twenty.

why do i even bother

a world in which
ryan is
nothing but
a bad memory

well

i am proud of you too, you know

although
it makes me feel sad

last thought before i sleep

being able to talk to her
and ask her about her new box
to be happy for her
truly
honestly
without losing an ounce of the intensity that i feel now

maybe that is real love
that balance

i will learn
funny
never thought she'd change me that much
but i don't want to be different anymore
just happy

and i will learn if that is what it takes to see her again.

thoughts

i don't really want to write
but then again i don't want to die without a trace

the words are always there.
maybe a remnant when i'm gone, someday
so i might as well get them down

last night i dreamt i woke nicole up from a coma
she loved me until i had to tell her that no
i'm sorry nicole
you have another boyfriend now
think you're happier with him maybe
fuck if i know we don't talk anymore
not in the real world

the look in her eyes
i swear i'd forgotten it for months now
how she looks when she's in love with me

i didn't want to tell her
it was only a dream i didn't have to
but it's funny
i didn't want her to settle for anything less

it's been almost two weeks since the last time i really thought about her
so that means that i am forgetting
it is the right thing to do

apparently during the ocs family visit james michael hill was around
asking my colleagues and trainees about me and subsequently asking about nicole
not sure what's the deal there
but andrew's alright. nicole was right, he's cute, and harmless;
and i was being a complete idiot before.

the days have been flying past really
with nothing much to hold on to, not many people around
that matter to me

not many people have mattered to me
now that i really think about it

i wish i were closer to my parents; my family
my class

i am not very well-adjusted
but i am trying

god i am trying

nine boys to make into officers and some of them don't even give a damn. but this is my job and i will not pass out half-fucked officers who don't give a damn. they all have potential to be outstanding people if they put their minds to it. this i can do at least.

angel misses me terribly and is always delighted when i come home but i think it is because i am the only one in the house who plays with her. i fight with her and run with her and pretend to be cats with her and tickle her until she can't stop laughing.

i will swim and run and write and read and things will get better and before i know it i will be out of army.

ryan you will be happy before the year ends.

rollercoaster

i don't know how to fix my mistakes.

no. bernice was right there. there are no second chances. we suck it up, hold our dignity in, and move on. it's not that hard to do.

for months after the breakup with nicole every day that passed was like a shard of glass in my chest as i thought about her growing happier with marcus. that was pain. it's natural.

what is not natural is wallowing in it. this new blog isn't "moving on". this is just me talking when there is nothing left to be said. i promised myself i would not be like this.

no.

there are other things for me now. responsibilities, work. i am getting better and it is true. i think about her less each day.

soon there will be no more nicole in my head.

what do i know

what the fuck do i know

memory.

soft sliding blankets love hey back trace lips smile touch breathe
maybe want this forever
want this

lucidity?

really,
all this blog proves is just how confused i am as a person.

i'm alright.

a brief list of recent thoughts:
1) i don't want my mum to grow old. i'm scared of things changing.
2) i really want to get out of army. the desperation died off some time back but it's back again these few days, in full force.
3) i miss nicole very much as a person. and i am scared of the possibility that we can never be normal friends again.
4) i am, and may well always be, very lonely.

I don’t want to be interesting anymore.

I don’t want to write anymore. Or draw, or have stupid little ideas about life or things I can or cannot change. I don’t want to have these dreams about desperation. I don’t want to get angry or sad about things. I don’t want to need to do exciting things or go overseas or see pretty places. I don’t want to feel the way I do. I don’t want to be Ryan. I don’t want already.

I just want to be happy.
I just want to be happy.

I want to be in love and hold hands and smile a lot just because I’m with a girl I’m crazy about. I want to give her little hugs from behind and light kisses on her eyelids. I want a stable, boring job I can come home from and be tired. I want to write badly and I want all my doodles to be ugly. I want to be nice and honest and stable and hardworking and boring and loving.

I don’t know why I’m like this.

Ryan is stupid.
Ryan is ugly.
Ryan is self-indulgent and unstable.
Ryan makes people feel unhappy. All the people who are supposed to matter.

I hate Ryan. I really and truly do. I wish he would die. I wish he would just die.

squash

we found a pair of squash racquets and a ball while clearing out the office. since there are like a hundred empty squash courts in safti and i have so much free time now i played squash for the first time today.

it comes to me a lot more naturally than badminton or tennis ever did, and i'm looking forward to getting better.

of course, the only reason why i'm writing about this here is because it made me think of nicole. she told me once about her and squash; about her growing up, wanting to play squash professionally. about how she gave that dream up.

i have a cute image in my mind right now. nicole hitting a ball against a wall, again and again. kinda makes me want to kiss her.

but i've been filling out the days with work, with gym, swimming, running, driving, going out. it's been better. she's back from hong kong now i hope she had a good time. i hope she's happy and smiling and cute for marcus.

some days are better than the others. maybe i'm learning.

i think i'll be spending a lot more time in the squash courts over the next few weeks.

what is gone is gone.

once every few weeks i still stare at my phone
thinking
rationalizing
about friendship and love and caring
and being mature
but the better part of me knows.

no.

no, ryan.
you are irrelevant now.

being mature doesn't mean staying friends
or being able to love someone without being with them
or even about changing the person you are.

the fact that you am fifteen minutes early for everything now
or that you've gotten better at shooting games
or that you're working so much harder
doesn't change anything.

no.
being mature means knowing what is more comfortable to her.
what will genuinely make her happy.
even if that means i will never
see her again
touch her face
share a smile
until the day we both die.

i still love her.

colder.

i just want to be happy.

i don't know why it's so hard.

i can't find her

ships and seas and useless thoughts.

