Racy Redwood #2

This is where I go when life gets particularly stressful – a place by the river called Boat Quay.

Flanked by skyscrapers in the Central Business District, a really busy place with dense human population. This is where all the business action goes in this city. In the daytime, you almost always see people dashing about, going about with their busy busy schedules. In the nighttime, the place lights up with the area lined up with restaurants, cafes and nightspots. Lots of action, all the time.

Hardly a serene picture huh?

But this is where I go… a place where milestones and footprints were left. A place where things start and ends. This is where I go, when life feels unbearable. To remember some of the best moments in my life. To remember during bad times that “This too, will past”. To be reminded that, I have had a good blend of good and bad times in my life. And that all is good. In good time, they will be.

I stroll around Boat Quay, and allow memories to permeate my mind, overtaking the spaces occupied by stresses and frustrations.

This was the place I had my graduation photos taken with 4 of my best friends in the university. We had hired a photographer to store the proudest moments of our lives at that time. I can still see vividly how proud and satisfied we looked. We had looked forward to the future with great hopes, dreams and expectations.

This was where Mark first asked me shyly if I would be his girlfriend. Where he first kissed me, by the river. I like walking around, tracing the steps we took, holding hands, as an official couple, for the first time. It leads to the spot where he proposed, looking so scared that I’d say no. Silly boy, I was dying to marry him!!!

And walking further down the bend at the river, I recall the pain as if someone had punched through my chest and ripped my heart out. This was where I learned of Mark and Jane’s affair. I can almost see the shocked faces of their colleagues that Mark’s wife had turned up at the company event unannounced. The pure shock interlaced with anger on Mark’s face as he removed his arms on Jane, demanding to know why was I there. And the fallen look with shame on Jane’s face. I would have felt my heart dropped, if it wasn’t totally broken by then. I knew what had happened that very second as I walked towards the event stage.

I do not believe it was specially engineered that way, but further down, near the benches by the river, where the big trees were, was where Thomas told me he wanted to marry me, that he was in love with me since the first day we met, and he’d be waiting to catch me when I fall. I was very married then. And while things at home weren’t the prettiest, we were trying to work things out, or so I thought. So with tears, this was where I lost my friend and someone who loved me, someone I loved too, if only I was allowed to love him the same way he wanted me to. This was where we said goodbye.

But I picked Boat Quay to celebrate my divorce, my start of a new life. And what laughs I had with my friends, my determination to be whole, despite it all. And my precious friends being there for me in my darkness moments. I had come out of those, and I know I can survive life’s worst moments.

So, yes, this is the way I do it. Not quite the usual, but I come to Boat Quay to remind myself that “This too, will pass”. To remember I had survived and I can do it again. And that nothing is impossible, if we put one foot in front of another. That as long as we keep moving forward, things will get better.

Somehow it will. And I have seen it all, well, almost, here, in Boat Quay.