| Funny: Just at the start of the year when i was figuring everything out, with 2011 ending in a very spectacular fashion i wrote in my journal: "The hardest part of ending is starting again". I simply can't imagine myself without hall, now that i think about it: easy to say how no other thing will change in life while i'm out of this place - i will still work at the ice cream shop, still work for tnp, still play softball for nus, and hopefully be more active in church. But it isn't that easy to leave a place which has in all honesty, grown on me over the time i've been here. I didn't envision, in january, just five months ago, that i'd be leaving so soon, i always thought i'd be here till graduation, which was really a long time away when i journalled at the start of 2012. But things change, people change, and priorities become more important for you to realize that there is more to life than what encloses us at 19 kent ridge crescent. It's easy to feel like i've been here forever, two and a half years (5 semesters) is a really long time - while i'm here i've lived in four different blocks and all three different kinds of rooms; i've stayed on an all-girls floor, then next to my entire clique of guy friends, then now back to a co-ed floor but next to one of the closest friends i've found in nus, through thick and thin, to date. But honestly, it feels like i just got here yesterday: moved into my block 3 room - getting to know my neighbours who i knew nothing about: i met lingz and thing, yx, agnes, my, sh, sm, xt, fiona, meiling (who i just bumped into yesterday out of nowhere?!) - then xuan and i met each other through xin, because i thought she was a batchmate from ac and we just became friends from there on. Back when i thought hall activities were important i joined photography never knowing what i'd just gotten myself into, and christian fellowship, and of course, softball, which brought me to this place in the first place; and block comm - where i met some of my closest friends like t and ky (and last time, cy) to this date. They were truly, the best. I have nothing but good memories of eating dabao-ed hall food (which was then, a novelty) after training while having block comm meetings. Then xuan and i shared a double room for the summer holidays, to do RHOC - where i met all the people who have really played a part in changing me for the better today, and made so many good memories in the worst committee i could ever have worked with - and ever felt so exhausted from. It was a good experience, yes, but the only good thing about that entire period was the friendships made - hs, ver, xuan, bw, sems, weijun, gx. Second year was a rollercoaster - nice to be a phantom only being in softball and photog - getting really in tune with my ice cream job, block 6 with all of them i miss all the times it was random banging on each other's doors to go for supper, or random night runs with xin and xuan. Lingz and thing always being such comforting people to have next door, at any point in time - all those late night talks about cats that were ugly, the passing and general cyclic nature of life - and downloading stupid engineering programs onto my laptop because macbooks couldn't run them. Second year was the ultimate phantom year but it was so good, it was so much fun living together. Third year - musical, phoenix, bop again and softball and much less people here - there are less and less memories to talk off and while ky said he'd want us to continue having so much fun like the past few weeks have been (and i agree wholeheartedly), i know that we're only making this time to be together because we know we don't have much time left, in fact as of tonight we no longer have time together. We don't have supper here anymore but that doesn't make it any less fun? Because we have those long walks to and fro to ameen or haoxiang, or sometimes i drive over and we go to clem or two chefs for dinner. It's a different kind of grown up feeling - we're in the same place but we never go for hall events anymore, if we do we show up for a while and leave soon after because it's novelty has truly been lost after so long. How do i put it into words that there is that feeling of not wanting to leave, that feeling of knowing that i'm not coming back, and the reality that i know this is just another ending to add to a collection of endings that i already have - and that life goes on, and that i know, even if i'm scared of the future and how unknown it seems without hall as a big part of me anymore, that God has something greater out there in my coming final year. How do i put those feelings into a single sentence to tell these people that i will miss them so dearly, i will miss those meals where we talk about how gross the food is in hall, how we make it a point to wake up for breakfast with each other, all our hokkien mixed chinese mixed english conversations (today cy was telling us about the resident cat and its 5 kittens which it had given birth to a few days ago and i couldn't stop lughing) and that i don't want to forget any of this, though i know i will, eventually. Sometimes you have to let go of things in order for your hands to be filled with better things. Yes i'm going home: i'm going to learn to face the problems i didn't know how to deal with when i was younger, gonna learn to love my parents wholeheartedly no matter what comes our way, gonna learn to talk softly in the corridor because my sister hates the noise - will get to watch all the cable tv i want - and will learn to have self control over these things, gonna learn to deal with problems while studying, and am really going to focus on year 4. Time to get that second upper class honours. Nice goals to have, even better knowing that i'm leaving with moments close to my heart - where clementi has become my second home; and knowing that i've been so blessed to have met such good people over the past years that i've been here: who are honestly too good for me, with their quirks, kindness and love. At the end of all this, tonight being probably my last night here: The hardest part of ending is truly, starting again. Always always always a huge part of my heart, and only filled with the best memories while i was here. |
