chaos! (2020/2021)

the second issue

An Open Letter dear you, hello! i hope you’ve been doing well this year, despite all its chaos. here is a summarised version of why this letter has reached you: i’m on a project to curate and collage stories, of yours, mine and Others. a year ago, i designed a personal zine that was a collection of writings. those writings were on things that were occupying my head at that point in time - they were rather personal to me. in the past year, i’ve figured a couple of things while going through this other absurd monstrosity of a thing called Life. firstly, that storytelling is something i wish to venture into, but not of my story alone, but of others too. secondly, in the same vein, that i’ve always been innately curious of people - their thoughts, feelings, journey, goals. all these things intrigue me because i was at a (rather low mental) state where i needed to reach out and connect.

in the beginning, i’m going to admit that knowing what others’ have gone through was a way of telling myself “hey, i’m not doing too bad.” but i came to realise that such comparisons was downplaying my own struggles. i was finding ways to feel better about myself. i was ignoring, instead of confronting. right now, my view has changed about the journey of others. because instead of trying to feed my own sense of security by hearing, i want to be able to honour theirs by listening (or reading, in this case, or either.) therefore, for the second edition of the zine (“chaos!”), i don’t wish for it to be about me, but more a collective “Us”. the theme this time will be about struggles - it was the source of inspiration! hence, I hope that you could write about this question:

What is one thing you wish to teach your kid about your life?

(Or pets, if you don’t wish to have any kids.)

“you are enough; you are worthy.”

“Atelophobia” - the fear of being not being good enough My whole life, even till this day, the fear of not being not good enough has been what is driving me forward. Yet it is also this fear that has weighed me to the ground, wrapped chokingly around my ankles.

On the surface, I lead an amazing life. A whole family, with parents willing to pay for any whim or fancy I had. I worked hard, and paved my way to “branded” schools. I thrived - I had good grades; I was appointed leadership positions in the school council; I made faithful and loyal friends whom I am still close to today. What more can a girl want, right?

But I am the living story of how your life can look perfect, that you can have every opportunity and every material item, but you can just be unhappy, unfulfilled, and just down-right miserable.

Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful for all I had, but in the end there was no true replacement for companionship, affection and love.

From a young age, my parents never had much time for me, I was pretty much raised by my aunts, alongside an estranged halfbrother. Don’t get me wrong, my aunts were amazing, they taught me what love was, and showed me what affection was, too. But there was always something amiss - I still felt like I was not good enough.

Because it seems, I have lost my parents’ attention to their business.

That was the start of the dark cloud that hung around me, I felt unworthy and just plain “not enough”. It affected how I carried myself in my life, and it affected everything around me.

Later on, I felt that I have lost to others in many ways. I lost out to my friends - not intelligent enough. I lost out to my brother - not good enough being female. I lost out to my CCA-mates - not sporty enough. Not enough. I convinced myself that I just needed to be better, prettier, thinner, sportier, smarter, and my life would be perfect.

“Becoming superman or supergirl in my case” I was 11 the first time I took a blade to my skin.

It was not even really that sharp, I found an old pen knife that my brother had thrown out, and convinced myself that this was a way to punish myself for being inadequate. It was a way to control myself, to be better, to be someone that anyone would be proud of. That rusty blade barely even cut skin, and I was frustrated that I could not even accomplish such a simple task. (With the wisdom that age has been bestowed on me, I’m glad that I failed that night, getting tetanus would have been truly awful.)

This was when I fell into a black hole, which I struggled to get out from for the next 7 years.

In the meantime, my life on the surface still looked perfect, my grades soared, and my relationship with my friends and family seemed to have strengthened, and I became the owner of more material goods than what I needed.

In reality, I was miserable, I felt like I never truly had any control, this awful secret drove me to hide in corners and thrive in the darkness.

When I wasn’t good enough, I sought to control the food I was consuming. I put on masks, hid behind airs and pretended nothing was wrong, while this secret slowly killed me from inside out. I acted as though nothing bordered me, while even a wrong look in my direction sent me spiraling.

I ended up dropping about 20kg in about 2 and a half to 3 years, and with scars that I still subconsciously hide till this day.

I was lucky that one of my best friends had noticed, and manipulated me into getting help. By “manipulation”, however, I meant that she had to think of unorthodox ways to get me to find help - it was the sake of my own good, never a bad thing.

I had never intended to see the sunrise of my 17th birthday. I promised myself that I never needed to reach my majority. And yet I sit here at 20, typing this story, showing that the clouds do part one day, even if it takes years for even a ray of sunlight to shine through.

“It is braver to be Clark Kent than to be superman” The scars have faded, and voices in my head screaming my inadequacy have grown quieter, but like many others, I have my good days, and I have my bad days. Hey, yet I am still here and I’m still fighting. I have learnt to stop hiding behind my masks, and show the world the icky, flawed side of me - that was something I never ever thought I would achieve in my life.

I am not perfect, I don’t think I will ever be perfect or “worthy” enough to completely silence the voices in my head, or to forever silence my harshest critic.

Instead, I have learnt to live with the voices, to talk back to them, to tell myself what I have done is enough. It has taken me years of self reflection to get here. But I am sure my journey is not over, I still have unseen battles to fight in. There are still many days when my first impulse is to run for the cold cruel blade, but recovery is never linear, and I have to take my comfort in that.

I think I never intend to have kids, but in this life, I have learnt that it is unpredictable. If there was one thing in life I would teach you, is that: You are enough and that you are worthy. There is no need to chase perfection as long as you do your best, because in the end it is the messy, unique and diverse individuals that make life beautiful in the end.

After all, if everyone was perfect and two-dimensional, then life would be colourless.

Love, Mum.

“cherish precious moments before it become a memory.”

Life in itself is not an easy journey, even if you didn’t grow up in a state of poverty or had never once experienced a traumatic childhood. (I guess that is where my downfall is.) It is often believed that having a fortunate and comfortable childhood equated to having minimal to no struggles while one is living. What is there to fret about?

Growing up, I always had everything I needed and wanted. I studied in a good school; I had kind and (sometimes overly) caring parents; I owned many of the latest gadgets in the tech market. Whether it was a new laptop, a new phone or a trendy pair of headphones, if I wanted it, I could get it. Now, you may be wondering, where is the struggle in all of that?

Everyone seems to glorify the wealthy and lavish way of living.

Perhaps it stands from the notion that money can buy happiness maybe not in direct relation, but if you had a good supply of money, you could purchase many goods that can bring you happiness.

Materialism and consumerism seems to be on the same side of the coin. If you had a good supply of money, you need not have to worry about every dollar and cent you were spending - you could lead a comfortable lifestyle without worrying about whether or not you could fork out the finances for the next household bill. That was how it worked - and still does work - in my family.

Yet it is this same comfort that led me to my own personal way of life. For a start, I am still supported by my parents. Without fully understanding the extent of their hard work to pay for our expenses, I started to ease into a rather slow pace of living. I excelled in the art of procrastination. Oh boy, I became so good at it that a full twoweek holiday consisted of games, and games only. Time passed with one gaming marathon after another - it was good fun and laughter with friends nonetheless.

Yet these days passed within a blink of an eye, and I would be back in school with surmounting work and pressure through the semester.

As I returned back to school, I heard of my peers doing so much within these two short weeks. Some had worked a part-time job; some started their own personal projects; some continued with their hobbies. I looked back on what I did in the past two weeks. Have I accomplished anything? Have I learnt anything? Have I improved on myself? Before the start of the holiday, I seemed to have wanted to do so much - there were so many things that I wanted to learn! What happened to all that desire and motivation to do so?

Procrastination, that’s what it is. I don’t think I have learnt to treasure time. I don’t think I have learnt to cherish all that I have so far either.

I seemed to have taken all these for granted.

Having been brought up in this easy-going environment, I don’t think I have completely comprehended the idea of “working hard”.

I didn’t see the rush in “growing up” or “self-improvement”. I didn’t see the rush in gaining independence, both financially and emotionally. I didn’t see the rush in nurturing my passions, pursuing my goals and finding my ambitions. Subconsciously, I felt that all things will fall in place eventually, and I did not have to strive too hard to get to where I ought to be.

Yet it has dawned on me now, that I was losing myself, together with time.

When I was sixteen, I spent a whole year’s worth of weekends practising and studying to become a pilot. Flying planes have always been a dream of mine - to be able to see the wide landscape as I flew towards a horizon; to be able to steer the plane toward the direction I wanted; to be able to navigate myself in a vast space (no pun intended). I liked being in control. A week before my final exam, I quit. Why? To this day, I still cannot justify the reasons. I knew that it was “wrong”, but I was still compelled to do it.

I have never been an extremely competitive person. In a sense, I’ve always told myself that it is better not to apply pressure on myself, simply because I’d thought that it would affect my performance. But this mentality got so bad and worked hard against me, that when the pressure does increase, I either quit while I’m ahead or don’t play the game at all. Perhaps this is also coupled with the fear of failure, that I’d rather say that I’ve not tried hard enough then fail, than to try my best and fail anyway. It’s the insecurity of not being good enough, especially in the midst of what other people expect of me too.

