Happy birthday Mady

Mady turns 22

For the first time in a long while Mady and I have been in a similar timezone as she’s in Korea. She’s still ahead of me by an hour, so I’m posting this on the eve of her birthday in Singapore just so she sees it the moment the clock strikes 12. 

Mady always seems a step ahead for everything. Her birthday is ahead of mine, for starters. She’s the one who came up with the idea of shared attachment last July (I’m realising we missed the one-year anniversary of our first-born child.) She’s ahead of me for university, because though we started together I ended up switching unis and courses, and also her course is only three years long, so this is her last year; I’m barely halfway through. In school, she always had the best essays. She was one of the Head Prefects. I remember some teacher was upset that she had picked one leadership position over the other (can you imagine… I don’t think teachers even remembered my name). I hadn’t heard anyone ever speak badly of her; Mady always had that sort of quiet, enviable, and faultless aura about her which made her appear to be such an enigma. This realisation of her being a step ahead never came from a place of resentment, but more amazement and quiet confusion. Amazement because she is so wise and a constant source of inspiration; confusion because I always wonder how she does it all. At the same time, I’m grateful that I have the privilege to grow beside/behind her.

This year I spent a week with Mady in her student flat in London, sharing her bed and eating her food and wearing her clothes and attempting to merge our minds and souls into one, traumatising her in the process. There is something so surreal about seeing someone’s bedroom and the spaces they inhabit through the screen of a phone for two years and then being in the very physical place yourself, staring at that person. London is a beautiful and charming city that I’d probably come back to someday, but what I reminisce the most about it is the conversations we had curled in bed or at the dining table; sitting for hours and talking about anything and everything. I always revisit the photographs we took and loathe myself for not taking more. I’m always of the belief (and to be honest, I’m painfully self-conscious of looking annoying when taking photos) that we should be in the moment when we are with loved ones; but now I wish that I had preserved those memories in a more tangible way than simply through the feverish viewfinder of my mind. 

(Some of my favourite pictures. I have more but I think I will leave that for my finsta.)

London living

Coming back to Singapore and sinking into the familiar rhythm I have here made that trip feel like it was something I had imagined and had never actually happened (I’m schizophrenic and she is the demon inside my head). Mady recently posted some random TikTok we took in the living room of her flat before we were to head out (I have literally no recollection of where we had gone that day) and I felt so strangely emotional — the gratitude for the time we had to spend together, which had felt nearly impossible before; the sadness for the distance that we had returned to again. Seeing the way we looked at each other in the video — giddy, lame, excited — felt like I was seeing some faraway dream flash before my eyes. Maybe I’m trying to say that you are the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) of my life. (I can imagine your face reading this bit.)

I realise how strangely our habits have sort of converged, even though we aren’t physically around each other. We both started texting the word “brah” a lot — me being mostly influenced by the Heartbreak High show — and when I hung out with you physically I realised we used it in the exact same way out loud, despite never having said it to each other. You always send all your Snapchat contacts a Snap of your food; now I send Snaps of my meals, but only to you, something I never used to do. Our shared attachment playlist has us actively listening to songs we probably never would otherwise. You don’t have TikTok anymore, but I swear at some point our For You Pages seemed completely merged and alike. We talk most days over text. Sometimes we call. We send each other pictures of our day and our outfits and makeup and random TikToks and songs that we love or hate. I open my Twitter mostly to send you Tweets. The days that we are too busy and our schedules don’t align feel like I’ve been transported into the Middle Ages. It always suddenly hits me how far away we are from each other, even though you are one of the few people I share so much of my life with. I recently read Anaïs Nin’s diary and the excerpts of the letters she wrote and received, and Kafka’s letters to Milena. We don’t write as passionately or eloquently over our Telegram chat (in fact most days, it’s just to complain about something), but there’s something so intimate and emotional about these conversations anyway, ones that will be lost at some point to the void of the internet or something, with no archivist out there waiting to sit and bind pages of our correspondence together. (Is it egotistical to expect one for us? I imagine us to be the Thelma and Louise of our generation.) People always sit and debate the meaning of life, what makes life worth everything, and I think that this is it — these moments, these conversations, these inside jokes and comforts, this relationship that transcends geographical boundaries and timezones and everything as a whole sum up the beauty of life.

Sometimes in the different conversations we have about life, I realise how much we are growing up and becoming our own people. Recently we’ve had conversations where you expressed your anxieties about your post-university life. It is only in those moments that it strikes me that you don’t see yourself the way I see you (at the risk of sounding like a cheesy boy band tune). You are one of the smartest people I know. I always want to hear your thoughts on everything simply because your opinion holds so much weight in my life. You have the most interesting passions and viewpoints and you are genuinely just one of the most comforting and authentic people in my life. Any school, company, man, woman, — anyone would be so blessed and insanely lucky to have you around. I hope you know that whatever choice you make or wherever life takes you, you are definitely going to transcend above everything, so don’t worry so much about the process. Just embrace it and let it happen. Breathe!

It’s so funny that at the start of the year Mady wrote for my birthday post:

We might not have thrown up in a club bathroom together, or gone on a brunch date, or really anything except eat Thai food at Pasir Panjang and eat Japanese food at ION, but she really is one of the people I hold closest to in my heart.

Now, nine months later, we’ve done literally everything else together. Now we need to do it all over again in this part (and every) of the world. 

Go wish Mady the happiest of birthdays. Mady; I am awaiting your text.