Hi, it’s me again.
I’ve finally found my footing after having been on-the-go for pretty much three weeks straight. I spent one and a half weeks in the balmy Balkans, skipping through beautiful walled cities in Albania, Montenegro, and Croatia. They’re countries less frequented by tourists, which I am not complaining about, because it was wonderful to wonder these amazing towns without having to elbow and bump shoulders with hundreds of people.
It was a pity that I didn’t have more time to dwell longer in each city beyond the main tourist spots, or get to know the local cuisine or people a little better. Although we spent most of our time moving places, it was still really nice to be able to spend this time with some of my closest friends, catch up on our lives a little. The last time we took such a road trip was nearly a decade ago, where I was far from being an adult and was still a fresh-faced graduate.
I could barely catch my breath returning from my short vacation before I had to make a long weekend trip to London. Spring break also means that everyone has a bit more time on their hands, and I was due for a catch-up with friends and acquaintances I’ve had the fortune of making over the years. I had a beautiful time staying with my dear friend Bhanu who runs Behanbox, who not only kindly hosted me but made sure I was sufficiently fed and rested the whole time.
In between all of that were two assignment deadlines and a talk on housing that I had to work on the whole time. Everything finally came to a culmination last Wednesday, and I celebrated that with a night out at a ball with classmates. Everyone dressed so beautifully, danced till our knees ached (at least for me), and truly I was amazed I even made it home, showered, and got up for an 8am meeting the next day.
These few weeks I’m also having friends travelling through Edinburgh again, and Peiying is on the go go go for quite the coming weeks. At this pressing moment, I really should be working on writing up about 3000 words that is due in a week, and preparing for a talk for an upcoming Singapore-activism-academia-star-studded conference that I’m super honoured to be speaking at about Kontinentalist and our data work. Many of the speakers at this conference are people I’ve looked up to for a long time, and it’s surreal that I’ll have this opportunity to share a panel with some of them.
The weather has been quite a thing this past month as this part of the world transitions into spring. I so quickly got used to the 25 degrees cardigan-wearing climate of the Balkans that it was a rude shock coming back to 5 degrees Edinburgh. I foolishly also packed a lighter coat to London thinking it’ll be a bit warmer, but alas it was colder! But this past weekend it’s been absolutely beautiful, and everyone was out on the meadows and in gardens. Yet today, as I finally took out a dress for spring, the fog descended on the city like a ghostly curtain. Make up your mind already, weather.
People in the UK love to talk about the weather. There is that quip/joke that if one doesn’t know what to start a conversation with, just talk about the weather. This is often lost on Singaporeans because we’ll get only about two sentences in about how hot it is and that’s it.
But as I wandered around the botanic gardens, looking at couples rolling on the grass with their toddlers, daffodils beaming towards the sun, the gentle dusting of cherry blossom petals on the ground, I couldn’t help but feel something rumble in me. This fickle weather has inspired hundreds, if not thousands of poems. The world’s most romantic sonnets — “Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”.
One of the downsides of being constantly on-the-go is I don’t give my emotions or body time to catch up with me. Being productive has its perks, but a major con is the moment I pause or stop, these other things come crashing down on me like a multi-vehicular pileup due to an emergency brake incident. It happened with me last semester in December and I’m going through it again now. My moods has been changing as drastically as the weather — I swing from a hundred to absolute zero within a day.
As someone who prides myself so much for my independence, it is debilitating to be so wrecked and overcome by my emotions that I can’t function. Most people would scoff at me and comment at how that’s basically how everyone lives with their emotions. Some experience them as anxiety or panic attacks maybe? But it really, really unsettles me. I absolutely hate it. Inside me are David and Goliath epic battles between my heart, body and mind. I have no patience or resolve to sit with these terrible feelings, and I struggle to let them overpower me. Except, the more I struggle, the worse it becomes. It’s as though I’m caught up in a web of nettles.
As I was battling a low point yesterday morning and struggled to get out of bed, a friend encouraged me to consider not resisting these feelings. To listen to them, and my body, and what it’s telling me. To speak to that pain and ask what it’s trying to tell me. It was nearly impossible. I just wanted to up and bolt, except there was no where to go. But this friend of mine — she is one of the wisest, kindest, gentlest souls I know — and she was right. In giving this feeling time, I also found acceptance. This. This is beyond my control. Once I accepted that, the solutions came faster than I thought they would, and things settled.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. When I started school in September, I wrote about the serenity prayer and how I was in need of a fleeting moment. Two seasons later, we’re now in my favorite spring, and cherry blossoms line the parks and streets. I feel I’ve come a little full circle, true to the name of this newsletter Sekejap, where we’re living in fleeting moments. As I sit with these big, difficult feelings, I recall my therapist saying to me, “Peiying, these things are scary, but they are also what makes life beautiful. Enjoy them.”
This rollercoaster is terrifying as hell, but I suppose it is also thrilling, and I won’t be down for too long. Spring will come and pass, and summer will soon be here. I’ve only got a few more months in this wonderful city, and I will cherish every passing minute, crappy weather, crazy mood swings, warts and all.