girl, fragmented

everyone’s an open book, you’re just not reading.

Who I’m tryna be (I can only hope to be as kind) (If he said that to me I’d just die)

I’ve always thought of myself as being a bit of a reserved and closed-off person. I did not arrive at this conclusion on my own, it became an accepted truth when a high school classmate offhandedly mentioned to me and a few others that I am not really open. I did frown a bit at her statement, but I don’t think anybody saw my raised eyebrows. Since then, I started paying more attention to others’ impressions of me. The data obtained are all of a contradictory nature, though. One friend told me she was surprised of how friendly and cheery I was being when we first met during orientation week. Some say I look intimidating, rarely am I without a glare present on my ever-sour face. There was a boy who bumped into me once. I couldn’t be further from being annoyed, and I muttered out an apology at the same time as he did, but my friend said I looked like I was about to eat him alive.

Anyway, the facts and figures at hand cannot provide me with a conclusive answer. What I am certain of is this; I have been freely handing out parts of myself to many people, whether I am always aware of it is up for debate. I think it’s rarely a deliberate, conscious decision on my part, I tend to be liberal with my enjoyment of things and find pleasure in inviting others to engage with it as well.

I really am not that secretive. I’ve never found it hard to talk about the things I love with my friends, to share my interests with anyone who found themselves in my company. They know I love playing sudoku and murder mystery logic puzzles while waiting for the lecture to start, and I know the kind of games they like to play and they’ll draw me into it too. I know what shows they’re watching and they know about the stories I’m reading. Maybe I’ll be a bit choosy about which fragment I’ll allow each person to see, but the return on investment is always worth it in the end.

A useful rule of thumb; when you offer a bit of yourselves to an unsuspecting soul, the recipient, whether by intention or accident, will almost always reveal something of themselves in return.

Does that sound a bit manipulative? I don’t mean to be deceptive, but sometimes, to be earnest yourself is the only way to behold the sincerity of others.

You have to lower your own guard to get a glimpse into the hearts of others. I can tell you about the many instances in my life where I’ve been rewarded for it.

Once in high school, a classmate caught me google translating passages from a Japanese light novel written in tategaki form (vertical writing). She seemed genuinely interested, to a notable degree, and asked me a lot of questions about the language. At that time I felt extremely embarrassed, she said I was cool but I was just desperate to know the relationship progression of the main couple (there wasn’t any translation available on the Internet).

I took Japanese as my foreign language class and she was taking Korean, but I could tell she had this scarcely contained enthusiasm and curiosity for the language and culture. A few months later before the exam, I was doing a last minute revision and she came to wish me good luck and took some time flipping through the textbook. These two conversations we had left weirdly deep impressions on me. Have you ever met a person who just radiates kindness from every pore of their being? She’s that kind of girl but we were never close even though we were classmates for 4 years.

It was no surprise to me when I learned about the scholarship she got to study abroad. She’s studying in Japan now that sweet girl. When I think back to those interactions, I feel this indescribable sense of happiness and more weirdly, a sense of victory? I can’t help but feel this deep, almost smug satisfaction when I get to witness a dear friend succeed in actualizing their dreams.

You were a half-formed thing at 17, with no clear vision of where you’re headed, but I saw that twinkle in your eyes, and look at where you are now.

It’s a lot like watching a flower bloom. You weren’t the gardener, the sun, or the rain. You played no part in their flourishing, all you had was foresight. You just knew it will be a sight to behold even before the petals began to unfurl. And when your prediction takes shape, the vindication alone is enough to sustain you.

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Another funny example would be when I didn’t close my tabs fast enough for a friend not to notice the Ao3 tab I had opened. She was sitting next to me in class, and she started laughing and teasing me about it (in my defense it was a character study and fix-it fic!!) and I was bashful but the joke’s on her cuz it takes one to know one. She acted so high and mighty like she was so above it at that time (in jest ya know we giggled over it). Weeks later, she had her emails opened on her laptop, and imagine my shock when she had a “You’ve got kudos!” notification among the countless unopened emails. I immediately made fun of her of course, but I never did found out which fandom she was writing for.

(Again, you gotta let your defences slip a little for other people to lower their own guard.)

Circling back to the whole ‘sharing more of yourself so you can learn more about other people’, I have one more person in mind. I remember being stuck in quarantine in my dorm of 10 people. Expecting one dull week ahead of me, I borrowed a friend’s copy of Pride and Prejudice, but one of my dormmates was getting bored too so I took turns reading it with her. (I didn’t call it buddy reading but that’s what it was I guess). This girl was my bedmate, I knew she likes heavy metal, and is talented at condensing the plot of the popular classic into an entertaining and funny story, while adding witty observations of her own. She regaled our friends with an amusing account of the events in an otherwise insipid and forgettable book (no offense to the Jane Austen fans).

I remember thinking oh, this is what people were referring to when they say simplicity is a sign of intelligence. I respect anyone with the ability to break down and distill a dense narrative to put their own colourful spin on a tale. That’s why funny people are by default clever and admirable I believe.

I don’t know why I’m writing about all these people when I haven’t spoken to some of them in years. Maybe I write in order not to forget. I don’t want to take for granted these tiny glimpses when they’ve been so graciously given. The times when you’ll be granted that special access will be few and far between, and it’s a privilege few are blessed with. It’s enough sometimes to have had these brief moments of connection that allows you to view someone in a completely different lens. You get to peel back the layers a little and see them in a new light. That matters to me more than I can put into words. What about you? How much of yourself have you betrayed, and how many have traded pieces of themselves in exchange?