Pictures

A picture paints a thousand words, too many perhaps, because all words stop when I see a picture of her.

I've never felt this way before. It is a great sadness that shouldn't be there. It is as if I've already decided that she will not accept these sentiments, affections.

But she's made it clear to me before that we're just friends - and I approved it. In fact, I was the one who spelt it out not once but twice. I thought she would simply say no when I called her on Sunday, but she didn't. She asked if it was love - I couldn't answer that because I couldn't define it. She wanted some time to think about it - that honestly surprised me. My heart skipped a beat. Is that normal?

I don't want her to feel obligated to be nice because of our past relation. I don't want her to feel guilty if she declines. I want her to be honest and true to herself, and in doing so she will also be true to me. We will not deceive each other. Instead, we will be honest, and reach the best possible outcome together.

We should meet up, if she can find the time, to talk and resolve our feelings, whatever they may be. She hardly knows me beyond my strictness and depression, she doesn't know how gentle I have been, I can be. How do I shed my intimidating nature and let her feel at ease? How can I make her smile, laugh, to bring happiness into her life?

Does she look down on me just because I'm still not an undergrad? Does she think I'm 'crazy'? Does she think I'm weak? These are the insults that will destroy me. If she betrays my confidence and recounts our conversations with condescension, it will destroy me. If she judges me, it will take away the precious sentiments that sustain me. In drawing strength from her kind and loving heart, I have made myself vulnerable to her.

In coming clean with sentiments I know she avoids, I have risked turning our friendship into a tomb. I hope she sees that, I hope she understands that, I hope she appreciates that this is not an easy step. I would like to be the cause of her smile and be a blessing to her, because she has been a blessing to me.

Help me think this through, because I can't.

I never expected to fall in love this way.

Withered

There is a Plant that has lost its suppleness

Lashing winds and pouring rains

It's not a cliche - it's accurate, precise

The Plant always stretches towards the silver lining

It seeks the pleasant, smiling sun

When the clouds cover the horizon

And the silver lining lies beyond this hemisphere

The Plant is lost.

Slowly it dies - drowned by the fretful skies

It begins to sway a giddy sway swirling

In whirlwinds, blurring the lines

Between progress and regress.

A siege of the elements, lurching it back and forth

It loses its colour and turns a pale pallor.

Only its fossil will be preserved for posterity.

Disclosed

I've said it. I hope she says yes - I'd be disappointed if she says no - but it's ok to be honest. It's ok :)

Hmm, I'm too used to having the ball in my court. It's a new sensation, somewhat pleasant in its own quaint manner. 

Undisclosed

I want to say I love you Xue Wen. I thought I could fight the feelings I have for you.

After all the tenderness you've shown me over this long year, I wished beyond wishing that I could love you, as you have loved me. But more so, more than in friendship. I want so say I love you. When I write on my public blog, I want to say I love you. It is not a sin to love, but I fear my love is feared.

You've never been willing to love beyond friendship. You've told me that in more than one way. I'm afraid of losing you as a friend. I'm afraid that you will fear me. But know this: it is because I respect your choices that I only write your name here, behind a cowardly pseudonym, when I'd rather hold your hands and say it to you looking into your eyes. You know me - handling the bare truth is always my preferred choice unless something precious is at stake.

This has to have a conclusion. I cannot continue watering the fruits of futile affections. I must tell you - tenderly, fiercely, anything! - before I leave Singapore. I must tell you I love you despite reason and resistance. I must. There is nothing else I can do, no other way to move forward into the future if I am stuck with these feelings. I need you to free me from my own feelings.

It's worked before. I will say hurtful things. I will snarl and rage till you cower in fear or fight back. You will be hurt, and perhaps you will hurt me in return. I want you to hurt me. I need you to hate me. I need closure. You seem to avoid meeting up with me over Christmas, give curt replies to my well-intended messages. Is it that obvious? Are you on to me?

But I don't want to hurt you.
Please Break My Heart.

(if you won't love me)

Dismay

What was I looking for after my 'A' levels? I think it was freedom. More than that, it was what I could do with it. Meet up with friends and catch up over coffee, join a new club and make new friends. Get a job - get paid while I learn, and make my mark.

None of that has happened. I'm not connecting with friends at a deeper level; I feel like I can never tell them how I truly feel. The distance is very disheartening, to think that I've made it through my ordeal but no one is there to share it with me.

I'm still unemployed, but I want the money. With all my medication and the $400 a month I spend on it, I feel guilty asking my parents for more money. More money to continue my piano lessons, more money to pay for my cycling jersey, more money to buy a road bicycle - the pride of owning the fruits of my labour. But my labour is unsolicited and the emptiness dismays. To assuage my wounded feelings of inadequacy I spend more money - on food, onbooks, PSP games, on things to take my mind off life. And my bank account falls below the minimum amount, the same account I expected to bourgeon with new wages.

Friendship, status, respect, recognition, wealth and love. Must I bear with this intense loneliness again?

XW, ms cricket, I wish we were more than friends. I need you to help me up, help me regain my strength, help me heal the festering wounds with your loving grace.

At least I'm not drinking anymore.

Enough

I've had it - I've had enough. For close to a month I've been searching for a temporary job. I've read books on interview processes; every point on the checklist has been followed even before I read it. I shake hands firmly, present a neat and cogent CV, dress smartly and talk confidently. The interviewers (all female for some reason) will smile with me, I'll make them laugh, I'll make them go 'wow' with my record and personality. I've had enough of this.

They always say they'll call but they never do. Every rejection wounds me more and more; makes me doubt my own self-worth. There used to be a Benjamin who'd confidently dismiss any failure and blame it on external factors without a thought. I've fallen a long way since then. Two hard years... now I blame every 'failing' on myself. I refuse to accept this self-sentence, rationalising that my person is not to blame for this. In plain fact, that is the truth - but it doesn't erase these feelings of inadequacy.

I've concluded another 2 interviews today in similar fashion. Both parties parted ways with a firm handshake and a smile. If they don't call, I won't look anymore. It's just not worth it. I am picky about the work I accept; a clerk-and-cashier type of job is a waste of time to me and the posts I agree to for interviews require initiative, meticulous research and critical thinking. I refuse to accept anything less. I am from Nanyang JC, I am a KI student, I am heading for Australia's Go8 - I deserve more than the mundane.

I will focus on reading for now, and riding my bicycle. I will work on my piano skills and karate. I will do all these and find a way to fill my time before I go to university. It's so much easier getting intelligent work once one falls under the undergraduate category, and even more so post-varsity.

(Un)employment

Nothing went wrong. In all my interviews, I could speak confidently and engage the interviewer.

My impeccable CV follows every rule in the book and more.

My attire - from strapping long-sleeved shirts to shoes that shine in the sun - is calibrated to convey exuberance.

I am always 5 minutes early for an appointment and demonstrate that I have read up on the position before hand.

Every interview ends on a good note: they smile and I occasionally give them a good-hearted laugh.

They say "We will call you by the end of today/tomorrow" but never do; nor do they respond to the voice-mails I leave to demonstrate my keen interest.

I steer clear of contentious topics like pay, fringe benefits and leave days.

After all this, why am I still unemployed?

Stanford Prison Experiment

I used the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment in my IS thesis to illustrate how sociological/psychological experiments lack a sound positivistic character. The experiment was too much of a simulation that failed to match actual prison conditions where the behaviour of both prisoners and guards are heavily scrutinised and regulated.

The prisoners were so tormented that they fell into a state of 'learned helplessness', characterised by the absence of individual opinion while relying on others for answers, guidance or instructions. Two years of my own little 'prison' and the tedious, lonely studies that took place within the confines of home have reduced me to a similar state. I'm no longer the bubbly never-say-die fellow I once was. Where i once attributed any fault to external factors, I have begun to blame it on my disposition and character. Of course, I rationalise it away by telling myself that my circumstances were different and caused by random factors but it doesn't get rid of that nagging feeling of helplessness in the face of existential forces.

