Soliloquy

Impossible [draft]

2010-05-07T18:50:00.002+08:00

I'm sorry, dear, but it's impossible. I can't pretend we're friends when my entire being is aching to hold you and tell you I love you every time we meet. Sooner or later, we will have to make a decision. It's either things change and we take things to a new level, or we end this tense relationship.

You're still the most wonderful person in the world to me, so patient, kind and always loving in your own special way. But I love you in a different way. You distance yourself and keep telling me we can't be together. I don't see why not. But there's really nothing I can do.

You know I need you as my friend and helper, as you've helped me over everything. But I think it's time for me to face the fact that I grow wearier when I think of far you are from me. I cannot live with this kind of estrangement. I try to forget you, I really do, but it doesn't work that way. I want you as my partner but if that's impossible, then I need to stop seeing you because this one-sided dependence is too confusing to handle with everything else.

At the same time, I know you're so important to me as a friend as well, or confidante, or any other name that says you've always helped me back on my feet. I know it gets tiring after some time, I know because everyone else - myself included - can't bear to listen to another breakdown or long-strung days of emptiness and pain. I always tell you everything, but I don't know where I stand with you. Just friends , after all I've told you? After all you've done for me? It's unfathomable. If I'm on par with everyone else after all this, then I'd be deeply hurt because it feels like my arduous journey is unappreciated by the one person that's seen it most. If I'm special in some way because of all this, then tell me. Is it so hard? I feel that you love me when you say nice things to make the pain disappear, yet the barricade you place - it feels like disdain.

It's about changing myself for the better, if some feelings should be buried where they'll be lighter on both of us. Please tell me, soon, where I really stand, and what sort of friend I am in your heart.

Affectionately Yours,

Fear

2010-04-23T18:42:00.001+08:00

She made me think of happy things, good grades, the esteem of my classmates, the praise of teachers written in red at the bottom of my essays. Then those brilliant streaks turned into painful moemories of failed papers, condemnation usurping the throne of praise, inexorable alienation from the friends I was no longer in school with. The End of my old life, self-bereavement.

I sent 4 messages to ms cricket.

23-Apr-2010 4:12 PM

"I know you're kinda busy but wud u mind msging a little while? It's always nice to talk to you." [help me]

"I jus concluded a very traumatic session with my psychologist. She induced a panic attack. The memories, the terror, the coldness, the shivering - everything. I know it, her words were calibrated to illicit those responses. And she kept talking when it worked. Torturous. I cringed, I couldn't breathe. All I could think of was you. I wanted to call you again. I wished you would be outside to tell me it's ok. I never felt better to talking to anyone else other than you. You are t[h]e angel, and my psychologist is the devil that has just sent me to hell and back..." [help me]

23-Apr-2010 4:30 PM

"It never occurred to me that someone else could exercise this kind of power over me like a nefarious puppet master. It was frightening. I almost wanted to strike her to make her stop. But I didn't. Because I could be stronger than that. Because you've shown me that I can be. The trembling... terror... I can't describe the sheer intensity.." [help me]

"I won't be proud with you, we're past that. When you read this, please help me... [end of msg]" [I need you]

Outgoing Calls - 4:57 PM Cancelled [10 rings, no response]

Incoming Calls - 5.14 PM 52 minutes [we talked]

I felt so much better after talking to her, telling her what a hell it was. Sheer terror. I can't think of a better description. Cowered, quivering in fear, weeping, hiding my face between my arms and hands grasping at my hair. And hair actually did come out, strands littered the clinic table. I mourned as if someone had died, I mourned as if it was me who died. The old me, audacious and brimming with unfettered flames, the stallion that chased the four winds. But I was afraid of her, the psychologist. I've never been this afraid of anyone. This power she has over me feels insidious despite its therapeutic aims. I don't know who I am now, but I do know that the shattered pieces need to be put back together. That takes time, and that takes someone special.

But at least ms cricket is here for me, as she always is, as I've no doubt she always will be. I can always count on her. After I felt a little better, I flirted with her. She said she didn't know how to flirt, but I soon awakened that instinct with her. The game was afoot - and I told her to eagerly anticipate my email on Sunday evening. That's when I'll have the telescope and we can go star-gazing at some remote reservoir, in addition to a supper picnic at the said place. I've told her before that she is central to my recovery and she diverted the conversation by saying how 'central' reminded her of cellular nuclei. That's not too far from the truth. SHe is slowly becoming my raison d'être, if she isn't already. I hope she wants me too, I hope she needs me in that special way.

Precious dear, you are the world to me.

Contingency Will

2010-04-14T09:11:00.000+08:00

Just in case I ever get knocked down while cycling or end up dead by any other cause, I'd like you - the reader - to deliver something for me.

On my MacBook White, there is a folder with the name "Writings" highlighted in yellow. Inside, there is a folder named "File X" that is locked. I need you to print, sort and deliver its contents to an addressee listed inside that folder.

To unlock the folder, right click on it and select "Get Info". Once the information window pops up, scroll to the bottom and you'll see a padlock symbol on the bottom-right corner. Click it and you'll be prompted for a username and password, which is as follows:

Username: [My English name] [Surname] [Anglicized Chinese name]
Password: 9June2007

As for my personal blog, currently privy to a selected and cherished few, could you help me make it public? The username is my Gmail address and the password is "3May2007". Perhaps someone can make better sense of the posts than I can and find out who I really was.

I know it's vain and futile to open up when there's nothing left to read, but its magic may - I hope - inspire the anonymous by-passer to live his /her life to the fullest in their own, special way.

Incurable Insomniac

2010-04-08T11:07:00.001+08:00

Another fucking sleepless night. And when I wake up, nothing ever goes right. The computer is too slow, I have to skip my cycling because my body hurts too much, the mind is too fucking hazy to do anything.

Fuck it. FUck it all. Why does this have to keep happening to me!? Why the fuck can't I just move on!?

