These past few weeks have been something like a free fall for me. I’m here, but I’m not really here. I’m trying, but I don’t actually care. I find myself waking up earlier than my alarm, staring at the ceiling overhead, telling myself I need to sleep so I’ll stay awake in class later. But the latter hardly happens. Physically there, mentally gone.
A few weeks ago my body just decided to shut down and I came out with one of those crazy fevers that puts your whole life on hold. Even after two weeks, two types of antibiotics and half a litre of cough syrup later, I lost my voice. Which was quite cool. In that I can sing AND sound like Louis Armstrong way.
The best part of the whole ordeal was that I was left alone at home for an entire weekend. My cousin had a wedding up in the north, and my parents and brother had to attend. I would’ve gone myself if I wasn’t a walking incubus of crap. But I was, and my mum was oh so kind in leaving me her car in order for me to drive out and eat.
Okay. Driving is not a big deal. Most people I know had gotten their license before SPM, or a month after they finish school. But for some bullshit of being the youngest or something, it took me countless of arguments, 8 months to get my license, and over a year after the license, before I was even allowed to touch any of OUR cars. And early this January, we had five. In a house of three drivers.
But that’s a rant for some other day.
So this was a pleasant surprise. A real pleasant surprise.
My family left at noon on Saturday and Sha was supposed to come sleep over to keep me company. She had something on during the day though, so I was pretty much free during the afternoon. Hanis wanted to have lunch, and I came over and picked her up.
Sending her home, I found myself at the wheel with this oddest feeling. I had cash in my bag, petrol in the tank, a free afternoon, and no one expecting anything from me. There was a P sticker on the car, I had my license, and there was nothing the law could find fault with me about. I was, there at 3.15pm, somewhere in the USJ area, with the car in neutral, taking stock, that I was a legal, independent adult.
It’s like this strangest fear took control of me, and no one was there to tell me what to do. I could go wherever, do whatever.
This was meant to be one of those defining moments in my life. A Catcher In The Rye scene where Holden Caufield just decides to run off somewhere where the sun never sets. Somewhere. Anywhere. Absolutely anywhere but here.
Yet I took the right turn onto the road to Taipan, bought more cough syrup and a single helium red balloon. Then went home.
_____________________
The next day Sha had gone home and I had the car and the house to myself for the rest of the evening.
Earlier on, we made a move for tapas in Bangsar, and she was sweating throughout the whole drive on the New Pantai Expressway. It can only be pure exhilaration, this heightened response and control as your foot slides smoothly from the accelerator to the brakes at a bend on the highway, tapping only gently, before going back to the former. I love it. I truly do.
So yeah. We ordered and we talked. About school. About our future. About love and loss. Where she’s finding herself in her life, and how I have learnt to settle.
If I could bottle that one moment, in between the chicken liver pate and the grilled sardines, with the rain beating down and absolutely nothing to do with life, nothing about the future, nothing about tomorrow, then I would be able to capture one moment where I could say I put everything behind.
So I did not get into Cambridge. The only thing I’ve ever wanted so hard as long as I can remember.
So, the interview STILL plays in my head at night, and the content of my essay flashes through my mind as I stare at the ceiling. So I cried for a week afterward. So I cut my hair and bought new clothes and became socially distant for a while. So I get all sorts of coos from friends and family who think it’s no big a deal. It was a big deal. I planned my whole life to lead to this. But it didn’t. And I felt so fucking lost. Don’t give me sympathy on my facebook wall, because you will never ever understand.
But so what? It’s ok.
It’s ok because at that moment I was content.
Leaning back against my handbag with the cough syrup, I could’ve even said I was happy.
And nothing could take that away from me.
Driving later that night with Azlan at my side, on the NPE through to Jalan Tun Razak all the way to Taman Tun Razak, getting lost somewhere between pudu and the Kampung Pandan roundabout; seeing KL in all her glory on an empty Sunday night. Cruising down the AKLEH with that magnificent turn with the Twin Towers on the side, sparking up memories of a dusty book and a hopeful letter of a young naive child so full of awe of Le Corbusier; to watching people queue up to catch the last bus home from the hub around Pasar Seni.
Nothing can take that away from me.
__________________________
Marina & The Diamonds – Hollywood (Acoustic)
John Mayer – Wheel
Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine
Beirut – Rhineland (Heartland)
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Beatles – Drive My Car
Beatles – Michelle
and
Sufjan Stevens – Chicago.
x