+ Just a step away from paradise

yeah, another template with a lily on it

1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?
i was in a relationship for over a year, i messed it up severely and had BIG problems getting out of it.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
hm. never had the habit really. I only break them, no point.

3. Did someone close to you give birth?
noope.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
not that i remember. thankfully.

5. What countries did you visit?
In 2005? Korea..

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
tacit diplomatic skills and the will to refrain from bitching bout those i absolutely detest.

7. What dates from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
hahaha the month leading up to 3rd of August. =) that's a secret between 2 pple.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
hm. i'll tell you when i think about it.

9. What was your biggest failure?
i couldn't be firm and clear-cut when i shld have .

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
hahaha. yeah, got sick a few times, unfortunately. nope. strangely for klutzy little me i don't get into bloody mishaps or the relative equivalent of it.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
hahah, My iPod!!!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Daphne. For being such a sweet friend.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

hm. she-who-shall-not-be-named

14. Where did most of your money go?
Food. always always food. And the iPod, which i sacrificed food for. (yuck i sound like a pig)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Jem, debate, post-a's freedom

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?
lol. Corrine May's first 2 albums.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier. Much.
ii. thinner or fatter? fatter =( boo hoo.
iii. richer or poorer? poorer. T_T

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Speaking with God.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
muddling my way through

20. How did you spend Christmas?
On the eve i had a christmas party, which i had fun in with my boyfriend. My first ever christmas as such. We had fun =) the on Christmas i had christmas burnch, which was good and yummy, then had church and i went to my boyfriend's relative's party =)

22. Did you fall in love in 2005?
ooh, YES.

23. Any one-night stands?
nope.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
i can't really rmb. i became deprived and i forgot =(

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
er. not really. i don't hate people. I detest them, am disgusted with them, but no, i do not hate.

26. What was the best book you read?
For that little time that i spent doign that, mmmmm... Sheil Silverstein's the giving tree.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
what if i didn't have one =x

28. What did you want and get?
Everything I wanted.

29. What did you want and not get?
Things I wanted temporarily which were not good for me.

30. Favorite film of this year?
Pride and Prejudice

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 18. I had lots of surprises! first a picnic, then a party...lots of sweet stuff in between =) Really, i couldn't ask for more

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If, perhaps, I had been more clear-cut and firm

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
lol. Didn't change much, cept i chose to cover up more i think, and i became more er, experimentive.

34. What kept you sane?
my friends and Jem

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
what happens when i didn't have one habitually? if u want to talk abt hot then William Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
hmph. Gays are not the sole cause of AIDS in Sg

37. Who do you miss?
Jem, Daffy, all those i haven't seen since Post-as.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
If you mean NEEEEWWWWWW-AND-SUPER-SHINY-STILL-IN-BUBBLE-WRAP, :) i guess maybe Marcus. ( i didn't bump into many new friends this year) if u talk about old-friend-newly-gotten-to-know, then its Jem.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005.
Be firm, not wishy washy. And don't look back.

~* wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Have you ever gotten that feeling where you want to stay right next to someone? just stay there and lie down/sit/stand/ do anything with that person perpetually? i don't know. notions of the pangs and pains of separation constantly pervade my mind. Notions of improvement and fear also, My mind seems like one big bing-bang of things anticipating, hoping, wishing, dreaming. I have never so much wanted to fast-forward time to the future. To get what i want at the present. Its warped, and many tell me to bide my time and wait. But that's my problem, Waiting now is such a torture. And yet each time i want to hold each moment spent together just that while more. I want time to move faster and slower at the same time. Sigh.

Sometimes i wonder what i really need, what i really want. I have fears, things are starting to get to me and the year is starting to look like its going to be particularly busy. I think i eventually will be lulled into this constancy of desire, of want, that will ultimately tie me tighter and tighter to things.

I feel afraid, excited, dreamy and yet i feel like i'm being squished into this tight cube. Its suffocating, yet enthrallling. I feel like i'm dizzy from riding the wind. I never wanted to tame the tiger, and yet, it seems to already have partially tamed me, and made me wilder, at the same time.

and to imagine that i'm strangely happy about all this, Why, i'll never know.

~* speed me across the time away from you

OK. Larissa, you should REALLY STOP SPENDING.

your form of self indulgence is disgusting. You cannot keep buying and buying and buying. There is only SO MUCH your wallet can support. And at the rate you are going, you will go broke. You've spent more on clothes and shoes in a month this round than you did in the WHOLE og 2005. This is bad, this is disgusting. THIS HAS TO STOP.

sorry. i really really needed to tell myself that. Again.

~*and the things just keep adding to her inventory.

yupp. This mouse has a new houseeee.

Moving into a new place meant new bed, new room. Rather hard to get used to. IT seems funny, i guess. I am also brilliant enough only to bring parts of one thing and not the others, which majorly inconvieniences me, but oh well. My room currently resembles a haphhazard warzone. Well almost. I tried to keep it as neat as i can but i'm evidently not very successful.

i wonder how i can have such sentimental attachments to everything. I am still attached to my growing up house. And i moved out of it SIX YEARS AGO. constancy can be a wierd thing.

~* i miss the smells of old that used to permeate everywhere

Do you remember that painting?