Mid-Lifer

2010-04-06T20:12:00.000+08:00

Mid-life crisis. You feel that your youth is gone. You feel like your dreams have been lost. You feel dissatisfied with life and its lack of purpose, meaning, joy. You feel this halfway through your life. Well, I feel it now, and life hasn't even begun.

I don't want to go to university with this shadow in my heart. It feels... heavy. I keep on asking what I'm still doing here, now. Wasn't life supposed to be wonderful after my exams? Wasn't life supposed to be brighter after those two horrid years? Wasn't cycling supposed to change all this?

Cycling... it's becoming more and more depressing. I've almost lost the will to wake up every morning before dawn just to head out there and train. My speed has dropped too. I'm just so tired of cycling alone. The club is ridiculous - no one really rides regularly. The relationships I've tried to build all flounder because the same bunch doesn't show up anymore. Sure, the praise of some members shocked by my progress was fun and all, but they're all so... old. No young people to talk to. So old, as old as... I am.

I've stopped Karate - I can't move the same way. The younger guys with fewer problems have taken the show. I'm still physically strong, just not fast enough. The agility is gone. I'm so tired of living through all this, finding something to do every day and coming up with nothing. I'm so tired of being alone, just so tired of all this. No hopes, no dreams, nothing to look forward to. There's just no beauty in life, no inspiration, nothing. I almost feel like going back to drinking.

I wonder why I'm still like this, then I realise it's because I can't meet like-minded youngsters. Intellectually, Im alone. In sports, my friends have different interests. My soul is drying up fast and my heart is withering. That's just it - I'm withering. And I haven't even blossomed.

False Serenity

2010-04-01T22:29:00.000+08:00

I've gotten used to the isolation. I've become comfortable - no, maybe accustomed - to shallow, fleeting relationships with people. I've found ways to live alone.

Or so I thought earlier today. My mood has steadily declined over the past few days and every waking hour has been spent perusing bicycle websites and reviews. I wish I was healthy again, continue riding 250 Km a week, sometimes with the club, sometimes on my own.

It seems that it is never a case of being independent but rather becoming dependent on different things. When you don't have enough of what you love, every little thing gains an exaggerated importance. The smallest inconvenience that might have been trivial before now transforms into a magnified thorn in one's sight.

When will this all end? All the fears and anxieties kept at the back of my head. Of status, of performance, the want of love and respect, the want to love, the want of solidarity.

When?

Dependence

2010-03-25T12:10:00.000+08:00

I've blown 4 inner tubes in 5 days in the exact same way.
There's no cycling now, and I'll probably have to forfeit Sunday's ITT race.
It feels depressing.
I've never realized how much I depend on cycling to start each new day the right way.

Dreams

2010-03-24T21:46:00.002+08:00

2008...

Roman aqueducts, 7 or 8 of them piled up one on top of the other in a semi-cylindrical shape with the arches of each row stacked partially off-center. The set-up is placed against a rolling hills and a blue, dawning sky. The whole thing spins - each alternating row in the opposite direction - and clowns run in and out of the arches. It makes me giddy. It makes me fall backwards.

2010...

"YOU, Benjamin Low, are found guilty of practicing Witchcraft and sentenced to Death by Hanging."

It is a precipitous brown brick skyscraper, but the ocean has covered half of it. I'm left to carry out my own sentence, effectively making it a suicide. I wonder if jumping down with the noose lynched around my neck would snap the nerve column and bring a swift death.

Or perhaps I should ride a cart inside the building. Strangely, the flow has a gagged gaping hole as if something massive crashed right through it. It is an office building, with frayed wires sparking through the ceiling and hanging down like treacherous serpents. The computers are flashing on and off, files lie strewn everywhere, and the gale picks up stray white papers, tossing them around like forgotten leaves. The electric passenger carts whizz around it. I wonder if I could whizz in one of them while the noose is tied to a pillar. Maybe that will make it quick as well.

What would Freud or Jung say about these queer dreams (nightmares) that have no apparent cause, association or real-world correspondence? I do not study Roman architecture, only having seen a documentary on the History Channel detailing its construction. I do not watch post-apocalyptic movies where the seas have risen that high. I am not superstitious, most certainly don't believe in witchcraft or similar metaphysical notions, and will definitely contest any such accusation or sentence. Yet I acquiesced. Even worse, I sought to carry it out, albeit with a melancholic air.

While we map the stars, we get lost in in our own psyches. These movies play behind my eyelids.

And I wonder what I'll see tonight.

2010-03-22T16:53:00.001+08:00

I hate writing here.

The rear tyre on my precious bicycle has caused multiple friction punctures, and I gotta replace it. It's definitely going to be costly, and I've already spent so much getting a pair of 'aerobars' to boost my speed. It sucks to enhance one aspect only to have problems creep up elsewhere.

Cheap thins are fucked, as are the cheap merchants that sell them. Cutting costs for 'adequate' quality is futile.

It only takes one little incident like this to destroy the past week's high. Life is still so fragile.

Fuck it.

Residual Effects

2010-03-16T18:01:00.002+08:00

I've been reading and studying, and not always liking it. Why do I read when the next few years will be full of it?

I think it's to make up for something lost. When I had to stop JC, it dealt a severe blow. I feared that I would lose that 'intellectual status', both in an academic and social sense. JC is over now, but the residual anxieties remain. I believe everything I write on one of my blogs, Deconstruction, is just an attempt to reaffirm my own capabilities.

Mind you, I can't restore the social status given to an intellectual. Only society can do that for me. Very few people read that blog, and no one ever leaves a note about the articles posted there. It's just a more intellectual version of this blog - a shouting box - for me to combat my own fears. This one, Soliloquy, is for existential and affective shadows that won't go away. Anxieties from possible cognitive breakdowns are fought in each post on Deconstruction.

Well, I wonder what my psychologist will have to say about these when we meet next week. It's our first appointment. I hope she'll be more constructive than the previous, deprecating one :)

Self-Diagnosis

2010-03-12T20:27:00.000+08:00

I have a penchant for writing intellectual articles with thick, academic language - even though I despise that practice myself. These articles are partly referenced, if at all, and revolve around fundamental issues.

