September is an apt month to revisit things one last time before you leave them to wither. More as an act of mercy than cruelty; withering is not an act I can bring about as an individual. It is a force of nature that we must all eventually succumb to.
The ache is delicious—panging, yes; snarling, not quite; but delicious, definitely—the ache for me to bring you to five distinct places that are not the careless result of darts flying at a world map, but the careful curation of my past. To bring you to five distinct places and tell you about them so I might bury them with the advent of autumn, never to visit the grave again.
SCENE 1: The library, Floyd Central High School, Indiana, USA
February. Two months in a foreign environment. I could spend lunch break with other people, but there’s nobody worthwhile to spend it with. Safest way to spend lunch break is in the library where silence is the default. Where I don’t have to endure ignorant questions about where I come from, no, really, where am I from. Last-minute edits to complete before the next class. English 10 (Honors). Some assignment on Shakespearean sonnets. To write one of our own that closely mimics the style. I chose Sonnet 18. No one for me to compare to a summer’s day. No one claiming the library computer next to me, explaining the fundamentals of coding, showing me a website he built entirely on his own. No subtle teasing at the fact that I may have observed an increase in excitement to see someone every day at lunch. Me and my dark blue English 10 (Honors) ring binder and loose-leaf pages in the quiet of the library. Nothing to fawn over. Nothing to distract me. The bell rings to signify the end of lunch and I walk alone to English 10 (Honors). I don’t slow my pace to drag out the distance. I don’t say “See you later” to anyone at the door. I take my seat ready to read my rendition of Sonnet 18, inspired by no one. And because of that, there will be no over-the-ocean calls or the prospect of a suburban house in North America or road trips over spring break. There will not be plans unmet and letters decrypted, time differences to respect and this blog to keep.
SCENE 2: A burger joint, Bayan Lepas, Penang, Malaysia
August. Merdeka Day. What is meant to be a twelve-to-nine shift will become a twelve-to-twelve shift. Cursed Foodpanda and its 63% discount on all eligible stores. We are an eligible store. But the double pay is worth it, so I swallow my weariness. I work front of house and I work it well. Having here or takeaway? Would you like to try our specials? What drink would you like with that? Fries or no fries? Where will you be sitting? Here’s your receipt, thank you. Print the order through to the back. Enter the kitchen, careful not to slip. Put the sides in the fryer and sink them into the boiling oil. Get the drinks. Exit the kitchen, careful not to slip, Serve the drinks. Now work on packing the Foodpanda delivery orders. Ding! Serve the burgers. Mundane routine. No one around to make it fun. No one to execute silly banter with. No one to toss and catch the ingredients with. No one to complain to when a customer rages unreasonable. No one reminds me that I’ve forgotten about dinner. Finally time comes to flip the sign on the door. My shirt and hair permeated with smells of the kitchen. The bottom of my shoes greasy and slippery. I wipe down every table and chair. I count the petty cash. I clean the toilet. No one waits outside the store while I clean up. No motivation to line up availability just to be scheduled on the same shift. No reason to ask what we are or where this is going. No car but mine to get into and drive away from an exhausting day. No cause to linger. Anywhere but here.
SCENE 3: River Street Tower, Manchester, United Kingdom
January. The city is oddly quiet, subdued in step with exam season. The weather presses down with an unbearable sharpness, but still I trudge through the icy wind to the library. I study with my friends until the hour edges past what I consider safe to walk home alone at night, my brain filled with more philosophical and political questions than when I first started. Back home once more, I make instant noodles for just one. My floor is bare for the night. No reason for small talk until my consciousness ebbs away with the twinkling of the moon outside my tightly-shut window. No goofy jokes followed by hushed tones to quell my housemate’s temper. No already making plans for lunch the following day. Something soupy, something warm. Chinatown. Pho. One with chicken and another with beef. The bowl of warmth remains imagined. So winter stays cold and I think about no one except the me outside of exam stress. The city holds its breath until I wake up to do it all over again.
