I’m really happy.

Is it possible that the human passion for deep connection has something to do with the years writers spent crafting their literature—a nostalgia for the graceful conversations and shifting from topics to topics? Perhaps.

I am really happy. Do I have depression? Yes.

Am I really happy? Yes.

Right here.

Right now.

Maybe when you are reading this, I will be going through something else. But I’m really happy as I’m writing this now.

I owe an incalculable debt to many friends I’ve gotten to know better in the past few months. My interest to connect with strangers online returned to me this year around late March when, as a writer who had to work from home in a pandemic, I hopped on to Twitter to share my writing with others. Idly looking around at all the writer’s lifts and writer’s tags, then slowly learning to give feedback on others when their writing evokes something in me, I experienced a kind of epiphanal vision of a writing that would bring about genuineness and compassion to humanity. I resolved to devote myself to such the task.

Exactly when I started being open about my feelings, I started to feel love and support. And it led me to you. Yes, you, the one reading this now. While I have become accustomed to people sharing their ups and downs, I am still feeling extremely conscious about mine. Even so, I am still fascinated by the events and the conversations that form my life here.

Crowds. People, lots of them, there are also all sorts of them on Twitter. Communicating. Beyond the actual language barrier and cultural differences, there is also the complex unspoken language online. This language of implication often seems to be the case here, and it has the tendency to often make what you don’t say more important than what you do say. It’s a bit funny, fortunately I’ve been privy enough to notice subtleties.

But why I am telling you all of this? Maybe it’s because somewhere in the crowd, I saw you. You didn’t think I would, but I did. Just the same, you might have seen me when I was looking somewhere else. You see, I see your tweets as I scroll through the feed. I can see the words. Its meaning is left for me to decipher—to each their own imagination and experience.

Day after day come delightful discoveries: Hollis who has his soul on his Hong Kong beach, neon lights, and questionable life choices. Wrust putting on his suits and Billy’s around to love him. Robert is probably having ramen for dinner again, I wonder if he changes the flavours. Krys looks amazing as always with her hoodie on, I notice she really loves her teacups. Think the first Steve must be singing again as he drives his car and ponders on what’s for dinner (he’s also very proud of a certain rainbow keychain), the second Steve has a lot of work cut out for him, and he’s absolutely smashing it, I can’t wait to see him smiling. I really hope Vanessa’s bumble guy treats her with all the love she deserves. Scout’s probably having her beanie on like a thinking cap when she shares writing tips. Wes is sharing his wellness tips again, lovely, I always found them to be assuring. Kenny’s an amazing artist, very underrated too. Ah, that reminds me, I should see how Emily’s faring.

Xan has writing blueprints figured out, they have really nice handwriting, I hope they know that. Ellie’s interactions with anyone makes me giggle all the time. And oh, look! Kristy has shared another fun word of the day again! Is Whi and Biren walking down the streets in India observing the situation around them for their next post? I still don’t know how Maponi looks behind his shades—I reckon he has beautiful eyes though. I wonder, I wonder… Derrick is proud of his new playlist, I haven’t listened to it yet and I know I should. Eri should be so proud of herself for taking a huge step for a new chapter in her life. Meanwhile, Heather seems to be moving in a positive direction in taking a stand for herself, I know she’s strong to do it. Jess, ah well, she’s doing what she does best, being a mess and sharing vivid haikus. Rachelle, Mina, Richelle, Shruba, Alex, Nick, Brianna, Alice, Sam, Callum…

Ah, you see… there’s so many of you. I can’t count.

I’ve stopped counting the numbers of people who care for me.

Because they are all around me.

And they don’t have to assure me at all.

It is, I know, impossible ever to fully understand this complex nature of online interaction. Yet for the rest of my life, I have made a special point of checking up on these people and others to be sure they are all right. Thanks to writing, instead of seeing a single world—my own—I now see it multiply until I have before me as many worlds as there are these writers. Happiness cannot be measured, you see. It must be perceived. And to that, I say, “I’m really happy.”

You make me happy.

I hope you will see yourself with the eyes I see you one day. You’re such a beautiful human being. I hope you let yourself rest, don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes, over regret, and over everything your mind wants to destroy you. I wish I could remove all those demons inside of your head because you deserve to feel happy, to be happy. If you ever feel lonely, then watch the sky, because you know—someone, at the same time is watching the sky too, maybe feeling the same way.

I am glad you exist and I hope you won’t ever remove your own spot in this world. Maybe you don’t feel like you belong here but, Angel, then build your home here. I don’t want you to leave this world unhappy. I want you to live every little second, I want you to feel alive, I don’t want you to see yourself just existing. You deserve it. Whatever happened, it’s not your fault, the demons in your head recognize that you have a beautiful heart, they want to take it because they have never seen such beautiful heart as yours, don’t let them win. You’re not selfish for isolating yourself, but you deserve to talk to someone.

If you’re reading this, then please never forget to breathe and smile.

Lastly, I want to hear you echo these words…

“I’m really happy.”

…to yourself.

There's are plenty of you who have reached out to me in my DMs telling me about your life, opening up to me on extremely personal matters, letting me know what my writing has done for you, or how I have impacted you in some ways. I'm grateful, so grateful because you trust me so. It takes immense courage to open up to anyone, let alone a stranger on the internet. You are so brave, and I wouldn't want to let you down either. I'm not perfect, I will make mistakes. And I hope you know that you have made me a better person than I was yesterday. From the bottom of my heart, I cherish you.

The man who inspired.

