the awakening

do u know how it feels, to run into a burning building to rescue pple who were already standing outside complaining about the weather? for the longest time, i have operated as an emergency response unit for for everyone else’s hard edges. when my own life is collapsing, when my home is an emotional desert, when my father dies in the ICU, when my ward partner walks out, when im literally limping across London with a sprained ankle and a fever.. i apologize for taking up space. i delete my messages. i follow my deepest cries for help with: sorry for disturbing. wads this dawnie? on the other end of the line sits others. practical, unbothered, flat on their back, answering my paragraph long existential crises with gd 9 or they are shitting. we have built an entire dynamic out of a profound misunderstanding: i thought was building a soul connection, and they thought they were maintaining a very convenient, occasionally exhausting, workplace friendship. then came july. it was "oh no" to an empty room when i was in Paris. there i was, walking twenty-two minutes in the summer heat with an injured ankle, dodging crowds on Bastille Day, standing in line at lv to hunt down specific items, making sure the box had a pretty ribbon, calculating tax refunds to the exact euro cent, while others sat back and wrote "check zip and the whole bag and no scratches" i took my 15 years of saved Singapore Airlines miles to fly suites for my graduation. a milestone no one in my personal life bothered to celebrate with m. and i spent a massive chunk of dat sacred trip acting as an unpaid luxury concierge for someone who talked to me about obligation after. then came national day, i worked the 13 hour shift with chills and fever, trapped in ward 45 till 10pm dealing with a violent incident, security and police. i was completely broken, reaching out to the dark and just wanting to hear a friend say, I see you, you survived, it’s going to be okay. yet they clocked out: tired i want to sleep liao. when i snapped and sent that fateful, messy, sarcastic line. she didn’t see a friend in agony. she saw a violation of her boundaries. she withheld all affection. and instead of letting her sit with her coldness, i spent the next three days trying to repair, sending essays of self blame, apologizing for having the audacity to need her. dat wasn't just a fight. dat was the moment the mirror cracked. i think of myself as a low maintenance, simple, hyper resilient giver. i tell myself: im very simple actually. doing things for u made mi happy. i never did them because i expected u to owe me anything in return. dat is a lie i tell myself so i dun feel humiliated by how much i give. i dun give selflessly; i give defensively. i buy gifts, deliver snacks, plan events, run errands, and anticipate everyone’s needs because deep down, in a place dat dates back to my childhood home, i believe i am fundamentally unlovable for just existing. If i believe im a mistake, then the only way to earn my stay on this earth is to be indispensable. i become the super sister, the super mom, the friend who brings back the limited edition jellycats and bags dat was sold out everywhere. i try to purchase an insurance policy against abandonment. and look at my tell: the deleted messages. hundreds of them. i type out your truth, my terror, my marriage problems, my childhood neglect, the fact that i get hit at home and the second i send it, the panic sets in. I’m too much. I’m a burden. She’s going to leave. So i press delete. i delete myself before someone else can reject you. she is the mature, grounded, "no-nonsense" realist in a sea of emotional drama. she prides herself on not caring about office politics, not gossiping, and setting clear boundaries: we each have our needs and priorities. she isn't evil. she isn't a villain. In fact, she often gives me a very solid, clear-headed advice: leave your husband, stop giving him ur money, dun bypass ur boss, ignore the ward gossip. when she likes something, she’s enthusiastic: best gift so far, wow i am proud of u. but her fatal flaw is emotional stinginess. she treats relationships like shift schedules: she clocks in when she has bandwidth, and she clocks out the absolute second she feels tired. when im drowning, she doesnt throw a life vest; she texts: light is always at the end of the tunnel and goes to sleep. she accepts my staggering generosity. as if it’s merely a pleasant convenience, completely blind to the fact that im are