Rocky Road

bruised and battered

2005 has been relentless. And its only March. I feel bruised and battered with bandages on my wounds.

I've had to do battle with the following nefarious elements:

visions of death
buried in the deep underground the only thought being a blinding realisation that when you die you die alone and the only thing you bring to the earth is yourself in your barest, naked form, unembellished pure and whole with nothing to hide behind, no mental veils no fancy conversation no bling bling no slogans. Just the essence of you who you really are the truth the truth the truth.

i subsequently went through morbid phase of evaluating all personal and impersonal actions and its 'grave' implications. i am being deathly serious. i need a plan for the afterlife.

actual death
My grandaunt in Singapore who was possibly one of the most disenfranchised people i knew. She was adopted, stateless, illiterate, unemployed and never got married. She adopted a daughter herself who later threw her out of her house citing space constraint and despite pleas from the rest of the family she refused to live with anyone else decided to maintain firm independence to insulate herself from further heartbreak and rejection.

She visited us frequently in KL and we were in the process of sorting out her legal mess of being a 'stateless' citizen - how cruel is the Singapore government? Being stateless she had to get a visa everytime she visited (which was hard for her as she had a bad leg) and her visit was limited to 1 month. I was supposed to visit her in 2 weeks for a cooking fest - she made the best mee rebus and mee siam singapore of anyone I know. She was looking forward to my visit and told everyone else to expect me over.

She died alone and we discovered her body only 2 days later. It was her nightmare to die alone and it actually happened. I had the vision of death the night before she died.

She was cheerful and selfless to the last, despite her raw deal in life - she left no progeny but a lasting memory of kindness and unconditional love for nieces, nephews, cousins - all my relatives decided to do the tahlil and there was nothing but wracking sobs, with my big, burly uncle choking with emotion chest heaving barely able to lead the prayer rubbing his eyes out like a 5 year old. It was the most heartfelt tahlil i had ever attended and during those moments it was as if the soul of the dead and the living were desperately united in a lingering farewell. Our sorrow formed a palpable link to the world of the unseen and her presence was heavy in the room.

At the cemetary i watched as the man behind the tractor filled earth into the freshly dug grave. His ability in handling the tractor arms were beyond skillful - it was respectful. He reversed slowly, dipped the tractor head and picked up a mound of earth. Pause. Then lower and lower the tractor head went, till finally, the earth was spread over the body with a strangely graceful motion. Which of course is absurd for a tractor but it actually appeared smooth and loving. He backed up, repeated the motion and was somehow able to continue without disrupting the talkin being read.

There were 12 graves dug that day, and as our prayers were being read, two other bodies were being buried and yet more were arriving.

What a major reality check.

unemployment
which thankfully ends next week, hurrah. Can stop incessant self pity whine of feeling like a welfare citizen (living off free hot food and shelter from parents and occasional drinks from friends) which undoubtedly my friends will be thankful for because was getting altogether unbearable for them. Can now also re-connect phone line and desperately contact people who sms-ed and got no reply (if you are one of them you now know why)

poverty
a trip to KLCC to watch a movie is now equivalent to a luxury cruise to Alaska - RM10.oo for ticket, RM9.00 for mineral water and RM12.50 for parking if you engage in a 2 hour natter with your chum. My funds have since considerably depleted and i have since realised that mamak shops are not as cheap as they make it out to be! Its daylight robbery! I spent RM15 the other day just on teh tarik, thosai and ayam goreng. KL is simply too expensive for me. I should relocate to Batang Berjuntai.

obesity
Because am going through self pity and whining phase am using excuse to eat through depression. My worst confession to date is that i ate 12 chocolate chip cookies in the space of 10 minutes. I am at my heaviest i have ever been in my life and i have really let go. I bumped into a gay friend the other day and he looked aghast at my personal appearance. He left me with some earnest advice - You simply must be a diva darling, nothing else will do.

I promise that i will not throw anymore pity parties nor scoff down cookies (yesterday i did 6 jammy tarts in 3 minutes) starting from 7 March 2005. What's worse is that my gaggle of girfriends have started an insane bet of losing 3kg by 25 April or risk losing tons of money. I have always been terrible at gambling.

Till the 7 March then.