I stilled my heart before burying it deep, and still the question lingers: How to begin to make sense of what I have, what I am, to disentangle it from what I used to be, a fleeting coherence that vanishes the moment I open my eyes. Ask no questions, and I shall have to tell no lies.

This CNY, pretty much the least visiting I've done since I can remember, 初一 a flash of age-wrinkled hands, it shouldn't elicit as visceral a surge of emotion each time, but it does, always, another reminder of the passage of time. Memories seem to be a recurring theme for me, each CNY, this time was no different, many of my formative memories are of time spent at my grandparents' house, a 2-storied flat in Serangoon, heading there after classes at Rosyth to wait for my mum to finish work and pick me up, or time spent messing around with my cousins in our once weekly Saturday family visits, savoring my grandma's delicious home-cooked food, the doting affections of my grandpa who'd buy food from the coffeeshop downstairs whenever I came over, and, not that I remember much, but the first few months of my life spent there, while my parents were waiting to get a house of their own. It's changed, now, not only physically, after the pretty recent renovations, but also in the nature of the things we do, subtly yet very distinctly different, it's human nature, or perhaps more significantly, a huge part of my nature to hold that little bit of sentimentalism, and emotional attachment to the past, I know that part of me just isn't going to go away, and it hurts, more than a little, this realization that we simply can't hold on to the past forever.

In line with this theme, I spent 初二 alone at home sorting through a little of my old stuff while the rest of my family went visiting (yeah, I know I should probably have done this before CNY, but what's a procrastinator gonna do ><) in anticipation of having some friends over the next day, coz my room was in a veritable mess. Seriously. It was quite a chore, but as I looked through all those old RI notes, it really struck me that we were very fortunate to have been exposed to such a wide variety of readings, loads of paper wasted, trees killed, yeah, but no one can say that they didn't try. A lot of interesting stuff, ethics, politics and such, it shames me to admit that I didn't see the importance of these at that point of time, and didn't read much tbh, and it's a missed opportunity I may rue given the highly specialized nature my education is going to take from now on. And I realized that it is these miscellaneous readings, rather than the tutorials and lecture notes from the sciences that I'd treasure at this point of time,  the hard, recall based knowledge perhaps not as relevant to me now as the trivia on a basis of casual interest. I got into a bit of trouble with my mother, as a lot of her memorabilia along with old clothes was in my room, promises to clear them out "eventually" having never materialized till I pushed for it. It...wasn't too pleasant. Things sortta came to a head the next day, particularly tense and I couldn't take the overbearing passive aggressiveness (who flames their own sibling behind their back for asking them out for breakfast? It just doesn't make sense) so I just walked out when we were supposed to go shopping for ingredients together. I can't say I meant anything by doing that, didn't intend to make a statement, I just didn't feel up to sticking around with the negativity, I suppose that's something you can understand, right? To her credit she caught up to me pretty soon after and idk, things improved somewhat, without any mention of what'd happened earlier that morning. Things aren't ever resolved, but well..I was more than happy to take it..

Not the best start to the day, but things turned out well enough to pretend that everything was okay, and it got better from there, I actually enjoyed preparing the rosti, and having M&M over was a pretty nice experience, not much to do in my house, but I never knew my roof could be such a nice place to chill, talk cock and play a few rounds of poker, I was the first to go bust, risk-adverse though I was, and Mos won eventually, going all-in on pure dumb luck, so it was worth it, I guess?

I'm not too sure where life goes from here, I haven't quite formed the words in my head so do pardon any incoherence on my part. And I guess I should be the first to know that time spent one to one, rambling endless convos that go on and on don't necessarily mean a thing. Compound onto that my apparent self-perceived heartlessness, something I can't quite express, not right now at least, and I don't know if I even deserve anything.

Ah screw this, I tried, that's all for now..