So why do I do this? I don't publish them. All I do is keep them in a desktop folder on my macbook. A few of the better ones make it onto my deconstruction blog. The explanations I find is simple: it is to assure myself that intellectual value is among my personal attributes. It relates to the desire to be recognised for this capacity, and the entailing social status accorded to such individuals.

It is further enhanced by the loss of formal education over the past two years. The JC is an institution that endows members with a certain special status based on the premise of their academic intellect. The episodic compromise of intellect brought about by chronic insomnia threatened not just my self worth, but also my social status as a JC student. I never reclaimed that title, and the latent desire was consciously repressed for a year in order to reduce my misery.

Since then, it has been a constant goal to assimilate back into the JC system - but that chance has gone. Also, having been disillusioned by its incompetence, apathy and commodification of students, that goal has since been tainted with a deep and sordid stain. I have thus been jettisoned from my world view of a proper social phase - that of a pre-university student - and need to reclaim the self-esteem lost back then before I can comfortably head to university without looking back.

Without looking back... that's probably the hardest part. The doubt, the fears, the scars and the anxieties must be removed before I am liberated. It is not a rational issue, explaining the problem doesn't solve it. It is an affective issue that requires an affective solution.

And when I want to celebrate, all my friends are busy elsewhere. Well done man. It's a cold and lonely world. Why am I still alive?

Disbelief

2010-03-11T22:47:00.000+08:00

I made it through. On half a JC education under a cloud of drowsy pills, I made it through when others didn't. An 'A' for a highly competitive subject and respectable grades for the rest.

But this is all there is. No fanfare, no big celebration, just a night out with xue wen. She means a lot to me, yes, but so do my other friends. But they were all busy. Army, relationships, internships overseas, theatre projects, personal issues - the reprieve I thought would come was an illusion, or maybe a delusion. I don't know.

I joined a cycling club and an ethics club. No friends there. They are all so old. All working adults. We have nothing to talk about, nothing personal. It's just 'hi' and 'bye'. I have no one to share my elation with, no one to tell me I've done well. I need someone to say this. I need someone to tell me that the light at the tunnel's end is full of affirming warmth, not just a cold, blind dazzle.

Nevermind...

Congratulations

2010-03-07T23:03:00.000+08:00

One of my friends in UniMelb tell me that my scores give me a very high chance on entry into my desired course! I can cast my fears aside!

And all my friends are congratulating me on facebook too! I feel so... happy! :D

Despondence

2010-03-07T12:21:00.000+08:00

Why am I never satisfied with my grades?

I got the grades A, B and C for full A-Level subjects with only a year of formal schooling. But why do I still feel incensed when the university representatives give me a tenuous smile? Why do I feel like murdering the liaison when he said I may not make the grade for UniMelb even though the university's representative already said I did?

I still hate NYJC. They messed up my testimonials and CCA records. They left me to study on my own when I needed them. They didn't even give me, their student, a tutor or subsidise me when I hired one privately. They even charged me with dishonesty. So tell me, why do I still wish for their respect? Top KI student, distinction. There had better be a plaque of commendation for me on College day. Lest I will become an arsonist.

I still feel disappointed. I could have done so much better if my school actually bothered to find good teachers. I hate my school. I hate my teachers. And above all else, I wish I didn't have to hate anyone at all.

But to win your esteem, Xue Wen, will make up for all the injustice inflicted.

Synthesis

2010-03-06T01:08:00.001+08:00

Ataraxia has been achieved, and it's the path to heaven on earth that's prevailed: HURRAH!

Ataraxia

2010-03-04T19:56:00.004+08:00

It's like trying to stay happy in the ballroom of the Titanic, when everyone's frantically searching for hope.

Alprazolam 0.25, Clonazepam 0.5 - all just for tomorrow's moment, all this on top of the Lexapro, Remeron, Seroquel Sodium Valporate and a host of other drugs that make other doctors gasp.

Two years I've suffered hell to get here. It must be worth it. Tomorrow I'll be packing a few special items into my bag.

1. My black belt, a symbol of years of hard work and the friends made along the way. A home of sorts, with people, not places.

2. My first Joy Riders jersey - the club where I've begun to make new friends and forge a new away from the horrors of the past. Where for the first time in many years, I've made heads turn and gained status.

4. A black Chinese seal that my team made during our lovely economics trip to China. For new friends in new places, laughing through many joys together.

5. Hayley Westenra's album "Pure" - the album that made me a fan of hers. Hayley's music always cuts through the gloom no matter what they were or how many times I've heard the same songs.

6. A cloud list of names of friends and people who have been special in my life. Xue Wen's will be at the center.

7. (I wish I had some token of affection or consolation from Xue Wen to keep with me)

8. The University of Melbourne 2010 prospectus, where I can meet old friends and make new ones with a fresh start. My dream, my destination, my hope.

9. The book "The Story of Philosophy" by Bryan Magee. It started me on my intellectual journey and has been a constant academic companion ever since.

10. A blank note with a black gash saying "This is what I've been through" - because nothing can describe the pain of nothingness for so long.

11. My Othello script. We put up this play in 2007 for the NYJC Drama Night. I played Iago, and people loved me for it. Henceforth, Iago became my pseudonym.

12. My Peircean Voices choir tie and T-shirt. There, I found a greater purpose for my leadership skills. I've rarely found the same meaning ever since then.

13. The 'A'-grade history essays in my first year that made me so proud of myself :)

14. I'll wear my Suunto T3c heart rate monitor on my wrist. Its logs show how hard i've tried to sail away from the past and into a brighter future.

15. My first Victorinox, because I love the outdoors and think that Richard Dean Anderson (in McGyver and Stargate SG-1) is so cool!

On my laptop, there is a folder labelled "Writings" and a locked subfolder called "File X". It has things I've always wanted to say to her but never did, because I didn't want to lose her. The authentication code is 24-12-08. In fact, everything about me is in what I write.

