It's 12:30am and here I am writing about this song that both broke my heart and also inspired me to piece it back together in a very healthy way.

This whole year came at me with so many complications with regards to friendships and relationships. I had to learn so many difficult lessons because I felt that a lot of the friendships that I held so close to me were falling apart. I didn't know how to handle a lot of the hurt. I didn't know how to move on from the pain. I wasn't sure how to let go. And even though I kept telling myself that I'm over it, the truth actually proved to be really far from that.

And for the longest time, even before this year, I had this bad habit of erasing bad memories of broken relationships and friendships from my past. I was – am – guilty of repressing them so bad because, I guess, I felt ashamed that relationships in my life had failed. I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t able to make them last. I maintained this belief very strongly, (false consciousness for the Marxist theory fans out there) because maybe, I can't seem to reconcile with the fact that my relationships with the people around me, an aspect of my life that I deemed to be so big, did not last.

But I'm starting to figure out that that shouldn't be the case.

One taught me love
One taught me patience
And one taught me pain
Now, I'm so amazing

As much as I hate to admit it, failed relationships, and all the ugly heartbreak that comes with it, also come with lessons. And as damn painful as those lessons may be, they're necessary nonetheless. They're necessary for my growth. They’re necessary for me to be stronger and better. So I'm trying to be more open and vulnerable with all the relationships that didn't manage to last as long as I had hoped.

I've loved and I've lost
But that's not what I see
So, look what I got
Look what you taught me

This song is so beautiful in expressing the reconciliation of all the conflicted emotions regarding relationships that I've been experiencing (sub-consciously). While it is about the pain of break ups and relationships that have ended, it's primarily  about accepting all that's happened. It’s about moving on and how the failures allow us  to emerge stronger emotionally and mentally. God, Ari is such a Queen. I stan ok. I stan a woman who promotes carrying on in a very healthy and inspiring manner.

I've got so much love
Got so much patience
I've learned from the pain
I turned out amazing

I don't think I've ever had to endure the intense pain of being in the receiving end of a romantic breakup, but no matter what people say, I still think it's painful to be in the other end. It’s paintful to be in the position of breaking the heart of another loved one, especially when it's done unwillingly and unintentionally. I also stand by the personal belief that friendship breakups can hurt just as bad, if not even more, than romantic ones. (But then again, what do I know?)

So, to all the friends and boys I've loved but for a time much shorter than I had hoped (though I doubt they'd be reading this haha), thank you. For all the pain, the heartbreak, the mistakes, the tears, and most importantly, the lessons. I don't think I have enough vulnerability yet to say that I have absolutely no regrets from all the experiences, but I think I can start feeling the gratitude, and I think that's something.

Thank u, next.

Amidst the busy weekend, I miraculously managed to squeeze some time to head to SWF (Singapore Writers' Festival) just to attend the "Time for the Women!" panel. It was mainly to see Noraliah Norasid because I love her book, The Gatekeeper, and come on, she's a Malay Muslim women writer who's published books written in English. Without even knowing her personally, she's gained a lot of cool points in my eyes.

And after the panel, I got the chance to speak to her and have her sign my copy of the book (actually it's my brother's, but anyway.) In our conversation, she shared with me how her first ever drafted manuscript of The Gatekeeper was actually finished in 2005. 2005!!! That's like, 12 years before the book was actually published. 12 years!!! That's the amount of time a typical Singaporean child goes through before sitting for the first major examination of their life.

When she said that, I'm again made to realise how the process of writing is not immediate at all. What more publishing a book. It's strange how I still think that writing takes very little time (hell I used to think five years was super long). It's strange that I think that masterpieces are produced in only a few years. The reality is that it isn't. Writing stories, like any other skill, really, takes lots of time. Lots of years. And you don't really master it. You always have stuff to learn, but you'll learn only after you try.

I hate how I'm often crippled by my own self-doubt. It isn't just in writing stories. It's in writing anything. Essays, assignments, reports, plays, poems, fiction, whatever. I always have to battle against this ugly, monstrous creature of self-doubt. It lives on my heart and it manifests into the heavy weight on my fingers whenever I am inspired by an idea. Before I even start writing, the monster lifts its form and prevents me from even starting. I hate it.

I have to try to battle it, though. If I ever wanna be better.

And that's when I saw Nas Daily's video.

He hasn't had a single day off since he made that promise of making one video each day for 1,000 days. That's like, almost three years. And he has kept to that promise religiously. He may have started off badly in taking videos, but because he's been doing it every single day, he's gotten a lot better throughout the years. He has been making videos every. Single. Day. He's crazy. But I think other realistic words for to describe him is that he's disciplined, determined, and resilient. I admire him so much more for that.

