It's not that I'm not giving myself any breaks. I did. I didn't do anything that I ought to have done from 10pm last night all the way till 1pm this afternoon. It's because house visits were postponed, so I had an unexpected length of free time today. I gave myself a good long break. Last night I chatted online till 2 plus in the morning. I watched the ending of a movie with my parents till 3am. I slept, and I woke up and helped out with Eric's art supplies, but I slept again and dreamt of being in Ukraine, and there was Sasha Sikorska, and there was surprisingly also Benjamin, I have no idea why he came into the picture, and there was Eilton, I wonder why he was in the dream too, in Ukraine... And there was Guru, and perhaps Carson too, I'm not too sure. And then I think we were somewhere waiting to take the marshrutka, to get to the metro station, and somewhere in the background I saw a trail trodden by too many feet among the tall grass, a footpath made by too many feet having trodden there before. It's like the place where we had our picnic, but on the other side it looked like the entrance to the strip club, where we once sat tipsily along the curb. In my dream, I was on a swing at one point in time, and the swing felt just like the Screamin' Swing at Morey's Adventure Pier, summer 2010. The sensation I felt was the same, the g-force so strong I felt my blood vessels about to burst. My stomach rose as the swing oscillated back and forth in simple harmonic motion. And then I was in a museum, somewhat like the toy museum we went with the Green Country children in Kiev.
In my dream I was thinking, oh goodness me, I'm mixing up dreams and reality, I'm mixing up names and mixing up faces of friends. I'm mixing up everyone that I know, forgetting how I met them, why I know them, why we are at a certain place at a certain time. I was confused and afraid, but I didn't want to wake up, because I think I was in Ukraine.
I woke up when the doorbell rang, I saw that it was half-past noon. I struggled out of bed with the dream still so fresh in my mind. I did what I had to do. Eric took 2 hours to finish his lunch today. The last one hour was me feeding him. Mom left after a hasty lunch to buy the remaining of Eric's art supply from Bras Basah because that's the only place that sells them. I blamed myself for not studying his art supply list last week, because I was at SMU and I could have bought them then. I was lazy, I procrastinated because I wanted only to think of happy things, not troubling matters.
Mom is always resigned to circumstances. She is so tired and I suspect she is very unhappy. She has a stomachful of complaints and she starts talking about them to me. She doesn't ever complain like I do, never with my kind of aggressiveness and impatience. She complains in such a gentle, exasperated and resigned manner. Never raises her voice at all. But yet, I brush her off again and again, my tone laced with annoyance because I don't like to listen to these things that I already know. So she swallows her troubles again and let her duty and obligation to the family take over, let her actions overwhelm her conscious thoughts so that she is kept consistently busy, consistently occupied, never a moment of rest. Then I feel guilty, and I do exactly the same. Never a moment idle, so that I don't let my thoughts wander too far. What must be done must be done.
Shaelyn is catching on with my bad temper nowadays, especially with respect to her attitude towards Eric. She speaks with such harsh tones and he responds with his day-dreamy story-telling, seemingly unaffected. Every time such an exchange takes place I feel a stab in my heart. I ache, and then I take a deep breath and I continue with what I'm supposed to be doing. I block out all noise. I'm too tired to hurt. Hurting takes energy too, somehow. It takes effort to have any sort of emotion. So sometimes, like now, I let myself feel nothing. Nothing except the physical churning in the left of my chest. I wonder what that is.
Dad is perpetually pissed off, especially at Eric. He never has a single kind word to say. He either hollers, threatens or stings with his words. He waves a cane around and sighs with obvious intention and force. And he burrows himself in his work, or his hobbies, or by torturing Shaelyn with the leftovers of his fierce attentions. The last of these naturally leads to a retaliation from Shaelyn, with an absolutely nonchalant and negligent attitude towards her work. She occupies her meagre amount of free time building houses with Eric's lego and playing stupid games on her iPhone. Alternatively, she draws with Giant Crayons meant for babies. And so Dad turns to me for his rants and complaints, which I used to entertain before the term started, because we used to have lunch together. I listen to his side of the story, empathise, give my input, he feels happy. Now, I'm never at home for lunch. Today, when he started ranting, I ignored, and proceeded to shove food into Eric's mouth.
In between feeding Eric with baby-sized spoonfuls of beehoon, hiding his cup of Milo away from him, I read my Managerial Accounting textbook inch by inch. This morning, in my half-asleep state, I mentally accounted for my upcoming commitments and the backlog of school work and realised to my utmost dismay that even if I devote every single minute of my time to my studies, I wouldn't be able to catch up ever. I then proceeded to sleep it off.
I busied about today, answering phone calls from Sel, asking about AIESEC interview and directions to the venue, phone calls from Mom asking about the specifics of Eric's art supplies ("What's the difference between 2B and 2B zero? Lumograph and Norica? Is it necessary to by TiTi brand for oil pastels? Where can I find Zebra brand magic pens?"), fed Eric, went through Shaelyn's English composition and another English composition draft, fed Eric, hid his Milo, read my textbook, fed Eric...
His greasy hands grabbed my arms and my legs again and again, his food flew around as he waved his fork about. Dad waved something about too - the cane. My patience nearly ran out at the whole absurdity of the situation. Dad was talking about reproduction in plants to Shaelyn, who was fidgeting about in her seat, turning this way and that, throwing in words of reproach to Eric, both Dad and Shaelyn. Dad waves the cane about, mostly in Eric's face, sometimes in Shaelyn's. I feed Eric, read a line of my textbook, blocking out Dad's voice ("The leaves make up the bulb of the onion. The shoots grow above ground.") and Shaelyn's nonsensical questions ("They drew 10 leaves here. All 10 leaves are underground, how to make food?"), and I feed Eric some more, and Eric talks crazy things ("Do adults get scolded too? Do they go to jail? If I misbehave shall I go to jail? Let me go to jail, I will throw Mommy away. I am a zebra. My mommy is a giraffe. My mommy is a baby, and I push her in a pram. I am going to grow smaller and smaller. I will not grow up. Only your house has a cane, all other houses have no canes.")
And then Mom's text message came, and I hurried everyone out of their seats to get ready for class. Finally finished feeding Eric. Washed his hands and mouth and face, packed his art supplies. Packed Mom's laptop for her, called to check up on Ez-link card and her plans for tonight. Broke the news to Dad that Mom's not coming with us for the house visit to Great-aunt's house because her cousin - my uncle - is coming over tonight, and so Dad got pissed off, stormed out, stood around in the corridor. And then Eric's bag was too heavy for him but Shaelyn was carrying Mom's laptop so she didn't want to help him and I didn't care to ask her, and then they dilly-dallied and Dad went down in the elevator with a neighbour. Then Eric's water bottle fell out of his bag and Shaelyn was shouting at him and I was at home watching all this because I had already locked the door behind them, and I asked Shaelyn to help him but she just stood there shouting at him to hurry up and put his shoes on, and I lost my patience and snapped at her, "Can you just handle this??" and so she grabbed Eric's water bottle, dashed into the lift which just arrived, and Eric dropped his bag onto the floor but mustered all his strength to pick it up and called out in alarm to Shaelyn, "Wait for me!!"
And then the lift doors closed and I watched all of this in a very detached manner and I came into my room with a sudden wave of tears that disappeared as soon as they came, so I didn't cry. I don't cry. I won't cry.
I just go on dreaming. If only I can split myself into more of myself.
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