This blog chronicles my weary days. My other blogs are:
a) http://ben--low.blogspot.com [for optimism and possibilities]
b) http://de-con-struc-tion.blogspot.com [as an approximate intellectual record]
c) http://picturesque-pedale.blogspot.com [for pictures taken from the saddle]

I write all this because it could be the last thing I ever write again. It is a suicide note if suicide becomes... necessary. I am not contented with second-best. I loathe it. There's no point in life if all one can see ahead is misery. You could say it's a mid-life crisis - I don't know where I'm going, where meaning lies or how it's created. I just hold on to what I have and lead a hedonistic life, because that's a panacea for all things dark.

Hayley once sang:

"But you are still so young with so many years to come.

You have too many cares."

I suppose that's enough. No one can understand what I've been through. It's better this way. No one should have to go through what I've been through. I love my friends.

That's it.

Waking Up

2010-02-21T10:02:00.000+08:00

A nightmare, always around the corner. The giant arowana was trivial but losing her wasn't. In this dream, we quarreled bitterly. Our relationship grew colder, even more strained, painful. It was scary, and I woke up with this weight on my heart. It was fear and terror all over again. I trembled. It felt so cold. I was so scared. I still am.

She's the only one who can tell me that everything's alright. She's the only one who can say the sweetest things, the right things, and make all the ghosts disappear. She's ineffably special to me. She's my strength and my frailty. She is my other half. I struggle for serenity without her around, but she's always so distant and cordial. What am I supposed to do? I'm fragile without her, yet vulnerable with her. I need her, I depend on her support. I need her to help me back on my feet. But I fall on my knees asking for her love.

The nightmare lives while sleeping. It's still there when I wake up.

Questions

2010-02-19T21:17:00.000+08:00

There're never really far behind.

Why did I have to go through that and lose so much? It's not my fault.
Where am I headed now? University and- what?
Will my grades be good? Please let me go to Melbourne.
Will I make good friends there in an alien land?
Where lies my dream?
Where lies love and companionship?
How should I spend my remaining days? Only cycling? Surely there are some books I can read.
How can I find the will to practice on my piano when I'm so restless?
How do I stop thinking so much?
How can I find something meaningful to think about?
It's so boring these days... and we all know that boredom makes its own fatigue.

Does anyone really understand me? Can anyone comprehend what I've been through?
Can someone still love me in spite of all the scars I bear?
Can they?

Soliloquy

2010-02-13T22:02:00.000+08:00

"Some friends don’t understand this. They don’t understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you’re wonderful just the way you are. They don’t understand that I can’t remember anyone ever saying that to me."

Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

#QUOTE: ELIZABETH WURTZEL

(from thechocolatebrigade)

But ms. cricket did... at least for awhile. I wish I could be certain if she was absolutely sincere, that her affections came not from obligation, but from her heart.

Vengeance

2010-02-13T14:45:00.000+08:00

Today, I was in high spirits. My odometer broke through the 1000 Km mark. I was happy and proud of myself. Then my fucked up father had to ruin it. When I ordered a pair of contacts, he told me to get a trial pair first because of the cost - in front of the optician. I snapped at him.

This disgusting fuck. After two bloody years of unrelenting suffering I've finally found something I love doing and he has to disparage me for it. When I first went to get my bike, he kept on going about getting a fucking rental first even though I've told him many times that no such bike can be rented. Even my club members have better things to say than he does. "You're strong" "You're holding back, I can tell" - the veterans in my cycling club are all impressed by me, this newbie on an entry-level bike, who manages to challenge these experienced cyclists on classy Italian bicycles.

They make me happier than my father does.

Fuck you dad. One more statement like that and I'll pound the fucking shit out of you. I swear it. Forgive and forget? Forget it. Reciprocity is a basic human operation. I shall teach you that. You, who are too niggardly to even help pay for my bike, my coach's fee, my jerseys, equipment - everything! - have no right to speak on these issues. Fuck you! There shall be no forgiveness or forgetting until you fucking learn not to mess with me.

You don't pay, you don't praise.
Fuck off dad.

Hating My Coach

2010-02-12T13:26:00.000+08:00

Damn it.

You charge me so much for a training plan, yet I hardly hear from you after that. You are always quick to criticize and slow to praise. You always compare me with your 'elite guys' full knowing I've only cycled for a month on an aluminum frame that doesn't offer a world-class.

Damn it.

When I ask you for advice, you say it "topic that can go on for pages and I shall not go into too much details here. You will also learn by experience and observing how others (who know what they are doing) do it.". What's the point of being a coach if you can't even show me how it's done?

Damn it.

Your absentee coaching and deprecating remarks are eroding my morale. What's the point of hiring you if you're going to affect my performance anyway?

Fuck you.

Existential Entrapment

2010-02-07T17:30:00.000+08:00

I need to break free! Aggressively!

Out of the Ghost's reach

Out of isolation

Out of the Past

Out of myself

Out of everything else!

Was that sense of reprieve and progress completely illusory? No hope was to be found in work, no lasting friendships forged, not great learning points. No joy was found with the Joy Riders - everyone said 'hi' and 'bye' as if it meant nothing! NOTHING!

To hold on to: nothing! What good is money when it can't get me the things I want? I need? Society, company, prospects, status! No internships, no scholarships - NOTHING!

I don't find any kindred spirits in Karate. I hate cycling alone. I hate my nonexistent cycling coach. What the hell am I doing here? Waiting? For the 'A's to come and pronounce my sentence. What if- what if it doesn't get me somewhere? What then? Then there will be no tomorrow - nothing left to live for, no life to hope for.

A disgusting existence. Trapped in the shadow of the past, never free from its Ghost. Always living in fear of this insubstantial being. Boredom boredom boredom! I read the magazines, I read the novels, but they always come to an end and I'm left exactly where I started - in the grasp of the Ghost's shadow. Better thou hast never been born than face this wretched life!

