socially disengaged meritocratic elite

Sunday, October 14, 2007

set the fire to the third bar

i'm reluctant to get close to people. it's not that i don't want to, it's just that i feel i'm incapable of attaching myself to someone long enough to feel their eventual absence rub my heart raw. this has nothing to do with friendships or romantic endeavours, it has to do more with the realization that others are capable of grieving over someone's death because they truly would miss having the person around, as compared to me - grieving because i never got to know the person. distance separated us for years and as i was thrust into this strange new environment, surrounded by relatives that have long faded from memory, i found myself smack in the middle of his illness.

news of their arrival didn't excite me as much as everyone else. i hardly knew them and a part of me felt guilty for having had forgotten them. i was aware of their existence but i never bothered to initiate contact, even though dad apparently sent them updates and pictures of us growing up an ocean apart. they knew and cared more about me than i probably bothered to. all i could muster from memory, when told of his condition, was how he once took me down to this little patch of garden they kept just behind their apartment and attempted to introduce me to all his plants. i wasn't paying attention. i was eight, freezing from the bite of the morning air, and frankly was more interested in exploring the rest of the city. what was so interesting about plants anyways?

but he wasn't really talking about his plants, he was really trying to get to know me. when you're eight, you have this stupid notion that you have all the time in the world to get to know people, and right then you'd much rather head down to the park and feed pigeons. besides, i hadn't encountered death at that age and never really fathomed the idea that one day the voice beside me would soon fade. but despite my non-existent interest, the sweet eight year old me indulged him as he moved on to talk about the architecture of the buildings.

i guess he knew better. he understood the vast distance that separated us. he knew this would be one of the last times he'd see me as a kid. he knew that once puberty kicks in, he'd never get to talk to me this way again - to get me in a garden and indulge an old man despite the freezing air. he was right, i never talked to him again - except for the customary christmas and birthday greeting.

when i hit my teens years, i lost all ability to converse with them - i just couldn't relate. when my dad would call them and force us kids to talk, i'd be pushing my brother to be first. i hated the awkward silences and how they always seemed to mistake me for my brother (was my voice really that low? or perhaps my brother just had a girly voice heh). i also had nothing to say to them. i felt that they wouldn't really understand whatever i said anyways, and frankly i had a hard time deciphering what they were muttering.

besides, my accent probably sounded alien to them. heck, my uncle still finds my accent alien. after this speech i gave during his wake, my uncle bounded forward and exclaimed how he didn't understand a word i just said and went on to explain to our provincial relatives that i had just come from singapore and thus speak strange. that sure made me feel good. after publicly realizing that i suck at controlling my tears, which resulted in me sobbing through my speech in the most unglamorous fashion, i was made to feel as if i was the worst public speaker ever. great.

but i digress. point is, if i had just allowed myself to be the eight year old kid in the garden, i might have had an amazing relationship with him. as i sat beside him in the hospital, which was where we met again for the first time, i felt his eyes on me. he had a respirator (i typed ventilator earlier - haha that just makes me laugh) down his throat, which prevented him from speaking, but i'm sure he had a lot to say. probably, he always had a lot to say, i just never gave him the chance. the sight of him: frail, donned in ugly hospital garb, needles inserted all over his body, breathing through a respirator, dumbed me. i couldn't speak, not even to my brother, not even to his nurse who tried to get me to speak. he can hear you know, she had said. i know he can, i just don't know where to start.

...i could do with some orange gummy bears right now.

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