your skin so golden brown

a list of my favourite words:
- exquisite
- rose (past tense of rise)
- pregnant (as a metaphor)
- sapphic
- nascent
- delicious (when used not about food)
- honey
- ferocious
- mom
- moon
- opulent/opulence
- soft
- sleepy
- infuse
- lazily
- loll
- bathe
- patio
- dreamy
- courtyard
- drowse
- ennui

honourable mentions:
- wife
- poetic
- heaven(ly)
- verdant/verdance
- goodness

poetic but nonsensical

from 19 june 2014:
she says i live in my own bubble and we go around together like that because we are the same
so i said to her we could converge them
she said back that we could

i want to scrape the blackness out my heart

shiver like i used to

I'm that godforsaken person who never knows what they have till it's gone.
I've thought about this loads and loads and I can't possibly deny it.
It's in the little(?) things.
When I'm sending someone off at the airport and feel nothing until they've gone past the departure gates, the waves of crashing loss only coming when they're well out of sight.
Or when it's the very last day of school and I know I'll never be coming back again but it's the most uneventful day all the same (intense nostalgia seeps in much much later).
Or when I race through the last 3 episodes of Haikyuu!! S2 only to realise belatedly that the comforting feeling of knowing there are episodes waiting for me is then gone forever, because for many months I've been taking it for granted and now there is nothing new to look forward to anymore.

I think it's something to do with me and emotional detachment.

gold and silver line my heart

i hear the birds on the summer breeze, i drive fast
i am alone in midnight
been tryin' hard not to get into trouble, but i
i've got a war in my mind
so i just ride

i should've known all along, from the second i first listened to her in 2012, that lana would bring me into a new era of my life, would make me feel an exquisite sense of nostalgia and longing for a life i never had, would make me feel more and less like myself all at once

oh dear god i'm so melodramatic this is nothing whatever i'm feeling they're nothing and so inconsequential but wow o wow does it make me want to maybe die

all alone she moves

Lately I've been feeling, comment dire, horrendous.
I don't know where it came from - it's crept up and sprung onto me so suddenly but maybe it's been there all along.
I had another one of those "deepest certainties" recently & it's tearing me apart.
(no offence @ said certainty but i could've certainly done perfectly fine without, thank you very much)
I don't know I don't know I'm strained inside out & I don't know if this is because of school or if it's just me being the usual, y'know, inadequate and mediocre and incapable and gross.
I feel horrible & I need to talk to people because it's so dangerous, I think, to bubble myself up like this.
I exist too much in dreams.
it's so horrible it's so so horrible and i feel so alone

also, what does it mean when rationally you know that life is beautiful and wondrous and precious but emotionally you want 2 die

underneath the big top trees

I am absolutely knackered right now after a whole day's flurry of activities.
(If I have never disclosed it before, I will note it down here that I have been volunteering a little for the visually handicapped.)
Today, we took our beneficiaries out to have a go at soundball and thereafter for a round at the trampoline park, which was fantastic. I love trampoline parks & I also love that everyone else loved it too.
But the best part of my day, I think, was when everything was all over & I walked the entire way home from Khatib with a spring in my step, a cup of dollar strawberry ripple ice cream in my hand and the loveliest of breezes playing around me.
A stroll of solitude in the night (although it was not quite a stroll, not really, for my pace was relatively quick) truly is something!
I find nighttime to be such an enigmatic entity - how does one explain that queer feeling of transformation when night falls? like you're smaller, mellower, a little softer around the edges than you are in the day.
It almost made me wish I had someone by my side to admire the dark velvet sky with, or to murmur my secrets to, but I know I wouldn't have wanted this because I was using this journey home to recharge & re-energise my socially-drained, introvert self.
In retrospect, it does sound a little counter-intuitive, considering I was coming home from a long day of physical exertion etc etc etc, but an endless walk alone with minimal breaks was 1000% what I needed and I'm so glad I tended to that.
Anyway, I reached my doorstep about an hour later a little flushed and rosy, with a delicious ache in my legs, glowing like honey and presently I am feeling so. content.
A little a lot sleepy and heavy-eyed, of course, but ridiculously content all the same.
(the kind of contentment that's warm as sunshine, draping itself heavily around your little soul.)
The past week has just been nothing but smooth and golden, and I have only God to thank for that.

saw your face, heard your name

Hello everyone, once again.
It's been a couple of busy weeks & I doubt this will let up anytime soon.
I'm just writing a quick one to put it out there that 1) I am so blessed and 2) God loves me so much.