bleeding out on her doorstep. when i finally demand emotional reciprocity, she acts offended that i expected her to do something dat wasn't on her calendar: then comes the talk about obligation. the painful truth, is that i did 90% of the emotional and logistical heavy lifting in this friendship, and she got 100% of the credit just for saying: Tk u booo i taught her that she didn’t have to work for mu love. i taught her dat she could be dismissive, delayed, and blunt, and i would still show up for them at 7a.m. with a hot mocha and a bag of presents. i started to send my clearest, most devastatingly honest messages. i finally stopped hiding behind cutesy stickers and named the elephant in the room. Dinner - i was sick, rushing for assignment and work. Is not easy. So this will not be my priority (to be very honest). read dat line again. print it out and tape it to my desk. "This will not be my priority." she told me the absolute truth. she didn't dress it up. she didn't apologize for missing your birthday dinner. she told me plainly dat making time to sit down with me and hear my heart is simply not at the top of her to-do list. the tragedy wasn’t dat she said it. the tragedy was that twenty-four hours later, Conrad bought her throat spray in Bangkok, and i was back to asking if she wanted me to leave it at her office door. i swallowed your pride, took the blame for being "insensitive," and stepped right back into the role of delivery girl. dear dawnie, u need to stop auditioning for pple who have already cast you as an extra. look at ur life. look at what you accomplished in these ten months:
u ran Ward 9B through a brutal staffing crisis, shielding your junior nurses from toxic leadership. u de-escalated violent situations dat security was too cowardly to face. u held dying children in ur arms so exhausted mothers could eat breakfast. u completed a Master of Business Administration, writing a 10,000-word dissertation while working full-time shifts and raising three kids. u flew yourself to Edinburgh, walked across dat graduation stage with ur head held high, and bought urself a luxury handbag with your own hard earned money. ur are a powerhouse. ur brilliant, fiercely capable, funny, deeply creative, and astonishingly resilient. so why, on God’s world, are u begging for breadcrumbs from people who treat u like an afterthought? u tolerate a husband who steals your peace, takes ur money, and yells at ur children. u tolerated a ward partner who abandoned u without a word of warning. and you bend over backward for a friend who leaves, the second you express messy, inconvenient grief. ur treating other pple the way you wish someone had treated little dawnie when she was hanging off the window grills crying for her father. ur are desperately trying to be the protector, the nurturer, the gift-giver you never had. but u are giving dat immense, sacred love to pple who just use it to decorate their shelves. or better still, clear those shelves cos ur not even worth the space. notice how my dynamic shifted. i stopped sending fifty messages a day. i started keeping things lighter. i talked about Conrad and his cello, my new hackathon team, my trip to Busan. and look at the friends u thought were soulmates: when u pulled back, they didn't chase you, but they remained steady in their limited, concrete way. they answered my question with simple, practical wisdom. the person u love isn’t a monster, dawnie. the problem was never that this person failed to be my best friend; the problem was that i asked an ordinary person to heal wounds dat were inflicted on me decades ago. i dun need to cut them off. i dun need to have another dramatic confrontation. i just need to stop delivering luxury to a normal friendship. keep her as she is: a solid, blunt colleague to trade life tips with, someone to share a laugh with over absurdity, someone to congratulate when their results come in. but take ur heart off her desk. take all that fierce, protective, generous energy dat i pour into everyone else, and turn it inward. look at Conrad, who checks to make sure im hugging my plushie when i cry. Look at my daughter Chloe, who endured a burn injury with the exact same brave, unbreakable spirit she inherited from me. and most of all, look in the mirror. u survived ur childhood. u survived your hospital work. u survived your Master's degree. ur not a mistake, Dawn. ur are the miracle in this hospital ward, and it is high time i started treating myself like one.