My recent search for part-time employment has made it more salient. They say they'll call but they never do; they forget to email you even though they said they would; every company wants experienced part-timers but we fresh school grads don't have it - and how are we expected to find any with this kind of criteria in place? The internship application dates are closed, my college conveniently forgot to tell me about legal attachments, and the government boards - the sector which holds some meaning beyond the next wage - is only roping in scholars headed for the likes of Harvard and Oxford.

I come from Nanyang Junior College, a mid-ranked college right below ACJC and AJC. My projected grades BBBD/ABBD are sufficient to earn a place in universities of good repute such as the majority of Australia's Top 8, and my shining (no kidding) CCA record attests to my active personality. So tell me, why can't I clinch the positions I apply for?

Does the HR sector only hire students from the top 5 JCs? Do they have an (unfounded) issue with my NS exemption? Is it my wardrobe $500 wardrobe overhaul calibrated to impress that's insufficient? Or perhaps it is their vague questions asking for my strengths and weaknesses when these issues are highly contextual? Perhaps it's the downturn that's discouraging them, or the simple lack of interest in interns/part-timers/temps.

In 2008-2009, I felt 'unemployed' because I could not attend school like any 'normal' JC student. I missed my friends, my teachers, my life and my youth. My spirit was shattered and scarred but little did I think that I would truly fail to find employment after JC, where I thought I could breathe and live at last. Don't mind the narrative; I'm barely keeping awake. I used to crave sleep so much; now I fear it. Give me something to look forward to every morning and I shall rest early, rest easy. Give it to me, because it seems to elude my efforts...

... what a shame.

Vacillations

She asked me to write her entry essay for medical school - yet she left out so many details and didn't volunteer sufficient information even when asked. I stopped editing it.

She asked me to edit her journals for her management modules - yet she kept fussing over it, showcasing how bad her PR skills were

She agreed to come as my secret date for prom, yet when it came to the crunch she backed down.

Decisiveness is one attribute she sorely lacks... but the fun we had during our JC orientation days is hard to ignore, hard not to ponder what we could have been.

Fuck

It's still so hard to compose myself. The spammer is back, harping on my NS exemption. It's irritating to say the least - to contend with his stupidity. That fellow is so much of a coward that he won't even leave his name, just some symbol. The MO warned me that discrimination might occure; I didn't expect it to occur so soon.

Then there's that bloody HR company, Recruit Express. I applied for a temp job and for days they didn't respond. I didn't even know if they got my application. All of a sudden they call today and ask me to turn up for an interview tomorrow. Guess what? My clothes aren't ready! What the hell...

My sharp reaction to this situation is what alarms me. All of a sudden I become flustered, frustrated, wrathful. I feel like destroying something - anything - just to vent it out. It angers me beyond reason, I could bear it until despondence joined wrath.

Somehow, it made me reflect on the past 2 years. I want this company to recognise me. I want Young & Rubicam and MINLAW to give me internships or suitable part-time offers. I want to succeed and today's fluster made me think of the 'f' word. No not the vulgar one, the one that lousy students are slapped with.

Now I'm bingeing on a bowl of cereal. I can't remember the last time I felt like bingeing, or drinking, but it all comes back in an instant. My mind is arrested and the words won't form. The lucid prose and cogent arguments dissipate with the post-exam euphoria that was still with me a day ago. It's just like 2008 - one day, in a flash, the cookie crumbles.

Fuck it, I hate being so fragile. I hate parents who don't believe in me. I hate the world.
Fuck you world. My misanthropy stands.

Terror

I though it was over and done with. I thought I had got over it - them - those. I was wrong, it still triggers something tottering on the brink of panic as if one were balancing on the ledge of a cliff, looking down at the jagged teeth below where the wind howls through your soul.

That word... 'failure'... it is still so strong. I didn't even hear it from a person, just a thing. I was watching internet TV and the theme of this episode was testing and failure. 'Test', 'scores' and 'failure' kept hounding my ears. It was negligible at first. It barely triggered anything. The terror slowly dawned on me like. It felt like a razor probing deep into my throat slowly with my reflection in a mirror so I can witness the full visceral agony. My heart beat faster, my shoulders tensed up and my breathing became heavy. It was an indescribable fear, an unnamed horror that bound me in cold chains.

Perhaps some scars never d heal after all.

Too much lust to call love, unless sensual desires come hand-in-hand with heart-in-heart.

Desire

To my undisclosed lover

The overwhelming desire
To touch and to kiss
To hold and to fondle
My dear, sweet _______

Your soft, warm hands
I want to feel them again
Yes, you in my arms
The lock of our lips
and tentative tongues
Me with you, over you
in you

Your singing enchants me
A calming voice
Yes you are sweet, your
voice, touch, scent
I want to sift through your
nocturne veil, trace my fingers
along your contours
softly, gently, deftly
exploring curiously, stirring the
dark impulse of passion

I want you...

[I can barely contain this]

Memento

[First Draft]

I dropped out of school, just to 'recover'. I could not sleep. I could not sleep even if my body ached with fatigue. There was no rest for my weary mind and bloodshot eyes. Six days a week, every week, never a hope for sleep until the seventh day, I gained a short night of fitful sleep.

I could not study because I was too tired; I would not understand what I wrote nor carry a coherent train of thought. Slowly my grades fell... the 'A's turned into nothing. Neither could I sustain any exercise because my body could not rest. Every day began without any purpose or joy or relief, on and on it went day after day, week after week, month after month. I became a Sisyphus on an uphill climb without a goal in sight. It never occurred to me that hell could be boredom until this happened. I couldn't even play the piano - I'd suffer panic attacks playing for my teacher because I felt so... useless. Worthless. Everything I worked so hard for I lost overnight because that one doctor decided it was time to play with my pills.

Then the drinking started. Fifty dollars a week, one hundred, one hundred and fifty. The alcohol, growing in quantity and potency to help me earn a few moments of blithe happiness amidst days of endless drift. Sometimes I mixed liquor and beer to get an extra high until my heart began to beat so hard and fast I thought I would die there and then and all would be well. I went to school a few times to see my friends but the damage of absence was done. Out of sight, out of mind, out of date. Our rapport was gone. I envied them. They wore their uniforms with a purpose, I merely to relive what purpose I had while aimlessly haunting the corridors. I wanted to die, I prayed to die, but the usual silence pervaded. So many times I wanted to take it myself, yet Hamlet was right - I feared the stakes of Pascal's wager.

But at least she was there. At least there was someone I could talk to. She would always be there when I called, when I messaged. X gave me kind words when when closest friends judged me. She came to see me when all I saw were the same four walls of my home - by now a prison. In her I found some hope, some joy, someone who actually gave me something closest to love. But she was always clear that we were only friends, nothing more.

I promised her I'd stop drinking but failed to keep it. I remember that night when I had drunk more than usual an couldn't find a cab back. I remember walking home from the neighborhood bar, stumbling along the way. I remember wishing I had taken just one more drink, one more elixir for the euphoria to keep me buoyant before I sank again. I dropped to my knees once, then again, then a third time. I remember my eyes began to blur as much as my head until I realised I was crying and asking why I had to suffer through this. On her birthday I told her what happened that night. I told her I couldn't keep the promise, and from then I swore I wouldn't fail her again.

I went from psychiatrist to psychiatrist. The Freudian psychotherapist, the cognitive-behavioural psychologist, a third psychiatrist. None of them could give me a working diagnosis, but at least Dr. Samuel found the right mix of pills to send me to sleep. The pills gradually increased in kind and strength just as the drinks had but at least they gave me a sound sleep every night. I began to regain some function during the day and started studying again, hoping to catch up. As the new year came I fell into terror. I didn't want to face the strange faces, but I did eventually. Even so, I could not stay. The pills gave me sleep at night but left me drowsy in the day. The nightmare soon started again: I stopped going to college, once more confined to the same walls.

