“He doesn’t know you before… I did.”

Untamable.

That’s what he meant.

That’s what they all said.

And that’s what they all laugh about when i smile and shake my head.

In exchange for an affection i had wanted only from you, I gave myself up by will. But in our hearts we leave too much room for expectations that we fail to look at the reality of the whole picture. One way, two way. We are all guilty of such sinful demeanor.

At 10 I flew on my own to Perth to live with a friend for a month not missing the words home even once.

At 11 i took cabs and walked out of the house with only the words I’m going out. Freedom was my everything. Not coming home for days meant absolutely nothing.

At 12, i fell asleep in clubs, bars and friend’s homes with people i meet on random whims because alcohol made me sleep.

Silently, being alone became a part of me as i grew up and casually edged myself away from my safest nests.

Everyone cared. I had more love than i needed from family, friends and strangers alike.

I craved the attention. I needed the company.

But still i drifted into my corner that earned me the title of “the social antisocial.”

At 15, I walked around the neighbourhood, up the hilll taking as long as i could to reach home in heels and skirts so short you would stop and stare even if i was ugly. All this at 4am in the morning. Screams and fights and the screeching of car breaks as i scramble my way out and slam the car doors mid motion through the empty streets that scream solitude at such hours.

Trips to Bali made me happy. Walking along the dirty alleyways hand in hand in the dark and making friends with the dodgiest looking of people. There had been no lines drawn. No rights or wrongs. I did as i willed with him accompanying me along. Watching, keeping me away from harm.

Fast forward.

School trip to Seoul. School trip to Kyoto.

Midnight walks. Empty streets. Quiet carriage trains. Cold breeze. Signboards i couldn’t read.

I never felt safer.

Men who spoke in pauses and men who sometimes drew pictures. Men 3 times my age.

People never understood.

I got along with them too well.

Laughter filled my heart.

Laughter in the unknown place with men who could rape me at any given minute.

They never did.

They gave me advice and told me I was beautiful refusing to believe i was not even legal.

Fast forward more.

Parents suddenly put a collar. My freedom became restricted.

I never understood why.

I never did drugs. I never picked up a cigarette.

They said it was because i was ripe.

Funny.

I hadn’t changed a bit since i hit puberty at 10-11.

I guess people never really noticed.

My downfall then began.

I fail when I am bounded.

Depression came and go much too often.

Fast forward to 2007.

He helped me pick my clothes.

He knew my taste. He let me roam. I always came back. I was his.

Corea Seoul.

I carried his picture in a photoframe.

I missed him so much i hated the couples on the street.

Still i loved this place.

I felt like i never wanted to leave.

First night alone, she directed me home by myself.

I was scared.

For the first time ever I had been scared to walk in a strange place by myself in the dark.

It had been all the restraints put on me. That extraction of freedom from me.

10 days.

I had my own little apartment in a not so busy street.

I grew to remember the joys of lonely walks at the hours people were normally asleep.

I crave that right now.

at 21. My freedom has been restricted.

Things that made me happy now become wrong for reasons of a past that did not even involve me.

I always come back. I always do.

My trips that replenish my soul just keep being taken away from me.

I need this.

There is no way to explain it to you.

It’s not about holidays.

It’s more than just this.

It’s an accumulation of a collar that keeps getting tighter as i age and you being the one to tighten that leash.

Horses run wild.

But I walked into your stables.

I am thinning.

I need you still.

But i am dying without my fresh pastures and free runs across uncharted mappings.

Take a ride with me.

Or else let me run free.

I’ll be right here again.

I never leave.

Not until you push me.

Hello.

I am so busy.

But this is a bribe.

K THX BYE!

Go visit Vanity Dreams okay

Love you!

*sorry broken link.i dont know why my blog add keeps appearing in front of it X_X*

its www.vanitydreams.net k?

Some days i want to leave it all and run away to a place where i can be alone and the realities of the world exist only in the news that litters the expanse of my coffee table.

Somewhere where the horizon is seen as clearly as the day and the sea is just a little stretch away from my tingling toes that crave its constant presence and my tears mix with it’s salty coolness.

I don’t have to have lots of money, just enough to be comfortable in my little home away from the bustling noise of the city.

One day i will have the freedom and strength to do this.

The courage to let myself go and push myself beyond my known limits.

Someday.

One day.

I will it all go.

And allow myself to truly be me.

Until then, sugar bunnies like this will be my childish amusements.

(no, i dont know where to find them)

*pictures nicked from Carmen*

There will always be eyes watching you wherever you go. Some of them friendly, some just nonchalant and the minor few that brings an air of discomfort.

*~*~*~*~*~*

I have noticed a strange habit of mine.

My inability to neither be alone nor to have someone by my side.

