Veronika decides to die...

I feel as if I have nine more days left to live.

As if in nine days time I will pull the trigger on myself and end my existence as I know it.

That's how leaving feels.

I thought I had given myself enough time to prepare, enough nerve-numbing hours of pouring through administrative forms and visa applications and telling everyone around me that I am leaving.

Yet when I whittle it down to a fortnight, panic strikes. Not a blood-thumping heart racing kind of panic but a strange kind of heightened sensation at everything. It's like I want to take in everyone at the same time, yet I can't.

A heightened sense of touch from hugs. A heightened sense of smell of Harvard's aftershave. A heightened sense of hearing the odd chatter from a drinking party. A heightened sense of sight, trying to remember people's current hair colour, style and face shapes. A heightened sense of taste, of tea, one lipton teabag, two flicks of sugar, throw in a wooden stirrer and hot water. The same drill every evening after dinner. Somehow the wood from the stirrer enhances the taste of sugar-sweet tea tasting water.

Watching the dining hall, quiet except for the purring of fridge and the click from the milo dispenser. It's comforting when you know how many flicks each person puts in their teacup. Everyone here, some I am familar with, others I have grown to love, sitting static, head over work.

Sitting on my bed, sinking into the silence of it, my ears ringing despite the noisy chatter of a drinking party next door. "Give her another shot!" "She's not drunk enough!" I recognise those voices. I smile. Looking at two boxes and a old battered suitcase, I have condensed my life into. Boxes labelled FOR DARREN, FOR OTHERS, TO BE RETURNED, TO BE KEPT and TO BE TAKEN HOME. I have neatly divided up my life into five boxes. Family, Singapore friends, Australia friends, myself and society.

All of a sudden there is an epiphany of simplicity. It's as if life just took the form of a triangle. Or a graph. Or a map. Or a 20 piece jigsaw puzzle.

Like the moment before a crash, I see my life flash by in slow technocolour Wong Kar Wai film sort of way, interspersed with bits from Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicide and a narrative from one of Paulo Coelho's books.

Soy hot chocolate and one skinny soy latte takeaway at Plush fish with Akina every tuesday at 9:50am.

Butter and a scraping of vegemite for breakfast.

High table, second formal chair from the right, my study seat. Evelyn to my right, Regine, Debra, Nisha, Mark on the left.

The pink box containing my toothbrush, toothpaste, contact solution, contact lens case and face wash to Harvard's room.

Running for the tram. And always missing it just as I walk out from the gate.

Affendi, Chandran and Niro, teasing, bantering and laughing.

Vogue and Instyle with Regine, and the flipping forward and backwards and forward again.

Licking gelati. Always baci on top of mint.

The musty smell of Ballieu library and the damp staleness of the graffitied toilets.

Rossi the fat cat, spread out contentedly with a sly smile, on the foyer carpet.

Asia-pacific international relations lectures. And inane notes from the "Very Mature Political Science students"

Being on scaffold and touching the lights for Cafe with a kind of trembling joy of a five year old kid in a candy store.

Being on the scaffold yelling because I'm exasperated with the lights.

Being onstage for Cafe, seeing smiles among the darkness. And feeling adrenalin-pumped joy.

Late night conversations with legs hoisted over armchairs, specifically about the moral perogative of screwing a dead chicken.

The smell of intersection pizza on cold rainy nights and the smiles and whoops of joy that accompanies the slimy cheese and bbq chicken.

Pieces of memories are scattered, I'm unable to tell which came first. Was that this year, last year or before school even started.

The ephemeral instincts of memory. Some fresh. Some a little faded like a tram ticket in the pocket of newly washed jeans. Some feel so archaic, like a yellowed price tag stuck on the back of a bus chair.

I feel like I have been in Melbourne, in International House, in the University of Melbourne forever. If my mind could take pictures, the photographs would overflow, each looking like an image from a lomocam. Saturated with colour and emotion and thoughts.

I feel like a spectator now. Like a piece of very polished glass is in front of me everywhere I go. I feel like I can see them, but I can't touch them. I can observe them, but I can't feel them.

I feel a sense of remorse. A need to apologise. A need to hold on tight, grabbing the sleeves and not letting go of comfortableness.

Not smiling. Not speaking. Beauty.

Correction. Leaving is not like dying. It feels more like losing my memory permanently, of a time so pure and naive.

It's time to go home.