What has this whole idea of my uncompetitive nature has got to do with cherishing time then?

Being competitive to me means doing my very best to win - it doesn’t only have to be about winning whilst against others, but also emerging victorious from every challenge. Yet it seemed, that I haven’t been strong-headed enough to want to win - it just isn’t in my nature.

It led me to think back on all those times I have wanted to go to compete, and all those times I did spend practising - it all seemed to have gone to waste because I have decided to quit at the last minute. Once again, it seemed, I have taken time for granted. If only I had that courage in me, I would have turned those moments of practice into something useful.

Time always seemed unlimited to me, there was always a tomorrow.

I always assumed that people would stick around no matter the circumstances. I was brought up in a loving family, and every relationship felt permanent and sustainable. I felt invincible, because I felt supported. What an illusion that has seemed to be.

As I grew older, friendships started to seem temporary, and the bonds I had with the people that made me happy didn’t seem to last. Everyone was well on their journey somewhere, I understood that. You could argue that I still have a naive view of what a true friendship should entail - I shouldn’t be expecting people to be on my journey all the time. That is true, but wouldn’t it be nice to know, at the very least, that there is company when you experience your highs and lows? That they are present?

In the good times, I seemed to have taken them for granted. The times when I had everything going for me - doing well in school, sports and relationships, I felt that I have not properly lived in those moments. Even in the bad, I didn’t appreciate its challenge - its point was to make me value the good in the first place.

My family and I have been to many places in the world for our vacation, many of which I can’t seem to remember… Japan? Korea?

Europe? All these extravagant holidays seem to be distant memories.

While you could guess that my memory wasn’t the best to begin with, the trip that is ingrained most in my mind was a short budget trip down to the Gold Coast with my girlfriend at that time.

It was almost catastrophic. She fell ill due to a cold. I had to visit a doctor because I had to have half a contact removed from my eye.

The trip ended with what we had defined as a bad trip. It was only when we have broken up, when I did look back on that trip, do I remember the worried look on her face the moment I stepped in to our place with a swollen eye, or the cold walks along the beach at three in the morning, or how the cold sands embraced our feet as we shivered. Despite its downturn, it was still a trip to remember. It was all these nuanced but significant moments in my life that I have not treasured, and I regret that.

So if there was one thing that I would want to teach you, it is that time is precious. Not just time alone, but what comes alongside this timeline - the experiences you had and will have, the people you’ve met and will meet. No matter your “nature” and how you were brought up, I hope you’ll stay optimistic. Don’t take for granted any moment, whether good or bad. Cherish them, before they become just a distant memory.

Love, Dad.

“those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”

Writing this letter has been challenging. I have so many things to tell you...now, where do I begin? Growing up, I’ve always been selfconscious of what others think of me. There were many times that I felt that I can never meet everyone’s expectations, but as I grew older, I realised it’s perfectly fine not to – so listen up, kid, I’ve got important things to tell you.

Being raised in Singapore, education played a huge part and important role in my life. During my O Levels, the expectations to do well in my studies took a toll on my mental health. I remember feeling really stressed during that period of time and I couldn’t accept failure.

Failure was defined then, as ‘not scoring a grade A for my subjects’.

It was defined by everyone – my teachers, my parents and my classmates - who believed in that as well. Witnessing how well my close friends were doing academically made me feel worse about myself and my abilities. Despite being diligent in school, my results did not show the fruits of my labour. Those grades were not what I wanted. There’s a saying that “you reap what you sow”, but that didn’t happen for me. Those were the darkest periods of my life, I would break down often, and secretly cry myself to sleep.

As a teenager, I had a huge pride and refused to show my vulnerability. I kept all my struggles and concerns to myself. The high expectations from my loved ones did not help, and I kept telling myself that I didn’t want to disappoint them. I was always putting up a façade, but deep down I was drowning. At one point, I was so anxious that I had difficulty breathing. I was willing to do anything that would take away that pain I was feeling, which evidently manifested physically.

I thought of ending my life – because life itself was… pain. However, the thought of disappointing and bringing pain to my loved ones stopped me from doing so. This pain that I’d imagine I’d bring to my loved ones far outweighed the pain that I was feeling internally.

Life is like driving, and if you have no clue as to what you are doing, accidents are bound to happen. When I’m uncertain, I become a hazard to myself and those on the road as well. That was when I decided to let go of people’s expectations of me.

Mind you, that wasn’t easy, especially for someone with an oversized ego like myself - it wasn’t easy not to care about what others think.

I told myself daily – that for every single minute that I was holding on to those expectations, it would only make me feel worse about myself. They were out of my control, yet I continued to let them torture me. They have prevented me from being happy, or at least I thought I’ve forgotten what happiness was all about.

I tried to let go of all the mistakes that I was beating myself up for - to let go of all the times that I was not perfect. Let it go, let it go, let it go. (Now, if you are wondering whether Frozen was released at that time, no it wasn’t. I guess I was a trend setter…)

I thought by telling myself all these, I would truly let go, but alas, when I received my O Level results, I was very disappointed. Looking back now, I think it was a blessing in disguise.

I have completed my formal tertiary education, and these are some of my lessons and I want you to know:

1. Grades don’t matter as much as you think

It’s not the end of the world if you didn’t attain the results you’d wish for. Opportunities come in ways that you least expect. The love for self-improvement and making connections with people matter more during many of those times. It’s the people whom you know who will teach you what you need to learn.

2. It’s alright to fail.

As the saying goes, “Fail faster, succeed sooner.” I can’t agree more.

Be open to taking risks and stepping out of your comfort zone, it will open doors for more opportunities. Even If you fail, at least you will not regret the chances you didn’t take. You know that you’ve tried.

I hope this letter will serve as a reminder for you, that things will not always go your way, but let go of your pride, accept the truth and learn. It’s a beautiful world out there. Let go and move on, only then will you be able to appreciate that beauty.

Love, Mum.

“love someone; love yourself.”

My story is about my journey towards finding my self worth, and gaining independence.

I didn’t really have many good things to say about myself, other than “I think I’m a nice guy”. But then again, in the words of my partner: “That’s what people say when they can’t think of anything else to compliment someone with”. I don’t always think that’s the reason why people use the word “nice”, but in my case it was true.

I migrated to Indonesia when I was 10, and returned to Singapore when I was 15. I lost contact with a lot of my friends from primary school. Eventually, when I did come back, I had inevitably lost contact with my friends in Indonesia as well. On the one hand, I grew up being very comfortable with living with myself and being alone. I rarely ever felt “lonely” even when I was alone. I didn’t often talk to my friends outside of school, and seldom met them on the weekends. My friends were confined to school days. Of course, this was not to say that I didn’t have friends, I just never felt like I was a loner even when I could not speak to them for weeks at a time. Most of my time would be spent at home reading, playing games with my brothers or just spending time with family.

On the other hand, looking at the people around me, at the strong friendships they had made, left me feeling lonely. It got to the point where I felt like there was something innately wrong in me, and I could never make those kinds of connections for myself.

Thinking back on it, it was a rather sad time for me. Although I did make some really good friends, I still felt that I could never be truly part of their inner circle. I always had a low self-esteem, thinking that I was never up to mark compared to other people. I measured myself against others in terms of intelligence, amity, talents and looks, of course - as much as I hate how superficial I was. I didn’t think I did much to stand out.

Yet, it was reality to me. Because of this, a lot of my achievements didn’t really mean much to me. Regardless of what I did, I still didn’t feel like I was anywhere close to the people that I admired. The culmination of my insecurities reached its peak when I was dumped “because we weren’t a good match”. Although I understand what that phrase means now, and that the relationship didn’t end because I wasn’t “good enough”, I had a hard time figuring out what it meant at the time.

Predictably, I tried to change myself as a means of making myself feel better about my shortcomings. I dressed and presented myself better, tried to improve my hobbies, dived into learning new things and to be more well-read. I did all these to make up for the things that I felt I was lacking in.

As you would expect, this did not work out as well as I had hoped for it to, because although I felt better outwardly, I still had this gnawing distress at the back of my head that I was simply “not good enough”.

I spent a long time going deeper and deeper into trying to improve myself, and I only really found my peace when I came to start loving myself for the things that weren’t something that you could learn.

It wasn’t about the skills or the know-how, like playing the guitar, or doing music, or riding a bike, or running a marathon, or reading book after book after book, or reciting the entire of The Amazing Spiderman film. I started loving myself for the things that made me me - the way I could think, the way I could feel, the way I could act. It was the way I could just be.

Of course, getting to that point was a pretty long journey. I still didn’t think there was anything special about who I was. All of the good qualities I had, I didn’t think they were unique to me. I always felt that someone else could have had the same qualities. I kept searching for that “one thing” that makes me, me.

Here’s where my advice comes in.

I met a wonderful girl that made me look at things differently. She would tell me why she loves me, and it would be all the same things that I love about myself, but she would say it with such passion, and such conviction. It wasn’t so much the things that she said, but the way she said it, and the way she looked at me when she did. It made me realise that the thing that makes me special isn’t the qualities that I possess, which I thought that I could also find in others. It was never about the skills or the know-how either - It was the person that I am.

