For starters, 'Hello.'

Hi. You must not remember me, let alone remember my name. But that is okay – there will be time for re-introductions in the near future. Hopefully.  As for now, you just need to know my name. My name is Kristen Alyssa Sylvanmani and I turned nineteen on the 11^th of April. I am a Malaysian and have been born and bred in this little tiny red dot on the World Map, known as Malaysia but unfortunately, which can hardly be seen with the naked eye.

I don’t intend to come off as too formal but I am afraid I have already given you that impression. Anyhow, I should probably proceed with this – letter? note? – anyway. Time has a knack of dragging on too long when we are caught in situations which don’t tickle our fancies and it passes by at the speed of light when we are doing what we absolutely, passionately love to do. I, as you might have already guessed, found myself trapped in-between the two. Instead of responsibly taking matters into my own hands and doing what a normal living, breathing person would do while caught in such a situation – try to turn matters around – I had allowed myself to be drowned in my own self-pity and had allowed myself to manifest on pathetic excuses which were solely lead by my over-empowering laziness – the ‘I’ll-do-it-tomorrow’ syndrome. At the other end of this tug-of-war, instead of basking in my God-given gifts to do the things I love, I consciously allowed myself to fall from the pedestal , holding on to the fact that there will always be another day for me to shine. Both roads of which I’d stumbled upon – although tip-toeing my way through – lead me to where I am today. This very day. (I am sensing that I might have unintentionally related my situation to that of the character in The Road Not Taken, a poem I studied during my lower-forms in high school.)

With all my might and strength, I willed myself to open up Microsoft Word today, place all my 10 fingers on the keyboard, to simply type. I realized that I have not done this in the longest time as while I was preparing my mindset to write with the guidance of my creative juices, an over-whelming splash of emotion hit me like a tidal wave, as if to say, “Welcome Home!” As comforting as that split-second feeling was, I know I still owe you an explanation. Somehow or rather, knowing that I have to do what I have to do, I feel like a little kid who is being punished by her mother for something she did wrong. It is the feeling of knowing that even after all the scolding you are going to get, along with perhaps a few strokes from the rattan and even after apologizing a gazillion times, there would still be an explanation expected by your mother for your absurd behavior. Sigh, mothers…

An explanation? I don’t have any. I know too well that it is not something you want to hear but at this point, taking into account our unfortunate circumstance, I’d rather be blatantly honest than concoct sugar-coated, flowery lies to soothe your soul.

And now I’m stuck again as apologizing is another strenuous task.

To sum up all that I have written above and to reach the intention of this supposedly letter of apology, I want to firstly say that I am sorry.

I am sorry for abandoning this little nook of mine in the blogsphere.

I am sorry for allowing myself to get so lazy and brain-dead.

I am sorry for abandoning and disregarding my passion for writing.

I am sorry for giving up so easily when I couldn’t think of anything that was worth penning down.

I am sorry for taking for granted the gifts God has given me.

I am so sorry for not sticking to the end of my bargain by writing every happening in my life.

I am just so sorry.

I may not know who I am apologizing to or whether there is even a need for me to apologize to begin with but I hope you – whoever is reading this – would forgive me anyway. Despite all that I have apologized for, I hang on to the thought that maybe the joke’s on me. Maybe I owe myself an apology. After all, isn’t it similar to the overrated truth that ‘you’ve got to love yourself first before you can love another’?

If it is, well then maybe that’s the price I’ve got to repay some other day.

As for today, and hopefully in the all the days that follow, I am home.