Two weeks ago, I had wanted to go somewhere. Anywhere.

Though my passport has yet to reach its expiry date, it was heavily burdened with visa endorsements from my trips between Singapore and Malaysia back then, and I had no choice but have to get it replace.

It had ran out of pages.

I didn’t choose 17 October 2007 to get it done. It chose me. It was a sudden idea though I had wanted to get it done sooner, but always didn’t see the need to.

It was a morning I wouldn’t forget.

I walked out in the morning light, heading down to High Commission of Malaysia by myself by public transport.

I hadn’t slept. And I thought it would be the best since the submission tend to be very early in the morning.

Since young, it was a chore always accompanied by my parents, and a chore I absolutely hate.

On that very day, I was too dazed to remember. Maybe I don’t like the process so much that I refuse to remember. But I know my phone was out of battery, and since there was also no one to call to pass the awful time, it didn’t quite matter.

I was supposed to return that afternoon to pick the passport, but there was only so much my body could take, and I only returned the next.

I remember queuing to get my picture taken, and I remember why I had loathed my own countrymen that much. Some attempted to cut my queue with some reasons that didn’t make sense, and when I pointed out their mistakes, they told me I knew nothing.

The person ahead believed them, not me, and allowed them to cut queue.

And that, would have cut me half an hour of waiting for my submission.

I felt plenty of injustice, but I was too tired to fight.

***

I held the passports in my hands.

I opened up the new one and saw tired, red, and swollen eyes looking back at me. They looked sad, and kinda.. cynical.

Must be from the morning of 17 October 2007, when the picture was taken. Even the face showed signs of water retention.

I ambitiously planned to have the 64 pages strewn with visas, and thought of what could be ahead.

When I opened up the old passports, the enthusiasm disappeared just as quickly.

The passport’s top right hand corner was ruthlessly snipped, and from a document that held so much importance to me, it had became nothing.

And from that day forth, it would no longer serve me, and I would no longer bring it everywhere I go.

I thought about the memories it held.

The trips back and forth. The passport had a difficult birth when we met a conman in Malaysia.

Then, after seeing the constant endorsements, it saw the endorsement of my employment pass. It then saw the residence ship I had so much wanted.

And I took a glance at the place, which was last graced when I had her in my arms to declare her citizenship and get her passport done… the day she was to leave my side to be by my parents’.

It held so much, and then it became nothing. Just because someone had cut its tip away.

I stacked it to a corner when I got back, and had plans for the new one.

Then again, it never held much. Much of the visas are just between Malaysia and Singapore, and I had never ventured further than Bintan with it. I never went far with it.

It has been nearly 2 weeks, but the quietness on the new one, is bringing me nowhere. I fact, it was such a stark contrast that I am sensitive to the new change, and it just gets me waking up last night and keep thinking about the blank passport.

It must have been 6 times I woken up, and I kept thinking about my new passport.

The enthusiasm is not a realistic one.

The blankness stared back at me.

And it was almost deja vu.

I felt this somewhere before. And it was exactly just a year ago.

Ya. Deja vu.

I am still here.

Not anywhere else.