The coalescence of everything that identifies with me.

It is ironic that I said that this story is about independence, when the realisation came to me in the form of my partner. What I meant by independence now, is that I see myself today in a different light.

I am able to stand on my own feet, knowing that I am who I am, and that I don’t need to prove myself to anyone else. So, kiddo, if there is anything to take away from this story it would be this: love somebody that makes you love yourself.

Love, Dad.

“trust your gut.”

Perhaps many people would disapprove of this statement with reasons like “It’s irresponsible of you - others make decisions based on evidence and data, instead you choose to trust ‘your gut’”. Yet, in a situation that requires quick wit and/or response, I strongly believe that ‘trusting the gut’ is a notion that I will still hold on to. While I do subscribe to the idea of ‘trusting the gut’, it is fair to say that it still acts as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it warns me of the danger when put in a potentially risky situation - a rational decisionmaker of sorts. On the other, it can merely be an outward extension of my ego - was I merely making decisions without thorough consideration of what was right and wrong, just because I felt like it?

Why would I teach you this?

Well, to be honest, my childhood was pretty bland, uneventful. I would describe it like a journal - but sparsely-filled, absent of the exciting or dramatic entries that people would remember. Evidently, how I led my life was rather simple. I tended to heed others’ advice and did what I was told to do. I barely gave much thought to these directions, but this backfired against me. I felt that I was often made a scapegoat, and piled with the responsibility to manage the work of others. Having gone through multiple of these incidents, I would not want my kid to experience the same things as I had. I hope for him to be self-directed, to have the opportunities to do what he wants to do and figure things out on his own. If he ought to experience the bad to learn a lesson, so be it.

Growing up, I had a sheltered childhood. I didn’t have many friends to hang out with, neither did I like going out with other people.

I am an only child, which implied that I was well-protected - not just from people, but also from any activity that was slightly more “adventurous”. I am fairly prone to injury, if I say so myself. I have got a huge bump on the top of my head, “it didn’t form properly”, that’s what my doctor said, whatever that meant. I have problems wearing a helmet and doing most of the “fun” activities like my other friends. It’s a funny story, for another time. The fact that I am this prone to injury did not provide comfort to my caretakers back home, particularly so when I told them I was going to go “ride a bike” or go “rock climbing”.

So, what does my childhood have anything to do with trusting the gut?

Well, there wasn’t. That was the point, they did not have a connection. I did not allow myself to trust my intuition. I did not allow myself to do things the way I would have done. I did not allow myself to trust myself. Whether it was making a friend and honing my interpersonal skills, or cooking and trying out new things, I did not give myself the chance to open up to people and opportunities.

Reaching this realisation then, I decided that I was going to give myself a shot, and to give people a shot, to put trust in someone and take “a leap of faith”, as they would say.

I made a friend during this time. I first spoke to him because he sat beside me in my tuition class. He wasn’t the smartest with the books, but from the way he spoke and behaved, I could tell that he was, instead, street-smart. He was strong in his character, who stood his ground firmly, and spoke his mind freely and loudly. He was the complete opposite of me, but I also saw parts of him that aspire to be one day.

As we bonded and our friendship grew stronger, he opened many doors to me. He taught me how to ride a bike at age 16, which I firmly believe and stand by, that a 6-year-old could possibly ride more confidently and skilfully than me! He taught me how to have my own stand and voice, to speak for myself and not become a pushover. He guided me to nurture my own interpersonal skills and introduced me to a ton of his friends - from gaming to the workplace - from anywhere under the sun. He did all of those out of goodwill and expected nothing in return.

I often wonder, would I have been varsely different if I had not spoken to him that very first time in class?

Over the years, I have learnt to better trust my gut, especially when I am forced into a situation that requires me to make a decision, without sufficient time to think. From this experience, it gave me confidence in myself. However, this confidence does not stem from that one time that I decided to speak to this one friend. Yet I will never discredit what he has done for me - because he has widened my worldview and developed a large part of my character.

Rather, it comes from the accumulation of all the times I have trusted my gut to make decisions since then, which has been working well in my favour (most of the time).

Perhaps they were the result of the subconscious part of my brain (and heart) processing the situation faster and more accurately than the conscious - I would like to think of it this way. While others may disregard the biases and emotions when it comes to decision-making, I would choose to acknowledge it and be one with it - decisions will thus be “uniquely mine”. I do not wish to live with regrets, and I do not wish for you to either.

Finally, from me to you, as a friend, I hope you do remember: trust your gut, and never apologise for trusting your intuition.

Love, Dad.

“it gets messy.”

If you had asked me this question a year ago about what I wanted to teach my kids, I would have given you a long, storied answer, detailing what I thought I had covered as a young adult myself: you hustle, you work hard, you be a good person, and you try to make the impact you want to see in the world. Easy, right? You grind through the rough spots, and enjoy the good patches – simple.

But I’ve been pretty lost, recently. It’s one of the few times i’m admitting this out loud, but yes. Let’s talk about the struggles.

Dear kid, if there is one thing I wish to tell you, that is, “It gets messy.”

The easy path to go down would be to blame my parents – they are bad and have no emotional quotient; they bring up divorce in every fight since young; they are physically abusive; they are never supportive of what I’m doing; they are extremely controlling... etcetera. I’ve also just learnt (last month) that I’ve got half-siblings from their previous relationships… just from an argument they had.

I used to always do that as an angsty teen - blame them. you wouldn’t believe how angry I’ve gotten at them, or how bitter I’ve felt whenever I listened to my friends and their happier family lives. I’ve always asked my friends how their day went. I’m honestly interested, because starting these conversations and talking, they are a really foreign concept in my family. I’ve wished that I never had to see my parents again. I’ve dreamt of far lands, of independence, of being unchained and free and never having to look back again.

I’ve snuck around, and fought for the taboo things that would make me feel like an “adult” – alcohol, games, whatever not. Hell yeah teenage rebellion!

But, well. It took me 20 years to learn that my parents are human too, and I guess, that they are trying their best in a messy marriage, and as flawed human beings we all are.

I’m really sorry if I don’t have a cookie cutter “everything is right with the world” answer to give you right now, or some nice neat advice that you can fit into your pocket as you go on with life and love. I’m sure my parents were brimming with hope to give similar advice a good 30 years ago, probably even now.

However, unfortunately, the only certain thing life has shown me in the short 20 years I’ve had is that it’s messy - you’ll feel things you don’t understand, you’ll lay the best plans out, and a year later you’ll look back at them and not recognize the person who seemed so sure and so confident about it. You’ll think to yourself – I’m (insert your name - i hope “odette” if you’re a girl), I always do (this) when it comes to (this situation), and there’s no way it’ll ever change”. But it will change. It always does. You’ll change, you’ll grow, and you’ll have the choice to how you want to react to situations that crop up in your life. The choices are going to be hard, the decisions are going to be tough, you’re not going to know if you made the right choice or if there even is a right choice, but i just want to be there when you make your decisions, and your choices. and i promise to do so without judgement, and to offer my advice if you do ask for it.

Then again, I’m not sure how 20 more years of life and the responsibilities of taking care of you will change me, but as of now, I know a listening ear is all you need. I’ll do my best to grow, find my way and become the person you deserve, but I’m figuring out how life, and love works. be patient with me please.

Love, Dad (holy fuck!)

“it’s okay not to be okay.”

It feels quite odd to think about an important lesson I want to teach you, when I am still learning so much about myself and my life.

Since young, I had always wanted to satisfy my parents – to make them happy, to make them feel proud of me. I would strive to be the best student, to have the best manners and stay humble, because my parents’ happiness was my happiness. Their happiness still is my happiness, except that the way I perceive to achieve this is very different now.

The title was inspired by the title of a Korean drama that is trending now (circa July 2020) … being a Kdrama fanatic I am! It is something I am still trying to learn but want to achieve throughout my adulthood.

I live a largely privileged life. Up until 2016, I rarely faced any difficulty in academic work and could balance multiple commitments. Then in 2016, transitioning into junior college, exposed to an unfamiliar environment whilst subjected to steep learning curves, came as a big blow to me. It did not help that my grandmother, Ahma (who stays with us), started experiencing early onsets of dementia. We were not trained to deal with it.

For the next few years, I struggled to deal with the stress from family matters and my plunging grades. I often walked aimlessly along school corridors and hid in secluded stairwells, spending lesson time crying in toilet cubicles because I could not bear the pressure of coping with these changes in my life. I could not accept why everything changed so drastically in a span of a few months. I was so cheerful, what happened? I was so confident, what happened? I could not accept this newer, sadder version of myself.

Simultaneously, my mum had higher expectations of me to be more filial towards Ahma, who brought me up. “Why can’t you be more patient towards her?”, “Just accept it”, “Why can’t you be more understanding?”. These are the words I often hear, in spite of my efforts to behave in the ways that were expected of me. It is these same things that I echo back to myself every day too. I didn’t know that what I was feeling (the sadness, stress and anger) was normal.

Everyone around me wanted me to stop thinking so much about what my family expects me to do because I was so miserable. But I want to make things better for my family. I want my mother to be happier and for Ahma to be in less pain by just cooperating with my mother without going against her. For a while, I thought that keeping mum about my worries and anxiety will relieve my mother a little from the stress of being a caregiver.

