Deeper breaths and slower steps

I took a deep breath just now, to relax and to think.

I realized that I could have been trying to do too much, and achieve too much.

Trying to rush up the re-enlistment process. Rushing to build up a new social circle. Rushing to make new good friends. Rushing to make sure that I keep in contact with and keep close to old ones. Rushing to get my results.

It was in part a strategic move, the rushing around things. I thought that it would help to prevent myself from getting bored and nostalgic, and to make sure that the sudden absence of a particular someone beside me would not be too noticeable.

I think the strategy hasn’t been good for me.

Not only because it has failed in its aims, however inchoate they might have been when I first embarked on it. I am bored. I am very nostalgic, to the point that I am almost positively inclined to favour anyone with a British or pseudo-British accent. To the point whereby my ears perk up when I hear BBC radio. To the point that I am still religiously following the Tory leadership election.

The absence is also obvious. And there is nothing much I can do about it.

I can only hope. Is there a limit to hope though? I thought for a while that it is too tiring to hope and then be disappointed, hope and then be disappointed. But now, I think not, just as long as I take deep breaths, play a couple of Sun Yan Zi songs including 我要的幸福, I'll be alright.

There is something I am presently hoping for. I dare not enunciate the hope however. I am cowardly I guess, and dare not take the responsibility of overly influencing one’s uprooting and replanting in a new environment which may be stifling and stunting.

The rushing around strategy hasn’t been good for another reason. It’s too tiring. Perhaps far more so than all the test and exam hoops that every Singapore kid has had to jump through. Maybe because this time, there are more and deeper emotions involved. A barrage of different and contrasting emotions hit me every day – hope and despair, joy and disappointment, anticipation and dread, anger and irritation, jealosy and loneliness. It’s also quite tiring initiating and re-initiating contact. Thus far, only one of my new pals has initiated a ‘Let’s meet up again’ and followed up on it without prompting. Ok, there’s two, but the second one is in HK or Macau at the moment. The result of the tiredness: I feel slightly more judgemental these days. And I swore once yesterday, the third time in my life that I can recall. I realize that when I ‘lol’ on MSN, I am no longer really laughing. I’m afraid of becoming a bitter person. I’m afraid of losing my laughter, my mischief, myself in the rushing and rushing.

Oh. One thing I am really really nostalgic about. The hugs. Singaporeans don’t hug unfortunately. And so I am hug-deprived. And therefore I am so going to be giving the wrong signals to anyone who hugs me next. I will prolly cling on and not want to let go. And get horny and what not.

So. How is tomorrow going to be like? Do you know? I don’t.

I only know that I may have to take deeper breaths, and slower steps.