How do I escape? How do I get out? Do I find respect and status and love again? How hOw HOW???

Fear

2010-02-06T22:12:00.001+08:00

It's a terrible thing to be afraid of sleep.

Again.

There's so many things I want to do. Not enough has been done today, so I feel.

Again.

5th February 2010

2010-02-06T18:39:00.005+08:00

It was another panic attack. My hands grew cold and it spread towards my chest. I needed to hold onto something. Then my eyes grew wider in fear before the same, haunting memories all came back again. I broke. In fear, in tears, in terror - I was so lonely.

I called Eric. He couldn't make out what I was saying. I called him before the tears came because I wanted to rest, to regain a sense of calm. But when the memories came, the floodgates could not hold. I gasped once, twice, then the grief took over. I cried and cried, wishing he'd say something right. It was so painful... But he couldn't hear me, and the chill grew stronger. He wouldn't know how it feels like to be robbed as I had. No one can; it is beyond imagination, beyond Verstehen. I've never found the words to describe those two long years of isolation and entrapment. Perhaps that is why no one understands.

I told him I needed her, Xue Wen, because she has become my source of strength. No matter how hard things got, I would always feel better when she called, when she came to visit me. Her smile, her laugh, the sparkle in her eyes all enchanted me, but more so because she came. She cared enough to. Then there was that one time I held her hand. Her soft, firm grasp gave me the courage to face the the days ahead. Silly as I was, I let go before she did. Since then, I've always wanted to hold her hand again.

Eric called Xue Wen and told her what happened on the said day. She called me and said she'd come. I waited at the train station. Half an hour, an hour, two - I thought I saw her among the crowd. I dashed and chased, I searched with a frantic haste, but I didn't see her there. Then she called. She was right outside my place. We sat on a bench. I led her to the same side but she sat across instead. I understand.

We talked. I felt that she really cared, but she would always turn the discussion away from her. She subtly draws the line between us, the line that discourages all notions of romance. Yet she's so beautiful. I've never met someone who could talk like she does, someone who engages me in conversation. She's so kind, so gentle, patient and loving. She's such a precious dear and I cherish her very much.

We listened to some songs and sang a few we used to sing together in the choir. We played with Marco my retriever, cracked a few jokes and whiled the time away. We had prata for dinner. I passed her the music box that had been lying in my room since December '09, just waiting for the right time. There was a folded note inside. As it unfolds, it reads "I" "Cherish" "You". When the paper is laid flat out, she can see the little flowers and snowflakes I made with colored pencils, made with loving hands just for her. And as she left in a cab...

Bl: "On the side, it means 'through adversity to the stars' :) "
Xw: "Oh my gosh.. I love it! Thank you :) Oh and the question, are you feeling better?"
Xw: "I cherish you too"
Bl: "Yes, I always feel better and braver after I've spent time with you. I can't find the right words. You're.. precious to me"
Xw: "Thanks. But remember this, even if you're alone, you'll be brave too because you know there're people who truly care about you. You're my treasured friend."
Bl: "I understand :)"
Xw: " :) You should be sleeping soon since you're having an early day tomorrow. Do take care and have enough rest. I'll emphasize this again, you're no burden to me. I forbid you from thinking that way."
Bl: "Yes ma'm! (sry if I've accidentally made you sound too old :P ) And as for you young lady, drop the notes I know you're holding. Turn the spindle for a lullaby :)"
Xw: "Haha, that was spooky. I'm really studying. Just a bit more and I'll turn in :) Good night :)"
Bl: "I'm psychic :P Sleep tight! :)"
Xw: "Yup, you too psychic! :)"

She sent me a message again this morning asking how I was. For sure, her care is genuine but her words... why does it always feel like a chess game? Why do I always find that she sends these signals asking me to keep away. It's as if she wants to keep me away unless I direly need her. But I always do.

"You've become central to my recovery"
"Hahas! Central. Makes me think of cells you know? The nuclei at the centre"

Perhaps... it's unavoidable...

"The moon is a literary device used to capture nostalgic or poignant sentiments"
"No, the moon is a sphere in elliptical centrifugal orbit around the earth"

But when we sang those nostalgic lines, there was nothing else that needed to be said. I wanted to hold her so much, to tell her she's special to me.

I still do...

Images

2010-02-05T17:18:00.000+08:00

Haunt scar plague spectre looming insidious malicious terror fear retreat insulation flee cower hide affliction sinister shatters shards shock scythed on and on and on

Two years

I still need her

DIstant isolate reject cordial painful wish dreams shards love hurt pain tears tears in-com-mu-ni-ca-do

Remeron atarax seroquel lexapro epilim slumber fragile

...Xue Wen

elwm

2010-02-04T23:43:00.001+08:00

What could have been
What might have been
What we dreamed of being
together... lost in the years between.

I remember E.L.W.M.

Does she remember me?

Hot-Pots

2010-02-04T22:04:00.003+08:00

There were hot-pots on display

Big ones, little ones, all set for New Year's Day.

I thought "This would be nice for a reunion dinner with Xue W-..."

Is it so wrong to have a Freudian slip? Because I find myself so irrevocably affectionate when I think of her. I veer to the side of reason and deny my hopes, but I always drift back towards her tender memory and sweetness of soul.

The soup is growing cold.

Numbers

2010-01-27T20:44:00.000+08:00

[This is no credit card advertisement]

Insomnia pills: $400 a month

Bicycle (road): 1.5k after discount

Degreaser and grease: $22

Frame pouch: $25
Gloves: $45
Heat-moulded cycling shoes: close to $365
Heart-rate monitor: $165
Helmet: $30
Jerseys and shorts: $220 for 2 sets
Lights: $40
Pumps (primary and contingency) : $90
Recovery drink: $55
Storage stand: $20
Spare tyre and inner tubes: $173 (contingencies)

OCBC clinic and race fees: $113
Provisional coaching fees: $250 + $450 (Heart rate/Bike/Training regime set-up + 3-month coaching)

Total Cost: 3.963k

Recovering the confidence, happiness and sense of belonging stolen from me over the past two years: ineffably Priceless

Bliss

2010-01-26T00:31:00.001+08:00

I'm finally doing the things I love and choose.
It brightens my days and warms my heart :)

Restraint

2010-01-24T20:54:00.000+08:00

Desire, desire, desire.
Tempestuous desire.
Her soft hands, lips
It is temptation.
I want to throw all cares to the wind
but I know, in the end,
it's her love that I truly want.