Ahma’s condition worsened and it is only recently that I’ve come to accept that things will barely change for the better. No matter what I do, my mum will only expect more, and my Ahma may not even remember me in a few years’ time. The best I can do is to treasure the time I have with her while she still remembers me – my face, my name and what I do. But I can’t continue living the way I did before – constantly wanting to satisfy my mother, especially if the bar I’m supposed to reach is set so infinitely high. I can’t continue living my life waiting for people to appreciate me in order to derive a sense of happiness. This kind of happiness will not last. Nothing lasts. If there’s something dementia taught me, is to treasure the present. Our memories of ourselves, our family, our friends, do not last forever. Sometimes they disappear in the form of short-term memory. For others with dementia, they disappear in static scenes, suddenly appearing and disappearing, as though your mind is playing a game of catch with you.

It saddens me that this has to happen to someone who means so much to me, but it is not within my control. Every day, I can only reassure her that it is alright to feel frustrated, and if she forgets certain things, don’t force her to recollect. Don’t make her do something she is not in the mood to do. It came to a point where I suddenly realised that what I am doing to make her feel better can be practiced on myself too to a certain extent. Some things are just beyond my control, and what I can do instead is to appreciate the present and learn from it.

It is still a very tough period for me now, but I know that eventually, I will emerge like a well-polished stone, more emotionally mature and stronger. For many years, the unwillingness to let go and accept my situation was a bug that I could not kill for a long time. It was also an infestation in the house, since it manifests in different ways for my family. At one point in my life, I tried to seek reassurance in the form of blaming – that what is going on in my life is my mother’s fault, or my uncles’ fault.

It did not make me any happier nor did it make me much of a better person. Pinpointing a blame on someone will not change the situation but causes both parties to experience a form of guilt that eats us away from the inside.

In the end, I will still want you to strive to be the best version of yourself and always seek self-improvement, but I will not want it to be at the expense of your mental wellness or happiness. All parents wish for the best for their kids, but what they expect from their children may not bring their kids happiness. If it makes you so miserable, I will not want to enforce my ideals on you. I want you to know there will be many stages in life where we encounter a situation that forces us to make a sacrifice. You may feel angry that you are forced to be in a sticky situation, but forgive, and don’t blame. It is okay to not be okay, but communicate your worries well while keeping your temper in check. One day you will look back on these problems and surprise yourself that you will always make it through.

- Your mother, at 21 years old Love, Mum.

“there’s enough love to go around!”

I wonder how old you are when you’re reading this. Perhaps you’ve already made friends that will stick with you for a long time, or perhaps you just had your first fight with those very friends whom you care about. But regardless, I hope you learn something about friendship and love through this letter. Some lessons in life have to be learnt the hard way and I don’t want you to go through the same pain and regret as I did, at least not as much as I did. I just wanted to leave you with this quote - “there is always enough love to go around”. What does it mean exactly? Everyone has their interpretation but my story revolves around friendships.

Perhaps that quote sounds cheesy, and I’m certain that none of my friends have ever heard me say such a cliché line. Yet this quote has been, and will be, a line that I will recite, to challenge my most-hated weakness – possessiveness.

I like to draw clear boundaries in life - often with a venn diagram of sorts. Most evidently, these boundaries appear in my relationships with others. The innermost circle is kept close for family. Veering further, we have a circle for close friends. This is for the people that I would want to keep with me for as long as possible - my chosen family. Finally, we have the areas demarcated for normal friends, followed by acquaintances. It’s a clear cut diagram. The smaller the circle, the more love I have for people it holds. Simple as that.

Growing up, I’ve always wanted to keep my friends close to me, both physically and emotionally. I wanted to be the first person they turn to when they need help, the first person they think of when they need a friend. Just like how they are given special treatment in my circle of close friends, I wanted to be part of theirs, even till this day.

When I was in primary school, I was part of a small close-knit group of friends, or “clique”, as we learnt to call it. It was a normal group of 5. With every clique, of course, there were some who were closer to others within the same group - it’s a normal dynamic.

As a 10 year old, being left alone was a nightmare. I remember distinctly how I would deliberately attempt to catch the eye of my “best friend” before the end of class, so that we could walk together in pairs to the canteen or to the school gate. I did get to walk together with her on most days. But whenever my “best friend” ended up walking with someone else, no matter who that person was, I would feel a sense of I don’t know… bitterness? As if something had been taken away from me, and a part of me was just empty. And as dramatic as it sounds, the lonely walk out of the classroom seemed much longer and much much lonelier. It’s a complicated feeling that my 10 year old self couldn’t comprehend.

But as I grew older, I realised what it was.

It was possessiveness. It was the desire to make everything exclusively mine, particularly my relationships. Just as how I have “chosen” these friends to be part of an inner circle of mine, I wanted to be part of theirs.

I wanted that mutual exchange. I wanted that implicit agreement. By this “implicit agreement”, I didn’t mean “Oh, you can only be friends with me. There’s no such thing as mutual friends.” I didn’t think that I was reigning in control over what my friends wanted to do and the people they wanted to hang out with. Rather, while I watched as my friends expanded their own circle and created their own networks, I had a brewing sense of insecurity, I thought, “go ahead, do whatever you want, but just… please don’t forget me.”

Now that I have put it into words, the reason behind this possessiveness boils down to the fear of being left behind. It is the fear that if my mutual friends do get close, I’ll be forgotten and excluded. It is the fear that while their friendship continues to blossom, they will get their happily ever after with each other, and I’ll be stuck in the same place, not knowing if they will ever realise that I’m no longer able to catch up to them.

This irrational fear has strained and even ruined some friendships for me, which till this day I regret extensively. Sometimes I wonder, if only I had known this earlier, that there is enough love to go around. If only I had known, that the boundaries of my venn diagram are limitless. If only I had known, that there’s no quota as to the number of people that could stay in the “close friend” zone. If only I had known, that my place in someone’s venn diagram isn’t at the expense of someone else’s position in that exact same diagram, and vice versa.

It’s easy to simply tell myself that friendships shouldn’t be about competition. Yet even as I reach adulthood, I still struggle to practise what I remind myself of, and to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to this mantra. I still find myself holding back from investing wholly in friendships, because I am afraid that getting close to someone may conjure a sense of insecurity again - to arise the same sense of possessiveness I had before. I still find myself holding on to a slight bias against mutual friends of me and my close friends, ensuing from the fear that my close relationships with them will be threatened, and that these relationships will slowly drift further away from me somehow, and eventually disintegrate into pure nothing.

Am I still possessive? Probably. But am I trying to change that about myself? Definitely.

Here is what I know so far. There is indeed enough love to go around! Love is non-rivalrous! There’s no need to get jealous and possessive over relationships, because so what if your friend gets close to your other friends? So what if your friend talks more to other friends compared to you? Honestly, so what?

Does that mean you’re of less value to him or her? There’s so much love in a person, it’s immeasurable. You can’t just say, “OK, I’m gonna’ shower you with 10ml of love only, gotta’ save my remaining quota for the others!”. It never works that way. Just because you assume your friend has shown more of his or her affection to someone else, doesn’t mean that he or she has less of a concern towards you.

The idea of love itself, it isn’t quantifiable to begin with. It’s a subjective topic. We’ll never truly know how much we mean to others, how we fare in their venn diagram. And ultimately, none of those should matter. Some say friendships are all about giving while expecting no returns, but a friendship in itself is already benefiting us in so many ways. We tend to receive so much more than we give, because a friendship, or any other relationship, is a lifelong lesson that teaches us how to love, how to be understanding, and how to be thankful.

You don’t always have to be number 1 in everyone’s heart, you don’t have to be the only one in the close friend zone. This isn’t a survival show. Your place in someone’s heart isn’t threatened just because there’s a new addition. The amount of love you get won’t diminish just because someone else is also getting the same amount of love whatever this amount that you may have defined it to be.

It’s hard to just totally erase possessiveness out of my dictionary, but I’m trying, and I hope by writing this little reflection, it’ll help you rethink your take on friendships and love.

Love, Mum.

“life’s a rollercoaster ride.”

In life, there will always be ups and downs. I truly believe that without the bad, you won’t be able to fully appreciate the good.

Without the bad, you may end up taking the good for granted - take it as a given, take it as a birthright. How, then, will you be able to appreciate anything and everything you’ve got?

Here’s a paradox: I love the idea of rollercoasters, the concept of it.

To live life at the edge of your seats, barely clinging on. The rush, the burst of adrenaline, the thrill of it all. The thrill that I desire. Yet, I hate rollercoasters. It fills me with fear, an empty pit in my stomach.

I love the ride up, don’t get me wrong. To put it in the words of John Green, “I’m on a rollercoaster that only goes up”. Yet, as they say, “what goes up must come down” - the fall, the downs, those are inevitable. Recovering from there, it is when I struggle most.

The following depicts a recollection of two short stories, excerpts from my childhood – it may have been biased and skewed, memories are a funny fuzzy thing: There was a boy.

In retrospect, it was young love. Starry eyed, dreamer’s disease.