The days soon became aimless again. I'd trick myself thinking I was studying when all I did was peruse the same notes to while away the hours before night came and I could go online without guilt. There were no more drinks; I soon ran out of money had didn't have the cheek to ask for more. But sometimes I'd flare up over the smallest issues: the punctured wardrobe doors testify to that. My knuckles were cut by splintered wood as were my feet - yet they couldn't compare with the scar that fate and time had left on me. No matter what I felt, no matter the time of the day or issue on my mind, it was always there - the fragments of broken dreams like shards of shattered glass that pierced my trembling hands as I tried to pick up the pieces.

So many nights I cried. I wish she was close by to pick me up. I wished she could hold me. I wished I could hold her so that I knew without a doubt that she was truly here with me. I didn't want to be alone - never alone - but all I had was her voice at the other end of the line. I loved her, because she loved me. But did I love her? She was always so distant, so... cordial. I couldn't have loved someone I didn't even know. I knew she would never want us to be more than friends and my love was therefore somewhere between the platonic and the romantic, or so I reasoned. Yet I still thought of her everyday. I thought of her warm smiles which shone in her eyes whenever we met. I asked to hold her hand one day because I needed the reassurance, and she held on to me with a strong grip. Her warm, soft hands and slender fingers invoked a poignant sentiment that I couldn't name. She held on to me longer than I did to her. I regretted letting her go the moment I did so but I couldn't lose her - never lose her - and so I've never asked to hold her hand again.

I still think of her everyday, praying for her happiness in some way or other. I wish I could be so much more to her. I love her. Is that really so bad? I remind myself it's not healthy to be so addicted to her. I made my own snares, she been nothing but sweet to me. She never talks about herself unless I ask, and then only in passing. X has left an indelible mark on me. She has become so special in so many undefinable ways. Sometimes I think she's lost too. She'd join clubs but never stay in them, or make plans to join more but never does. She studies - that is all she's ever done since our secondary school days. I'd always see her at the atrium, textbooks out with paper ready. Sometimes I wonder if she's as lost as I am without knowing it, or refusing to face it. I hold back my sentiments, knowing full well that I will crumble if I lose her. Perhaps I just want someone to love. Perhaps these years of abject loneliness have simply made me desperate for someone to love and be with.

For the first time, I told an old friend how I really felt about her, what she's helped me through. "duuuude... don't say that; I want to cry..." I'm not surprised; tears are all that seem to come despite all the hard work and tenacity. Cambridge will grade it as it sees fit. Regardless of the score, I can proudly say I made it through half of my 'A' Level education on my own and stunned many teachers with a performance that exceeded those who had two full years. I have walked through tears and heartbreak, solitude and despondence, the deprivation of sleep and depravation of mind. I can never have the same spunk and zest for life I had before. I understand that I still hang by a thread. Above all, I wish I can love her still because she's loved me.

[In a small blue case, a music box that sings over the rainbow]

"To Xue Wen

My beacon of light

My fountain of hope

BenLow 2009"

A note, folded in three, lies below the music box:

The first fold reads "I", unfolding the second layer, "cherish", and the third reads "you" with stenciled flowers, stars and snowflakes drawn all around.

When will she see it?

Will she see it?

Never never never

I never wanted to come back here. I never wanted to have to say things that could only be said here. I think I did well for my prelims - I even got a B for literature even though I made it through J2 alone, alone in so many ways - but school starts again tomorrow. They will confirm my grades tomorrow.

The fear is astounding, paralysing... It makes me want to hide. I want to go drinking again and feel the silly euphoria that helps me forget everything else. Or maybe I need 'her' again... Yes I want to hold her hand again. I want to hold her. I want her to need me. I want someone to love - and she is the only one who inspires it. We're meeting up this week.

I've always told myself not to fall in love with her. She seems to inspire it but is herself immune to its allure. I avoid succumbing by keeping a tight rein on my imagination. I will not put her on a pedestal... or have I already done so? I don't want her to feel like she has to be nice to me just because I confide in her. I want authenticity - authentic love. It seems I have succumbed after all.

She doesn't know how much I want her and need her.


But I digress. I know this fear. I've faced it before. It is the fear of the future, of what it holds, and what it would do to me. Then I cling to the present because I have walls to protect me, things that make me happy or, at the very least, prevent me from sinking further. I wouldn't want to engage with anything or anyone beyond my 'comfort zone', my own little world. It is a place of solace, from the prison of my fears - fears brought about by the unnamed condition and all the destruction it has wreaked. The invisible scars are very real and keenly felt. They are still raw. The whips of life.

I've decided not to go to school tomorrow. Yes, I've decided to hide. I get nervous when I'm meeting people, miserable when I have to submit myself to judgement. The trigger words are very real as well and quickly induce a state of shock - hyperventilation, palpitations, anxiety, and soon I become too weak to speak or move. It has happened on many occasions and on each occurrence I remember nothing but fear fear paralysing fear. This is the cowardice that two years of uncertainty, loneliness, insomnia and despondence created. It was never my fault.

I feel like Job, but I've never blamed God. Jesus is my salvation - don't ask me why I hardly know myself. He works through fateful providence - can, has and will - so I believe. My faith is unorthodox and I distrust the church because it goes against so many teachings in the bible, assuming the bible itself is accurate. History necessitates selection, and the bible's compilation looks extremely suspicious. But I digress again. It's what I do to run away, so maybe I'll just go for one lesson.

I'm scared of sleeping now. It will make tomorrow arrive faster. As far as the mind is concerned, sleep is to time what a wormhole is to space - a shortcut. Could I please not wake up?

Obsoletion

What purpose does this blog truly serve? It is a meagre replacement for the listening ears and caring eyes of a friend. Once this exam is over, I will search for new friends and grow closer to old ones.

This blog will be obsolete.

O-C-D

It's only been four days since she came, the miracle. It's been 4 days since I held her hand and felt the infusion of her care in my blood. I asked to hold her hand because I miss the sense of assurance it brings and I was euphoric with the way she held onto mine - not limply, but with all the strength her tiny hand could say "It's ok because I'm here with you".

Of course she was tense, people don't go around asking to hold hands regardless of the other party's gender. But I felt that she cared and was sure of it. After all, she did come to visit me despite her busy schedule. I'm addicted to her, but it's not a romantic love. I cannot define it. It's like a reciprocal love but so... precious to me. I love her because she loves me, but I also want her to admire me. I think I want my tenacity to produce outstanding grades despite my circumstances and at the end of the day, I want HER to beam proudly at me. What is this love?

4 days since and I'm backsliding. With each slide I feel like my spirits are cut - slide, cut, slide, cut - like a bar of soap on rain-moist rocks. The confidence is fading fast and getting the answers right doesn't seem to count for much unless someone else esteems me for it. I suppose that's what the school system does: it prices recognition on grades but no matter how good my answers, only Mr. Sim ever gives me any praise for it.

I just want to hold her hand again. Small things mean a lot in times like these. I want to call her again, I want to hold her hand again - I want to hold her - and feel the warmth and comfort only she seems to able to give. It's different, special. But I tell myself to be strong and stand on my own again. I want her to see me strong and tall, not some fragile miserable creature... but I can't deny that every moment I wish she was here with me. Do I want to win her? To possess her love?


OCD means I write my notes, crush them, write them again, tear them, write tear crush write tear crush write tear blanco crush to make it "pretty and perfect" - but all I'm writing is how crushed and torn I am inside.

Back to my books.

Dawning

It's 5.22am, the second day of what I can only describe as a sanctuary period. I am hiding, delusional, refusing to come out of my own little world. After yesterday's breakdown, a few things dawned on me.

