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.