Everything felt like it was meant to be. We had our futures all mapped up, timelines matched up. However, we made mistakes, an oversight on both our ends. We changed the course of our own paths, unwilling to give in to the other. We fell apart and with that, I fell into pieces. That, my dear, was my true first heartbreak.

Afterwards, I felt this sense of loss, a sadness so innate that it seemed neverending. It took a lot of time, a lot more sad songs, and a large helping of self-destruction before I realised that there was nowhere to go from here but up. When you’ve hit rock bottom, things can only get better from here.

I had a bestfriend.

She taught me one of the greatest lessons in my life, back then.

She said, “I think, some people, you’ll always care for. They’ll always mean something to you”.

I still remember the conversation we had after school that day, about romance and heartbreaks. She led me to learn that, indeed, my past relationship was young love. It’s true that the pain from your first heartbreak will change you, but it does go away. When you have truly loved a person, it’s not possible for you to simply transition from caring so much, to having no concern at all for the other.

Rather, over time, you learn to accept one thing - “I don’t know what’s going on in your life anymore and that’s okay, but I wish you all the best and I hope you’re happy”. She taught me that.

Rollercoasters, like life, loops around and circles back. More often than not, it’s out of your control. The best you can do is live through it all. Live loudly, scream at the top of your lungs.

I once read that the visceral sensation of fear itself is part of what forms the love/hate relationship with rollercoasters. To quote Dylan Thomas, “do not go gentle into the good night… rage, rage against the dying of the light”. Do not let your fear of the unknown stop you from doing what you want to do. Change is the only constant.

We give bits of ourselves to others in the form of stories. Little anecdotes. And whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you’re going through, I hope that you know – this, too shall pass. Life is a rollercoaster ride. So I urge you, please, enjoy the ride, embrace the ups and downs of it all.

Love, Mum.

“about growing up on the internet”

Growing up is a difficult and weird process, even as I look back, fondly or otherwise, into the days of my youth. It was served on a platter of excitement, novelty, danger and recklessness, with a dash of ratchet/rabz (if these terms are still used in your time).

Growing up also means that you have to deal with your developing identity, sexuality and desires. That includes, too, the intermixing of hormones, frequent or infrequent indulgence in alcohol, and the outward relaxation of social norms. Couple that with a healthy serving of high-speed internet and instantaneous access to high fidelity porn, sex, drugs and liberal ideas espoused by wannabe Marx, Kant or Hume of your generation; it might seem that living in a liberal and self-indulgent utopia, or where every teenaged kid has his wet dream, has been achieved.

If only dreams ever come true. I grew up with similar circumstances, access to the internet as well as liberalized social values (maybe not to the extent similar to yours of the future). My experiences of developing and living with my identity, sexuality and desires online and offline have highlighted the intersectionality of traditional conservative values of chastity and modern liberal values of c’est la vie.

Shame was the feeling I felt when I found information about my intimate experiences with someone online. We were consenting individuals who agreed on the terms of confidentiality. Yet as fleeting as relations are built online, so was the trust that we had.

Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame for me. Shame for my family. Shame to my friends.

Where were the calls for celebration for one’s free expression for liberal ideas and actions? Why was that there was only deafening silence? Why did the creeping influence of traditional values triumph? Why was I the victim blamed for my actions? Why did we not shame the perpetrator for betraying the trust of another? Why do we stand in silence against wrongdoers, why do we not stand in solidarity with the victims?

In light of the unfortunate experiences, the unsavoriness of the internet, the stranglehold of traditional values on modern culture; will I in good conscience advise you against posting and sharing intimate information with people?

I cannot.

I cannot stand for a culture that instead of celebrating one’s free expression of her/his sexuality, shame her/his for failing to abide by conventional values or the irrational aversion to sexuality and nudity. I cannot stand for a culture that stands behind the shaming victims and while allowing perpetrators to walk away scot-free. On or offline, we and by extension you, my child, should be able to discern right from wrong, to not let one’s irrational fear of the naked expression of one’s body, sexuality and ideas trump our acceptance of difference and tolerance.

If you ever choose to stand naked before a camera or lay your hands before a keyboard for a controversy, I cannot in good faith tell you to fear the repercussions of your actions. We are masters of our destinies, to hold strong in face of pressure, to be keenly aware of our actions, to defend them. To not falter under the pressure of irrational shame. This is what it means to be young, to be human, to grow up.

My hope is that you will learn from my experience, that you will grow up to be kind, to be accepting, to live and let live.

Love, Dad.

“moderate.”

My child, Where do I start? I have so much I want to tell you – joys to share, sorrows to warn you about and lessons to impart. Watching you grow from a little baby to the child that you are, I can only imagine the adult you will be. If I could leave with you one important lesson that I learnt from this thing called life, it would be that – everything in moderation.

Your dad grew up in a relatively comfortable environment, yet he always had the fear that he wasn’t good enough - this is going to stay with him for a long time. He wasn’t the best student, he didn’t have the best grades. During that time, grades in school were really important. It didn’t help that he was from one of the ‘best’ schools in Singapore, or so people said. Having almost had to repeat a year when he was 17 years old, he told himself that he will work really hard to be good enough, to be the cream of the crop. Your grandmother, or my mother, was a very successful lady and I think I wanted to live up to her expectations. I wanted her validation that I was successful too.

Even when I went to university, I wanted to always be on the ball. I was constantly ahead for every single assignment and test. I wanted to be able to find a job in the future. Once again, I worked really hard, some days it felt really tiring - I was burnt out - but my mind could only think about work, nothing else. There was a lot of striving and not much rest, I’m not talking about physical rest, but emotional and mental rest. I needed a break from work very much, but I wasn’t able to bring myself to do so.

One day, I really felt like I was under too much stress and I saw no point in all these strivings. I realised that it has been a long time since I played my favourite game – Monster Hunter, or since I watched a single show. And coincidentally, a schoolmate that I was working with for a project told me “Mark, next time when you have a job, you’ll be working for the rest of your life, relax a bit first”. Her words ‘woke’ something in me and it felt like somebody just pressed a pause on my life.

It was then, I realised, no, the fear of not being good enough may not be a bad thing. If it leads me to work hard, it is not a bad thing.

Yet it becomes a bad thing when my whole life is about working hard. Working hard is good only when it is balanced with play. That it isn’t healthy for me to live a lopsided life. That there are many important things for me to devote my time and energy on, such as relationships with other people, my hobbies and… well, not just work. There’s so much to enjoy, to relish and savour. The phrase “stop and smell the roses” started to make a lot of sense to me.

Yet my dear child, the opposite is also bad, when it is all play and no work. Smelling roses all day isn’t going to do you any good. This is why - I feel that this is such an important lesson for you - that I want you to lead a balanced life with everything in healthy moderations.

This lesson can be applied to many things in our lives, even food!

Wisdom needs to be applied about where the balance is, but I don’t expect you to figure it out right from the start, I certainly didn’t.

Navigating this complex world will be a lifelong journey and even I haven’t mastered it, but what I do know is that who you’ll one day become (and who I will one day become), is someone only we can do. It’s a calling unique to us and it gives meaning to life.

I’m so excited about your life - the lessons that you will one day learn and in turn tell your kid. Remember that no matter how many mess-ups you make while trying to navigate life, both your mum and dad will always love you and will always be a safe space for you to come home to.

Love, Dad.

“live with yourself, for yourself.”

I was born into a great family. A banker dad, a housewife mom and a high-achieving sister. There were no problems whatsoever, financially and emotionally. They always showered me with love and positivity, and they have never put me in a spot. My relatives always doted on me as their favorite niece - they bought me the food I liked and have always asked for my opinion in family matters. Of course, I returned the favor by being filial and putting family first, contributing wherever I could and always visiting my grandmother, even getting a tattoo of her with a bouquet of flowers I bought for her, two years ago.

Which was why people never understood why I wanted to kill myself at the age of 15. “Your family loves you!”, “Why would you want to put them through something like this?”, “Your parents don’t deserve this.”... These are just some of the “justifications” people made to prevent me from doing what I wanted to do most. It only made me want to do it even more.

At that point, I was hallucinating almost every day. Voices were screaming at me, telling me that I was a “worthless fuck” or that “mami and papi will be fine with just jiejie”. If statements like these were at maximum volume around you 24/7, I’m sure you would want to find a way to mute them too.

There were a few people that “questioned” my mental health issues, ignorantly blabbering things about how my living environment was above average and therefore, I “should not” have suicidal thoughts or hallucinations. Some even questioned whether or not I was putting on a show because I was an attention seeker.

That is why, ladies and gentlemen, people do not speak up about their mental health. The black hole just manifests until there is significant and obvious damage to its host till the point where people realize it’s not “just for attention” anymore.

All these doubts were on top of the difficulties I had with accepting that my own expectations for myself were far too high, and that I could not and would never be able to put myself in a mould completely and come out as a QC-ed product. I was struggling, because I had strived to be in this mould - a norm that everybody accepts. I forgot that I was my own being, regardless of whatever environment I grew in. I did not need to wreck myself over sky-high expectations that no one has set for me, that I was good enough so long as I was a good person, and that I could bring joy to a few people in this life.