What my doctors call 'anxiety' cannot be separated from despair. My anxiety induced something tremulous, like fear, only less pronounced. Like some mirror flaking with rust, it slowly put me in a state of despair and because that despair was suffered quietly - alone - for so long a time, it made me anxious about life and love. This loneliness is also loveless insofar as I couldn't be honest with anyone about my feelings. Even when I talked to Xue Wen and couzzie, the words did not come easily. It is hard for neatly defined words to match vague, confused emotion, but sometimes I simply did want to verbalise the same sentiments that have been repeated over and over and over again. I simply wanted them to hold my hand, just to be with my when I cried.

They were the only two souls who softened every blow with a touch of humane tenderness. It's not as if I wanted a romantic sort of love, just one that gave the noun 'friend' all its warmth and preciousness. I always strive to be strong and independent but it's obvious there will be times when I can't rise up again without some help. A broken crutch cannot mend itself. That's why I need them. They provide a softer, gentler kind of love that my male buddies cannot provide. Indeed, they fail to grasp the issue and pontificate with ineffectual goodwill. Their failure to respond constructively only made it worse because - well, it's worse when you're alone in a crowd.

It's not their fault, I think. But I blame them for their callousness because it hurt me so badly. That's why I turn to Xue Wen and couzzie and only them. XW doesn't pretend like she knows while couzzie actually does - both will sit with me and talk, and listen, and simply be with me. Their company is as precious as their words, but the buddies don't see that.

I'm scared of falling back into despair, yet I realise a breakdown is the only way to purge this terror. I suppose I do want to break down but only if there's someone holding my hand as well. But they have their own lives too and I must wait till they're free. In the meantime, I hide myself in an insular world where everything is filtered and censored in self-defense. I also eat, for the warmth in my tummy and flavour in my mouth is soothing, somehow.

It's 5.45am. In 15 minutes the world will make up and buzz about their business, but not I. I will stay on the internet and hide myself in that world where no one knows what's truly authentic and what's not. I will indulge in fiction till I am worn, then I shall take my pills and sleep as the sun passes over, waking only to go online again. This is my insular life, one that I shall stay in until this storm passes over and the warm hearts that care for me give me sanctuary and rest in their loving care.

With incoherent thoughts and sentiments,
Me

I just wanted someone to hold me while I cried. Then I realized all the love I could get came through the phone, so I cried again and again and again because I couldn't help it, because I couldn't correct the situation, because I couldn't help myself. I wanted a hand to hold and an arm to cradle my wretched head, but of course that didn't happen.

I wanted couzzie, the cousin I've always looked up to, to help me. I wanted Xue Wen, who has returned some measure of tenderness to me, to hold me. But they were on the other side of the island. I didn't know who else to call.

Junwei will blame me. Again. That's why I called him and told him how much I hated him for what he said last year after karate. He blamed me. Hon Ding is too callous to understand, so I didn't even try.

Then I realized how they could all be counted on less than one hand and I cried even more, and howling, and calling for a God who never gives a straight answer. It is ironic that I'm reading the book of Job now.

That was 30 minutes ago. The outer tears are sporadic but the quiet ones echo on and on in my cold and callous heart - broken.

Broken.

sigh

Burnt-out, sinking, the charred remains of a derelict vessel on its requiem into the deep.

I wish it could be this easy.

If only the figurative were the literal.

Two years of anxiety, continual struggles and vacillations, I just want it to end.

I'm so tired I can't study, can't smile with friends when we watch movies

I'm so tired...

I need someone to hold me

Make sure I fall into rest, not a hard crash

Lie my head on a pillow and kiss my forehead

Instead of a free-fall with the cold kiss of the concrete floor.

Plath's aquatic nocturne, full of slow calm and silent depth,

with pretty flickers of light...

deep in liquid
turquoise slivers
of dilute light


quiver in thin streaks
of bright tinfoil
on mobile jet:


pale flounder
waver by
tilting silver:


in the shallows
agile minnows
flicker gilt:


grapeblue mussels
dilate lithe and
pliant valves:


dull lunar globes
of blubous jellyfish
glow milkgreen:


eels twirl
in wily spirals
on elusive tails:


adroit lobsters
amble darkly olive
on shrewd claws:


down where sound
comes blunt and wan
like the bronze tone
of a sunken gong.


I want this calm oblivion

What the fuck do I care

Oh sure, another one of those blue mondays.

Despite the rain I went for tuition but my tutor forgot we had class today. Fuck.

Yesnoyesnoyesnoyesnoyesnofuck-I-don't-care-no
That sums up what I think of couzzie today. I think this is the first time I'm this mad with her. I think this is the first time I'm mad with her, ever. What the fuck what do I care.

So everyone cancelled their appointment with me today and now I've no mood to go for karate even though I always look forward to it. I'm too sedated to study more than a few minutes before fizzing and blanking out, too drowsy to sustain practice on the piano and too fucking apathetic to care.

I'm sorry for my bad language - NOT. Fuck the school and its denial of my rights. Fuck that imposter of a teacher who charges me with academic honesty even though I was just making up for what the school failed to provide. Fuck the hypocrites who teach history in NYJC. Fuck that lit teacher who thinks she's just that damn superior and revels in making us feel like we're never good enough or going anywhere. Fuck the other lit teacher who hardly teaches. Fuck MOE for throwing PW at us. Fuck MOE for implementing the university bidding system. Fuck the system for robbing us of our youth. Fuck Singapore - period.

Fuck them all
fuck them all
the long and the short and the tall
fuck all the posers and principals too
fuck the whole system and their bastard parts

Fuck off.

Drained

I woke up today knowing I was about to bring formal charges against a teacher's competency and negligence. I put on the now-hated school uniform and headed out. I kept on wishing that there was some other way, that everything worked out properly in the first place so that I wouldn't have to fight so many opponents at once. First my circumstances, then myself, and now the establishment.

I'm so tired now that I can't study. I reduced my sedatives but forgot to take my vitamin B complex. My fatigue isn't physical. It's a drugged drowsiness and despondent resignation based on the old paradox: I want to study and give myself a fair chance while knowing full well I'm never going to get the grades I could achieve under better conditions. One could say my efforts are admirable but ultimately limited but neuro-chemistry and situational factors that I'm too tired to reiterate.

If the institution cannot help, then I pray God can. I hope my Member of Parliament will represent my interests even though no one has voted in this constituency for a very long time. No taxation without representation, taxation without representation is tyranny, phrases coined for the American Revolution. I hope my MP will represent me fairly and remedy my grievances. My situation sucks enough as it is, I don't want a half-baked teacher to ruin it even more.

Oh, I met Nicole on the bridge to Thomson Plaza yesterday. She has conveniently forgot the $300 I loaned her but has enough money to ponder going to the University of London on her father-doctor's money. Whatever, I don't care. I have turned into the hippies I studied: drugged, tuned-out, and looking for a happier way of life that isn't paranoid about productivity and wealth.

I'm so tired........................................................

Warded

Sometimes I wonder if I was better off warded. I'm pretending to study, I'm isolated, and I'm sleeping most of the day. My level of activity is commensurate with a warded patient's but socially worse off because there's no one to talk to. I am an island fenced off by high, forbidding cliffs that I actually want to jump off. Of course I can't, I am the island. The water is neck-high but the continental shelf props me up like a conical tripod but all I want is to crumble and sink into the ocean.

"No man is an island". I believe that saying never came across mental insularity. I have withdrawal symptoms after missing out on my dose of optimism and have no ataraxia (Greek for tranquility) despite all my atarax (anti-depressant drug).

The prelims are next month and I don't know when my papers are.

The prelims are next month and I'm taking the larger part of this week off.

The prelims are next month and I'm still drowsy in the morning.

The prelims are next month and I spell   i-n-s-u-l-a-r   a-p-a-t-h-y

Slow Day

It's been a slow day. I woke up at 3pm, studied, went on the piano, studied some more and I'm busted by 8. I'm not too sure what I covered exactly. I'm not too sure what I'm doing either. I try to spread my waking hours evenly among all my subjects but it's not working very well. Productivity remains low because I'm essentially going through motion, with the random insight every now and then.

