something is just worth protecting...

I have two sets of piercings on both of my ears...
My hair is a bit brownish since I dyed them last month...
I waited till I’ve finished my contract with the school before doing it.
Not the usual image you have in mind for a teacher huh?

I want you to know that I understand this completely...
what it entails...what it means...
Call me a hypocrite if you must...for living two lies...
But I am and will try to protect my students in any way I can...
Even from something or someone like...me.

While I am familiar with the world that they are living in...
While I tried my best to do them justice when I was still their teacher...
If possible, I just wish...I wish I could protect their innocence a while longer...
Even if that means hiding the real me...or at least my current self.

I am not too sure what people will think...
I might look like this...
But in most parts, I do have a share of my own innocence...
I don’t hold all the world answers in the palm of my hands.
And I don’t think that is a bad thing...

I have my own principles and I have my own rules...
There’ll come a day when you’ll understand.
Something is just worth protecting...

just something i need to say

These past couple of days, I find it hard to listen to the usual happy songs...
While I feel dead inside...
even though the words reached my ears just fine,
my brain it seems to be translating a bunch of incomprehensible static that it blocked my ability to understand any of its words.

The lively melody bounces off my ear-canals, not taking in anything.
A usual routine that used to infect my mood like a virus...
Lifting up my spirit...
Is now, gone.

I used to be able to relate to the stories behind the lyrics...
Now, it feels foreign and empty.
The somebody-else’s story, remains just...somebody else’s, not mine.

I guess even for someone like me, these kinds of things do affect me...
It might not be for a while longer but...it does affect me, nonetheless.

I won’t say I am sorry when I am not.
Please do not forgive me when I am not asking for any.
It will be patronizing...and I don’t want that.

But I do learn from my past mistakes...
From she who has gone through the same situation...
From she who has not easily thrown me away despite what I have said in the past...
Despite my coldness and at times seemingly ignorant...
We are not even blood-related...now I know the gravity of what it means to be related to someone...
From she who keeps what little of that unimportant relationship that we have...
From she who never takes the step to sever that tie...

I am grateful...
I am grateful towards you for helping me and welcoming me into your home...
I am grateful towards you who did not abandon me.

This part of you I find really admirable that I feel like I’ve been blind all my life when it comes to family and living among people.

I will try my best to do the same for my little sister...
I will bend for her, and for you and your family...
If ever you need me, I will be your real little sister this time around.
And what past-conflict I had with Brother...I feel now, I am ready to let it go – completely.
I was not being honest to myself or anyone before this but, not this time.

I will bend for my parents, my friends, my students....including those that need my kindness....
And I will bend also for the ones who have severed their ties with me.

This is a promise I made to myself...and I
will honour it.

........................................................
P/S:
Dear readers, please read my post as it is.
For my sake, do not add on your own personal interpretation of it because then, you’ll just end up mixing and complicate things.
Do not read for things that are not even there.
Just read for what it is.

God bless and stay strong.

Past, Present & Future 'Me'

I can’t say that I don’t have any regrets,
living throughout these past years...
I do have regrets.

But if I have been given a chance to go back in time,
To salvage or rectify some of the mistakes that I have made...
I am not confident enough to say
that I will take a different road or make a different decision
than what I have done in the past.

I am me,
no matter what the time, the place, or whoever might be standing in front of me...
I am me.

Times when I sit alone and try to think of a better way to go about doing it...
Perhaps there were several things that could make things less painful and difficult...
But...
Honestly, I don’t think it will make much of a difference.
I stand by my choice and decision and that is it.

Time and time again, the question will occasionally float around in my head despite my conclusion and determination.
Sometimes, it brings doubt and guilt...
And I will be tortured by the sense of helplessness that all of this doesn’t make sense.
Like how I usually face things by finding the underlying pattern or understanding of the whole event,

But LIFE is nothing like an event.
It does not concern, just YOU.
Too many variables...including unpredictable and unstable ones...
I feel like throwing in the towel just thinking about it.

We make decisions...I make decisions based on the time that it was given to me.
With what little knowledge that I have...
With wisdom and a combination of logic and empathetically deduced ending...
I tried.

Did you try?
I am also one of your ‘variables’, might not be an important one...
But did you at least try to consider my ‘properties’ like how I have done with yours?

