Before landing in Singapore just under four days ago, I had only left my country of birth once. Juvenile and spirited, as fresh and green as a baby pea at nineteen, with the world under my feet. I was working as a housekeeper at a farm stay, and just as I had about two grand in the bank, I applied for my own passport, booked my tickets to the UK, and I was off for my little rendez-vous with England. Little did I know that trip would snowball the following years into a spiral as saucy as homemade spaghetti eaten with a spoon, and ultimately lead me here: to the belly of a sticky metropolis, brimming with flavour and eccentricities the western cities I’m used to have never displayed.
To know that I would most certainly be living a different timeline if I hadn’t taken a ballsy yet purposeful stumble into the unknown somewhat unnerves me. That out there, under slightly altered stars, there is a me that never returned from that trip, or, more likely, never went. But whilst it disrupts the flat earth beneath my feet to consider how different life could be if only a minute were out, I have also fully surrendered to the fact that this unfolding is what is meant for me. And, in my stubbornness, I actually appreciate, for once, that I can’t argue with that. I cannot try to barter for what I do not know, or pry into what is locked. The chance came and went when I was sleeping, when I stopped to smell the roses, when I had no clue it was ever there. And little by little all my choices came together to unfold this one.
But regardless of the path that I have taken, or that you have taken, chosen or not, we are all dealing with the same inescapable aspects of being human, whether you’ve got a big backyard or a small one, a rooftop pool or a river. Whether you live in a high-rise flat or a humpy in some marsh out whoop. That wherever we all sit in the world, we are all dealing with dying parents, money worries, fertility issues, troubled relationships, suffocating culture, and the sometimes ugly barriers placed between us through skin colour and language. We’re all in the same boat, looking for the same slice of land to find refuge on. That although we could have been variations of who we are now or of the life we lead, we would still fundamentally remain the same, with the same distressing bag of issues that bite at our heels and crowd us in silent hallways.
These are all things I didn’t fathom at nineteen and couldn’t have. Crammed in a rocket being flung hundreds of kilometres per hour to the other side of the globe where the seasons flipped, and spring greeted me months before I had even traversed winter. Ultimately, my going was fuelled by a desire to be free of all those uncomfortable, tragic aspects of being human, free from the burdens of a typical life, and I assumed that a new place, a foreign place, would allow me to reframe everything I had ever known. I had fun, mind you, pretending that the world I once inhabited didn’t exist when late spring split the sky open and poured warm, buttery sun on my face, but the reality of life as I knew it still stood when I returned and would’ve done so if I stayed.
Now, as I walk the loud, bustling streets of Chinatown, as I pace the glossy underground to board efficient trains and eat authentic dishes at hole-in-the-wall restaurants, I see me in everyone I pass. I see that every walk is slightly uneven, every shoulder carries the invisible weight of a problem I can fathom but will never truly know. Call me optimistic, but I value recognising those aspects that make up each of us now more than ever, despite their presence being a weight tied around our ankles. The tragedy, wonder, disgust, joy, and bewilderment I have felt and feel link me to every single person in this city and to those at home, and because of that, I have never felt so held, so thankful, so in awe of the splendour of the human spirit.
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