Sure, I’m dealing with it much better now, choosing instead to play with my Nintendo Switch instead of blades, but there are still some holes and gaps that cannot be patched. I still bruise and bite myself, I still have a low tolerance for myself, and I give myself way too much stress for even the simplest things, but that’s okay. Sure, I am a host for a parasite I cannot get rid of in the near future, but I have learnt how not to succumb to it, instead choosing to co-exist with it without sacrificing too much of myself.

All these, because I am alive.

So, learn to live, with your own realities by your own premises, you will then live, for yourself.

Love, Mum.

“the world is not a benevolent place by default. open your eyes as early as possible to that. care for others, but be selfish in your formation of thought.”

Many things in life are cliche. We don’t really understand the meaning of certain sentences until we experience something that ties one of these sentences to some deep and physically-felt meaning.

This letter can very well be one I wished I had read as a child.

Growing up, I’ve missed many opportunities I could’ve seized - if only had I been more mature and more familiar with the ways of the world. For one, I would’ve been glad if I was told that relationships weren’t black and white, that it was okay to reach out and befriend people who were different from you, so long as it was based on mutual respect.

I wished I had someone who taught me that life wasn’t a straight line. Growing up, my parental and societal influences shaped me into being a disciplined and goal-driven person. I excelled in my academics. Yet I wasn’t taught the meta-skill of choosing my own goals, or managing my own emotions. Neither was I brought up with the idea that caring for my self-interest and/or being selfish is natural, and that the conservative values of yielding to authority and giving way to strangers out of politeness, even at my own expense, are deeply wrong at times.

This caught up to me in National Service (NS). It was a bad time for me, looking back at it objectively. I went from working towards my future in a self-directed and free-willed setting to becoming a cog in the machine. Previously, I did well, because I had control - the amount I studied, the resources I worked with and the time and effort I invested into the work I cared about.

When I entered the army, I felt as if I lost all of that - every activity seemed scheduled; every movement seemed restricted; every moment did not seem like my own time. Truthfully, I wasn’t mature enough to deal with the drastic change in environment back then - I was still a very unrealistically rigid person in the way my morals and mind worked. I told myself that my attitude would dictate what I would get out of this unfavorable situation, but deep down I didn’t really believe it.

Seven months after enlistment, after I had completed my NS highlight of some “mildly dangerous exercises”, I was well on my way to earning my beret as a full-fledged soldier. Yet even before that attainment, I had to drop out of training. I had developed a bad case of eczema. I became a paper pusher for the next year or so. I tortured myself by comparing the sheer meaninglessness of what I was doing every day, to the things I could have been doing. This problem was compounded further.

It was a common notion, that I was “young” and I was “strong”, and that young adulthood should have been the start of a prime period of my life. However, very much on the contrary, I have not had the most fundamental idea of what I wanted out of my own life. I felt aimless. Once upon a time, I grew and excelled in a system that had all things in place for me, and all I had to do was to try my best to be the best. It was what I call the “successful Singaporean student” track. Right now, I thought, without this overarching structure of school, what is there installed for me?

That’s the catch, there wasn’t. I could only pave my way out of the system - any system - to find what I truly wanted for myself. I felt guilty, for being immature, and not considering this before. I felt useless, without a goal, because I could no longer channel the discipline and tenacity I once had toward something productive.

I turned that obsessive energy back toward myself. Without the stimulation that was once present, I fell into a mental slump I had never experienced before.

Looking back, I think the reason for this mental slump was that I was blind to the things I could’ve done for myself. I still had a choice then, to change my attitude and my behaviour, yet I did not come to recognise that I did. It has occurred to me now, that I could have chosen to “opt out” of a system that affected my wellbeing immensely. Yet I stuck blindly to the notion that I should “do my best in everything I do” - a value that I grew up with, coupled with the fear of social judgement if my actions had shown otherwise. What if what I was supposed to do was so pointless? What then? I had an external structure for my life up to then, I followed everything my “authorities” told me. No one told me how - or even that I could - take responsibility for my own choices and actions - even if they made me happy but were ultimately selfish. If only I had really, really known that I could have said “fuck off” to what others expected of me - and still bore the consequences of doing so - I wouldn’t have spent that year or so stuck in a soul-draining limbo.

And then one day, deep in this vulnerability and self-doubt, desperate to satisfy my thirst for risk and excitement, perhaps with the desire to be rebellious against my own nature, I was taken advantage of - by a stranger I trusted naively. The full experience is too long and too personal for the purposes of this letter.

It hit me hard and forced me to face my childish projections of the world. Soon after, while I was reeling from the loss, I read a lot of Nietszche. I read on his philosophies of protecting oneself from malevolence - by seeing the world as it is and being prepared to take responsibility for yourself, and to fight for yourself even if it means harming or disagreeing with others.

Eventually, I came to this conclusion: the reason I had made that mistake and gave myself up to be exploited, was that I wasn’t sufficiently self-interested nor emotionally detached to truly face real world problems. The real world isn’t a benevolent place by default.

True, there is a famous quote, stated by Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle”; I am still a strong proponent of positive thinking and “following your bliss (a la Joseph Campbell)” when living life. I think this notion has the most utility when it comes to staying motivated and untarnished by stress over the period of decades.

But I now have a new creed: it is not enough being a good man. To be a good man, you have to first be good at being a man. They are not the same thing.

Strength makes all other virtues possible. You have to be willing to be selfish and hard-hearted enough to protect yourself and others from those who are out to do harm. Malevolence exists, and the cure is not to avoid situations that are scary. The cure is to develop the strength to recognize, then ruthlessly defend yourself and defeat them. If not for the sake of yourself, then for the sake of others who do not have the privilege of bouncing back up from limiting thoughts, like I was.

Work for what you believe in. Stay positive. Adopt a problem-solving mindset and help others. But above that, be constantly asking yourself if what you’re working on is what you truly want. Do not be afraid to tell the world: “This may make you feel uncomfortable, but this is what I want from you. It may end up helping us both, even if you disagree with it now.” And lastly, develop the courage to face all that is ugly so that you may turn their destructive, psychopathic energy upon their deserving selves.

Love, Dad.

“being alone doesn’t have to mean you are lonely.”

Hello, you.

A close friend of mine once asked me to write about one thing I’d wish to teach my kid about my life. So I thought what better way to do so than to write a letter - for you to learn about what I’ve been through and what I’ve learnt about life.

Of all the things I’ve been through, the one thing I’d want you to remember is: Being alone doesn’t have to mean you are lonely.

My mother did a good job of instilling me with values of compassion and altruism. She was a great role model for this. She would never fail to go out of her way to help whoever it may be, especially when it comes to her loved ones. She loved giving little surprises - it didn’t matter if there was an occasion or not. It was her way of showing she thought of you. I remember every gift she’s given me, and it’s numerous.

The one thing she never taught me though, was balance - for she herself wasn’t good at it. She spent so much time thinking of others, she had none for herself. She would spread herself too thin, and at times wear herself down from fatigue or get herself hurt in the process.

I was the same. I admired my mother so much that I tried emulating her. My focus was on other people - to make them happy. I thought I would find happiness in others and so I strove for it. Slowly, I was unconsciously becoming dependent on others’ emotions to mould my own. If someone was unhappy, I would aim to go above and beyond to solve their problems. Every time I did things for others, I would unknowingly set expectations on their response - and get utterly disappointed when they weren’t met. Little did I know that all this was doing was just turning me into a people-pleaser - a chaser.

Chasing for happiness, my self-worth and company in things out of my control.

I’ve had to go through a lot to realise the flaw in my thinking. I’ve lost many people who I once considered dear to me: half of my extended family, a close aunt, a couple of close friends who I had known for years and years. They didn’t die - it’s just life doesn’t work out sometimes and you drift apart through no fault of your own which is probably what amplifies the pain of separation even more, knowing that they’re out there but choosing not to be with you anymore.

This was the turning point for me that made me realise that the only person I can rely on for my own happiness is myself.

I had to learn that my emotions are independent of others, no matter how close I am to them.

I had to learn to be happy with myself.

Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy unless you choose to be happy.

To teach myself this, I had to dissociate myself from others and be alone. Although it might sound lonely, I never really think it ever was.

I started to focus more on myself: addressed my needs and focused on personal growth. The things I used to avoid for fear of perceived judgement from others, I did them. The things I used to agree to do at the expense of my time and happiness, I rejected them. In my solitude, I found freedom.

It’s okay to be a little selfish sometimes, so long as it doesn’t do anyone else harm.

Funnily enough, focusing on myself instead surrounded me with other people who supported me and with whom I was truly comfortable with. I found myself spending less time in doubt, and more on practicing self-confidence.

It’s true when they say when you’ve found yourself, the right people will gravitate towards you.

This is something I wished I realised at a much younger age. Perhaps I could have avoided all the pain and grief if I’d known. However, without those hardships, would I ever be able to come to this realisation? How ironic.

So there’s my 2 cents. No doubt you may have to deal with a similar problem at some point in your life. Ultimately, how you decide to tackle it is entirely up to you. Everyone is different - from the same problem, we may end up learning different things from it. Whatever you decide, I hope reading this will provide you with another perspective as we undertake this complex journey that is Life.