I don't want to see my psychologist anymore. Going to Woodbridge is a chore because it's so far, costs so much and takes up too much time. It's quite a dreary place as well despite their fountains and what-not. The discerning eye can see that the windows are barred, even though they hid it very well.

And every day is passed alone.

Help me out of this

I'm too tired of this. I can't take it anymore. I tell myself that the 3-4 hours I spend every night watching Stargate or playing Facebook games is justified because I've been working so diligently in the day. What a lie.

The truth is bleaker: my studies are a filler between waking up and going online when darkness falls. I hate studying this way. I hate not having classmates around. I hate the way the chair I sit on for hours warms up and makes me feel so oppressed. I hate the way the sun beats down in the afternoon making it so drowsy and frustrating.

I hate this life. I know I have so much to read, so much to think about, so much to analyse and memorise before THE 'A' levels, that single exam which decides whether the stressful and turgid life all JC students suffer has been worth the fight. In my case, it will also decide if all the pain and pills and the irremovable scars are signs of veteran distinction - a testament of my mettle - or a long gash that I will always see in the fading whites of my eyes.

I grow fat because the medication makes me eat and retain so much weight. I can't exercise much because of a bad foot. The disgusting innards of my drug-dowsed mind take on a new form, and I hate it. I hate this, all of this, I want out. Why do I have to fight anyway? Why DID I have to fight so hard....

I don't want to read anymore, I don't want to write anymore, I don't want to deceive myself anymore. I wish I could let it all out, cry it all out, because I don't have the energy to smash it out anymore. That option was expended last year. All that's left is an insipid, lack-lustre hollow of my previous dynamism. I don't want to live this way.

Someone give me an answer, because the drugs aren't talking to me anymore. I want out. For the first time in months, I actually want to die.

Oddities

Lunch consisted of char siew rice, but the meds are fooling around again. I took

an apple
coffee
a box of biscuits
a bowl of fruit & nut cereal
2 soft-boiled eggs
a mini-mooncake

And I still wanted more. Yes, I'm getting fat and my damn foot is hurting even more. I so wanna go for a jog, or do a variety of other cardio workouts that I used to frequent. Fat black belt - fuck

My head was drowsy for most of the day and study was unproductive, to my mounting distress and consternation. Never mind.

My Happiest Birthday

If we had time enough and life enough, like today

Immediate Resonance

Oh yes, I'm determined to stay this happy as often as I can, even if it costs me money or even a few marks. You see, I've started reading Prozac Nation and find the story of a young, depressed and psychiatrically-drugged child - my story - growing up. Certain lines spoke out to me:

Phrase 1
"Happiness is an ongoing battle... I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it."

Phrase 2
"Life was one long distraction from the inevitable... We're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter. That was my motto."

The most obvious insight is that this girl is more dead than dead could be. She is a zombie overwhelmed by her circumstances and, in the memoir, cutting and drugging herself on top of all her meds - not that she takes them all.

Phrase 1 depicts happiness as a fight - why!? Sure, life has a lot of competition, stress, anxiety and uncertainty, but that in-itself does not entail misery. There are existential balancers - friends, hobbies, loved ones and lovers - a rainbow painted as an equipoise. Of course, her condition is worse than mine, but I do hope she can one day muster the strength to be friends with her friends, to give love a chance. She notes that "I need love". My friends responded when I reached out to them - some harshly, others with loving tenderness. In that sense, I don't just fight for happiness, happiness also fights to get to me in the form my friends' waiting hands and open hearts.

Just hang out, eat, chat, play together and smile. Remember that a smile together is as good as a laugh alone - but you're not alone.

Phrase 2 is a fatalist stance, surrendering to the inevitable shroud of death. Well, if I don't have the religious courage to commit suicide, mortal life can either be a long, flat cloud or a sunny blue sky dotted with fluffy blue clouds - and the occasional bird twittering past. Yes, I like bird-watching, but that's besides the point. To be honest, I see the point in death: for people like us, death is the rational course. However, if I don't die, I'd damn myself to a living hell if I'd live in misery. This is why we need meaningful and enjoyable activity - careers, sports, music, reading, anything - to counter-balance the challenge of living.

What does it matter? It matters to me, that's why I fight for it, and I'll show my friends that their care has not been in vain. A hug, a handshake, true smiles exchanged. I love my friends and although some of them have hurt me before, I still need them.

Why was this post titled Immediate Resonance? Simple. It's because today's blithe outing had a simple joy that connected with me. My pals weren't free, but that's ok too. My long walks still took on their characteristic stride but with some sushi and soup in-between, the warm sun and cool malls were positively enjoyable. I brought back one CD, but that makes me very happy. I came home and listened to the music and headed off for piano - a simple day never felt so wonderful.

Prozac Nation also resonated with me from the very first paragraph, but it was a repulsive resonance. I was able to comprehend the protagonist's struggles and their parallels with mine. Her situation is graver than mine and I honor her feelings, but I feel that God - despite my agnosticism - has been kind to me and it's time I stop looking at the floor and up at the horizon.

I look to my left and see my buddies.
To the right, I see my female friends.
They are my comrades and my refuge.
I look behind and see my parents trying their best to hide my scars.
I look forward and feel the staff of effort in my hand, the canteen on my belt, the boots under my feet and I know that this is the time of my life.

I begin walking beside the rainbow, following it's colors to a special place beyond time and space to present dreams. This day is the present.

Fate's Cruel Irony

My history essays straddled the borders between a B and C, but the unseen section pulled me down. Literature was a disoriented mess, and economics was a total farce. Yet I told my psychologist that everything was dandy, and I believed that they were until the truth of the matter was apparent.

It proved one point: I have lied so well that the lines between fiction and reality have vanished. It took me forever to calculate my marks, and I bore the impression that I had regained by pre-Condition standing. That was so wrong. I've cancelled tomorrow's consultation, preferring to shy away from it again. It's for my protection actually, I don't want to have my essay and fragile mind dissected and shredded by my teacher any more than it already is.

My next appointment with my psychologist is in 3 weeks. Today's was squandered by me delusion. I don't know how to cope with the news about my lit paper. I really wish, most ardently, that I can stop fighting here and now - a protracted war is so debilitating. So what if my grades don;t fall short of others who've been attending lessons? It reflects badly on them but gives me no credit. I did not endure so much to achieve so little.

My shrink said I should give myself a pat on the back, considering how far I've come. She applauds my tenacity and diligence, but I'm my indifference speaks volumes about my resignation. I've stopped swimming, now I'm just doing my best to float on the fickle currents that buoy me to and fro to nowhere.  As usual, I'll pretend (convincingly) that the ills never happened - the marks for my history essays will become synonymous with the mid-years, even though they're not.

I wish I rest my head and hurt somewhere, maybe with someone, maybe with anyone. My parents have no faith in me, accepting the m-e-d-i-o-c-r-i-t-y spelt by my grades. No one tells me I can do better than I have done, but I need that. I need someone to have faith in me, because I have so little faith in myself. Help me, please, dear reader. I need a friend, a lover, someone dependable... because I can't depend on myself.

It's too cold alone...
Help...
Help...

More Euphemisms

Young and of weary spirit. It doesn't feel natural, healthy, or desirable in any way. The only consolation and justification is the hope of future blessings in the form of status, wealth, and security.

Take away that hope and everything crumbles. Funny how we base our endeavors on such metaphysical notions despite our rational up-bringing in a pragmatic society. I guess we all need euphemisms for emotional security and stability.

Engulf & Swallow

I keep turning to this blog when I'm down, and down I seem to be. Why? Because there is no rest against your own past. It is not a battle but a war that can only end when these two mutually antithetical forces cancel the other. Hah, see? I'm such a liar. Using academic lexicon to gloss over human pain rationalises it away, or at least appears to. It is a distraction.

