An Open Letter to Singapore from a Foreigner and a Secret Lover.
Coming home to Singapore is always a strange feeling for me: mixed with familiarity, a yearning sense of wanting to belong and gnawing feeling that I’ve overstayed my welcome. There’s a maxim: no one belongs here more than you. I feel that way about Singapore – that a significant and irrevocable part of who I am could not have been forged without you. Boy, I’ve tried and yearned so much to belong and I have belonged here in microcosms that sits atop this tiny island – microcosms that have flourished quietly in the fringes but now have suddenly grown and have grinded with friction against the emotional baggage of what I understand to be a fledgling democratic nation.
It’s cool bro. We’ve been there before. The great political upheavals come from the pent-up frustrations of the working class. We've got the scars to prove it and our presence here is evidence of that exodus in the political upheavals of 1997. What marvels me is where Singapore is at right now, at the cusp of a tide-turner and I hope that it carries you with a peaceful transition.
You see I’m not Singaporean. I’m Indonesian. I have lived here for close to 14 years. As I’m not a citizen, I’ve grown to remain quiet but I’ve felt the empathy of your struggle, yearning to participate in the great national discourses but alas, I'm just a guest and I've learned well enough to respect the boundaries of a nation's sovereignty from living here.
Politics aside, Singapore is my home. I have deep, deep feelings for this country – shared nostalgia of having spent more than half of my life here and more importantly the transformative adolescent years. But this nostalgia feels borrowed. This is what you get when you rent a livelihood in someone else’s nation. It’s a lot like having a relationship with a character in an indie script – maybe in a movie by Boo Jun Feng or a play by Alfian Sa’at – the surreptitious love between two lovers who could not proclaim their love so openly for the heteronormativity of an Asian society that would have frowned on it so we deny it. Or perhaps the complex maternal relationship as portrayed by Anthony Chen's ILO ILO, except I'm Jialer and Singapore is Teresa.
So I guess, I deny it... until now. It's really unusual to say that I love this country but heck, I do. How could I not feel for you as you have been a surrogate to my own upbringing?
Singapore, I know you love me too… or at least that’s what I have felt from you otherwise I would not have thrived as I have here. You are truly the best cradle for third culture kids like me and I could not have imagined growing up happier in a town with a more vibrant culture and a fantastic national library. Truly I have grown here and graciously, I am filled with deep gratitude.
So how do you leave a place like this? For this I look to Beryl Markham:
“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
Next year, on your 50th birthday, I will be celebrating your birth from afar as I celebrate the 70th birthday of my home country. For you Singapore, I wish you peace and happiness in the coming years with a lifelong amity between you and I.
stormborns
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
