hold the book in front of my eyes. My brain has no capacity to comprehend just what I am reading. Okay, something smaller then: sit up. I manage it but within the same minute, I collapse again. The only thing I can do uncontrollably is cry. I cry like if I do it long enough, the paralyzing fear has to be washed out through my eyes, like if I do it hard enough, the faces of all my worries will present themselves before me. I cry like I am not a child of the island but the water that surrounds it.”

What shocked me was not the bout of anxiety itself but the very next morning. I thought to myself, how strange that last night I was crying with all the might of my lungs as if I wouldn’t live to see daylight and would no sooner drown in my bedroom, and this morning, the mere difference of twelve hours, I am sitting in the passenger seat talking to my mother about lunch. The sun’s warmth highlights the orange tint of my skin and the air is still. It’s impossible to think that anything bad could happen. The island lives to see another day. 

The whole ordeal, of course, would come clawing at my door the very next night. As I had excruciatingly illustrated to the only friend who would listen over the phone, it feels like I have nothing more to give. It doesn’t matter who or what is demanding something from me, I am a void vessel. I carry not even my soul but only echoes. I have donated every bone and spirit in me to healing before flying back on the promise that all the work I’ve done would amount to something; never in seven lifetimes would I have imagined that I would be asked to fight for longer without an end in sight, even when I have emptied every cartridge and wrapped every bullet in white flags.

I wish I could round off this section by detailing how I miraculously rose to the challenge or with some advice on making lemonade out of rotten citrus, but this is not that kind of story. I am still grappling with every sudden pang of fear that thwarts itself onto my chest, still learning how to make space and coexist with the choices I have made while not losing my sense of self. It’s tough work. It’s honest work. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out. 

mes amis 

If you asked me to write a full-fledged chapter about each of my friends, I would gleefully oblige. If you asked me when was the last time I had truly sat down to revisit the intricacies of every friendship, you might not hear from me for a while. 

I don’t tug at threads frequently enough to check whether they have frayed. I have a sordid tendency to believe that I have done my job as a friend so long as their numbers are still logged onto my phone and I have sent a text at least once per financial quarter. Ludicrous, yes. But I’d be damned if anyone says they are not guilty of the same under the ever-looming talons of adulthood.

My time back this month has changed my perspective in many ways. When I had hoped for weeks of rest and relaxation—sans the aid of sleep medication—I am being charged instead with realizations to waltz around with, especially when it comes to my darling friends.

It’s a funny feeling to reunite with people who live in your yearbook, as well as to stop seeing those you indulge in healthy gossip with every other week. Without this sudden change in scenery, we aren’t prompted to think about much at all. In fact, we might even take things for granted without the intention to do so, to the fault of none. 

Have I really grown that far apart from my friends? That, if we do not share a desk in a poorly air-conditioned room or work in the same student organization, we do not have shared interests or common topics? How have our conversations been reduced to senseless gossip and existential rants so quickly? Does there exist the possibility for us to return to pre-yearbook days? There used to be a time when, if we wrote down everything we talked about verbatim, it would span larger than the basketball court you so loved to frequent. Little things used to crack us up to no end, like folding dollar bills in alternating directions so the figurehead seems capable of smiling and frowning depending on the angle from which you are viewing. Talk to me not of your latest relationships but what you think about the future with artificial intelligence and daylight genocides, not of the latest artisanal food trend but of the philosophy book you so accidentally came upon and the intersections of religion and science. Over tea, we can reminisce about the good days, when we were still girls together, figuratively braiding each other’s hair. Now, when we braid each other’s hair, all we can summon is the courage to say that our hair has gone fragile and point out the rouge strands of silver. Say that growing up has worn us out, the stress is as heavy as our body weight, yet our body weight isn’t what it used to be because we don’t have time to feed ourselves. We fuel ambitions and careers over our well-being. Perhaps that is just me! Am I talking to myself in a room full of names I used to be able to write out in neat Mandarin characters? Quelle horreur!

The restaurant we frequented in college closed down. Did a part of us also end there? The evening winds that used to scrape our cheeks as we sat talking in a car with the windows down are still circulating somewhere. So are the pizza boxes in those bulk deliveries for Halloween and Christmas. I think of you when I see a beach, or when somebody mentions the sport you tried to teach me. I think of us having braces at the same time in high school and sitting tired in the back of tuition, whispering to each other about how lost we are about that one concept. I hold your birthday in my palms like a sacred text; do you remember mine if you do not glance at your phone? When did our friendship reduce to a measly few interactions on the internet on a bimonthly basis? Is there anything that reminds you of me once in a while? Of the songs we wrote? The rear-ends we witnessed? The curfews we surpassed? 

We have grown critical. Do not mistake this for a bad thing; it is a skill required to survive our adulthood at the very minimum, but we have extended this criticism to each other, unknowingly. When you ask me why I am so political at the dinner table or about my recent relationship, I have to think twice before answering. I no longer am capable of predicting your response. You don’t laugh at the same jokes; at least not in the same way. None of us are kids anymore, though we long to be. I don’t tell you how proud I am of you, but that doesn’t mean I stopped feeling that way. I dig out the old photographs now and then and wonder when was the last time you took a good look at it. 

I reduced the number of postcards I send out in a year. My birthday wishes used to be a full-length chapter, but now, I suppress the urge to shorten it to three short alphabets. It doesn’t mean I appreciate your existence and birth any less. I still wish you well with all the might of my fifteen-year-old self. 

I write a petition and pass it down to every age I have been to sign it. I promise I only meant to forget the difficult equations we learned in class that I might never apply again, but it seems I might have also forgotten to check up on you in the process of it all. Perhaps it is my confidence in your success, that I know you would go on to do well. 

I falter in my ability to be a friend. Not a best friend or a good friend, just a friend. For as many friends as I have who grew up in a state outside of the island, I still fail to construct what life in Selangor is like, or even in the East. We make the same promise a thousand times, that you will show me where you grew up and broke bones in your father’s car, even though we know it will never manifest. When does your adoration for me stop and when does your forgiveness begin? 

They often say that we are made up of the ten people closest to us. You still make up so much of what I write. Do I still make up a tenth of you? I’ll even take a smaller fraction.

un réveil brutal

My plan for third year was simply to step away from student societies and focus on my academics and self. It was a well-thought-out plan accompanied by a vision board that has seen better days, save for one caveat. I failed to account for the fact that when one is blessed with extra time on one’s hands, one is also cursed to think too deeply about things.

Lines I used to read between, I now walk like tightropes. Where I used to arrange magnetic alphabets, I now sit in the refrigerator light and space out. Without work to serve as a distraction and accomplishment, I am forced to more critically evaluate other aspects of my living. I bring this up because homecoming included visiting relatives who want the usual updates. They tend to ask incessantly about my career and relationship plans, answers for which I have prepared on the flight, both of which I reply to curtly and tactfully. Satisfy them just enough with the minimum details. It’s not that I’m withholding information, I simply haven’t got anything figured out. I hate to be so predictable as to quote a Swiftian lyric, but how can a person know everything at eighteen and nothing at twenty-two? 

I lie in bed perplexed by a multitude of questions. Uncertainty has joined anxiety in my body. I long for my old life back. I wish for things to get better. I wonder if those two amount to the same realities. 

Like I said, I’ll let you know when I figure it all out. But I have a sneaky feeling that the final ingredient required for homecoming is the somber realization that you no longer belong, not fully. It might be the first place you learned to shout your name, but you don’t call this place home anymore.