Soliloquy

There is this girl I know, Diana. We met on the first day of secondary school and in our silly teenage tussle for Queen-Bee rights, became nemeses of sorts. I think we were destined to either be enemies or best friends. Too similar in too many ways, you see. We even kinda look alike.

And yet despite the countless squabbles and misunderstandings we’ve had over these 12 years, I am always drawn to her. There was something about her that made me think her special. She was always the life of any party. Always ready with a quick-witted retort to get everyone in stitches at her audacity. It was like nothing fazed her. She took pride in being bitchy and gossipy, but in the most likable way possible, if that makes any sense.

Yet her hugs made you feel like there was an old soul inside that bubbly cotton-candy facade. Surely it gets tiring once in a while being the life of the party. As far as I could tell, she kept up that persona even around her boyfriends and best friends.

Me being the annoying “come let’s talk about your feelings” kind of person had tried on a few occasions to lure her into peeling back some of those defences. We went for a late night picnic in April this year and it felt like she wanted to open up. Then she disappeared. Withdrew.

I was concerned but gave her space to breathe.

Blogs these days often seem to be a space for people to parade their cute photos and flaunt their romances, and it’s becoming rarer to read a really raw, vulnerable entry. Diana wrote one this week. (Yes, I got her permission to share this here.)

 

I had a long talk with my mum.

My mum told me when I was a little girl, barely 3 or 4 years old, I had an affection towards the black crayon. I would draw an apple and colour it black. I would draw a house and colour it black. I coloured everything black and I would draw the sun and clouds at the bottom of drawing block and sketch my black grasses at the top. She got worried and thought I was colour blind so she decided to send me for art classes at the CC nearby. I remembered getting scolded and was sort of forced to use beige to colour a person's face and colour my carrots orangey.

I grew out of black eventually when I moved on to primary school.

Years back when my mum was still teaching at the kindergarten, she attended child psychology seminars, and it was then she found out that my black drawings meant something. I was the only child she had who coloured in black. And she said I was not a very happy child and that I was already starting to put on a facade then. She said I was eccentric and am still.

"Own mother also cannot understand you. Sometimes like this...sometimes like that. I think you act happy when you know you are not," my mum confessed.

As my mum tried to tell me about me, I cringed.

Black. Seriously?

Am I not someone full of rainbow colours and bubbly sparks and endless laughters that will light up the whole room? What is it that I am hiding? What makes me happy? Why do I disappear when I get emotional? How is it that I can transit in between different social masks and still appear sane.

Who is the Diana you know/knew? And which of these masks portrays the truest me?

I don't know anymore.

 

Today I invited her to be my +1 for a Saturday night party a colleague invited me to. Her reply explaining why she wouldn’t be able to join me revealed something she’d been keeping to herself for a while now. Something scary and painful her family is going through now. Because of this, she’s also had to put aside her original plan to commence her Mass Comm degree this month in Australia. I teared when I read her sms.

It’s incredible how much burden a person can carry on their own and even more incredible how they manage to conceal it so well from the rest of the world. I have respect for the way she’s handled herself - she generally loves attention and the spotlight, yet is matured enough to not play the victim like some would.

But at the same time I hope she is able to recognise when to put aside that sunflower act if it ever becomes more a liability than a protection. I hope she hangs on and finds the truest her.

This entry is dedicated to Diana, a pretty kickass person.