Richocheted feelings

“Solitude is not meant to be experienced alone, but in the companion of close friends and family. Something that I learnt recently”

Again, I recently headed to Kuala Lumpur (KL) for an overnight stay and surprisingly, this trip ended up with a lot of ‘ricocheted’ feelings. KL has been a lot of things to me, a place that I love being in, long to be, and at the same time an escape for me.

I visit KL almost on a monthly basis. It’s a habit I cultivated since my university days. On the bus back to Singapore, I counted that there 24 entry stamps into Malaysia over a spread of three years (since 2002) which means on average every 1.5 months I would escape to KL. KL has always been my shangri-la for escape every time I feel down, sad or I just need to get away from it all. Over time, this habit grew and I no longer need to feel sad to just head to KL. It has grown into an addiction, providing me with short term feeling of control and away from unresolved issues.

A good friend of mine said to me, to start by claiming KL to be a hideaway is already a bad start. I should learn to resolve my issues and stop running from them. Another friend said to me, until the day, I learn to accept myself for who I am, the failures I have made, the mistakes and choices I made, I can never be truly happy. No amount of running can free me from it. And on this trip, I learnt the truth of those words.

Like most of my previous trips, I headed to KL all by myself, walked across the causeway, took a bus to the bus terminal, bought the bus tickets and waited half and hour then the bus took off at 7pm and I was on my 4.5hours bus ride to KL.

When I arrived, it was 11pm, checked into a budget motel, bought KFC chicken, stayed in my room and just sat there and ate. Walked around a little bit and then it hit me. I actually thought of my previous trips when I was with my friends.

I remembered showing my Swiss friend, Matthias, KL Tower which stood prominently by my motel as well as the attempt to enter a club 15mins before it closed and I was not allowed to enter with my backpack, the Skybridge of the Petronas Twin Tower that I went to with Ying, June and Chin Yong. Even a recent funny incident cross my mind and made me smile. I remembered on my last trip with June, Ying and CY, they wanted to get the bus home, and the last ‘NICE’ bus was sold out or were too late for them (I cant recall) so they settled for another one, and when it arrived it had the decal on its windscreen “Nice Too” which made me laugh for hours.

I realised I didn’t like to be alone in KL anymore. Probably the trip was ‘tainted’, probably it was ‘enriched’ by me bringing my friends along on one my escapades. It made me think about a lot of things. Hell no…KL is definitely cool. Not that anything about KL has changed whatsoever, I just saw things from a different dimension.

I guess KL will always be dear to me, but I need to stop seeing it as an escape route or as a tight hold on to years that went by. Yeah I know you cynics out there would say I am ageing…true to some extent but most importantly I was trying to recapture the four years that I lost and I need to let it go.

I hope there would be a point in time, where I would forgive myself, accept who I am and finally be able to tell the world that I made a mistake in life, but I have learnt from it and it made me a better person. I hope by then, true happiness would not only beckoned but would be right next to me.