I need a distraction. What? Youtube, anime, books, all light on the head. But I'm neither light-headed nor light of heart. If I could talk to my circumstances and face them eye-to-eye, this blog would serve as its face. Mere words to point to something more abstract and real than the larger world. Politics, economics, environmental issues - the great questions of this age swooning around in the public eye, a dizzying spectacle of how mankind continually plagues itself with endless ills. We fought back nature, but we've hardly progressed fighting ourselves. But I digress.

Clarity of thought is difficult when one is plagued with muddled sentiments. There is no enemy to grasp by the throat, whose face you can rearrange with hardened knuckles and taut muscles. It's not as easy as fighting someone else. Instead, the vacuum of my mind pulls me further inward. Insularity becomes a cannibalistic virus and my own little world begins to eat away at what my pills were meant to fight against. Like China, like Japan, the inner corruption weakens external defense. Wait till an imperial power (another of mankind's follies) invade and everything will crumble... but some Meiji milk and Kahlua would be opiate, allowing me to turn a blind eye to the war.

I'd like to travel with good company someday, see the world. I'd have accumulated sufficient reserves before that. I'd stay at motels with the optimum balance of budget and comfort, and the same goes for food and mementos. No, the world is too big. I'd prefer to visit certain cities - not a hurried tour - and take in the history, the culture, the land and the zeitgeist. Paris, Japan (but not urban Tokyo), Berlin, Vienna, London(?)...

I caught that lie. I'll be running from more than going to. To be rational and realistic is a torture without the means to achieve the ends prescribed by my passions. I'm tired but, as usual, I don't want to sleep. I like to believe that my days have not floated by pointlessly, so I delay (with utmost futility) the coming of the next day by sleeping late, as if absorbing the most number of hours of each waning day would delay sleep and 'therefore' the next day. I have woven interesting structures of thought, strange systems of beliefs. The conservatives will balk at it, the realists scoff at it. But I don't really care.

Well, it's been a long time since I've had suicidal sentiments. If only the antithesis could be divorced from will, I'd have no blame in my own death.

Satis House

"I am disgusted with my calling and my life"

The paint is falling off

My clothes are wearing thin

The ants are forming a colony

My mind is lost in time

I have the symbols of wealth but feel dead inside

Cheated by life, college, doctors, 'friends'

Wait, I don't have much cash left. Looks like I cheated myself too.

Entrapment

I feel trapped.

"Keep the future in its place" I said, but I am hard pressed to follow. I don't need some critical social theory to make me aware of the social forces that coerce me into following certain paths. It's not just academic pressure, or the implications it has on social status and access to a varsity education. My grades now will affect future employment and this, too, puts on the pressure.

My illness, or Condition, isn't helping. My social circle continues to shrink as circumstances compel me to pull out social engagements for practical reasons. Academically insecure and socially isolated, I can't help but feel as if I'm trapped in a prison of circumstances. But this island traps me too. The heat, the incessant construction noise, the hustle and bustle of life and the dead look in everyone's weary eyes all point me towards my own despair. With my foot problem, I can't even vent my frustration through physical activity. How frustrating.

"So you're an 'A' level student?"

"Yes"

"Which JC?"

"Nanyang JC"

"Oohhh!"

The declaring my student identity and the 'oh' of recognition it elicited was gratifying. Physiotherapy was more therapeutic in the psychological arena rather than the podiatric. Then my exam papers were returned. Othello was 1 mark short of a 'B', poetry was a mess. I was too agitated during these 2 papers and subsequent sittings were better thanks to my trusty 3-month-old MP4 - which recently failed on me (that had a depressive effect; I can't spend so much so soon).

I want to buy some happiness. I want to buy new sai to supplement my training. I want to import my favourite singer's albums from the US. I bought nice new clothes but have no occasion to wear them. I want to buy an iPod so that the songs I rip onto my macbook will play. I want to buy some Kahlua and mix it with Meiji milk. I want to buy a bottle of Absolut and mix it with apple juice. I want to buy a fancy new slide handphone with fancy features that will make me smile. I want to buy Romance volume 2 & 3 to keep my romantic side alive in these despondent times.I want to do all this - and maybe more - but I don't have the money to. Nor will I ask anyone for it.

One item only, I must choose. A restriction - self-imposed - to assuage a guilt that accuses me of not deserving anything, because my high academic aims (where did I get them?) are too lofty for reality. Life is in shambles. I reiterate my constant wish: "to die, to sleep - no more".

'Tis not nobler to to take up arms against an endless sea of struggles; he robs himself that spends a bootless grief. But yet conscience makes cowards of us all. If only I had Nietzschean notions of divine morality.

Trampled

I realise that I've no one to turn to when others trample on my sentiments.

There was this girl a at friend's party whom I found very captivating. On my 'happy' blog (is that a lie too?) I posted a few paragraphs describing my romantic fantasies. Then came two anonymous spammers who told me to stop "acting like shakespeare or a poet" and "it will never come true". I never thought it would come true, nor was I trying to 'act' like an artist. I wrote what I wrote because it was a beautiful dream to me, but it seems that some people read meaning where there is none. Why would they get so agitated over my imaginary persona?

I think they were her friends. These spammers said "she's older than you". So? The rest don't know my real age. But someone else said I needed to stop dreaming and "get back to school", which suggests that they know me. How is that possible? Or maybe they read my previous posts about school. In any case, I was surprised how sensitive I was to their sharp comments. I was surprised at my confrontational attitude towards the whole issue. If they said it to my face, I would've started an argument or disfigured them on the spot. I was calm enough to give a rational reply on the tagboard, but I wanted to strike them - even if they were girls.

(It is fallacious to expect gender equality while treasuring 'chivalrous' preferential treatment. If we are to be kind and loving, let it come from our faculties of love instead of some frivolous social contrivance.)

It looks like my past and my illness has scarred my self-esteem beyond repair. Being misunderstood, so wronged, is so... hurting. Tenacity, oh Jesus, please give me the strength to surpass my flaws and hone my strengths. Amen.

Inspiration at Borders

Dispositional-Situational Totality

Dispositional:

1. Physical Health

2. Biography

3. Mental state

Situational:

1. Economic & financial

2. Social location

3. Prospects

4. Nuclear social location (?)

5. Autonomy and obligations

Collective conscience is a myth. All there are are multiple overlapping webs of belief enforced or perpetuated by a narrow ruling class and modifications to the sum confluence of these webs are contingent on power symmetries between groups or individuals. Personal liberty has an inverse causal(?) correlation with cultural homogenity because individual deviance is not penaised - it may even be respected on equal par with antecedent paradigms.

Culture = common practices within a particular social loci(?)

Chinese = "Jews of the East" - Phibun Songkhram

Ethnic and cultural loyalties provided a more intrinsically appealing basis for national identity than the modern state system, based on complex ideological foundations imported from 'alien' societies.

In South-East Asia (SEA), Marxist class conflict is entangled with ethnic conflict between native races and 'alien' ones. Prior to independence, the native races have always occupied an economically inferior position compared to the economically dominant white colonials. After independence, alien economic hegemony persisted as the Chinese became the economically dominant ethnic group in every South-East Asian country. Attempts to transfer ownership of the economy to "real natives" or Bumiputeras, such as Indonesia's Benteng Program or Malaysia's New Economic Policy (NEP) were circumvented by "Ali-Baba" arrangements where businesses would be registered under the names of Bumiputera while Chinese businessmen called the shots.

These conditions resulted in widespread ethno-economic conflicts in various forms. Malaysia experienced racial riots in 1969, Chinese in Indonesia had to relocate or surrender their businesses (PP 10/1959) and those that refused faced harsh repression. Such xenophobic tendencies even resulted in attempts to 'naturalise' the alien races via cultural genocide or forced assimilation. Thai and Indonesian Chinese were forced to take on Thai- and Indonesian- sounding names respectively, although the latter went so far as to forbid all public expressions of Chinese culture resulting in the closure of many temples, Chinese-language schools and the prohibition of public displays of Chinese script as part of the 1967 "Basic Policy for the Solution of the Chinese Problem".