Snowflakes. Her.

Pictures

2009-12-30T19:58:00.005+08:00

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

2009-12-30T11:33:00.003+08:00

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

2009-12-28T23:27:00.001+08:00

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

2009-12-27T21:56:00.001+08:00

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

2009-12-19T21:10:00.010+08:00

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

2009-12-17T22:23:00.000+08:00

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

2009-12-12T14:46:00.001+08:00

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

2009-12-09T01:50:00.000+08:00

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

2009-12-04T10:26:00.000+08:00

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

2009-12-01T23:36:00.001+08:00

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

2009-11-29T20:00:00.000+08:00

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.

2009-11-26T23:16:00.002+08:00

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

Desire

2009-11-23T23:33:00.002+08:00

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

2009-11-20T22:54:00.004+08:00

[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

2009-10-04T22:34:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-19T19:45:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-08T21:32:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-02T05:43:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-01T21:11:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-01T17:27:00.002+08:00

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

2009-08-31T16:48:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-28T18:36:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-26T22:15:00.000+08:00

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).

2009-08-26T01:08:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-23T20:43:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-19T20:31:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-15T23:01:00.000+08:00

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

2009-08-07T14:08:00.001+08:00

If we had time enough and life enough, like today

Immediate Resonance

2009-07-26T20:20:00.002+08:00

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

2009-07-22T21:14:00.000+08:00

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

2009-07-21T19:49:00.000+08:00

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

2009-07-15T22:23:00.002+08:00

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

2009-07-15T18:46:00.002+08:00

"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

2009-07-15T17:40:00.001+08:00

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

2009-07-14T19:49:00.003+08:00

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

2009-07-13T00:35:00.001+08:00

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

2009-07-10T13:30:00.002+08:00

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

~

2009-07-10T00:25:00.003+08:00

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

2009-06-30T19:26:00.000+08:00

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

2009-06-29T19:16:00.002+08:00

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

2009-06-28T20:36:00.004+08:00

"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

2009-06-26T23:11:00.002+08:00

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

2009-06-25T20:11:00.002+08:00

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

2009-06-14T00:04:00.002+08:00

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

2009-06-13T19:16:00.002+08:00

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

2009-06-04T22:01:00.003+08:00

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

2009-06-01T00:24:00.005+08:00

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

2009-05-31T22:44:00.003+08:00

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

2009-05-31T14:21:00.002+08:00

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

2009-05-28T19:10:00.002+08:00

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

2009-05-27T00:49:00.004+08:00

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

2009-05-26T21:27:00.004+08:00

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

2009-05-21T20:33:00.000+08:00

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.

Tiny Steps

2009-05-20T22:07:00.002+08:00

Stop asking big questions, stop looking at the big picture. Focus on the now, the task at hand, and that will bring me forward. Work was done today, that pleases me.

For that same reason, I eschewed the public press and GP. Humanity never ceases to renew its own pain, and I don't care about it anymore. My description of the older Stephen in James Joyce's POA can be applied to me: "Politically aware without a care".

Joking

2009-05-20T00:38:00.002+08:00

The previous post was not a joke, nor is this. I'm not the one joking around, fate is - that unseen malicious witch that makes mocks of man's endeavors, who casts all hopes in a darker hue and robs the sparkle from the eyes of Youth.

Today was a complete waste, I didn't achieve any of my objectives. There was little progress in a any of my 4 subjects, unless one counts finding out about one's ignorance a step forward. I don't, simply because I believe in real, material, absolute progress, not "ideological" advancement. Hell, I'm not a friggin armchair philosopher, and I never intend to be one.

I'm just slacking now, and will soon binging on Macs. Right now, my sense of futility outweighs previous concerns about weight, productivity, and the other things I consider important. Tomorrow? I guess I'll resume my tedious, tenuous studies. I am not confident about this, but I still strive to excel in whatever I can excel in, while there flames of willpower still burn.

This blog is going public. I will not shut these things up in a box anymore, but I will make it anonymous. Don't ask me what the point is. I've long ceased to believe that there is a fundamental point in anything - one point is a point only for some other point, a closed web - but I still do what I do because the exigencies of life and living require it... but I might as well do it with a smile.

Ha. Ha.

My Conviction.

2009-05-13T22:12:00.004+08:00

I am ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

This blog is a crutch, a place whose very existence encourages a crutch mentality. Today, I freaked about an essay's mediocrity and wanted to run away, either to this blog or to my appointment at IMH. I did neither, only shut off all thoughts and rewrote the whole damn essay and even though it isn't very good, I am proud of my effort.

Those feelings of doubt and vacillating moments where I stood tottering on the edge of despondence are not unlike the feelings I have before a karate tournament. I just have to bite the bullet and go fight hard, although I am my toughest opponent. My previous boycott of this blog had failed, but now I'm quite through with this putrid confessional.

Doubts came to me throughout the day and though I am aware that I had been lying to myself about many things, I know that I'll have to do my best. The future? That's beyond me right now and I've little idea how I'll fare, but as I told someone before, "keep the future in its place".

Today, I've understood the global economic crises of the '70s and '80s, apportioning praise and blame according to the causes and consequences of events. When I look back upon my JC days, I do not want to blame myself. I consider my own mediocrity a sin, but wasting in sloth is by far the worser evil.

Ous.

Labyrinth

2009-05-10T19:41:00.002+08:00

Again again again!