Caught somewhere between wanting to express and not reveal everything, and armed with the reserved emotion armour, that was me. Perhaps, this has not changed—not entirely. Finally, I settled down with a blog for myself. This time, I told myself, you are not going to delete this one and disappear like you did before. Over the last months saturated with unprecedented global lockdowns and escalating uncertainties, I was struggling with a massive writer’s block. Finally, in Feb 2021, I was debating on a writing hiatus. Anxiety and depression was catching up. I tried to ignore the discomfort as I kept busy with freelance writing and art commissions, but the lack of clarity in my interests forced me to come to terms that I cannot be perfect. There was no such thing as perfection.

This distressed me. Alarming, for a lot of reasons. It’s odd, and I can only summarize that I am a perfectionist. It’s not as beautiful as it implies. There’s really a lot that goes behind the scenes. Whenever a piece is published, that’s what an individual sees—a finished piece. What they don’t see is the number of times I edit a piece, hate it, start over, hate it again and realise my first draft was the best. Managing my blog has funnily but not surprisingly made me a little more insane than I had ever been. But again, I overthink and overanalyze. I beat myself up when I feel that my writing isn’t thought-provoking enough, when it doesn’t give my readers something to think about throughout the week. I don’t know why it is that way but it just is.

On the evening of March 9, 2021, I sat in my room hiding my loneliness behind a glass of beer. Suddenly moved by the special melancholy that comes from being alone, I placed my manuscripts away from view. My laptop was switched on, and I decided to read something, anything. Call it a fate, or whatever magical coincidence that you believe, and this blog just found me at the right time. Grey in background, and white were the fonts. The words read “Hollis Porter is a fiction writer in Hong Kong”. So Hollis Porter is his name. He had a certain way with words. “Enigma” was the title of his post, The first piece I ever read by him—It was so beautiful there. Vivid and raw. I didn’t ever want to come back to reality while I was getting lost in his writing. Emotions run free when you’re enraptured like that. He had allowed me into the dream of his writing, made familiar by his sincerity and human flaws. And each new post then, I would wait eagerly, for they would infect me with newer streams of insight and artistry. For it was in his words, I saw visions—colours of vulnerability, shades of poignancy, and the free strokes of freedom.

So what does this mean for me then? Gratitude. I was grateful for what he had to offer. It’s not often you come across creatives such as him. I think much of writing is about creating a dialogue with the world around you. The settings, the people, the collective thinking. When I was relying on my own memory and experience in what I wrote, there was a barrier that held me back. In the beginning I always tried to keep reassuring thoughts flowing in my head. But I slowly realised I wasn’t giving myself space to breathe, to live, and I grasped for solace. And to have this pleasure of reading his words, and relate to them in some ways, it was therapy.

I took a moment to unwind. Started to read more from other people. Now I am writing every day—not because I have to, but because it feels right for me. I think what Hollis had allowed me was to stop time, and in that moment when time stopped, it allowed me for reflection, both on my writing and my life. I essentially left him a message the very next day. That message underwent a lot of editing because I didn’t want to make a mistake for first impressions—Heck, I was bloody nervous. But I had to let this person know what his writing did for me. It justified a lot of my emotions and legitimized my desire to write about what I was experiencing in my own life. His words, they would dance on your lips and evoke an emotional specificity of that said piece. It’s something that I chase in what I write.

Whenever Hollis releases a new post, I would think to myself, “This is the best damn thing I’ve ever read” and then I am proven wrong with his next writing every time. I think most of us can agree that a lot of our writing comes from a deeply interiorized and personal space. So I can’t help but wonder sometimes, what was his writing process for his antiblog like? There was so much chaos in his writing, yet it felt like there was always something beguiling to take away from. He immerses his readers in hauntingly sweet tapestries of word, blurring the lines between unreality and reality, allowing one to revel in the alluring haze between asleep and awake. What’s more impressive is, the antiblog series was a pure and cathartic journey that flowed fluidly from beginning to end. His way with details either, it’s never too little, never too much. He employs them tastefully in his thoughts and writing respectively.

It’s not easy most of the time to be reading his writing due to its graphic nature, but there is real beauty to be found in knowing that one can face their demons in reading and writing. Now if something made me afraid or uncomfortable to write, I gravitated towards it. I started writing honestly—kind of like an experiment that allows me to talk to my anxieties, and then lets me see beyond myself, as I learn to access my situation with a more present vision. I have to add, while serious in writing, his natural gaiety knows no bounds too, and I am most privileged to be connected with him. And after reading “Life By The Sea And Out Of Time” and “Life Under The Sea. And Back In Time“, I am inclined to believe that when a person’s work has communicated to me any measure of something valued, to be remembered or recognised in the streets I have walked, then they are a success within very limited qualifications; that is, we have already met.

It cannot be expressed enough that I am constantly humbled that my amazingly talented writer friends and readers are willing to read what I write. It grants me a sense of gratification regardless of the outcome, and I hope to hold on to that feeling. As I rest my fingers on my keyboard and begin a new piece, I would think of what he said to me, “Take what you want from my writing—it’s your own interpretation that counts. Your own reality.” I have written this post for him, he didn’t know, but he does now. He will know who was the man who inspired this, who inspired me. Some people read Harry Potter; I read Hollis Porter. Thank you, Hollis.

---

From what I have gathered from his writings, he is open to life, and continues to learn. He is a well into which the sweet waters of experience and knowledge keep falling. But more than that, he is a writer who is unapologetic of who he is. There's no doubt about it. For those of you curious about his works now, you can find them at https://www.hollisporter.com