What has passed is irrevocable.
So I will add another try on my long list of becoming a better me...
My effort might look like nothing but I have the awareness.
That makes a different.
In life – towards the past, present and for the coming future – that makes a huge difference.
It shows that my life has not yet, reached its end-point.
I still have hope that I will change just as how my life will.
For a better future – I am not without hope.

So,
I will try again...
This time not to look back on the past but to look forward to future.
I will change, not the past but the future.
The future me still has that 100% probability of taking a different road or
Make a different choice.
Because the ‘me’ in the future will not be the same as the ‘me’ in the past...

I will not allow it...
And this is, what I believe in.

filing away life

I was working on my thesis when I heard the all-so-familiar sound of the postman’s motorcycle.
Followed by the usual Tet! Tet!
Herm...an express mail – ‘That must be it’, was what I thought.
My desk is right in front of the window, overlooking the front porch...
So yeah, I’ve been stalking the mail man weeks before Raya because I was waiting on an important letter from the university.

I kept my head poised over my laptop though – not flinching even one bit.
Even though my head was all over the place after the first ‘Tet!’ sound.
Then, Dad came in with a big envelope in his hand – Aha! LOL.

I read through the stack, jotting down things that I have to prepare and do.
All of my important documents – birth cert, passport, and academic cert, my degree cert, blah, blah, blah....
I keep it in big folder – a blue and white checker file.
I thought to myself, “What the hell...might as well clean this ‘Pandora box’ a little bit now that I’ve opened it”.
So I did.

My kindergarten cert is still in there.
Along with receipts, letters and other office stuff.
There’s also some goodbye letters and cards from students...
The 10 000 Baht I received in my first year, helping a group of students from Thailand cruising around the campus...their lecturer was very kind...
Some keepsakes... a 100 000 rupiah from Indonesia when I went there for my teaching practical...
And a couple of Mauritius rupee coins from last trip in July.

My first ever pay-cheque slip...LOL. God, I still have that?
And my entire collection of student’s ID cards I’ve ever received...from high school, matriculation college, degree years, colleges...some even has changed its colours over the years....
Some TVXQ! Stickers...a bank slip for JYJ concert goodies and tickets that I purchased last year...
A dream came true...
I still feel the adrenaline and the feeling of immense happiness every time I think of that day when I was under the same roof as Jaejoong...
Even now, each time I get onto the LRT or monorail...I will make sure to catch a glimpse of Stadium Negara...forever an important landmark for me.

At the bottom of the first folder, I found 5 stickers of cute girls.
Now thinking back on it, I bought these when I was 12...
I used to have a thing for stickers...I collected them and sold them to friends at school.
Oh yeah...I was kind of an entrepreneur when I was young. LOL.
I was saving it for the right time... I guess it just never came.

My degree courses lasted for 4 years (yeah, it was long; all from the education faculty lasts that long).
In that file, I still have all eight of my examination slips (2 for each year).
Man, it is really a miracle how the file can hold all of this stuff....

I got rid of out-dated letters, trash, old receipts, more trash...
Now, the file is no longer bulging like it was before.
It has ‘slimmed down’ a little. Okay, a wee lil bit. LOL.
What can I say, I’m a collector.

This cleaning-of-file job...
I can’t wait to do it again after another 5 or 10 years.
The reminiscent moments as I flipped through the folders...
As I picked up traces from yesteryears...
It gave me a fluttery bittersweet feeling.
I felt like my heart bloomed when I touched these...
These evidences of my past existence.

A new semester will reopen soon...what I hope to be my last.
Time runs too fast. It was only a year ago when I applied for my Master degree...
A lot of things have happened since then...some were bad but mostly good if you are the optimistic kind of gal like me. LOL.

Like always, I will take this file back to the uni again with me.

I took the bus a lot since I first started life away from home and that was like almost 6 years ago...
If I had kept every bus ticket I’ve ever bought, I wonder what will happen to the file...
Herm...
Even so, there is only one bus ticket that I will never throw away...
And that was for my longest bus ride I ever had in my life.
It was when I went for my interview, alone last May.
The memories itself were unbelievable...with nothing but a resume, a blazer and a bottle of mineral water...some cash and a return ticket home.
No change of clothes whatsoever...so I practically didn’t wash myself for 2 days.
On the morning of the interview till the next morning I arrived home.
Radical, isn’t it? ;)

I am a naturalist, romanticist and optimist.
I am a dreamer. I am an observer.
I am a collector.

I am me.
Now, tell me who are you?