Head, body, aching aching aching

Nerves frayed, can't study, can't find the right words, can't form ideas into words

Black and white hammers, nervous anxious agitated impatient

Frustrated frustrated rage

Builds up, kills me

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 days wasted, wasted, lagging behind

catch up, must, imperative, categorical, what?

Write how? Argue what? Argh

Read run hide read die

Effort

2009-05-06T21:27:00.002+08:00

I'm not sure why this blog even exists anymore - there's little need for a distinction between a 'happy' blog and a melancholic one, simply because the latter overwhelms daily life.

So far, I've been diligently studying what I need to study. I'm making progress with literature (so I hope), reading up on history, making headway in those two. Economics has remained stagnant, KI is... reserved for weekends. I need more time: there too few hours in a day, and fewer still where good sleep is found. I study at a snail's pace and sleep fitfully. In fact, sleep is a misnomer - its more like lying down, closing my eyes and hoping for the best.

I better not give this too much expression lest it distract me further. Yea, I better get back to studying. Nevermind this (just another repressed issue).

suicide is painless

2009-04-23T00:01:00.003+08:00

Who was I kidding. There's no way I can keep away from this blog. It exists as a mirror of my troubles and as long as those troubles continue to exist, so will this blog.

I don't want to do this anymore. It was never my fault, so why should I continue trying to right the wrongs I wrongly suffer. I can't sleep well, I can't write well, and some of my teachers are making things worse. Why should I keep fighting? Why should I keep trying? In the end, what does this all get me?

No, I don't want t- to what? Go on? Give up? Try to catch the precious broken shards of yesterday's dreams? I don't want to fight. What's there for me at the finishing line? There's no degree for the grades I'm scoring now and without it, life ends... so why wait?

Why why WHY?? Why was I put through this? Why was it all taken from me to begin with?

I want to put all my papers into a single pit and watch the flames dance happily on its blackening pages. Then I can say its truly over... Poor Ben Low, cracked all over, shards held together only by... what?

Mediocrity is a sin,

Ben Low has gone drinking.

Ous!

2009-04-17T19:20:00.002+08:00

I shall boycott this blog for 2 weeks.

There is no gain in sorrow

(he robs himself that spends a bootless grief)

A strong smile with a fisted heart

I'm so going to move up and move on.

OUS!

2009-04-15T01:15:00.002+08:00

I think its the fear of an appalling outcome that turns one away from putting in effort. Its made worse when one feels that no effort will make up for the putrid combination of problems and personal shortcomings.

Effort.

There. The point I'm trying to press eludes me. Don't think too much.

Questions

2009-04-14T00:24:00.003+08:00

What is sleep? Why do I seem to be awake when I sleep? To be conscious of the this, am I really sleeping?

What is self-study? Notes, notes and more endless notes? Writing, thinking, searching for answers to get that prize. Am I going the right way?

Hiding, am I? When I decide on mornings that follow restless nights, am I hiding from school in timid withdrawal or am I bravely taking the more rational and productive option?

Are late nights excuses for not studying or are they simply a time to relax?

Can I really trust my history/KI teachers?

Am I on the right track?

Pressure

2009-04-10T20:32:00.003+08:00

Boyle's Law states that volume and pressure share an inverse relation and I'm beginning to understand what that means. I remember that my O level physics textbook had a diagram demonstrating this principle with a bubble under water.

Well, my bubble is closing in alright, thanks to history. As the volume of SEA I need to swim through and make sense of increases, so does the anxiety. The pressure of JC life is truly horrifying but it wouldn't be so bad if my teachers' notes were factual enough. No, his notes contradict themselves, are extremely vague, and lack an overall sense of coherence which makes my study of the subject an up-hill endeavor. But I can't complain. He's my form teacher, and I will need his favor every now and then. Perhaps I should learn from the Afghan war - the USA supplied the Mujahideen with arms to battle the Soviets, making it a proxy war that incurred minimal cost for the Americans.

I'm lagging behind on my literature, on all fronts, although the anthology study is the most neglected. KI - my thesis has been sacrificed for history. The only subject I'm way ahead of is economics, thanks to their well-collated and comprehensive notes.

I want to run away, but I know I should stay. The very anxieties repel me also compel me to stay. I hate my teacher, but I don't have the power to do anything about it. It all comes down to that in the end doesn't it? Power. It determines your rights. I better get back to to work.

JUST ONE SONG

2009-04-06T23:52:00.003+08:00

JUST ONE FUCKING SONG!!! IS THAT TOO FUCKING MUCH TO ASK!?

Your concern can go to fucking hell you bitch - that's what i wanted to tell my senile bitchy mother. So long i've tried to live through this whole bloody time and i finally found some peace and progress with the black and white keys on the piano

and just when i was about to complete a song that i've made a lot of progress in, she had to wave and wave and fucking distract me till the song got fucking screwed and cut off! and she still had toe fucking gall to be pissed with ME! FUCK IT ALL

I KICKED THINGS AND SHOUTED AND PUNCHED AND RAGED ON AND ON AND ON TILL THAT FUCKING BITCH CAME OUT AND PRETENDED TO BE ALL CONCERNED. WELL FUCK YOU BITCH! CRY! DO SO! THAT'S ALL YOU'RE FUCKING GOOD FOR ANYWAY.

PUT YOURSELF BETWEEN ME AND THE PUNCHING BAG AGAIN AND I SWEAR I'LL PUNCH RIGHT THROUGH YOUR HIDEOUS FACE!

I really wanted to slap her until she said sorry and begged for her miserable little life.

Now my mood's spoilt, I won't sleep, and i've therefore missed another day at school.

FUCK YOU BITCH!

2009-04-06T21:07:00.002+08:00

For many hours I hovered between sleep and reality, flipping left and right with each ache of the shoulders and back. I haven't been sleeping well at all, and my studies suffer accordingly. I don't want to do literature because of its highly frustrating nature, even though its the subject that I'm lagging behind on.

