i want to like you for you.

i had stopped by to visit my mother this afternoon, and we were bantering as usual when she mentioned that she's got more business coming from my aunt's place - and since my aunt lives in the better part of town it means that the customer she gets is actually quite well-to-do.

and when she mentioned that the other family is worth even more than my aunt's family i felt this cold rock at the bottom of my stomach...

will i ever get there? at that point i really didn't want to continue the conversation.


..not that "there" is an important place to be or that i MUST get there but rather, will i ever have a chance to live in the kind of "opulence" - not needing to care whether or not i have to return that book i rented, where to go for that meal of da zha xie (fried crabs), and WHEN i may go for that meal of da zha xie, whether i have the necessary to not bother where i'm headed or when and that all i have to think about is what i want to do and when.

and i look at the people about me. my colleagues seem happy. not that i am not - i am. i am blessed in every way possible - or "lucky", if you don't believe in an Almighty - to have the education, the accommodation, the smarts to make it through to a good school and then to getting some skills behind me, jobs, a place of my own, great friends who will help me out, who i will help out and who i love -


i am blessed. triply blessed. because. because of the above-mentioned reasons and then some.

but when i look at the people about me, and when i look. i see people struggling with work, with deadlines, with stress: the same things i struggle with.

but then comes lunch time and people start talking about the places they're headed to for drinks, who's got them invites and how "her dad said 'money's not yours until you spend it' and how he bought ANOTHER television set (or something)" and how she's got cars back in wherever she came from. and my friends, they've got lovely homes with wonderful parents who seem to know just what advice to give. it helps that they're beautiful too.

and all i can do is to try to keep up, you know?


and the people i know. the people i get to know. if i like them i really don't want to know more about them. i only want to know their names, their contact numbers if we happen to exchange numbers but even then. i just want to know their names, and that be it.

for to know more would mean i will have preconceived notions about you. just like if i were to know that you're well-to-do or even better than "just" well-to-do. i don't want to know that you live in a penthouse and own two shophouses in emerald hill plus a pub down the road AND seven cars, all lamborghinis of different colours to suit different outfits. i don't, i really don't.

it scares me, i feel like i'm not worthy, because i simply do not have the things you have. i have not seen the things you have, and probably have not done the things you did. like owning more than forty-six pairs of shoes. it's ridiculous, i don't need forty-six pairs of shoes and unless you're aspiring to be a millipede chances are you won't, neither. but you get what i mean?


i know i'm cool. i know i'm beautiful. i know i don't have to be worth a thing but still be priceless. i know that. YOU know that.

and i don't want to know who you are. i was curious about someone who impressed me. and i asked.

what a mistake. the more impressed i was, the dumber i got. the dumber i got the more ingratiating i became.

me. lapdog. ME.



..and i must not be like that. and i don't want to know who you are, whether or not i have met you, will meet you. i don't want to know who you are. i want to know you as you, ilke you for you, as you are; not what you have, where you'd been, who you'd seen. i can offer you the friendship and camaraderie that you may have found so lacking in the world, that spark of genuine-ness.

but i must not know who you are. i don't want to know who you are.