Maybe I should try to do that, too. Writing every day? We shall see.

 
Kimi no Na Wa (Your Name) is one of those pieces of beautiful literature that reminded me of the reasons why I fell in love with Japanese fiction in the first place. The film boasts of beautiful artwork and animation that transcends imagination and physical possibility. Every background was given lots of attention in creating detail, making it very much worth it to see on the big screen.

Its characters, aside from the main Taki and Mitsuha, possess both beauty and humour in their own unique ways, and that was something difficult not to appreciate. And the music, God, the music. The OST by RADIWIMPS many a time gave me goosebumps as the tunes complement the scenes very beautifully. The J-rock band really struck many hearstrings with all of their wonderful melodies, and even the ones that were composed entirely in a language foreign for me touched me all the same.

A song in particular is in the above video. It's called Kataware Doki, which the movie explains to mean the brief and subtle moment before the Sun sets, where people can sometimes go through out-of-the-world experiences. The song is company to my favourite scene of the entire movie, where everything was just so beautiful I was moved to tears. 

I also love how the pieces of plot of Kimi no Na Wa fits together extremely well throughout the movie. The plot of the film itself is an embodiment of one of the Japanese concepts called Musubi, which was explored in the movie. As Mitsuha's grandmother says it best, "they twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again. That is musubi."

The film touches on romance, but it's much more than that. It touches on the pain of separation, and the determination to reach out for something, or someone, or an entire village, after having gone through loss. I love it how it touched my heart, along with many others', in incredible and inexplainable ways.

It’s amazing, and I feel like crying just thinking about how deep my love for Japanese anime and manga has run. It’s been a part of my life since as long as I can remember, and whenever one dismisses it as a genre that is excluded from possessing the intellect and sophisticatedness of true literature, it really breaks my heart because of how ignorant such thinking is.

Manga and anime played a huge part in shaping my morals and worldview, and I can’t even begin to describe how deep their stories truly are. It’s a genre of literature that I personally feel is heavily underrated, and hopefully, I can somehow change that.

Once again, I was looking through the photos of my Kedah trip (which, I have yet to make the time to form into words) and my heart was filled with the yearning to see the children again. I miss the kids so much; their joyful faces and their innovative games, their intriguing stories and their willingness to play and learn. I really want to see them, meet new faces, and do more things that can help alleviate their situation.

To ease my heart, I played Michael Jackson's amazingly heartfelt classic Heal the World. I then came across Maati Baani's version of the song, one that featured child prodigies from all over the world. As I was doing my house chores, tears just wouldn't stop rolling hahaha. The video is so touching, and the fact that only children were the one singing made it all the more sincere and earnest.

It brought me back to the last day of the camp with the Rohingyangs, when we Irsyad facillitators were singing the very same song on stage for the children. At one point, the children simply caught me off guard when they too started to beautifully sing along to the chorus. That moment, I just couldn't continue singing, so I just stood there and waved my arms with tears rolling down my cheeks. I was standing in the centre of the stage, so it was impossible for the children to miss my crying face, so I noticed some of them actually gestured towards their eyes while shaking their heads and smiling. It was an attempt to make me stop crying, but it backfired totally because it only made me cry much harder.

Another moment that really stood out to me, was when the children raised their voice in unison every time they sang the line "for you and for me and the entire human race". It was so difficult to hold myself together every time that lyric was repeated and reverberated loudly in my ears.

It deeply touched me how they, children who suffered such a terrible past, see the world with light in their eyes, the same world where most turned a blind eye and closed their ears deaf to the horrible plight of the Rohingyans. Maybe that's just one of the beautiful things about children, about young humans – their optimism, faith, and belief in the world is still strongly preserved.

Call it strange, but I aspire to hold on strongly to my own optimism, faith, and belief in the world. I've been told many a time that it's a gullible thing to do, but is it really?

Because if I were to say I've "given up on humanity", I really mean that I'm giving up on myself, because I'm human. I don't know whether we realise it, but when we say that phrase, we're giving up on ourselves, and the things that we can actually do to help one another out. It's true, a lot of people in the world are the causers and victims of suffering, but I just don't think losing faith in ourselves is doing much to change that. Because, well, we are all part of humanity, part of the human race. We're human, and none of us a special exclusions, nor are we a unique exception. And we've got the ability in us to do something.

We shouldn't wait for others to do something, because to "restore that faith", to heal the world, it all starts from us. To heal my world, it all starts from me.