So today, a friend of mine sent me a couple of pictures from New Zealand. Specifically, Coromandel. And even more specifically, Colville, in Coromandel. It brought back a heap of unexpected memories and surpringsly, a pain that I thought no longer existed. The pain hit me in the gut. Deep.
" I went to dock the lambs today."
Its an unexplainable pain. It's one that I still find is rearing its head at me even after 2 months of conscious burying. Burying it such that my mind finds it hard to recall what the place was like. Yet I remember New Zealand like it was yesterday. Sometimes I don't even know why its so hard to forget. Was it something about the people, or was it something about the nature that my heart had yearned for and for which I left behind when I came back to Singapore? I don't know. Nights like this, I still struggle to find out.
I know that I am sentimentally attached to places easily. Far too easily for my own good, sometimes. And I hate myself for it. I'd recall the days I was back in that place, remember how I felt- essentially, cling on so tightly to a memory that has been locked securely in place by Time. As each day passes, I struggle to keep a firm hold of what I remember of that place, desperate to talk to anyone from the place I miss, desperate to remember every tiny little detail about that area, as if I was still there. Like what I do now. Checking google maps, looking back at Bryant Hall, remembering how I'd walk to classes, the meals I had in the dining hall, the pool table in the commons, my room in Y Block, the people on my floor. The list could go on forever. I cling onto every tiny little detail that sometimes it scares me when I can't recall what it is anymore. That's the extent to which my heart holds on to a memory. A lingering memory, no doubt, but one that is still there, nonetheless. On particularly nostalgic nights, I flick through my facebook album, looking at the photos that tried to capture every moment of my life in Waikato. And as ironic as it may sound, it helps to ease the pain, even momentarily. But it is never enough, because as I glance at the photos, what I am looking at is not the photo itself, but the series of events that led up to, and after, the taking of the photograph itself. And that is something photographs can never capture. The emotions felt at that point in time. Photos are nothing but man's way of beating Time, an attempt to freeze, to materialise a fleeting moment in its place and immortalise it.
Some nights, it hurts so badly that I lay awake, just staring blankly at the ceiling. I close my eyes and I can feel the room dissolve, and I am right back at home, in my hall, on my bed. I could open my eyes and see the familiar dark green door, the lime green coloured table, the shelves with my dusty array of books. I can hear the laugher of my floor mates outside my room, and I can reach over to my phone and text, " Hey Will, going for dinner?" But I open my eyes and suddenly reality crashes forward like a bowling ball, I'm in Singapore, I am thousands of kilometers away, and my room is no longer mine.
I struggle to not to cry because the vivid memory still haunts me. It's a beautiful memory, but one that is tinged with pain, knowing that I will not be able to visit that place again so soon. I recall how, at the beginning of my exchange, I would hold back making friends, knowing that I have this tendency to immerse myself in life there so much so that I would struggle to adapt back to Singapore. I did it anyway. And its something that, while I enjoyed, is the root of my pain right now. Talking to anyone in New Zealand makes me immensely happy, but beyond that, I find moments, like now, where I'm breaking inside. Breaking from the weight of the memory. And while a part of me is burying the pain because the reality is Singapore, another part of me yearns to revisit the memories New Zealand provided me with.
And as I looked at the pictures my friend sent me, I stop still at the image of a flat field of grass that welded against the soft rolling hills in the distance. I sit in my warm, humid room in Singapore and I imagine the cold wind biting at my earlobes, the wind battering my hair. I bite my lip, holding back tears.
" I went to dock the lambs today."
Its an unexplainable pain. It's one that I still find is rearing its head at me even after 2 months of conscious burying. Burying it such that my mind finds it hard to recall what the place was like. Yet I remember New Zealand like it was yesterday. Sometimes I don't even know why its so hard to forget. Was it something about the people, or was it something about the nature that my heart had yearned for and for which I left behind when I came back to Singapore? I don't know. Nights like this, I still struggle to find out.
I know that I am sentimentally attached to places easily. Far too easily for my own good, sometimes. And I hate myself for it. I'd recall the days I was back in that place, remember how I felt- essentially, cling on so tightly to a memory that has been locked securely in place by Time. As each day passes, I struggle to keep a firm hold of what I remember of that place, desperate to talk to anyone from the place I miss, desperate to remember every tiny little detail about that area, as if I was still there. Like what I do now. Checking google maps, looking back at Bryant Hall, remembering how I'd walk to classes, the meals I had in the dining hall, the pool table in the commons, my room in Y Block, the people on my floor. The list could go on forever. I cling onto every tiny little detail that sometimes it scares me when I can't recall what it is anymore. That's the extent to which my heart holds on to a memory. A lingering memory, no doubt, but one that is still there, nonetheless. On particularly nostalgic nights, I flick through my facebook album, looking at the photos that tried to capture every moment of my life in Waikato. And as ironic as it may sound, it helps to ease the pain, even momentarily. But it is never enough, because as I glance at the photos, what I am looking at is not the photo itself, but the series of events that led up to, and after, the taking of the photograph itself. And that is something photographs can never capture. The emotions felt at that point in time. Photos are nothing but man's way of beating Time, an attempt to freeze, to materialise a fleeting moment in its place and immortalise it.
Some nights, it hurts so badly that I lay awake, just staring blankly at the ceiling. I close my eyes and I can feel the room dissolve, and I am right back at home, in my hall, on my bed. I could open my eyes and see the familiar dark green door, the lime green coloured table, the shelves with my dusty array of books. I can hear the laugher of my floor mates outside my room, and I can reach over to my phone and text, " Hey Will, going for dinner?" But I open my eyes and suddenly reality crashes forward like a bowling ball, I'm in Singapore, I am thousands of kilometers away, and my room is no longer mine.
I struggle to not to cry because the vivid memory still haunts me. It's a beautiful memory, but one that is tinged with pain, knowing that I will not be able to visit that place again so soon. I recall how, at the beginning of my exchange, I would hold back making friends, knowing that I have this tendency to immerse myself in life there so much so that I would struggle to adapt back to Singapore. I did it anyway. And its something that, while I enjoyed, is the root of my pain right now. Talking to anyone in New Zealand makes me immensely happy, but beyond that, I find moments, like now, where I'm breaking inside. Breaking from the weight of the memory. And while a part of me is burying the pain because the reality is Singapore, another part of me yearns to revisit the memories New Zealand provided me with.
And as I looked at the pictures my friend sent me, I stop still at the image of a flat field of grass that welded against the soft rolling hills in the distance. I sit in my warm, humid room in Singapore and I imagine the cold wind biting at my earlobes, the wind battering my hair. I bite my lip, holding back tears.
1 comment:
I know its hard, but you are strong and you will see it all again if you will it.
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