Just remember, being alone sometimes does not have to be a bad thing. It’s society’s fault for creating the notion of ‘FOMO’ (Fear of Missing Out) and trust me, it doesn’t do anybody any good except seed feelings of abandonment, anxiety and jealousy.

However, when you’re having a hard time, please know you don’t have to go through it alone. You are surrounded by many, family and friends, who are blessed to know you. The right people will always be there to support you through it. All you have to do is reach out.

So should you ever find yourself really feeling lonely, don’t.

For you are never truly alone.

Love, Mum.

“always save for a rainy day - never be complacent.”

I think to better show you how my life was a classic analogy of Icarus flying too close to the sun, I would have to tell you what my childhood was like.

It had always been comfortable. I am the youngest in a family of five.

I was driven around when needed and my wallet was always full even if I spent all my pre-allocated allowance of that week. Shamefully, I must admit that I used to get nervous and anxious whenever I was out with friends and had to take the public transport. That was how foreign taking a bus was to me at that time because of my comfortable lifestyle.

Your grandfather was a businessman and the sole breadwinner of our family. He started shadowing various CEOs in China where he learnt how to start an effective business and made connections. I used to look up to him because of his knowledge and the confidence he had. Those attributes were what made him an incredible businessman. Unfortunately, his biggest strength would also become his downfall.

The year I turned 17 was the year where I started to realise maybe, just maybe, the family was not doing so well after all.

We had to sell our second car and forgo some expensive eating habits like fortnightly shark-fin soup. It was also the time when my older siblings went overseas to pursue their medicine degree. The costs of the degree started to accumulate. It was extra weight on my father’s shoulders. Pairing that with my father’s risky business gamble, the wax of Icarus’ wings started to melt.

We sold our condominium and unbeknown to me, my family started approaching friends and family to settle bills from the university.

Even at that point, I chose to ignore the problems, perhaps just as a mere unwillingness to confront it, pretending to be oblivious and in denial to the impending doom that was approaching my family.

The day I realised how serious the problem was when I was introduced to a friend of my father’s. Let us call him Ben. Ben started hanging out in my home and with my father. How does one describe Ben? To me, he was approachable but there was an underlying tenacity and strength hidden under his persona. I do not have a small figure and I have intimidated people with my sheer size. But being placed in the same room as Ben kept me on edge. I felt tiny.

I only found out later that Ben has been visiting, because my father was being targeted by loan-sharks. Ben had fought and dealt with many of such dangerous people before. As he empathised with our situation, he had volunteered to take care of my father back then.

Runners had been visiting our house at wee hours, ringing our doorbell and slamming on our gate, all while shouting my father’s name. This took a toll on my mother who was usually home alone and had to hide behind her room door, shaking from fear as she listened to the man outside shouting for my father to come out of the house. Despite knowing that those runners who painted our house were arrested and probably serving time, every time we do have an unexplained doorbell ring today, I will see a flash of fear on your grandmother’s face. Honestly, my heart skips a beat whenever I hear the doorbell chime, and I would have to quell my worries by thinking of alternative reasons: a postman delivering my package, or my sister returning from work and being too lazy to use her keys.

Having seen this trauma, I do not wish that upon anyone.

What was unforgettable, till today, was the smell of paint mixed with paint thinner. It was around 10pm and I was walking past my front door from the kitchen. I smelled this distinctive chemical odor seeping through from the corridor. I opened the front door, and all I saw was red. Vivid red. My mother was far-sighted - she had placed a plastic tarp over our front gate. All I saw was bright red dripping down the transparent plastic. Because the plastic blocked off access to the gate’s grills, the runners could only place the bicycle lock onto our shoe cabinet. Once we opened the gate, we could see the trails of red paint on the floor along the corridor, with a discarded plastic bottle in a corner. It never once crossed my mind that news articles and advertisements about these incidents could become my reality.

Reflecting on that day, I can dare say that that day may have been the angriest and most helpless I have felt in my life. I was a child, thrown into this situation and forced to stay strong and tall because my parents no longer could.

Doing business has always been a calculated gamble and I can never put the blame fully on my father. His intentions to provide a better future was pure. It came from a place of love. Yet perhaps he also held on to his overwhelming sense of masculinity and ego - he had too much pride to back down from a losing fight. All that I hoped for was that he came up with a plan B instead of investing savings into a dying deal.

I think right now, debts will take a while to repay and we have been blessed with understanding relatives who had the capacity to loan my sisters. The runners were arrested about 4 months after the incident. My mother and I still think twice whenever the doorbell rings, but I believe we are getting better at eradicating fear. The future does not seem as bleak as before.

Spending money is a slippery slope. What happened to my family is something I do not wish to experience ever again. Having lived a life of luxuries, I look back on this with regret.

There was so much more we could have done with the money we have spent on seemingly worthless things. So, if there’s only one advice I can impart to you, it would be to understand the value of money, to save properly and spend meaningfully, and for you and your family to feel safe and secure, knowing that your finances are well-maintained.

Love, Dad.

“there is no special inherent universal meaning of life, and that is perfectly okay.”

I think a problematic belief I had when I was young was assuming that there was a special inherent universal meaning of life. As I grew up, I spent the better of my time doing two things: struggling to come to terms with the fact that life was not special and trying to find my own personal meaning.

You see, for the first 12 years of my life, I was religious (Christian Methodism), and was taught that all humans were special and had a built-in purpose: Be a good person and dedicate yourself to serving God, and enjoy a peaceful afterlife in heaven.

As I got older, at about the age of 13, I started to doubt religious doctrine and shifted to a more agnostic-atheistic worldview.

While this was great for improving my critical thinking, it severely hampered my motivation in life. I had lost the very thing that gave my life meaning. I felt directionless and began searching for other avenues to derive my meaning.

First, I looked toward science for the answer: If religion is false, surely the thing that disproves it can provide some semblance of a good answer! So what does science tell us about our purpose? Well, in summary, our inherent purpose is to spread our genetic code. That is it, no special destiny, no cool unique path, nothing, null, nada. You see, biology teaches us that we are nothing more than complex apes and astronomy teaches us that the earth is just a wet rock in the infinitude of space. In essence, there are only two important aspects of the human life plan: food and f…ecundity. This is our inherent meaning of life; not an opinion, but a fact based on data. While a sobering thought, our civilisation is extremely complex, and we cannot just base our lives on this model.

‘So I know that the inherent meaning of life is neither special nor magical, so how do I move on from here?’ was a prevailing thought I had. I knew that I had to derive meaning from an external avenue but I did not know where to start. Being lazy, I postponed my quest for meaning and concluded that since life was not special, I should have as much fun as I can without compromising my future. Thus, I began a carefree lifestyle which consisted of living in the moment and doing the bare minimum in school to get a passable grade.

This lifestyle stuck with me for the next seven years as I got through secondary school and junior college. During that time, I lived my life almost stress-free, using life’s intrinsic ordinariness as an excuse to pardon my many failures. Looking back, it was a very short-sighted worldview.

In the second year of my National Service (NS), I ended my relationship with my ex-girlfriend and was in an emotional slump.

Saddened, my mind started to wander and eventually went back to pondering the meaning of life. This time, I hit a dark apex: If life has no true meaning, and all is nought upon death, why bother doing anything at all? This thought struck me hard, and I could no longer postpone the quest for the meaning of life.

I remember likening life to a video game. In a video game, you can choose to hustle hard and get achievements or do nothing. Either way, the choices mean nothing once you quit the game. Similarly, no matter the choices we make in life, it makes no difference upon death. I believed that the actions we make just distract ourselves from this sombre fact. Life, to me, was merely an endless quest of digression. Most nights, I found myself lying in bed unable to sleep, thinking about how my life was pointless. Gratefully, I never had any suicidal or self-harming thoughts. This new bleak worldview haunted me, and I knew that I had to urgently find a new meaning to my life.

Thankfully, I had friends and family that supported me during that difficult time. Eventually, after some experimentation, I found a meaning of life I could call my own and be proud of: To find sustained, true happiness. It is a long story, but I basically found out that dedicating myself to meaningful distractions can bring about true happiness. Hence, I have decided to keep the ball rolling and carry on with this for the rest of my life.

In conclusion, the meaning of life is not handed to you or woven into your existence, it is something you have to actively pursue. I had to undergo many twists and turns before arriving at one I am comfortable with and I am sure that many people have undergone the same. To my future children, fret not that your life is not inherently special or meaningful! Life is only as meaningful and special as you allow it to be, and you can quote me on that.

Love, Dad.

“change.”

an empty fridge.

My fridge wasn’t always empty. It used to be filled with fresh milk, chocolate bars, fruits, frozen pizza and ice cream. I could never complain about food, because it was always stocked full once a week; the receipts were always long. My mother would bring us to the market once a week, she would buy those large juicy grapes and six dollar cereals. She would fill the cart with ingredients she would cook the same day and we would trudge home with a trolley and plastic bags.

We lived like this for 17 years.