I've become very adept at lying.

Tenacity

Even ms. cricket cannot comprehend it fully. My tenacity, and God, are the guardians of my dreams.

~

I smile because the exams are over. I can enjoy myself.

I am sad because the exams are over. The loneliness sets in as my intellectual 'distractions' relinquish the spotlight.

I can't cry, although I wish I could. Crying alone makes things worst doesn't it?

Ms. cricket is sleeping. I guess I have my weaknesses too. At least my pills will swoon in my brain, sending me into oblivious sleep.

Come morning, I will realise there's no one next to me. My bed would be a pleasant grave. Oblivion is such a comforting word.

Will her hands and heart be as soft in my dreams? She can give an assuring warmth or stab with an icy spike. I've seen her do it, felt her do it.

I'm used to being the powerful one.

(I used to be the powerful one)

2nd F-up

This is actually comical because I don't really care about the subject. For economics, I picked 2 questions that I was confident of answering, and ended up doing another two instead. Why? Simple - it was a mistake and I didn't even realize it till I was half through the wrong two questions. In the end, I wrote that I couldn't complete the paper because of a hangover and caricatured my school logo, making it into a merlion with the tag line "our morbid nationalism". Then I proceeded to ramble about the modern condition, about Marx - yes the Red one - and Prozac. I drew a connection between these two, dropping in a few socio/philo book titles along the way.

History was better, but the time I spent canceling sentences could have been better spent writing about... 3 paragraphs! Enough to complete my source critiques. My answer for nationalism strayed a little, my answer for the Japanese occupation was pretty good (for someone who hasn't sat for a paper in 1 1/2 years) and the one on maximum government was a little... fragmented. I was hoping for a question on national unity. Oh yes, and if a question doesn't ask about proving/disproving a certain quote or phrase, I'd be totally disoriented.

E.g. comment on the role of ethnicity in post-WW2 SEA = huh!?!? Too friggin broad!

By the end of the day, after spending hours "bent double", I recalled Wilfred Owen's Deuce et Decorum Est and how it rhymed with Study is a Pain in the Ass - the latter being a poem I shall soon compose. Speaking of poetry, I'm able to identify many literary techniques but the "literary effect" is a more elusive substance.

Chinese paper tomorrow, all because Lee Kuan Yew had a fit of conservatism (as revealed in his memoirs) that made a pass in mother tongue necessary for entering a local university. Fuck these conservatives who force their views on others.

Fucked up the first paper

Self-explanatory title. I knew what I wanted to say for poetry comparison an Othello, but I had problems saying it. In the former section, I meticulously combed for technical details and got quite a few - but missed one and jumbled the rest till I can't even remember what I wrote. For Othello, I believe I came up with good points but lacked sufficient detail. It was more of a reflective essay rather than an argumentative one.

I have low expectations for Great Expectations. I jumped into the question without looking and will probably get marks hardly worth looking at. In fact, I started the concluding paragraph with "To sum up this disappointing essay..." Fucked up ain't it?

That was rhetorical.

Pathetic

"I love you", what a stupid line to say. What sort of response could the utterer hope to illicit? It's a pathetic statement that earns more hate than love.

Statements of this nature are what I call the wounded puppy syndrome, much like Pip in Great Expectations, trailing her hoping for affection and becoming beggared in the process. I have seen her, an Estella-like person who keeps her heart beyond all reach. You won't see her soul past those eyes, those beautiful sparkling eyes full of gentleness and elegant strength.

But I kid myself - I am pathetic. I watched her all through secondary school, noting how many members of my sex craved for her attention and, despite their strength of character, crumbled at the lack of it. I swore to myself I wouldn't be like them, to yield what hurts me and enriches no one, but I've almost failed. I yielded up so much to her because she keeps it locked in her heart , where my frailties are safely hidden from the word.

She is alluring, captivating, so beyond my powers of description. Yet I love her not as a lover - I love her for reasons unknown, possibly because she loves me. That love was, is, so precious to me. I will crumble if bereft of it, and I will crumble with it.

"Drown cats and blind puppies"

Honest

I have a new bone the size of a dollar growing out of my foot as a result of "calcific tendonitis" (think OUCH). It hurts, I can't walk much, and karate is out :'(((

I looked over some of my old verses for ms. cricket. Guess what? I'm actually quite surprised I wrote them. For once, I can confidently call them poems! Not the sophisticated sort the murky modern variety, but poems nonetheless. There's some meter, a rhyme scheme and most of all, there's that indescribable aesthetic poignance about it.

I'd like couzzie's take on them someday. I doubt I shall ever send them to 'her', nor openly name 'her'. Give me some license to abuse language, and I'll say those poems capture my 'zeitgeist' during that long and lonely period, where her warmth was to me like a blanket is to a winter-beaten beggar.

Yes, for once this blog isn't used for despondent thoughts. I write these here because I've put up a verse on my other blog. This is a black hole, the other is a meadow: entries are sorted accordingly.

Sudden Depression

It happened just as my KI teacher left. I love the way he teaches. He will give me readings to analyse, keep on asking me questions, consistently pushing me higher and higher. When he left my place today, I suddenly fell - into a shallow but dark depression.

Perhaps I missed a pill last night, or perhaps it's because I didn't finish revising what I wanted to. It was sudden, shockingly sudden, and I'm disoriented by the sudden turn, the sudden change, as these convoluted lines reveal.

I'm happy that she was online. I was happy we talked. Some of you will know that I affectionately refer to her as Ms. Cricket. I gave her the name because I liked the crickets' song at night, a dark time that blurs the lines between tranquility and loneliness. I was... so alone last year. I felt trapped - imprisoned - by fate, by my home, by my own mind. Bereft of the rest sleep provides, I just haunted the world drifting from place to place...

That's why I loved her, thats why I still love her. I don't know if that love is merely the natural return for the love she gave me, or something of a different nature. I cannot handle romance now. I am not fit to hold someone's heart in my hands, hence I hope that no one has put theirs to my name. But I wish for love. I'm so screwed.

She will take bioscience or chemistry at NUS:

"i can picture u in a lab coat

a white 'gown' in a white room

filled with the queerest colours

with smoke like a misty rainbow"

Recurrence

Another bout of doubt, anxiety over the sheer size of my task. The question of futility and delusion comes back again after I was stunned by some KI prelim papers.

I shouldn't be thinking about this.

Mr. Sim

Mr. Sim is my KI teacher. He is a very diligent man who doesn't limit his efforts to our weekly sessions but actively seeks out new journal articles and readings for my perusal and our discussion. Honestly, I feel more confident under his tutelage then I did with my previous tutor - who expected students to come to his far-off house and yet charged the same price as Mr. Sim, who is willing to meet me half-way.

But its still not enough. I see the good sense in having KI class discussions, but have hitherto underestimated its importance. It is not just a matter of exchanging ideas. It involves active discourse, it makes you think on your feet, it works your linguistic faculties to give quick and cogent expression to issues that can be very mangled. Mr. Sim makes up for this by engaging me on a variety of topics and ideas during our lessons, but I feel left out in the cold once the lesson's over. Sure, his book is very instructive, but it's a basic 'springboard' text. Most of my KI is founded upon 4 pillars: Wikipedia, Bryan Magee's "The Story of Philosophy", the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an online philosophy article database) and Mr. Sim's book.

As you can see, its a one-way flow of information. I've lost touch with a number of former KI students while those I remain in contact with aren't in the mood to relive their 'A' levels. Well, at least Mr. Sim passes me an article or two to dissect. It helps me think about things, and avoid thinking about other darker issues.

Guilt

Despite all the 'healthier' bingeing on wheat & muesli cereals, instead of Mcdonalds and instant noodles, despite all the exercise, I'm actually getting undeniably fat. For the 1st time, I don't feel good about all this. I struggle to do 50 push-ups, and even my ridiculously over-powered legs feel the added weight when it comes to stairs. I sweat more when I walk.

