Wednesday, February 15, 2006 // 10:27 PM

about moving to australia

every time we talk about this i can feel the panic rising inside. it is not a big deal i know, or rather, it is not that big a deal, it is nothing i will never get over. or get used to. but i suppose it's what i said the last time about choosing what influences you subscribe to, what kind of environment you would like to steep yourself in. this doesn't say anything at all on its own, but i do feel like i have anchors, some of them, now, without which i don't know where i would be. singapore, there is a lot to be liked and disliked about it, certainly there is a lot to be missed, simply because it has eighteen whole years of history, with me. this is myopic, i know, but rather. i am not a big picture person, at all, with these things. people, my favourite thing, are only my favourite thing (kept like pets, marvin accuses me) when everything is astoundingly personal. this, this whole issue of unplugging my life. i'm not sure if the big picture of things necessarily justifies to details of it all, the short term outcomes and how it is going to be.

i wanted to ask you: how can you tell me a thing like that and expect me to feel nothing? to not worry. i don't know. i have forgotten since the first time, anyway, but the new memory of things reminds me of how very precious this all really is. i don't really know how to react, though i know how i would like to react, with that burst of emotion, and a useless antagonism. but at the end of the day i think i do know that that much is childish, pointless, and there's a need to think things out, think things straight, without tripping up all over my emotions.

i'm not sure if i've said this to you before, but i do need to know that home is somewhere. if not here, or wherever it is i will be, at the time. the world, it is a terrifying place, maybe it will look less so in years to come but really i don't want to think or talk about it (which doesn't mean that i shouldnt think or talk about it. usually just the opposite, in fact). the truth is, it terrifies me, and this reaction is one of complete and utter rug-about-to-be-pulled-out-from-under-me fear. this doesn't mean that i will discount my own reaction, or dismiss it, if it is fear i really do not think it is unjustified. even if it will be obliterated in the long run, there's still that chance that this might be the one thing that takes things apart for me, that kills my childhood, that ruins my life. please. i've had my childhood killed once already. i'm not ecstatically happy here, but this is comfortable, or comfortable enough, and familiarity is perhaps the most under-rated thing in the world. i might not want to be here forever but i'll say one thing: i do want to be here now. i wish you could just stop moving around all over the place. i wish there was a way to do this without stepping all over your feelings. but i have not been contained the way you would probably like me to be contained. i have been reaching out all over the place in my mind or in my heart, or else i have been somewhere else, and now, and now. i find it very difficult to accept my being stuffed back into a travel-sized box, to be whisked off into another part of the world. like the last eighteen years of my life have meant nothing to me. changes i do need to grow into them, clomping them over the top of my head is usually counter-productive, because, yes i have an attitude problem, no i am not very adaptable, yes i am stubborn and independent and my freedom is one of the most important things to me. i find it very difficult, being told to pack all this about myself up, and wrench myself away from everything that i know. do you have any idea how Un-Adaptable i am? in secondary school everyone used to say that it didn't matter what jc i went to because i would be the same ella anywhere i went, anyway. such faith in the steadiness of my character, it sounded to me the funniest thing in the world. it isn't that i am unaffected by influence, it's just how hard i work to hide it. it's just the unexpected effect it has on me, for my subversive nature, for my contempt, for my compulsive perhaps childish need to break free just for the sake of it. to make some noise just for the sake of it. but what i am saying is, you do, you do get under my skin, in fact, i tear off the previous skin and barter it in for a new one, and i do it so well that people expect i have never been any different. i have been ever different, really, in every single circumstance. consistency of character is not something i am good at, these shoes are too big for me yet, yet, at least right now. what i'm saying, is, really, i feel the desperate need to pick and choose my influences, it is the only way i have any control over what kind of person i am becoming. because i don't trust myself at all, at all, unleashed on the world in total oblivious freedom: i will go stark raving perverted, and end up very very very confused about it all.

once again sitting here worrying about this, it just gets me frustrated.