The air was really good tonight. I sat at the bus stop at my house, staring at the park in front of me. The air was really good. I stayed there for fifteen minutes and I must say, it was the best fifteen minutes I've had in a long time. Sometimes we need to get away before we find where we truly belong. Sometimes we need to lose ourselves completely to start finding ourselves again. I've been rediscovering my neighbourhood this week, mostly with friends from the far ends of Singapore. It's amazing how I've lived here for years and still manage to find new things every time I travel a little out of my comfort zone. This neighbourhood is a warm neighbourhood. The people are friendly, they go out of their way to help complete strangers, and generations of people share the same space and the same mind. I've never seen my place in this light before, and I've never felt so comforted by things so unfamiliar. Maybe they weren't unfamiliar, just forgotten. I remember growing up in Queenstown with my ahma, my friends were the egg shop uncle and fishball stall aunty. Everyone looks out for you because they know your entire family. I've missed that a lot and I never realised it until today. Noel beb was a darling and he came down to my place for ice cream. Because I'm so unfamiliar with this area, we got lost. But we found a really cool playground and had our stomachs in knots on the swings. I never had this before. Walking around the HDB blocks, stumbling upon mama shops, hanging with friends at the playground. I probably sound really pretentious and douchey, oh atas kid never had a childhood because of her overprotective parents, but I crave this homeliness so much.
Home was always four walls and the telly. It was always canned food or takeouts. It was always the Internet. Fresh air feels amazing. It's not that I lack anything, nor do I feel shortchanged, but I'm learning to find home in new places, new old places, starting to see home in kind strangers and giggly children. I was lost for a really long time, and sometimes I think I still am. But walking around my neighbourhood this week helped piece a little bit back. I know my soul needs reconstruction and my spirit, restoration, but I'm trying to work at it, little by little, day by day. It's in moments of realisation in the middle of the day that I find myself learning to be human again. I have no idea who I am or who I want to be, no idea where I belong and where to call home, but I'm starting to see that it's not a place nor a time that would make me complete. It's in the little fragments and in the chaos that I am perfectly incomplete.
Home was always four walls and the telly. It was always canned food or takeouts. It was always the Internet. Fresh air feels amazing. It's not that I lack anything, nor do I feel shortchanged, but I'm learning to find home in new places, new old places, starting to see home in kind strangers and giggly children. I was lost for a really long time, and sometimes I think I still am. But walking around my neighbourhood this week helped piece a little bit back. I know my soul needs reconstruction and my spirit, restoration, but I'm trying to work at it, little by little, day by day. It's in moments of realisation in the middle of the day that I find myself learning to be human again. I have no idea who I am or who I want to be, no idea where I belong and where to call home, but I'm starting to see that it's not a place nor a time that would make me complete. It's in the little fragments and in the chaos that I am perfectly incomplete.