It's a wondrous thing to ask for strength, peace, vitality, drive, patience, gentleness when you're in a state of frenzied helplessness, and then have your prayers answered.
God knows I'm up to my head in tasks and to-dos, and He blesses me with the nicest, sweetest things.
❀ the best lunch date with my lovely cousin Husna
❀ long phone calls with the best friend
❀ the many canvassing opportunities
❀ the easy(?) mid-term paper today
❀ the cancelled morning lecture tomorrow
❀ the running i got done
❀ the frustrating assignment i finally finished
❀ ?????

There's a lot more, so much more, but I'm feeling sleepy and content and lowkey optimistic for the rest of the week.

Also,
Happy International Women's Day to all the lovely ladies out there - we're strong and powerful and magnificent and it's a glorious thing to celebrate every day.

hey i know something you don't

I've started running again! Bit by bit tho because I'm so out of touch lmao

"Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy! Happy people don't just shoot their husbands... they just don't!"

in the bed all day

i feel somehow as if i were being wicked and tricking you into supposing that i am always happy, but that is not true.
oh god, that cannot be any further from the truth.

i have written loads about my academic pursuits and i, and i've found myself wondering unceasingly if that's all there is to me.
on one hand, it gives me life.
on the other, it's all so meaningless, isn't it?
i mean, Death's gonna come hurtling at me either way

ah! i've found the trouble with blogging.
on this platform it is imperative to have a point, a topic, a purpose, and then expound it at some length.
alas, i have a sickeningly short attention span, and thoughts come to me in short spurts and sprays, and i cannot bear to muse over a single one for very long.
it is very tiring, i think, to have to always meticulously twist and shape your words just so to reach any desired effect.
it is for this reason twitter attends to me excellently - i never have to care past 140 characters!

did you know? i've lost my writing

sweet like cinnamon

hello!
once again, it's a been a hideous while, but welcome back!
i don't know who is reading this, but whoever you are, i pray that life has been glorious to you.

it's a funny thing to be dipping toes in my 20s and still come back to a space cultivated since i was a mere fledgling (what, 13? 14??), but i am very pleased to announce that as of now, for the present, i think,
I am in a good place.

as you may or may not know, i've been working on a linguistics (& multi-lingual studies) major and it is the most fulfilling thing yet.
many people have asked me what i could do with a linguistics degree and the truth is, well, i have no bloomin' idea!
all i know is that i am in love with my area of study through and through; God will sort out the rest.
there have been hiccups here and there, of course, but i pull it off all the same.

i feel like i've been channeling a lot of marina's The Family Jewels era lately.
don't do love, don't do friends,
i'm only after success.
i know exactly what i want and who i want to be.
'cause i feel like i'm the worst so i always act like i'm the best.
heck yeah first of all i know i want to keep my GPA's first class honours status.
i used to really really really want to be on the dean's list, then i sobered up & tried this little thing called Realistic & Logical Thinking lmao.
okay not saying it's impossible, just saying it's highly unlikely for now.
second of all i really really really want to be the best.
honestly i've been telling myself this since last semester but i don't really know what i mean by "the best".
still wanna be *it, tho.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
*it = the best

i also have quite a few commitments this sem?
1) i'm overloading and doing 18 AUs.
2) i'm in the biz mag committee for this year's LMS FOC??
3) also on the publicity team for this other thing i'm doing???
???????
i've never done this much for anything ever & while talking to a friend recently i realised perhaps it's because i wanted to start doing more things for others (while she wishes to do more for herself).
i think maybe it's also because subconsciously (or not), i'm pushing and pushing and pushing myself to accomplish more than i've ever had during a school term.
i don't know what i'm trying to prove but i'm getting there.

here's another thing i've learnt about myself: i'm an introvert but i take much delight in forming many new friendships, although i feel more comfortable if they were kept relatively superficial. however, i still cherish very deeply maintaining a smaller, more intimate group of friends. networking's fun and tolerable and all but only sometimes, and only when i feel like it. small close group of pals are for ever. i also still use solitude to recharge.

i'm sorry this has, in retrospect, been draggy and boring.
(or i would think so.)
but it's nice to have this down on my blog, just in case Young Me gets accidentally shifted to an alternate universe in a glitch and is somehow able to read all this.
if so,

this is your almost-20 self writing.
right now, you're doing great, b.
you're flourishing academically & blooming in luxuriant intellectual pursuits.
you're meeting many new people, every day, and starting to see past yourself.
you've even started on the "learning to drive" thing which i know you think is a Big Thing.
you've discovered precious things about yourself.
you're learning how to live a life of warmth and love and acceptance.
you feel content most times.
you're great & i love you.

i swore i'd chase until i was dead.
i heard the streets were paved with gold.

my late grandfather loved me so much he threw out his cigarettes the second i was born