Even the friendliest of looks sends me reeling in self conscious annoyance, yet this habit only happens in the vicinity of my own place of home (home not house – KL).

Loneliness creeps in as if it were a draft of air passing through the gaps of a window and i fall constantly into a hole that i can’t climb out of. I pace about restlessly and my mind becomes a chaotic mess of scenarios and words and imaginary whispers of passerbys that notice my faked indifference. I fear being alone. I despise this loneliness yet unknowingly, i seek it quite often.

I am a vial of confused opposites. Extremities at it’s worst, unable to find my bearings or maintain my equilibrium for more than a mere fraction of the time.

Yet, when taken out of my own home, the contrary starts to happen.

I am alone. I enjoy being alone. I feel no strangeness in walking alone down the streets or sitting alone in a cafe right by that street.

I am at peace with this lonesome visitor, this enemy i normally shy away from in disgust whenever he starts to knock on my door.

I am merely a stranger in a foreign land.

And i want to remain that stranger, unnoticed and minute to the constant movement surrounding me.

I want to be neither here nor there.

Time no longer matters, and i shuffle along the sidewalks as if i were only shadow cast upon the floor and my presence no longer really exists.

Some memories burn in your head like a hot brand placed across your skin.

Some become mixed up with dreams. Dreams that depict a reality or so we think that’s what it is.

*~*~*~*~*~*

The strong scent of incense in the temple pavilion wafts through my memory filters as if it were just yesterday i lay cross legged on the floor, surrounded by people decades older than i was. The flickering shadows casted by the hundreds of red candles placed all around kept a warm glow going in the golden room that was not really a room. There seemed to be too many openings, too many exits out of the place. This was necessary of course, there was no air conditioning; only the breeze that snaked it’s way into the place acting as a cooling system that worked maybe a little too well. It was hard for someone as young as me to stay awake in such conditions, i lapsed into phases of semi consciousness and sleep over the hours that we spent sitting on the wooden floor.

It was a love hate relationship with that temple i now no longer remember. Or maybe i never even knew it’s name or the exact location of the place.

The only clue i had was these cat dolls i would constantly bring back everytime we made a visit there or when my dad went and left me at home.

Over the years these cat toys disappeared from my life for reasons i cannot recall and they never made an appearance again until today. The images flashing in my head are too vivid to have been dreams.

I know that place. I know the hours i spent there and how hard it had been not to cry and wail in the circumstances of meditation at such a young age. The cats had been the official 1995 mascot of the Chiang Mai sea games. They were my best friends for the longest of time and i had an indirect obsession with them. Why did i let them disappear from sight? Where did they go? Did i not even keep a single one? This idea seems almost absurd. I love my dolls. I get too attached to things to throw them out. So why out of the multitude of other toys i had, was my Chiang Mai cats missing? I had at least 3 of them of various different sizes and materials. Is there something about that phase in my life that i was meant to forget?

But right now, at this moment; I can recall the smell and the sight almost too realistically.

Those red candles symbolised something to me. Although i do not know what but their lights had served as some sort of constant reminder of the place.

If i close my eyes and allow myself to calm enough, i can hear the chanting of the monks and the rustling of the bells. The soothing sing song way they said their Sanskrit behaved like a lullaby to me. I remember occasionally we would repeat some of these chants. I often wondered why i had such a strange affinity to those buddhist Sanskrit chants i collected from random times but it never once occurred to me that it was because of that temple and my repeated dreams of the place.

My final memory of that temple is the buckets of cold water.

The reason i hated the place.

I hate the cold and i hated how the monks would drench me in the cold water that was meant to be holy.

Yet i allowed it.

I liked how the little pinkish red candle wax floated in the water and how the water smelt. I think i even enjoyed drinking it.

I was fascinated when the wax droplets got themselves lodged in my hair and i would laugh picking them out and then collecting them to see what shapes they made out. My mother would tell me to throw them away but i always shoved them in my pockets and brought them back to the hotel with me.

I would smell like the incense they used for days there after.

It’s been well over 10 years.

I wish to stand in that pavilion again. Even if it’s just for a while.

The memories of the place are too haunting to forget.

*~*~*~*~*~*

This year, i kept my dates open to return to Chiang Mai after all those years; sacrificing my yearly 2-4 week trips i make to get away from here. Chiang Mai had never once appeared in my consciousnesses as a holiday destination but for some reason this year it appeared. My 21st.

It may be superstition or just plain coincidence but for a hidden memory to relapse after so many years just strikes me as a little strange.

21st. Chiang Mai. Reiki. Yoga. Meditation.

.

.

.

The hotel has been paid for.

Only, it may not be happening anymore.

And i wished you would stop doing this to me year after year where anticipation builds up only to be slapped back with false hopes and disappointments.

Some wishes retracted inflict a lot more damage than others.

This is one of them.