Editor note: This is a somewhat sombre post – something that most readers would deem as boring in most context. Well, I would think that every now and then, there would be one such post, and I do apologise that this post is not of sufficient entertainment value. This post is also not proofread for grammatical or spelling mistakes, but do feel free to correct me.
It’s been a long while I last posted anything here. To be exact, it was since #Brexit, which feels like eons ago. Quite a fair bit of things have happened since then – some good, some bad, some… simply unthinkable. Looking through my drafts, there were also some posts that didn’t get published; either because they were incomplete, or I just had second thoughts about posting them up. After all, the interwebs never forget, and sometimes, things just stay up there indefinitely and for eternity.
Perhaps just a bit of update about what happened since my last post. Well, nothing much really. As a student, I just study heaps, write my exams, take a short (somewhat well-deserved, depending on how hardworking I was) break; and the whole cycle starts all over again. And then Ashley came. And then I had an accident. And then… well, the new year came.
It almost seems like yesterday that I was longing for “salted-egg-anything”; dragging myself to the nearest Chinese restaurant just to satisfy my cravings. If I didn’t recall wrongly, that probably happened a couple of times. I don’t really remember much of what happened last year, but I did remember being a really sad person. Sad and lonely, to be exact.
And I hated it.
I can’t remember when the turning point was, but I was pretty sure it was when I stopped caring. Stopped caring about how people thought of me. Stopped caring about whether I have friends. Stopped caring about almost anything else. However, the world doesn’t quite run that way. Perhaps humans aren’t really meant to be lonesome creatures.
Speak about being isolated, I couldn’t help but wonder what made me the way I am? I am sure I have no one else to blame but myself – that’s what people always tell me, but I really wanted to know why. When I was in elementary school, I don’t remember being an extremely popular kid; I mean, I thought I fared average in terms of my social circles – I wasn’t the kid that has to be included whenever there was a game, outing or a gathering after school, but I was somehow included. It’s like, if there were 12 of us, and if we were playing team games, I would be chosen by one of the teams when either side was down to the 4th or 5th player. I didn’t feel unwanted, but I wasn’t high sought after.
But that was alright. In fact, that was actually pretty good for me – not to be left to the last.
Then I went to high school – and that was when I spent way more time in school and had more control over my own time, which was really quite a disaster because, as one of my teachers told me, I needed to “get my priorities right”. I actually don’t remember much of my time in high school, but I guess I turned out alright. Importantly, I got grades good enough that would send me to university.
In between, I did spend some time working; and that was when I realised how unpopular I really was. In the earlier days, people would talk about me – and this came from someone who would tell me the fact, but not the contents. It hurt me a lot, because I wasn’t aware of what I did, what I said, or what wrong I had done. I was labelled and isolated, but I just “moved on”. You know, like how your friend would pour out his/her problems to you, and if/when you have no solutions to them, you would ask them to “not think so much about it, just focus on what they have to do, and move on”? Yeah, that was basically it.
I moved on. Or at least I thought I did.
I took on a couple more jobs before finally heading off to university. To be honest, I did struggle quite a fair bit while studying. I had to pick up new terms and new adjectives, and it almost felt like I was a non-English native suddenly studying in an English-native environment. I was almost laughable, except that, it wasn’t really funny when I had to go through it. I probably hadn’t studied this hard before, but I wasn’t going to let that faze me.
However, that was when people started asking me to chill, to relax, and to take things easy; and when all that failed, I became the topic of gossips. Again. It felt like almost a mortal sin to want to understand what I was studying, and if I weren’t out with my group of friends, I was deemed as being too “hard-core”. The most common question posed to me was, “Why are you always studying?”.
Maybe because I am stupid?
Needless to say, I “moved on” again. This seems to be a recurring theme that seems all too familiar. Over time, I started to believe that I have a personality issue and perhaps I was just meant to be all by myself. I also started to feel that I was beginning to be socially awkward and socially inept, which probably didn’t help things a lot.
I could probably go on and on, but I think this is enough to give anyone a brief idea of what kind of life I have right now. Alone. Isolated. Socially awkward. Socially inept. Eccentric, perhaps.
I long for friends, for people whom I can open up to, for people to have me as someone that they can share to. However, perhaps I was overzealous for such friendship and companionship, that I have gotten myself into a lot of trouble; often getting myself hurt in the end. Through this whole process, I lost trust in people around me, and hope in myself. I have already lost count the number of nights I cried myself to sleep, yet resisted posting on Facebook how I really felt. Some would ask, why post on Facebook? Why not just talk to a friend?
Well, here’s where the problem lies. What friend?
To be fair, I do think there are people around me who genuinely care for me, who probably really want to help me, but I guess before I can start having people in my life, I need to “help myself”, or I need to “help myself so that others can help me, or “if I don’t help myself, there is nothing anyone else can do”.
I wish it were this easy – suddenly standing up, looking towards the sky with outstretched hands and exclaiming, “Yes! I want to help myself! I want to break out of this cycle!”
That said, I do think there are many others who are way worse off than me, probably way more broken than I am; and I do agree that I am probably better off, because, hey, at least I get to experience most of life – whatever that means. I think I sometimes give off the vibe that I am a spoilt brat; someone who believes that she is entitled to all the things in the world. To be honest, I do think if I do carry such a sense of self-entitlement, but often, I have real-life issues waiting for me to take care of, before I have an answer to that.
Even as I am writing this, I do have a handful of things that probably need more attention. However, I can’t help but keep wondering what wrong have I done (I am sure something scr*wed up, and I am just trying to figure out how I scr*wed up this badly) and what’s going to happen from now on. I guess I have really gotten myself onto a dead end this time round.