Short Story | Part 2: Lonely Weekends

She opens her heavy eyes.

The room is too bright with the lights on and the fan is spinning at maximum speed parallel to her, comfy enough to doze her off for the second time to the dreamland.

"What time is it?" She asks herself while looking at the clock. 11.30 P.M.

She pulls herself up, feeling a bit dizzy only to realize that she had been sleeping on the floor all this while, with her telekung on. While struggling to stand up, she pulls off her telekung and starts folding her prayer mat to the side, clearing the way between the two beds in that small room.

The swimming drill was probably too tiring that she went blackout right after her Ishak prayer but now, she's feeling fresh and ready to do her tasks. Oh wait.. but before that...

Her stomach growls.

This is for 1000th times of regret that she feels like slamming her head on the wall for skipping her breakfast and lunch. Her eating routine is not an exemplary act as a future doctor. 'I'm not hungry', 'I'll get some food at home', 'I'll buy myself dinner', she said but now, she's sitting on her bedside, looking at the clock with a sad face. No restaurants around her hostel area are open past 10 PM and her stomach could not starve any longer.

At times like this, she wonders where her roommate and housemates are. They're probably outside with their usual group of friends, having a proper dinner while chit-chatting until past midnight. They must be laughing and enjoying the company of funny people in the group, feeling of being accepted and celebrated by the crowds. At times like this, she wonders,

is she invisible to them?

She stood up and walks to the kitchen to get some water to freshen her throat. Then, she opens the fridge door, scanning through it before setting her eyes at one part of the compartment. Her dinner. She grabs two raw eggs from the egg shelve, boils them in a water-filled pot using the induction cooker and after a few minutes, the hard-boiled eggs are completely cooked. After several more steps, she had her mashed hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise ready on the dinner table. Voila! There goes her personal recipe that she thought her mom would be proud of. The dinner was done in less than 15 minutes and after doing the dishes, she went to her study table.

'It's okay to be lonely at times', as she starts flipping through her physics lecture notes.

'You don't need friends to know your worth. You can be happy on your own', the voice in her mind continues as she unzipped her stationary case.

'What's the point of spending hours of your time doing something you don't like just so you can fit in
?' This time she already have her pen in between her fingers, spinning around between her index and middle finger. She's thinking.

A polaroid photo of three smiling girls, embracing each other so dearly suddenly attracts her. It was glued on the white wall in front of her desk, placed in between the sticky notes of Le Chatier principle and some basic rules of integration that she wrote a few days ago.

The photo was taken only a month ago, when everything was going exactly the way she wanted. She couldn't remember where they were at that time but she knew that she was feeling happy at that time. She missed that moment although it probably was just a false sense of feeling belonged and accepted.

Sometimes, she hated herself for what happened and for being too demanding, selfish and anxious. She overthinks for every single second she spares in her nights, thinking of any other way she could do to reverse the time she screwed up. The time when she thought she needed a space for herself, also when she thought it was the transition time to find friends of the same momentum and same goals.

She's too kiasu and as much as her friends told her about it being her strength, she knows that it's also her greatest weakness, especially when it comes to friendship.

And now she's at her study table, distracted by the loneliness that's eating her up every weekends while the sound of her spinning table fan occupying the empty room and the chilliness filling her empty heart.

For a moment, her eyes suddenly focus on a shiny razor blade in her pencil case.

Short Story | Part 1: Underwater Thought

The water was warm that night, as usual.

She gasped for breath on the surface of the water as her chest rose up and down vigorously. She held her foggy goggle on her forehead, letting her eyes set with a clearer vision on the dark purplish sky. The cloud was no more to be seen and at the side of the swimming pool, she could only listen to gushing of water as it flowed into the outlet, down the drain before getting reheated and flowed back into the pool. Cloudy, her vision. 

"What a mess," she murmured under her breath as tears rolled down her red cheeks, feeling hot. 

Once again after God knows how many times, she held her goggle back, covering her red puffy eyes while inhaling deeply at the same time. With closed eyes, she plunged herself underwater and started to release bubbles of air slowly bit by bit until her body remain static, not floating back to the surface. She remained underwater, with her eyes now wide open, in a cross-legged sitting position.

All she saw was a clear space around her and as she looked further, the shades become darker until she can't see anything. Clearly, no one else was in the swimming pool with her. For a moment, she enjoyed the solitude when no one can see and control what she do. 

10 seconds passed, and she was still holding her breath tight. Seconds after, her lung felt squeezed and gasping for air but she remained in her position. This time, with her eyes shut.

In her mind, everything that happened above the water, in her life, continued playing like a fast-forwarded video. It kept replaying over and over again and that made her so angry. She hold her fist tight as her forehead puckered, her heart beat faster. 

"Time's up," a voice in her head whispered and in less than a second, she pulled herself to the surface, gasping for oxygen she owed on her lung and muscles. Her heart was still beating fast and her face had turned totally pink and hot. 

The feeling of suffocated, hot and oppressed that she felt at the moment was not something uncommon. They were pretty much similar to her life on land, she thought. Crazy how when you're living a life as a normal human being, doing whatever other people is doing and thinking, but the only difference is that you're feeling drowned but you can see other people breathing so perfectly. 

She scoffed a small laughter. 

"What a mess,"

She pulled herself out of the pool and off to the changing room. A moment later, she already had her clothes and hijab on as she walked back to her hostel.

It's been a while.

Hi, I'm Syahirah Omar and as much as I try to make a cool, jargon-filled opening for this post, I know I failed terribly.

So here's my first post for 2017.

Months have passed super super fast and it's already in the middle of April. Only God knows how my life goes like. Busy? Hectic? or Happy? Excited? God knows.
One thing I know for sure was how much I learnt from whatever that happened.

I have a lot of thing to share about my life, especially the terrible dilemma parts when I was being adorably fickle-minded about my life decision. Yes, I'm a self-proclaimed adorable mess.

Last year, in 2016, after I received my SPM result, and ALSO after I received some scholarship offers in which I had some hard times deciding on which one to take, (not intending to sound ungrateful. Alhamdulillah for the offers, I love all of them but surely I had to make decisions to pick out one of them duhhh) Well, I picked medicine.

On May, I registered myself in a college called Kolej Teknologi Timur to do 2 years of A-levels under JPA-MARA sponsorship. After over a month there, I realized that I wasn't feeling happy about that place since the first time I set my first step there. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY. I mean my friends there are super nice, witty and funny (legit loving them so muchieee), the lecturers are great and they are the ultimate miracle workers. Well, the seniors told us that but even without them telling, I knew it after having classes with them for a month.

So after a few processes with withdrawal forms and the check outs and some payments that needed to be made, I left the college and enrol in other university, Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences. Here, I'm doing my Foundation in Science while being sponsored by JPA bursary. How's my life here? Hmm probably will need new entry for that haha.

I'm about to finish my foundation in June and InsyaAllah I'm planning to pursue my medical degree in other university under JPA scholarship. While it haven't been decided yet, I'm living my current life through semester 4 which will commence in a another 1 week.

Everything has been great. Great. Such a vague one-word description of 'everything' wasn't it? All my ups and downs, mental exhaustion, hectic schedule, unstable emotions and problems with friends and grades? I'd say that those are parts of life. Spices of the curry of life. Because in the end, the spicy, sweet and hotness of the curry will only matters. Therefore, I can really say that everything has been great!

'There's time when I think all these efforts will go vain.
Tired and perhaps all the distractions.
Allah will help me, that whisper goes.'

Signing off. xoxo