Over there, by that wall?

Three girls played together in a field.

Now one is gone.

Where did she go you ask?

Don't you see her?

There she is, right at the corner.

She stands silently by that window,

watching.

The one in the empty grey wall.

lol. i'm fairly amused.

01. What do you think of me, iTunes?
these Days - bardot
gee.. how diplomatic and ambigious.

02. Will I have a happy life?
Love gets me everytime - Shania Twain
whee..

03. What do my friends really think of me?
i won't leave you lonely - Shania twain
ooh.. i'm perfectly happy bout that.

04. Do people secretly lust after me?
Dream a little Dream of Me - Laura Fygi
hmmmm.. is that a good thing?

05. How can I make myself happy?
i'd fall in love tonight - Anne Murray
??? but i already am!!!

06. What should I do with my life?
Cross my heart -S Club 7
... go figure

07. Why must life be so full of pain?
if I can't love her - Beauty and the Beast
why oh why is it all abt loveee??

08. Will I ever have children?
Missin your love - Bardot
is that a no?

09. Will I die happy?
Dawn! rising Sun - Kitaro
i think that is a yes...

10. Can you give me some advice?
you're still the one - Shania Twain
oohhh.. righttt

bugger everything. I've had it. With all of you.

and i'm bloody grouchy now. If i knew why, i wldn't be so snappish right now, to everyone.

Each time you push me away
i will try still to get one step closer.
Each time you pinch my heart to death
I will like a Phoenix, rise from the ashes
and look you in the eye once more.

Let me just repeat that to myself one more time. it hurts. it bloody hurts. it feels like my heart has been thrown to the dogs for dinner.

but do you even know that you're not the only one hurting?

~* let the ashes burn once more

My heart feels like its being squeezed into a 1 cm Cube. Its painful, and i hate it, this feeling of separation and isolation. can't do anything abt it though. sigh.

debate outing was funn, it was great to see everyone agian... sigh. It was almost as if it were back to old times, cept i'm not quite used to the idea of not going to school when everyone is going to it. It comes to the point of realisation that i actually enjoyed having it fill up my day. Its rather odd, like something is missing now i've stopped going. Contrary to how i've moaned and groaned about teh fact that holidays are so far away always and too short, i realise now that i wanna go back to school. mad i know, but true. I don't miss the homework or the tiresome lessons, but those short spurts of times where me and daffy used to spend our breaks walking around the track doing our 'ah-mah walks', or just sitting in the cafeteria yakking, or walking around school hoping to bump into a certain someone or just walking around in the middle of chinese lessons talking about life. Or having to stay back for debate and having a crazy time with my juniors or yakkig with Seniors about stuff, or just feeling the thrill and excitement of being in a debate. I miss those times, running around the track for PE, talking to my classmates about stuff, and just having something to do, something to work for. Hanging around waiting for results proves to be nerve-wrecking, but missing out on these sweeter parts of school life kinda makes it worse? i dunno. Maybe its just me.

I miss those afternoons where i'd run out of school to go down somewhere to meet jem, where my bus fare was a lot cheaper and i always had smthg to do. I miss the freedom i had being able to walk around in school uniform nibbling slowly on fondants in orchard with Daphne. I miss being able to bump into someone on the way back from home and just strike up a conversation on teh way home. Somehow or other these times have disappeared, everyone is everywhere, with their own things to do. I miss everyone.

Above all, i miss you, even though i spend most of my time with u. Fairly amusing, don't u think?

~* certain things that u wished would never end always do,

Being a little hungry, Grandpa treated me to a stick of strawberries. They looked perfectly innocent, three small little almost heart-shaped ruby red gems, and yet, they tasted sinful. MY tongue had tasted new passion as the red juice exploded within my mouth, swirling around in a whirlpool of unprecedented sweetness. The seeds crunched softly beneath my teeth, much as the sand softly crunches beneath your feet as you walk by the ocean, adding to that whirlpool a soft, tainted sourness that could never truly be expressed, just tasted. As my tongue lounged in the soft waves of the after taste of one, i took another, and spoilt myself silly with the same manner of tasting as i did with the first. By the third strawberry, i had gone into a gently euphoric delirium. As its after effects faded away like the night sky fading away in the rising of the sun, i looked at the stick, which was all that had remained of those divine ecstasy inducing fruits. No doubt, it was stained a faded, yet striking red.

I had tasted joy today. Really, i did.

~* soft sweet explosions that leave me breathless in its wake

It's scary, to realise how much one is fumbling in the dark now.

I feel scared. It's the beginning of a new year alright. And i anticipate a lot of change. I become fearful, as i fumble and tumble in the darkness trying to find my bearings again.I feel afraid for what is to come, and yet i realise that was has to come to pass will in the natural force of time.

I realise that i have scattered a lot of pieces in my process of unfurling my wings after my exams. Pieces scattered all over the ground, some perhaps too shattered to be repaired. I have a lot of picking up and mending to do. SOmehow i guess i will find the strength.

It is a new year, a new beginning. Certain things are meant to be forgotten, others carried over. I certainly hope there will be an eventual change in things. I am scared, and yet a strange excitement comes over me at the same time.

Things may get better yet.

happy new year everybody =)

~* hold my hand and walk this path with me