SCENE 4: One Utama Mall, Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
July. The mall is connected to the building where I am interning for the summer. Air-conditioned corridors stretch endlessly, a labyrinth of restaurants and shops before me. My indecisiveness eats me alive. The pitfalls of lunching alone. Always easier for someone else to call the shots, but this is not a viable option. I throw in the towel and join my colleagues at Nando’s instead. Always lemon and herb as the spice level. Always chips as a side. Safe, predictable. I’m not one for spontaneity. So I never walk into the creative cuisine restaurant Marco and order their pork shoulder steak. There’s no reason to. No half-a-year anniversary to toast. No custom cake hidden in the fridge. No scrapbook I spent every weekend working on only to be met with irreciprocity. No annoyance that I breathe into my lungs. I sit and pretend to understand the contents of my colleagues’ discussion. Acronyms and strategies. Begin to think whether I can be content with a long-term career in consulting. I haven’t yet found reason to choose happiness over stability. Five in the evening arrives on the clock and I get on the MRT on my own. An empty house as my destination, takeaway dinner as company. I set my phone face down, no messages to expect. The evening news fills the room where someone else’s voice could have been.
SCENE 5: Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
June. The heat paired with my office attire is disgusting and gives summer a bad name. I pray a little for my sanity before boarding the tube, instantaneously morphing into a sardine just like all these other suits. Bothered by the screeching, I put on my noise-cancelling earphones and pull up an old playlist. No new ones shared with me of late. I scan my keycard and spend the next eight hours staring at spreadsheets and decks. I look up how to use VLOOKUP. After work, the intern cohort insists on grabbing drinks to commemorate the beginning of our ten weeks together. I long to return to the comfort of my bed, but I oblige. Network. Connections. Blah blah blah. I do not find a reason to leave drinks early for there is no familiar silhouette waiting outside. The night progresses. I maneuver the crowded streets of London, pushing shoulder to shoulder with strangers. Reprieve comes in the form of a single seat at Eat Tokyo with the menu before me. Miso soup. Chicken katsu. Tap water. I take the number 12 bus home to avoid metamorphosing into a sardine again. I dump my work bag on the ground and read the book I had purchased from my most recent solo trip to Foyles. I watch Desperate Housewives until I fall asleep. London remains how it was before my arrival, and will not budge an inch even after I leave.
Ask me where erased things go. They stay beneath the surface of the paper, never to be seen again. Success is to view the usage of an eraser more as inching closer to getting something right than making a mere mistake. In depths of nights, I thank my younger self for writing certain memories in pencil rather than pen. Yet, I don’t account for the times I wrote with such fervor that you can still see the indents after the erasure. It is because of this that I can change bedrooms and move countries, but the gnaw finds me and scratches me clean in the dead of night. That days and months creep into my dreams as I sleep. I almost make the mistake of wishing I could go back and fix it, but when I wake up to the slits of sunrays in my bedroom, I know I don’t want to.
My mistake for letting you take my pride and my credit and my love. No matter, I have more to give. My mistake for writing what we had too harshly on paper, never mind lead or ink. No matter, I have more paper. And I think about the fortunate things to come out of this. How fortunate that all we share is a couple months that will be rendered negligible in a couple years’ time. How fortunate that I have wholly vacated places and left them behind. How fortunate that I have found a way to make new memories in places once tainted. How fortunate that the silence that once felt like punishment now sings to me like peace. How fortunate that I can shake the hands of someone new and not measure them against your shadow. How fortunate that forgetting is now more survival than betrayal. How fortunate that my narrative can exist and flourish without you in the footnotes.
Your greatest achievement in life will be becoming a chartered accountant, chartered engineer, or Michelin-starred chef and marrying a girl with a great pedigree. Mine will be manipulating the paper until there is no trace of writing that ever existed on it.
The accompanying image (Last Page by András Király) serves only as a visual complement to the essay and carries no interpretive or illustrative claim beyond that.
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