Reason To Write

***

He has officially crossed the line. It was caused by something which in some ways he saw it coming, but the speed it unraveled was a little discomforting. Now, his life is, in some ways, his own again. Now, he has the freedom to think about the other things in life without having to entertain second guesses and the like. As much as he felt sad about leaving people who supported him during these dark times, there were things to consider and embark on now. Whether they would bring him to the places he would thrive in and in that process find a big piece of himself there could still be arguable. With freedom came uncertainty. With freedom came responsibility. Freedom also meant risks, missteps and regrets.

He leaned back on the office swivel chair and thought about it all. The conversations he had during lunch with his co-workers, the many harried calls he made, the kind of doubts thrown in his direction when he voiced out his intention, and the reactions etched on the faces of his listeners. Closing his eyes, he could see, hear and even feel all of them: the expressions, the intentions and the words. He thought he could see the tears in the eyes of a middle-aged lady with whom he shared his spirituality with. He thought he saw a tinge of regret in the eyes of the big boss when he uttered the words “it is a pity”. He thought he could see the scowl on the faces of his co-workers when he described the events leading to him passing that precious letter gently to the people-in-charge. All these made him wish he could look into the future.

The reality is his future was shrouded in a thick mist. It was so thick that everything seemed dark and gloomy. Someone he lunched with yesterday commented that things would not look as bad if he had someone by his side through it all. He retorted with the statement about how inept he would be as a boyfriend, at the very least, during times like these. Love would be good, but now it was almost impossible to attain without hurting whoever his beloved was so deeply in the process.

***

“What will the future hold?” he hollered into the mist and the imposing darkness which surrounded him.

There was no response. The only thing he heard was silence. There was not even the faintest sounds of an echo.

Weary from all the emotional upheaval, he started to squat, placing his hands on his knees before using them to hold his head. Despair, one of his fiercest enemies, overwhelmed him so much that he could feel the warmth of its foul-smelling breath. He knew that the decision he made might liberate him from one place, but it could also cripple him because this attack from Despair would knock him out if he was not careful.

He clenched his fist, trying hard to muster whatever strength there was left in him to prepare for this final battle. The biggest fear was that he had very little of it left and to continue drawing from the empty within might be necessary but fatal. For the first time in his life, he realized how precarious the situation was now and he could feel the same kind of fear in the heart of the soldier going into a battle with an unknown enemy and in darkness.

He continued in that crouching position and started to whimper a little.

He had to fight it, but had quite forgotten how to prepare himself for it.

***

He gazed at his fingernails, which he should have trimmed yesterday. There were bits of dried blood in them. It was no longer peculiar to him how and why he had gotten used to seeing bits of red in his nails. He knew where they came from.

He gazed at his office swivel chair, which was filled with bits and pieces of white flakes. They were all over the red-coloured cushioned seat. It was no longer peculiar to him how and why he had gotten used to slapping the seat with a cloth to clear the flakes. He knew where these flakes came from.

He gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and noted how unkempt his hair had become. It told him honestly that it was capable of turning into the ultimate nightmare for the hairdresser and how long since he last stepped into the rather up-market saloon. He feared of embarrassing the hairdresser who would notice the pathetic state of his scalp. He knew where that came from.

His mother gazed at the back of his body last evening and noted the now-prominent scabs which she commented that they looked like were bits of rotting flesh. He wanted so much to tell her about how they were related to stress and he was not coping well with it for the longest of time. Quietly, he brushed her comment off and went into his room to put on his T-shirt just to keep her prying eyes away. He knew what these scabs were all about.

He gazed at his eyebrows which were crocked and signified his disbelief at the statement he just made. He just told him about how things were so bad that the effects were now turned inwards and they were affecting his head, only stopping short of showing those unsightly things on his body to him. Acknowledging his disbelief, he turned the subject of their conversation away from how things were linked to health to save himself possible judgment. He knew why he would be skeptical.

He gazed at his facial expression after picking up a sliver of cabbage from the Lo Han vegetarian dish. His other lunch companion was remarking how his fight for freedom came with a price, which at the moment, remained a blank cheque he had to sign soon. He contemplated how much he would be able to fork out and how much he would have to pay. The imaginary amount ballooned with every passing second of his contemplation. It became so big and so unmanageable that a shiver went down his spine. He knew what the price of freedom was.

He gazed at him, he with the bulging eye-bags and the smallish eyes. His face denoted anger and frustration. They were all as a result of what he said two minutes ago and he, the bulging eye-bags, followed up with a statement on how his job was above his family and his personal well-being in terms of his perspective on the priorities of a model employee at the gulag. He could only mutter a mild response, which on rare days when he was more confident of himself would be loud and not a little agitated, along the lines of how this would mean that his philosophies were incompatible to Mr. Bulging eye-bags’. He knew he had hammered another nail on his own coffin with his bloodied bare hands.

Sometimes, he would berate himself for knowing too much.

***

In days to come, he would not be surprised to see him carrying a placard around the central business district in shirt and tie (G-2000 some more). The placard would read “Will work for food” and possibly he might just make it as big as Singapore’s Who’s-who of the local blogging scene, albeit the fact that this would be a piece of negative publicity instead (the person who said that bad publicity is still publicity has a screw loose in his / her head). There, he would invite giggles from the well-dressed, power-suited office crowd, in particular those office ladies in tight skirts and smart make-up. On his back, his shirt would become translucent from all that standing in the sun and it would bring down his job eligibility level down a few notches because his paunch, his ballooning paunch, would be so prominent that any member of the female species could spot a mile away (when they are not ogling at those well-dressed office males in made-to-measure office shirts and slick ties).

Or, as he would love to share this piece of self-deprecating joke amongst his close friends, he would find himself sitting under a rainforest / pong-pong / angsana tree together with his colleagues who came from India, Bangladesh or elsewhere, tucking into his $1-lunch of curry sauce and lots of non-fragrant rice. His body would turn bronze and brazen from standing under the sun plunging the shovel into the red soil unique only to the land of his birth or from twirling the “Go” and “Stop” sign every few minutes while his colleagues toiled by the road.

Then, for a moment, he was reminded of a voice from long ago, comforting him with the words “no one can force you to do anything if you do not want to”. He knew from whom these words were from. He knew where this person was right now.

And he let off a chuckle, an all-skeptical chuckle as though his life and his future depended on it.