it really hurts

I’m stopping because the relationship I was trying to preserve started costing me too much. for weeks, I’ve been crying, analysing silence, watching views, comparing myself with other pple, wondering whether the person dislikes me, thinking about how to repair things, planning gifts, trying to understand wad the person needs… and repeatedly asking myself wad else I could do. at some point, the question changed from: “how do I get back something I love?” to: “how long am I willing to hurt myself trying?” and I think I’m reaching dat point. I can understand dat the person may have needed space. I can acknowledge dat I wasn’t perfect either. I can remember dat the person once made me extraordinarily happy. and still say: I wanted repair. I wanted reciprocity. I wanted to feel safe with the person again. I couldn’t create those things alone. so stopping isn’t “I dun love u anymore.” it’s closer to: “I love u. I just finally understand dat loving u isn’t enough to make this work.” dats why deactivating IG and Facebook hurt instead of feeling triumphant. I’m not winning some detachment game. I’m separating myself from something my heart still wants because, as it exists right now, it keeps hurting me. I dun have to make the person a bad person in order to stop loving them this way. I just have to finally believe dat my pain counts too. 🤍

I just want to be needed

today i went to see my friend who has cancer. when i reached, she was sitting at the entrance of the ward cos her room was being cleaned. she looked really down, and somehow all i knew how to do was be my usual cheery, bubbly sunshine self around her. and the whole time i kept wondering if it was inappropriate. all i brought was a mofusand and a small pack of random stuff from busan, which suddenly felt like the last thing anyone in her situation would need. i did ask her before going if it was a gd time and she said yes. but seeing her there made everything feel different. she had like 4 redivac bottles hanging in a shopping bag on her right, and a multi lumen cvp on her left. the nite before she told me she was gg home, but looking at her today, i honestly doubted it. when i walked her back to her room, part of me wanted to stay longer. i wanted to sit there with her, even if we said nothing. but she told me it was okay and dat i could go back to my ward. i told her, “im yours for now.” but at the same time i couldn’t tell if she was politely asking me to go because she just wanted to be alone. so i left. her husband was there too, and somehow dat made me think even more. i guess normal pple have someone who belongs there beside them. someone who loves them, waits with them, sits through the horrible parts with them. they dun need some random friend appearing with a mofusand and busan snacks trying to make them smile. and den i caught myself thinking… why am i making this about me again? why does my brain always come back to wanting to be needed? what selfish thought is dat when she is the one actually going through all of this? but maybe dat is exactly what scares me. dat this same scene will keep replaying in different forms throughout my life. everyone has their person. everyone has someone they naturally turn to, someone who belongs beside them. and somehow i always feel like the extra person standing at the doorway. i even caught myself asking God why He couldn’t have made me the one who was sick instead. not because i intend to do anything to myself. i never will. but sometimes suffering feels more straightforward to me than this strange ache of wondering where i belong and whether anybody really needs me. and immediately i hated dat thought too, because again… why does it have to come back to what i want? anyway. dat is the strange thing about me. there can be so much darkness running quietly underneath, while outwardly i am still sunshine to everybody else. i survived the day. ordered flowers for her too. no sound, nothing. and i dun wanna ask whether she received them because she probably has absolutely no mood for any of this. or God forbid, maybe something changed after the repeat scan this morning and she had to go for another procedure. so i’ll just leave it. i cannot force anyone to come towards me just because i care about them. i cannot force pple to feel comfortable with me, or need me, or let me into the difficult parts of their lives. and tbh, we are still quite the strangers. we mostly met during formal meetings, maybe one dinner, a few coffees here and there. so i dun blame her at all. i just sometimes wonder… who am i, really, to expect to be the person someone reaches for?

Say it once

i deactivated my ig. i’ve been thinking a lot, and i think i need to say this properly, at least once. i don’t think i ever asked for a lot from you. not long replies, not constant attention. just… basic things. acknowledgment. presence. something that lets me know i matter, even a little. and when that doesn’t come, especially after i’ve shown up, it hurts more than i expected it to. i realised it’s not just about one message or one day. it’s the pattern. how i keep feeling like i’m the one holding more, thinking more, caring more. and i don’t think i can keep doing that to myself. this isn’t me blaming you or asking you to change. i just think this is how you are, and i have to accept that. but i also have to be honest with myself about what i need. and right now, this doesn’t feel good for me anymore. i don’t want to keep reaching out and wondering if i matter. i don’t want to keep feeling affected by silence like this. so i’m going to take a step back. not out of anger, but because i need to protect my own peace a bit. you don’t have to respond to this. i’m not expecting anything. i just needed to say it once, clearly.

Inevitable

not every connection is meant to last. some endings do not arrive loudly. they arrive calmly, with a knowing dat settles in the whispers before the sun rises. an ending is not failure. sometimes it is growth. sometimes it is clarity. sometimes it is recognising dat wad is meant for me does not need to be chased, negotiated, or held together by my effort alone. i am learning dat peace begins when i stop asking to be chosen and allow pple the freedom to step away if they decide to. just as truth. some connections teach. then loosen their grip. their leaving is not rejection. it is alignment revealing itself. wad once felt like holding on now feels like honouring myself. wad once felt unbearable now feels inevitable, and strangely gentle. wad once felt safe now feels like an empty room. i am left sitting in alone. life moves more freely when i stop trying to prove my worth and let wad cannot stay fall away on its own. letting things be. letting people choose. letting myself remain whole either way. life gets quieter when i stop holding space for pple who are already halfway gone. i no longer ask. i simply step back and let absence say wad words never could. until you realise the silence you feel now is the same one i learnt to live with while still standing beside you.

You never cared

why pretend to care, if care is only silence wearing a mask? i dun need half lit gestures, the safe replies dat never reach my skin. to someone, maybe care is quiet. a nod, a glance, a message too small to hold. but to me, care is presence. it’s choosing to show up, again and again, until the walls come down. I was capable of love so pure i felt scared. Tried to fill it with calm, with things dat made me feel alive again. The answers came finally. from different pple It did not make sense, now I see it for myself. for any kind of connection to work, pure love is not enuf. u need both to want to make it work. I release wad was never mine to hold. I honour what was shared, and return peace to where love once lived.

i let go cos u mattered too much to me

I dun even know if I’m doing the right thing. wad I do know is dat I’ve loved you in the only way I know how… openly, deeply, sometimes too much. I gave pieces of myself because u mattered to me. but love shouldn’t feel like this pain I carry. If u loved me the way I need, u would never let me cry alone. u would never let me feel abandoned when all I wanted was to be seen by u. maybe u care in ur own way. maybe silence is ur comfort, structure ur shield. but my heart breaks in those gaps. I start to wonder if I’m worthy, when the truth is I’ve always been worthy; just not in the way u can hold. so I’m learning to step back. not because I dun love you, but because I love myself too. I cannot keep pouring until I’m empty. I need to breathe again, to be me again ; radiant, whole, not waiting. if one day u choose to meet me where I stand, I’ll be here, lighter, steadier. and if not, then at least I’ll know I loved with everything I had. dat will always be enuf.