whoa. it's been what, exactly 366 days since i last posted.
i must say that many, many things have happened in the span of this year and one day, but i shall not go into the details of these things because the reason i came back [just for today] is to dedicate this post to my dearest team.

much like what many of them have done this year when b'div 2013 ended, i wanted to post a dedication to them back then too, but i really couldn't bring myself to do it without crying so i scrapped the idea. but now that time is really running out and my mini birthday celebration with them just passed, i can't afford to make the same mistake i did two years ago by keeping my thoughts caged up inside of me. i need to tell them how much they mean to me before i regret this again.(yes girls your mother goose is opening up her heart to all of you) so here goes.

where do i begin? it was 8 years ago that i met nic, 4 years ago that i met my batch of teammies and 3 years ago that i met my junior teammies. back in pcps, my motivation to join volleyball was that since my dad, uncle, sister and older cousin were all part of it, i didn't want to be the odd one out. so i got in and played. back then i really wasn't very passionate about the sport, so when i got into dhs via dsa for vb, my dad told me (and i myself too, thought) that i didn't have to be too serious about it, i just had to attend training regularly enough and do the minimum, because my focus here was to study hard in dhs and not to play volleyball. and so yeah, i came in here, praying hard that i could just scrape through my 4 years in jhvb and that time would fly by so that i could get out and join something i liked better with no hard feelings.

but in the midst of this game plan, something completely unexpected happened.

i grew to love the sport; and grew to love my wonderful teammates even more.

i can still remember the times we spent...from when we first met in year 1 and were so awkward, to the times we upskirted each other round the classroom block, to the time we went for our first team outing at klp, to the times we totally slacked during pt, to the times we went for u13 and dropped the ball in the pool and on the roof and went to nic's house after that, to the times we met the [then quiet] juniors and complained how they were all tall, to the times we made the juniors get high and slack with us, to the times we trained hard and went for c'div 2011, to the times we trained with the taiwan coach, to the times the juniors rejoined us and shocked us with their improvement over only a few months, to the times the 18 of us trained so terribly hard for b'div 2013, to the times we went all the way to jurong for u16, to the times we had team talks, to the times we had lunches and dinners after trainings, to the times we went for b'div 2013, to the times after the year 4s stepped down yet we still met up regularly to celebrate birthdays and do stupid things like we always did...through all these little moments over the past 4 years, i unknowingly developed a love for the sport, unknowingly grew so attached to all 17 of my teammates and unknowingly found people who i'm definitely going to remember for eternity.

now that time has indeed flown by and i got past these 4 years, i really want to go back.

to be honest, two years ago...when i lost that someone so dear to me, i fell into a state of helplessness and grief. to top it off, when nic and jessie got posted to 3A and when everyone else was discussing what cca they'd wanna go for in sh, i realised that two years later, i'd experience that same excruciating pain from losing the people so dear to me. all over again. as much as we always say how we'll always be friends, i know deep inside that somehow things will be different in one way or another. don't get me wrong, i do believe that we're still gonna be as close as ever even in 2014 and beyond. i really do. but there's just something not quite the same when we're not seeing each other everyday and training and working hard together as a team anymore. i know this because the same person whom i lost back then, whom promised me that things between us would never change, is now practically like a person i've only met in a dream, a mirage that never really did exist no matter how real it once seemed. and i was so afraid of this happening again after this year, i ever considered just distancing myself from the team so that i wouldn't be attached to them so much; then, it wouldn't hurt that bad.

obviously, that didn't work. it wouldn't have ever worked. you can never, ever fight the attachment you feel for someone. because when you try and tell yourself not to get attached to someone, it means you already are.

once again, my plans failed. instead of becoming more distant, my team patiently stood by me and cheered me up all the time, waiting for me to finally be fine and open up again, making me get even more attached to them in the process. but i guess it isn't all that bad, because i really really really enjoyed and appreciate the time i spent with my team now, especially of the past 2 years. of the 16 years i've lived thus far, b'div with these girls was definitely the best. and i really mean all of them. if even just one of them weren't around, it wouldn't be the same ever. it's every single part of them put together that makes this team so special. they're such a special bunch that as much as i always say that nothing is impossible, they completely refuted that statement. because around them, it's definitely impossible not to smile and not to cheer up. happiness literally radiates off all of them, so much so that i can feel it even when i'm physically far away from them.

when they were asking me to pull the string out of the hello kitty box last friday, i thought it was gonna be like a scene lifted out of some cheesy drama where the character pulls the string and small things (like photos or notes) start flying out in all directions to all over the parade square while a heartbreaking melody plays in the background as the character stares at all these flying things with tears in her eyes. (LOL) obviously that didn't happen for me because well, clean up the parade square after we're done? ain't nobody got no time/mood fo dat. what came out was a whole string of photos from year 1 all the way to year 4, including long-lost photos from our very first team outing to klp. right there and then, though it was a quiet evening in a clean parade square, i realised how terribly i was going to miss this team after the year ends; i could literally hear the melody of 一个人想着一个人 playing while the frozen images of our memories flooded the parade square. that was when i really lost it and cried.

but with that a'div survival kit they gave me, i'll definitely pull through somehow.

if you're a literature student you can probably see how disorganised my thoughts are, jumping everywhere and anywhere in terms of chronological order, audience, mood and so on. that's because i really am disorganised inside; i have so much i want to say to my team, yet i have no idea how go about it at all. so i'm really just writing down whatever comes to my mind and hoping that they'll still feel what i feel and understand what i understood. a messed-up mind can only allow me to write this much; i hope i didn't leave anything important out though...if not, i don't think i'll be able to make it through this time round.

so before i forget, there's one last thing i definitely must not miss out before ending this post.

be it two years ago or any random bad day or when b'div ended...
for all those times you stood by me