#dayfifty

Yip, the VPN situation in China still sucks.

Hence why I'm posting this blog entry a day later. Meh, it's not like anything of note really happened anyway.

I went into work for a few hours to mark my stupid student journals. I bumped into my colleague JI, who happened to be working at school too. She teaches elementary and middle school students, so it seems like she's always working after hours.

While I was at school, JI and I talked about my decision to leave my current job. She doesn't want me to leave either, which is rather flattering. I just feel so torn about the whole business. On one hand, I don't want to leave a relatively comfortable work situation and relatively decent colleagues and students. But given what I saw with the negative changes made to the ESL programme at our school this year, I don't have a good feeling about what's in store for the foreign teachers next year.

I didn't get as much work done while JI and her kids were there in the office. But I made JI some fruit tea and she broke out some of the leftover cake from Friday afternoon and we sat and chatted together for a while. When I was alone again, I knuckled down on my work and blasted out some tunes in the office with my bluetooth speaker, kinda like what C used to do in the past when she worked late at school.

During that time, X's presence was all around me, like every other time when I'm alone and no one's there to distract me from my morbid thoughts. It's happening a lot more lately and I'm wondering why. Maybe it's because I haven't deleted her photos and messages from my phone and I haven't sent her personal effects back; it's all still in my study.

I'm still not ready to move on. My heart is still clinging stubbornly to the ghost of what X and I used to be to each other, of who X was before.

It's annoying as fuck.

And 'Clementine' by Halsey isn't helping either. I really love this song; it speaks to my current state of heartbreak. But those haunting echoes of a harp playing in the background sound more and more like X's haunting footsteps tiptoeing across my heart every time I hear that song.

I feel like I'm going crazy. When will this heartache finally end so I can breathe easy again?

It feels good typing it up. Maybe I can start exorcising X's demons bit by bit till I'm finally free of her.

After getting my work done, I ran home quickly with some packages that got delivered to my workplace. Then I went to meet AS and C at C's apartment for a movie marathon. I ended up watching 'Escape Room', 'Dark Phoenix' and 'Aladdin' before I bailed out after 22:00. From past experience, C's movie marathons literally involve watching movies all night with minimal sleep and bathroom breaks. And I like my sleep too much to do an all-night movie marathon, lol.

Still, it was a fun day and evening watching movies with AS roasting the actors and scenes whenever something silly or implausible came up. C even cooked some delicious food for us: coconut chicken curry, vegetables and a macaroni and cheese pie. I really tried not to enjoy all the fluffy romance in 'Aladdin', but I failed. I've always loved the Disney version from a young age and the new version was just as good with too many attractive people to count.

I lost in my battle for sarcasm and cynicism and Romance won this round.

I started listening to another song too: 'Another Lifetime' by Nao. It's so beautiful and freaking awesome! It's a total throwback to a 1990s RNB ballad. Every time I listen to its angsty lyrics, it makes me feel like I want to start writing again.

I'm going to take this as a good sign.

I have a tiny idea for a story. It's not an original story, it's based off a silly YouTube series I watched nearly two years ago, but it might work for getting my creative juices going again.

I think I really need this: to drown myself in a big and long project I enjoy to help myself get over X. Writing has always helped me heal in the past.