I can't do history because the banks on the lecture notes haven't been filled in - I haven't been for the lectures - so I settle for economics and KI, the subjects I have closest to cold science.

I don't want to live like this anymore, really. Without the ability to chase my dreams - which have since long rotted - I am nothing. Can't study, can't do anything... can't even rest. What am I supposed to do?

I really should just die. Don't tell me how fortunate I am. I know how fortunate I am, as spelled out above. I just don't want to do this anymore.

There's no point blogging.

2009-04-05T19:39:00.002+08:00

Are we ever happy?

So she asked, my fellow sufferer and comrade against the vagaries of life. I came home to find another exam paper on my desk, asking questions that I'd rather not because my ignorance will break the dams of memory and drown me in the alphabet soup: a-n-x-i-e-t-y. Prozac, Remeron, odd names to match our odd histories and minds. How apt, another of life's ironies.

Were we happy today, the two cousins who came out to watch a play? Though I laughed, I was fraught with anxiety deep down inside wondering it the time and money was well spent. I have so much to do, more than I let myself be aware of - but that doesn't make sense, only as much as my essays.

I've always felt out of place since this Condition kicked in. Titles are attached to names, although I find more of myself in the title than the name. Being without it - a hollow 'student' - weighs heavily. I'm not sure what I'm writing anymore.

James Joyce, Boey Kim Cheng... I hate these bastards. They're too dense, too cryptic in their art, till the reader is no longer enthralled by their work. Art is to be enjoyed, not deciphered, unless the deciphering is enjoyable. Sieving through their writings bring me no joy, both as a student and as a reader. Is this 'high art'? Ridiculous.

Shit... I still haven't got the latest history lecture covered. This whole week has been a huge waste. My mind and body is weary from the severe lack of sleep and unable to sustain study... nor am I inclined to. The fact is that every sleepless day brings back bitter memories - the whole flood - and God has given me a little boat to bear it out. No ark, nothing so secure.

I feel like the school has let me down. Lousy history teacher, one lousy literature teacher, another bitchy one, and absolutely no one for KI. I believe the institution is supposed to serve my interests, not leave me out in the cold.

I'm too tired to swear, to rant, to rage. I sigh lightly, for that is all the weight I seem to be worth these days.

For the first time in months, I actually feel like dying again.

Freeze

2009-04-02T14:15:00.004+08:00

Despite the warm, indifferent sun that lights the world with the filaments of leaves and the clear sapphire of a swimming pool. A storm approaches with its drums of doom, and all the accompanying colours - or lack of it - loom on the horizon.

But still, I'm here - trapped! On days like these, days that follow on more days on isolation and ill rest, the home becomes a hovel though nothing has changed. I am bogged down by the anxiety of missing lessons, yet it would be greater still had I been in school, sitting in with drowsy incomprehension. I am bogged down with an inner turmoil craving release, a tumultuous depravity that nothing but the sigh of shoulders can express. I want to turn to someone for help, but then the request - the plea - would not condescend to fit the confines of language.

I would stay home and study, pretending that time and tide and people have frozen, that the sounds of traffic and passing of Apollo's chariot is nothing more than a myth. Perhaps it would've been easier if my subjects did not touch the very core of humanity, did not require the exploration of sentiment. Perhaps I wouldn't have to break the dam that holds back my troubles if I had taken something colder - like physics, or mathematics - at put a calculator in place of my heart, then I need not fear my studies... as much.

Each time life takes a turn reminiscent of the recent past, all the turmoil and pain of the previous year comes back in all its vivid horror. I pour these feelings out here as a record, as an expression, as a mode of release

as a plea

A veteran of my own war, still fighting to escape the ghosts of its experiences.

Momentum

2009-04-01T19:40:00.002+08:00

Or more precisely, inertia. Things had been going well last week, due in great part to the sudden efficacy of my medication. The general state of affairs and bears a strong correlation with these drugs, with all the entailing effects on my mood. Last week was a lovely case of industrious joy - studying hard, studying well, and making up the next day with the blessings of the previous.

Not so this week. I couldn't sleep on Sunday night, nor on Monday, but a little on Tuesday. I've found that it's most productive to study at home when I've had a less-than-perfect slumber, hence my absence for the greater part of the week. Tomorrow, I should be returning to school... yet the inertia weighs heavily on my will and I shy away - timidly - from the prospect.

I can study economics at home, but history and literature require my physical presence. The blanks in the history notes need to be filled during lecture, and this method has yielded positive results which I wouldn't want to compromise. As for literature, we're taught face-to-face with minimal notes per se, and what you have is what you get from each lesson - and not all the tutors are competent. For a perennial absentee like me, such an approach is disastrous... yet I struggle to find a better way.

My KI has been sorely neglected - I have no idea what to study and even if I did, I have no idea where to get the relevant material. A single 2-hour session thrice a month isn't getting me very far, but that's the best I can apparently get. I can't even handle GP essays now.

I hate my college for letting me down this way.

I hate it so much I want to run away from it, from everything. I cannot see far into my future, I cannot see that shining beacon of hope in this fog-clouded ocean where the corpses of murdered dreams rot, filling the air with a thick, nauseating miasma.

I don't want to sink.

KI on history

2009-03-28T18:47:00.000+08:00

Exceedingly Troubled

2009-03-21T23:55:00.002+08:00

Its probably too early and exceptionally unhelpful to consider this, but ruminating at night tends to bring these things up.

I'm 20 this year. By the time I'm done with army and start university, I'll be 22 - the girls (yes, they're still girly) will be 18. 4 years apart... not something wonderfully pleasant to consider. Supposing its a 4 year course, I'll be 26 by the time I start work - a rather senior age for a job market entrant - and I hope this won't pose another problem. My medical history/condition already gives too much cause for concern.

Facing it without a special someone would be harder, and my long-held conviction that the vissicitudes of life are only bearable with a soulmate becomes an imperative to find one. Friends and family are lovely, but different... it just is.

But that's still far away. I once told someone "keep the future in its place" - right back at me.