Then again, my studies seem to be coming on well. I'm done with the problems of the global economy, with James Joyce (about as far as I'll probably get) too. I'm pretty much done with fundamentalism as well. Now there's just...

SEA nationalism, WW2, independence, political structures, economy (maybe i'll skip this) and the last ASEAN lecture...

The causes, progression, expansion [Korea & Cuba] and conclusion of the Cold War. The origins of the international economy (skip), revision of the Arab-Israeli & Indo-Pakistani conflicts...

The whole of Great Expectations, key scenes of Othello... and of course my IS. Should I be glad that my 'loving' college isn't examining me for KI?

I'm obsessed with my grades, so sue me. My apathetic history teacher says my essays are about a 'B' grade [aside: YES FINALLY, AGAIN, AFTER SO MANY FRICKKIN TRIES], my latest literature grade is a high 'C', and the skills for poetry/unseen analysis are coming back. I've never managed to pass proper for econs, but this year I got a 'C' as well.

Should I be feeling guilty?

Understanding The Mist

I understand why I binge at night, sleep late, watch TV or online shows in the twilight parenthesis between today and tomorrow. I understand why I don't want tomorrow to come. 

I am scared of its horrors, uncertainties, demands.

Courage lad!

Take the fight to the morrow!

I like waking up late because it seems like the comforting night is coming again, a time when I can rest without guilt, and there aren't too many hours left for studying till then.

What monsters lie within The Mist that shrouds tomorrow?

Courage lad!

Don't stay cowered in that glass prison, entrenched behind shelves of food!

I understand why the references for my thesis are almost entirely made up of online sources or books in my small little library, everything nicely in my room.

I don't want to mix with the world in all its filth, noise and smog. I don't want to see other's sighing shoulders, despondent eyes or vexed jawbones.

I don't want to see myself reflected in a thousand mirror shards, so sharp that it cuts on sight. Beholding mediocrity, weakness, angst and uncertainty is a painful thing to do.

Courage... lad?

Its hard to fight yourself...

I look back, down the trails of yesteryear, all erased by time and pain. But I slipped.

Yesterday's paper dated 2-0-0-7, black numbers whiter than the abyss it names.

I stared at it, it stared back. There goes my grip...

Unhealthy Solitude

It is unhealthy to be alone for so long. Linguistic cognition dulls, making speaking and writing - and perhaps thinking - very difficult tasks. Perhaps I should begin speaking to myself or an 'imaginary friend' just to keep the neural links sharp. Ah, sudoku might help in re-sharpening my critical faculties. In fact, I think I'll do just that right now.

Writing

Is it just me, or have I forgotten the art of cogent writing? Maybe the anxiety is to blame for the constant turgid paragraphs I seem to be churning out these days. My first history essays ever submitted in JC were labeled 'promising' or 'A', and the same can be said for my poetry comparisons. These days, I struggle to keep everything above a 'C' grade. Perhaps I am squeezing too many ideas into a small number of words, hence the convoluted passages. No matter, more writing needs to be done.

My psychiatrist thinks I place too much emphasis on my grades, but it doesn't take much pondering to see why.

Scars

The scars, they never really heal. They are fissures that ooze with flaming red and yellow, its slime an objection to the skin's youthful glow.

What do these days amount to? Am I a foregone failure or an ascending aspirant? When I am not drugged by sleep the slimy filth of life spills from the scars of yesteryear, yesterday, but I struggle (in vain?) to wash it all off and purify my life of two sins: mediocrity and sloth. But fate would not have it so. No, my head is caught in a vise and the virtues of industry crack under such pressure.

There's nothing more to write.

Run

I'm running away.

I don't want to face tomorrow.

That's why I don't sleep.

That's why I keep eating.

So tomorrow will never come.

I won't have to catch up.

On what I've not done these 2 days.

On what I've not done months before.

On what life has not done for me.

No, its for what it has done to me.

A few stray thoughts and the cookie crumbles.

I want cookies, I want mochi.

But all the stalls are closed.

I have wheat cereal and milk.

Again and again, I need more.

Give me more.

I'll call Mcdonalds.

I'll spent $20 on one order.

I'll grow fatter.

I'll spend my savings on these slothful sins.

Because I have nothing to spend time on.

Or life on.

I'll eat it all in my room.

The walls will shield me.

The internet will shield me.

But my table crawls with ants.

I don't know how to call for it.

One by one, they go offline.

Before my words are formed.

Before I reach for them.

Before I try.

Unlike before.

But I didn't need it before.

Only now, when I want to stay in the now.

Help.

Foregone Conclusions

Yes, that's what it was. Literature: how the hell do I decipher James joyce's POA or detect a friggin iambic pentameter? Villanelles, Petrachan/Shakespearean/Spencerian sonnets, iambic and trochaic verses...

Memorising the structure or technical details is useless unless I am somehow able to detect its literary significance. They said we should have an 'A' for 'O' level English in order to take literature, but the language component is severely overrated. It is LITERARY SENSITIVITY that separates the A-graders from the C-graders and unfortunately for me, I've been stuck in the latter band for... too long. It doesn't help that out poetry and POA tutor is a high-handed bitch who seems to take pleasure in putting us down - never an encouraging word to aid our learning in a tedious and often frustrating subject.

If anyone out there thinks its easy to do well in literature, I'd like to see them try. In the meantime, my grades - given the unfavourable situation I find myself in - is a foregone conclusion. Maybe you could write an eulogy for me when its over, it'll be the closest I'll ever come to sound literary writing.

2007

The phrase "chasing a formless dream" would be a suitable epigram for 2007. In that year, I chased girls, dreams, studies and some vague goal that now evades all memory. They're all related of course. I remember I chased 'J', but after a series of conflicts that I am largely - in retrospect - to blame for, I turned my attention to my studies instead. One could say I escaped into into the pages I scribbled on and I didn't do too badly. Being the top history student for the mid-years and the 2nd for the promotional was gratifying.

I took up H3 history. Indeed, I was the only one offered it. Perhaps I chased too many things, had too many dreams and spread myself too thin. Or then again, maybe I simply got complacent and underestimated the general weight of my studies. Sometimes I wonder whether I was delusional, and so did some of my classmates. I'd be going off on some new campaign, or writing some new article that didn't really make complete sense but hey, I was an idealist. I was in Othello, PUS, Temasek Sem., Orientation, Tamil competitions - everywhere! My friends in PJ even found my photo in their yearbook. But what was it I was chasing or, turning the picture around, what was I running from?

Perhaps it was the past, the way psychiatric ills became social ills. Fopped in a school I quite disdained, scrambling to insulate and protect myself from what I perceived as the onslaught of the world. It is in such a mess of memory that pseudo-scientific psychoanalysis makes sense: I was driven by past fears, seeing threats that weren't, perceiving almost everything as an ego-threatening challenge. I think I was quite successful in running away until things crashed in early 2008. Again, in retrospect, things were probably not as rosy. I don't think I was as smart or knowledgeable as I initially thought, but learning tends to do that to people.

So what is the point of this recollection? I think... actually I don't really know. I believe it was the people around me that made it so special. Teachers, dear classmates, vivacious friends and all really made me look forward to school. As I pulled away from school in 2008, I pulled away from them as well. School is a much colder place these days even though its walls are still painted in the same bright orange and sunny yellow. I guess I'm quite a megalomaniac, enjoying the spotlight of controversy and taking pleasure in hearing my own voice, looking at my own pictures and seeing my name in print - things that affirmed my own sense of worth through some warped and twisted mirror.

These days, I find little reason to walk with that determined stride I used to have nor lift my gaze to what's ahead. I shuffle my feet, take my time, look down at the curiously intriguing path in front of me. I don't dream big dreams and ask big questions, just plod along like (sigh) everyone else - maybe even worse. One Freudian slip said it all: an essay written this year was dated 2007, to my classmates' amusement.