Memory # 2

As the title suggest, i'm able to present to you another event in the past that has brought me eternal regret. i'm banking on the fact that she will never never stumble on this blog or i'd be... oh well, doomed...

Let me name the character who will appear so frequently thereafter as j.

It was after the week-long break following the 2nd orientation in JC1. The break that was suddenly declared to avert mass hysteria among parents owing to SARS. I see realisation dawning on your face... Alright, let us continue...

After dabbling in AJCO, Art club and Hockey, i decided to try my luck at CLDDS. I was to dig my grave there as well... Now, CLDDS was purely an amalgam of three essentially independent sections loosely connected only in name. I joined the Songwriting and Singing section due to my enthusiasm in singing. On my inaugural session, i saw j or rather i acknowledged her presence there. What i mean is that she was yet another person there after all. At the end of that session, we both had a bad impression of each other. Just because i quoted Jeff Chang as the singer whose repertoire i was most interested in... I left the LT, sullen and moody...

Joining this organisation seemed a doomed decision right from the start. To be more appropriate, it was a total fiasco. 4 guys and outnumbered by females five times over, we males looked set to be trodden over. Thankfully with the support of Kahhui (a male friend), the disaster was averted. We guys remained as a credible voice in the organisation.

If you were mollified by my earlier sentence, please feel sorry for me now. My first session with Ge Yao started with me being the only guy around and there were like, well 20 girls? \ _ /''' And she continued the mutual animosity by sniggering and gossiping behind my back. It was hell, a cold one too with the air conditioner chugging merrily at 18 degrees celsius...

But you know... Bu da bu xiang shi, how true.. For some remote reasons, we started communicating. At first, it was primitive. We acknowledged each other's presence. Then we exchanged few words... Before she was showing her true self. Bludgeoning me nearly to death with her equally deathly blows. A habit, i guess so. Much like the aussies with their back-slapping antics...

Before long, we really became fast friends... It was really fascinating to think of this now. It became smething of a ritual as we would come early before the official reporting time to talk... And she stopped the annoying things that she used to do in Ge Yao... I thought that our interaction would be limited within the CCA but to my surprise, we went on farther.

We started to go out together where i would bum around while she mull over the occasion birthday present buy. She even introduced her secondary friends to me. I was really dazed by all that. But i was happy and so was she, if i wasn't wrong... I started to come out specially to explain the occasional point in chemistry and those were memorable. Out of 3 hours we spent, only say half an hour was really fruitfully used. We were just enjoying ourselves. You know, things that friends do...

Very soon however, the scourges came, in the form of mind-numbing and neck-throttling rumours... Bother... Why are rumours such a nuisance, worse than carrion flies? At first, they trickled in to our consternation then they came rushing forth with such a force, that i was swept off my feet. Both our classes were going on and on...The worse of it all is that both our classes were seated next to each other during Civics and Maths. I thought a monastery temporarily shared grounds with AJ...

Scourges as they are, the rumours also strangely awaken me to soemthing else... I really enjoyed myself thoroughly whenever i was with her yet all these while i've been treating her as my buddy... Something snapped within me. I just got to ask her...

Crazy is what i will describe of myself then... It was supposed to be Promos the day after but there i was, pacing frantically on my phone, trying to coax the ear out of her that i deserve a chance. I elicited many strange stares but i was unfazed. That moment was ethereal... It was scorching hot when i began but pitch dark when she finally relented... i thought that i had managed to coax Saddam to call bush daddy.

It was wow... I spent countless days waking darn early so i could take the first train to Boon Keng just so that i can accompany her to school... It was ludicrous and mindblowing but then again, what's the difference between condemned art and me then? None... both are equally condemned...

Until one day... that day which i regard it as the day of reckoning... She revealed to me that she was a Wiccan. J told me that she got interested in it from the Web and join it thereafter... She said that i was the only other person to know after her closest friend. I was in disbelief...J? the teenage witch? Impossible...I had no doubt about it. It is as possible as Paris Hilton declaring her intent to be a nun... But in the end, i put aside all my reservations and differences to show that i wasn't bothered by her revelation. Little did i know that this will eventually culminate in an abrupt ending...

There i was around 3 weeks later, browsing in a bookshop when a books on religion caught my eye. I was scanning throught the books when i saw, "Occults, Wicca..." I read on. I was deeply disturbed. There she was infront of her computer, fishing out possibly twisted contents from the Net! and here i was, reading up nasty things that could befall on followers. I swung into action,my fingers were mobilised and my handphone was activated... I sped an sms conveying my deep concerns to her without any serious thinking on my part. I don't know what happened then... We exchange some brief messages and she ended up giving a final sms in block letters. That was the last time we ever communicated.

I was baffled. Was i wrong in doing that?Have i hurt her unwittingly? That episode marred my perspective on friendship... Subconsciously i became wary of befriending another person. The weekly CCA sessions merely exercerbated my awkwardness and drove me further still, into isolation. I became lonesome, a solitary figure and obscure.

I am never quite myself ever since. Looking back, i realise that indeed i have stopped making friends ever since that period. The soreness of that episode remains excruciating, the shadow lingers on. When will i ever get over it all and resume my life?