after a short self-exiling stint, running away from letting you readers see inside my head, i've come back, sort of, to resume my blogging life.
the break wasn't all unfruitful though. i managed to sort quite a fair chunk out and gear myself up for the next couple of months which are probably going to lead me to the trembling cusp of sanity, or death.
anyway, as the past has always, always taught me, i miss writing terribly when i get into one of those 'i'm-never-writing-again' moods; so it stands to reason that i should work that love-hate aspect out. or not, we'll see.
i'm exhausted, thanks to the draining week that has gone by, so i'm gonna catch some z's now.
so my pent-up frustrations over the work situation were unexpectedly given a brief respite today over lunch. forcefully stirring my iced milk tea, i could feel a fresh anger rising as i unloaded them.
what's this bitterness lingering behind my words? i thought i had already dealt adequately with this.
am i being petty? immature? i asked myself when i was alone. am i just choosing the well-worn pathway of helpless complaint and malcontent? i scorn the kind of person who gripes about others with a heated eloquence in safety behind their backs; yet i fear that's exactly what i've been reduced to.
someone said, but not to me, that we have no right to be upset when in christian ministry because that's how God trains and teaches us through firey trials and whatnot. and i wondered, after surpressing a wave of indignance, if all this is meant to be part of my testing, in which case i'm probably faring abysmally.
for the first time, i wish the capable voice of reason which has always guarded my emotional core could simply vanish so i can just let myself experience this at the most instinctive plane. maybe i have no idea what i'm asking for, but beyond the possible anguish, it might just be the most honest i'll ever feel.
i guess that's what i really need right now.
i'm not always ready to admit and accept that what's good for me, which is usually artfully disguised as some sickening ordeal like seeing the doctor or abstaining from fried chicken, is what i truly need.
and i very often struggle with the exceedingly grown up responsiblities that prop up a life with some measure of deliberate consistency and reflective dignity: i don't feel like trying hard or doing the right thing all the time, and i'm happy to leave my blind spots under the musty carpet for just one more day, plus i find it exhausting, truth be told, to be pushing myself to relentlessly grow and mature ad nauseum.
but i am now at a good place where i am able to actualize a need, a gift, if you will, just for myself. life is an intricate ebb and flow of giving away and receiving back, isn't it? so my need within this dynamic cycle is to carve out a snug space solely for me where i can rest, i can heal, i can renew and i can continually learn to be glad for all that i am.
i know myself. and i know what needs to happen in order for me to give the important moments in my life broad wings to fly. so i'm no longer going to apologise for wanting to make each of them count.
thursday morning: i crawled uncharacteristically out of bed while it was still dark, in part because of an extremely disturbing nightmare which i will avoid detailing here (thank me!), and because of a throbbing left shoulder which felt like it had been viciously yanked about.
the day's inching progress didn't alleviate the mounting pain and by mid-pm i was ready to admit, albeit grudgingly, i needed relief:
"yes, i'm not fine and yes, i need help."
why does it feel like i'm betraying something sacred when i say those words? but it was either that or massive sedation with drugs i don't have, so i basically went with help.
there's something masochistic about subjecting oneself to the hands of a masseur/masseuse because they very often feel like demented claws of unrelenting torture. each stubborn knot gets squashed and mashed as i fight the instinct to release muffled squawks into the massage chair. i suppose it's really no different from working through the knots in life - they both hurt, they both take time, and did i mention they both hurt?
having survived the first session, i went back sheepishly two days later for another and signed up for a package. i could get to like this.
wedding dinners are usually not particularly fun nor memorable. fancy table settings, soft lighting, cheesy love songs, lots of flowers and maybe candles, oh and perfectly coiffed strangers at the table picking at dainty morsels while making polite conversation for 3 hrs layer into a glittering blur in the wedding dinner compartment of the memory bank.
it therefore came as a surprise to be part of one last weekend which felt, well, different. it seems the right kind of friends can easily tip the scales in favor of boisterous and rowdy fun.
half-drunk buddies aside, i'm not sure why there appears to be an innate and unspoken disdain for these romantic gestures. is it unnatural to genuinely be happy for the happy couple taking that big step down the dry-ice covered carpet towards a new life together? we love it when love conquers all on the big screen in tandem with lush violins, but when it stares us in the face without the glitz, without the glamor we can't even recognize it.
i hope i never become so cynical, or so blind, that i forget what love really looks like. 
so i very nearly lost my phone today, and no, it wasn't a deliberately devious act to grant myself an excuse to go shopping. to trim the un-gripping story short, i stupidly left my phone in the washroom (i hate using the word toilet) and it was found, an hour later, in the hands of a scruffy worker who was doing some installation work in church.
at the initial awful dawning that there was a good chance i would never see the little sony-ericsson again, it wasn't dismay at losing a sleek piece of technology which surfaced, but rather, annoyance at the thought of having to replace my sim card and painstakingly reassemble my contact list. that and a i-deserve-it-for-being-a-moron feeling were curiously intertwined in a kind of pouty resignation.
i suppose i have always been the stoic type; shrugging off horrific injustices like getting served with stale cake at coffee bean. i don't mind getting the shorter end of the stick, as it were, or perhaps i just can't muster up the energy to tantrum and rail.
even at the unexpected recovery of my phone i merely thanked the red-handed worker for finding it when it was quite apparant his intentions were less than honorable.
maybe i'm just a wuss.
in our golden age of defiant individualism, the ties that bind are best discarded as quickly as possible.
but realizing that we can never completely be free from our family can be liberating in itself.
so come on home, then deal with it. 
there have been occasions where i have been presented with the question, "what is normal?"
it's a difficult question to approach, perhaps because i'm so deeply mired in the concept itself - that unspoken social conditioning that 'normal' thought expends itself best on the pressing challenges of, say, sociatal or corporate ladderism.
part of my current training, however, gleefully nudges me into the murky depths of philsophical and existential debate; which led me to ponder: isn't normality, at the end of the day, a product of social construction; sets upon sets of mores and values that owe their existence to popular culture and mass attitudes?
is it wisdom, then, to place so much emphasis on a value which alters according to an unyielding rhythm of time and space?
in my efforts to be more aware of the tendency to attach labels to the experiences of others, i have come to realize how easily unique realities can be thoughtlessly marginalized and conveniently categorized as deviant or requiring professional help.
this also helps me understand why i've always hated the idea of the bell curve which attempts to create neat descriptions to slot performance into. those who fall in the extreme ends of the curve are either extraordinary geniuses or hopeless underachievers. the bulk, though, sit nicely in the bulge right in between.
that's normal, right?
i still have no answer to the question; but i'm learning that perhaps a greater respect for the complexity and vastness of human experience will lead me closer to finding one.
sometimes things happen right in the midst of the very expected; which proves it's folly to rest in predictability.
the last time i fell down a flight of steps, it was thanks to a running boy who collided into me during recess at primary school, causing me to tumble down a long stretch of dusty concrete stairs. fast forward to last thurday when, quite surprising, i missed my step right as i exited the mrt station. i'm definitely not fleet-footedly inclined nor do i possess reflexes of lightning, so my breathless attempt to avoid slamming face down onto the ground ended instead in a nasty sprain.
Limping home, i was puzzled as to how i managed to accomplish that feat when i must have used those steps a million times.
fortunately the injured ankle appears to be recovering day by day. now, save for a pang of soreness, i can pretty much walk normally. however, those stairs will have to rebuild my trust again...