Blissful Worries.

(Last evening I had a nice dinner with Yu Jie at Pizza Hut after work :) he'd just come out from BMT for the first time and it was really nice to see him again after so long. Yu Jie, really hope you had fun fanning cards after you left for home.)

It's my 4th week at my admin job in the army. I wrote this down during my free time in between tasks at work, so I'll be able to record my thoughts as accurately and vividly as possible.

During dinner that day, Timothy called Yu Jie. Apparently he'd just booked out from SISPEC as well, having had his second round of field camp :(. I saw the effects later on when me and yu jie met tim at Clementi MRT. Tim was visibly tired, carried a heavy field pack containing probably lots of used stuff from field camp - but the worst of it all was his heat rash. He constantly twitched due to the pain from the rash all around. Things only got slightly better when we got into his dad's car at Aljunied MRT. On a side note, thanks tim for offering to ask your dad whether he could send me to Lorong Chuan station to collect my bike, and your dad for agreeing to do so :)

It really did took me some time to consolidate my thoughts over the weekend. It was only now - today - when I went back to work and he back to camp, that I started to fully comprehend everything I'd been thinking about over the weekend. I was sitting comfortably and sleepily in the office.

I listened to random pockets of laughter around the office, feeling myself resting relatively comfortably on my seat. The friendly talk. The running sound of my PC. The whirring noise of photocopiers and printers.

And then all of a sudden I started to feel really worried and fearful. The more the full realisation of my thoughts came inside of me the more afraid I could feel myself becoming. And then it started to hurt as well.

It hurt inside me, looking at that heat rash that day. I became suddenly afraid for tim and yu jie - and not just them - everyone I knew, other people going through such a nasty time in the army no matter where they were, I worried not just for their safety, but their health and even their mind too.

Surely, through tough trainings and field camps and other stuff, my friends in combat NS would definitely have undergone very hard (and perhaps, cathartic) experiences. Perhaps, I thought, in that manner the army does help to....mature the mind in some awkward way.

Somehow or other, though, my mind constantly hooks itself onto the pains and struggles that they face while undergoing such training. I worry for them a lot, believe it or not. Even in my relatively safe and comfortable environment, I wondered how everyone was doing. I worried and pined for my close friends in particular.. Whether they were safe, coping well or barely - and just whether they were feeling okay inside. Can't really express myself too truthfully for fear of MSD stigmatization, but yeah.

Ultimately, in the comfortable bliss of today, worry lingers. Logically I know, it's not use to worry - but I still do anyway. It feels like a slow rain of ash, marring an otherwise perfect scenery of a new-born butterfly taking its new wings to flight. If only what I feel could truly be expressed into words.
I'm not trying to paint a bad picture of NS - perhaps there really are people out there who really like NS or have been....irrevocably changed by their own cathartic NS experiences.

It's just what I thought about today and what tugged at my heartstrings and what hurt me even in that relatively safe environment. And I felt like penning down my thoughts right at that moment.

Now I'm hoping that everyone out there's safe, that's all.