we visited the rss persistence today, one of the singapore navy's massive tank landing ships. i don't know if i've mentioned this before, but the navy has always appealed to me. back in bmt i almost signed on - i'd already reached the interview stage before i changed my mind. later on i'd look back and think that i was mad to even consider signing on.

moving through the quiet corridors of the ship, though, reminded me of the reasons why i wanted to join the navy. as i stood within the enclosed cabin and looked out at the skies above the silent sea i felt an immense longing, a tremendous sense of promise and beauty not unlike the feeling i get from a carefully-inked drawing or the wind against my face on a sunday afternoon.

stendhal once postulated that beauty is the promise of happiness. in a way, i think found the ship beautiful because of the unfulfilled life, the possibilities of futures that i saw in the naval life i will never lead. thinking it over, i realized that two things appealed to me.

one, perhaps the more obvious one, was the prospect of change; the opportunity to dock at ports all around the world, to walk through different cities. the opportunity to sail away from the mistakes i've made, to lose myself in places where nobody knows me.

the other was the prospect of constancy, of closeness. on a ship, nothing changes. there are spaces to live, spaces to be alone and spaces to be close with the other people on board. and the whole ship is your family - men and women you can trust and grow to love, friends and companions you can have meals and travel with. this was what the small, quiet spaces and corners in the ship spoke to me of - the reason why just moving through the ship made my throat stick.

eventually, however, i came to the realization that i didn't really want, at my core, to join the navy. my longing was much more primal than that - it was the same longing, the same conflict between escape and loneliness, the conflict of wanting to be both utterly known and completely unknown, that drives people to elope, to run away, to be with the people they love and leave the places they know.

it's funny. i want to leave, but i don't want to be lonely. when i told nicole about my dreams of navy in bmt she told me that she'd thought about it too. back then i toyed briefly with the childish, wistful idea of joining the navy with her and being on a ship together. but i also knew at the same time that not only would we never share lives that close, we would only go on to drift further apart as uni and army wore on. i will never be in the same class as nicole ever again. for the rest of our lives, the little we had in common - the shared experiences, the people - will rapidly fade, until our relationship will be as improbable as it should have been to begin with.

in all honesty i don't know why i'm still writing about nicole. if she were reading this she'd probably think i'm using her as some fucked up pseudo-muse. i know. i know that she thinks i never really loved her for being her, that she was just a player in the idealist fantasy i try to impose on my life, that the reason why i'm not letting go of her is because i haven't found a replacement for that role she used to occupy in my life.

maybe that's true, i don't know. maybe she's right and i don't really need a nicole to be my girlfriend; maybe i just want any girl.

maybe so. but what i know is that even if we were shit as a couple i really do miss having a nicole in my life. being nicole, doing her stubborn technophobic sporty squealish nicole things. maybe she was right and i never really loved her. all i know is that i care, quite a lot. and sometimes i miss her so much i can't sleep and i don't know why i'm like that.

my regrets can't quite be counted on both of my hands.

bruises.

sometimes i get scared my body will grow old before i do. already it betrays me with old injuries that don't heal, fevers i can't shrug off - thailand put such a strain on my back i'm not sure it'll recover anytime soon.

as a boy you tend to think that you're invincible, that you'll recover from anything, that enough sleep and rest will heal your body of anything life can throw at it. it's hard to imagine never being able to recover, to imagine and accept that what is gone is gone. youth means that you will never die.

nicks, scratches, bruises, cuts from the blades of concertina wire digging into my arm. my body is deteriorating, being covered over with scars.

my hands are rougher now.

what is gone is gone is gone.

play.

i'm happier than this blog would indicate. i don't think about nicole as often as the frequency with which she is mentioned here would imply, either.

this is just where i come to get rid of the little wrenching moments that still grab me sometimes. today's memory is nicole gleefully prodding my PLAY shirt trying to get different reactions out of the different letters (L for Love, A for Asshole); after which i tickle her till she begs me to stop, and the two of us curl up comfortably with against each other for the rest of the afternoon.

...

last entry before thailand, probably. i'm scared to go. but at least nicole isn't there to lose anymore. i still remember her sms when i was in brunei, about there being a lot of guys in uni. her realizing something i knew all along.

in a way i always felt like gatsby; knowing that i didn't deserve the kind of love she gave me, feeling like i was cheating her somehow by being with her when there were other guys i was sure she would like better.

it's why i got so angry, i guess. because it was inevitable and i knew it was inevitable and i always knew it was inevitable but she said no, and that no denied the universe where she would go to uni and i would be in army and she would fall in love with other better guys.

the worst of it is that she wasn't lying. i think she would have stayed with me if i had managed to change. i let army defeat me, then. looking back, i was dead through the week, desperate through the weekends. all i was doing really was holding on to the one thing that still meant something to me - nicole. when what i should have been doing was waking up to what was going on and taking charge of the situation.

i'm doing that now, albeit belatedly, and not a day goes by that isn't wrenched out of my heart. every day i grow a little more, i lose a little more of her.

oh nicole. she was right to break it off. i should've stopped us first. but i didn't want to let her go.

nicole taps now on another boy's chest, and they are tender together, in that tiny artificial space i used to share with her, that space where it is mutually agreed that each will treat the other as a child.

life is elsewhere.

i hate the feeling of slipping. slipping backwards while everything else is slipping away.

real life is elsewhere. entirely elsewhere. as it has always been, as it always will be. but i won't hide behind that now; i have to find a way to live in this.

i am not my mistakes.

am i?

i don't know why i'm still writing. none of it makes sense when i read it back.

nicole

what the fuck is she even doing in law school? can't she think of herself she's not happy there. why does she have to be so damn hard-suffering.

don't do this to yourself.