To you, my future child, you will face periods of your life where fate will deal you a bad hand, abrupt changes which you will cry to run from. Because one day my fridge stopped being full, and one day your own fridge might be the same too.

Tragedies are sudden, unexpected, unexplained and they happen to the best of us; they traumatise the people around them but not many focus on those in the peripheral, perhaps for good reasons.

However, to a child it’s confusing and strange. I was the child who noticed my fridge started being filled with only the necessities, gaping in areas where there used to be candy, and the person who had filled it turned into a stranger.

In 2017, my mother suffered from an aneurysm at work. A hemorrhagic stroke, to be more specific. She was in a coma for more than two weeks. Someone told me they had to drill into her brain to drain fluids and while she laid in comatose, I searched for that area.

Perhaps to prove to myself that this was in fact real. She eventually awoken, but became a shell of a person she once was.

As her child, I didn’t know who came home with us. She was talking differently, acting differently, she looked different and could no longer walk with the same grace she once possessed. I just… didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know what to say. I can’t even talk to her the same way, she was just… All the characteristic traits that made her my mom, and made her seem to no longer exist too.

But enough of this sob story. What I really wanted to tell you, my dear, is how the human spirit refuses to break. I was in survival mode. While things fell around me, I did what I had to do. I broke things off with my first love, knowing for a while that he no longer cares for me, and that staying in a relationship with him was tugging at dead weight -- in survival mode, there is little emotional space to pretend things are alright.

When everything is going to shit, know that there is a quiet strength inside you fighting for your own life. This little strength has allowed me to open my eyes each morning. Its little voice is what helped me pick up my spoon and feed myself some rice. Its little voice is what helped me breathe. It was however, from this period that I learnt that I cannot be killed so easily. That even if my spirits were broken, I will not die.

Change is painful. But my child, change has shed light onto areas of my life I would never have noticed. It made me realise many things, one of which was how tenacious mankind is. The change my mother’s accident brought also revealed to me the people who truly loved me. My best friends dragged me onto the surface of turbulent waves when I sunk too deep into myself.

I’ll say it again — no matter how difficult life gets, you will not die; because you are my child. Eventually, one day you will be the one who fills up the empty spaces in the fridge, and things will be almost alright again.

Love, Mum.

“believe in the ocean.”

Looking at the ocean. The beauty lies in its waves. Waves that crash, and rise, again and again.

There will be moments where it feels like everything is crashing. But trust me, everything is going to be okay. I know you might think this is probably some selective bias example, so let me pose you another question. If you’re going to die today, was “being happy” the last thing you have done for yourself? I hope you said yes, because if you didn’t, I encourage you to speak to someone because life is not a living joke. I used to think mental health belongs to a small group, maybe because of some genetic variation, until it hit me.

I was happy and motivated - although doing only subpar in school, but life was fulfilling. It was fun, hella fun (and no I did not take drugs, just drinks). Then I got into university and I thought I met the love of my life. I never knew I would be so dumb to make such a poor decision in trusting my life in the wrong person, but I did. To be frank, I think my previous date was a better partner. But I left a guy who was ready to marry me, to someone who hid me from his parents and friends.

That really hurt me like a bitch.

I cried for hours when I thought I wouldn’t, and I never knew love could hurt you so much for so long. Everyday it felt like life was crashing because your five-year plans became a nightmare. The belief that you deserved good didn’t exist for a moment. You wake up feeling like you’re never getting out of a feeling you can’t put into words, and slowly it seems to swallow your endorphins, putting you away from your friends. It was as if a demon engulfed all your confidence, and it kept telling you that this version of yourself is actually you, because you made the choice of choosing this person, and you cannot believe everything you had is actually nothing good for you.

So as you slowly choose to destroy yourself against your gut, remember one thing, this demon is only here because you’re something good to be consumed. Your warmth, your vibrance, your sunshines, your positivity, your strength, beauty, confidence, relentlessness, kindness, love. Let it not take anything away from you.

Guard your heart above all else, for everything you do flows from it.

Change is the only constant, for the better. It’s not too late to trust yourself, to know that everything will be okay as long as you choose to believe in yourself.

So I’ll ask you the same question: If you’re going to die today, was “being happy” the last thing you have done for yourself?

I hope you find the courage today to say yes, and to know that every good thing starts from a belief, every manifestation starts with a thought. So think good of you, for you want you to be the best for you, for you want you to be the best, for you can control you, even if everything seems out of control.

As things crash, know that strength lies in your belief that the next wave will come in, better, stronger, just like the ocean. Take that courage further when you can, try something new, because you’re never too young to teach nor too old to learn.

Be kind to that person that runs along with you, because when everything crashes, one of them will be your strong foundation. In a million of evil, there is always one good.

Love, Mum (a Champion raiser).

“take a step back there is more to see when you look at the big picture.”

Kid, your mother is a perfectionist and a sensitive person – two things that can work best together or worst against each other.

When she uses those terms, she doesn’t mean that “an overwhelming sense of exasperation will encapsulate her when pizza slices are not cut into exact and straight octuple slices using a protractor”. Neither does she mean that “she will cry when someone disagrees with her liking for pineapples on pizza”.

For a start, they work best because I always want better. The more I look inward, the more I see parts of myself that can be pushed further, and I tend to do, and do, and do and do and do. I see myself as this ordinary person that can do more, learn more, grow more.

There is no ceiling.

But it was this same behaviour that fed the harshest inner critic in me, and I would never feel satisfied or proud of who I was and what I had done (at least, in the past). At some point I convinced myself that I couldn’t be happy - at a subconscious level then - and I meant it. That was what being a perfectionist meant to me.

I like being in control of my own journey – we all do. Yet this obsession with being in control - of the things that I could control about myself - drove me to hell. Since I was 15, your mother started developing an eating disorder (anorexia, to be exact). A day’s meals consisted: 1. two slices of bread for breakfast, 2. two slices of bread and one 140g cup of Marigold’s “non fat peach & mango yoghurt” for lunch, and 3. for dinner, a palm sized portion of vegetables, repeated every weekday for almost 2 years. This was on top of sport training thrice a week for up to 4 hours each.

For those years and the few after, a lot of what I was thinking and feeling was… very unclear. What was once conscious became subconscious – my habits changed. I started counting calories at every meal; I started avoiding outings with friends; I started skipping meals. I did all these so that I could feel like I was in control of at least one visible thing about myself – my body. I wanted to have the perfect body – even when I didn’t know what that meant. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Chasing after a thing when you don’t even know what that thing actually is.

Now imagine being able to notice the most nuanced things about people and places, including yourself and where you are. It’s not a bad thing. But imagine having a bug fly around you all the time, you having to wave it off constantly - just that it never goes away no matter how hard you try to shoo it, and that the bug is also part of you. It stays. It won’t die. It cannot die. That is how it feels to be “sensitive”.

And here is when I also want to say, kid, if you ever think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.

I was sexually assaulted twice in 2019. Back then, a part of me still thought I brought it on myself, “You invited the situation. You were the one that put yourself there.” This thought was propagated - I was slut shamed and questioned by kin.

2020 and 2021 were rough years. I was clinically diagnosed with dysthymia; I went through a breakup; I came back to Singapore only 2 months into a fresh university experience in Sydney. At the heart of it, it was this feeling of unfairness and injustice - that I hadn’t had a chance to explore a life by myself, and that I hadn’t been taking care of myself for myself.

Right now, as I’m writing this, being a perfectionist still means that I have ridiculously high expectations of myself, particularly in the moral sense, and being a sensitive person - who is often very aware of myself and others - fuels this mindset. But I think I am slowly starting to understand what it means to have balance. Not that I’m fantastic at it anyway, like, I’m at 170cm and my centre of gravity is rather high, and therefore if you take the moment about my belly button, I am perpetually the leaning tower of Pisa 80% of the time.

Point is, it just takes a bit more time and effort to bring myself back to centre…...

There is one thing your mother tells herself everyday, just to bring herself back to this “centre” she’s talking about. This centre is this… thing that calms her, in the midst of all this chaos (in her brain and the outside world now, really). “look at the big picture.”

1. yes, control what you can control - improve yourself! try! but don’t be harped on how they don’t seem to fit in anywhere at all. they all belong somewhere on the bigger whole, you’ll just have to wait and see.

2. the shaping of just one piece cannot be done using a single cut of a knife - so aren’t you. striving to the best you can be isn’t instant and easy. while in the process, take time to know the edges and curves, the end product will be worth it.

3. forgive - because on the longer timeline and bigger scale, you’ll see that there is no point feeling upset about how they have chipped the edges. you choose what you see, and it’s a beautiful view nonetheless.

4. there’s a bigger world out there, so find something to live for that is bigger than yourself.

Love, Mum. (Eat your vegetables.)

A Closing Note dear you, thank you for your time, honesty and genuineness. i have learnt a little something from each one of you. i believe in the power of narratives, and words, so thank you for allowing me to understand you, and this absurd monstrosity of a thing called Life. while we live by our statements, i hope we remember that only change is constant - Life is dynamic. whether or not these statements will only carry on until tomorrow or until we are 123 years old, i hope there is something new to add, subtract, multiply or divide to them every day. (pffft, it’s just math, how hard can it be right?)