lucifer just might be your middle name

I'll blog more when I have the time.

Well, at least that is what I keep telling myself...and what I keep reneging on. I envy those people out there who find time to update their blog daily or those who keep tabs of their day-to-day living in journal or diary. Do people still do that? Write in diary/journal, I mean. Things are so digitalised nowadays that I won't be surprised if the simple act of writing on papers will cease to exist five years to come. I know I know, it's more environmental friendly  but the way how we so heavily rely on devices such as smartphones etc terrifies me a lot.

Maybe it's not so much the whole technology thingamajig as the notion of depending that sends me running but oh well, that's a topic for another day. What I was trying to say is that I don't know what to say anymore. I have twelve unfinished blogposts, sitting patiently in queue, waiting for that moment when I deign it is time to give them a conclusion; an ending; anything that is not half written. But that is what you have been reduced to, my subconscious fervently reminded me.

Which, sadly to say, is true.

The last time I wrote something was more than a year ago. And if I were to exclude it for the reason that, that was for my creative writing assignment, it would have been more than two years already. This...this inability of mine renders me emotionally crippled most days.

I  find it ironic, amusing on good days but ironic nonetheless, that I've stopped writing as soon as I enrolled myself for a career in putting words together. Isn't this a mockery? Materials to base a satire on? The writer who can't write. The only unfortunate thing here is that I fail to find any trace of humour in it. Nope, not even a smidgen and herein lies my problem: I can't write anymore, not even to ridicule my lack of ability for doing so.

I've reached an impasse and I'm neck-deep in it. With this latest pit stop in my life, I've been left with nothing to do but think - to ruminate on whether if I've made the right choices, done the right thing. Because at the end of the day, journalism is not my passion; writing is.

And if I'm not even capable of the one thing that I am truly, madly, deeply in love with, then what else am I living for?

and just like that, I'm suddenly sad again. Will this ever end?

I've got to be

As I'm typing this out, I'm engulfed by silence. The proverbial silence that many are afraid of. There are less than ten people in the library, I think, and this assumption soothes me. I relish this sort of comfortable noiseless environment. It thrills me and in turn I strive in it.

I function optimally in an atmosphere where my thoughts can reverbrate loudly through my mind; where there's no external sound that can distract me from them. This is why I love cooping up in my room. Where my only company is my feelings and thoughts. Maybe this is why overthinking and overanalysing are ingrained in me.

Maybe not.

This week is going to be a rough week and I have no idea how and if I will be able to pull through. In spite of the tough front that I've been putting up, I hate confrontations. Especially with those who are supposed to love and care for you unconditionally.

It baffles me, most of the time, how selfish and calculative people can be. I'm a sinner and I'll be the first to tell you that, I've done many things that I'm not proud of but even then, I don't think I can ever stoop as low as them.

During one of the housevisits this cny, I was complimented. I was told that "She's a tough one". And it got me wondering, "Is that how others are viewing me?" This offhand remark both excites and saddens me to be honest.

I brushed off the compliment demurely, like I was taught since young, when all I wanted to reply was,

"I've got to be. I need to be"

I'm Terrified of Happiness

There are only a handful of time where you come across words that depict what you're feeling so well that it leaves you speechless. Those rare, precious moments when what you read describes you so well that you're in awe and left hanging, wondering if you have a twin out there, somewhere.

***

I am happy. I am in love; I have a roof over my head, parents that love me, a 4.0 GPA…yet tonight I cried. I cried because I’m terrified I will lose it all. I’m terrified to be too happy. I am haunted by that Charlie Brown quote “I think I’m afraid of being happy because whenever I get too happy something bad always happens.”

How do other people let themselves be happy? My Instagram feed, my newsfeed, my friends…they boast their happiness. They are not ashamed or scared; they do not think that if they embrace their happiness it will disappear. So why me, why am I like this?

I feel all my life I have been cautious. I was scared to be myself, worried what others would think, worried they wouldn’t like me. I was called annoying when I was younger; I guess that taught me to not be overly enthusiastic about anything. I found myself turning into an extremely cynical person as I entered my twenties. Love is not real, life is slavery, everyone is programmed like robots fed the same bullshit its all lies lies lies. Sometimes I believe happiness to be equated with stupidity. You can only be happy if you’re blind to the infidelities of the world, to the sickness of human nature. How can one be so keen and enthusiastic about a world that promotes so much death and hatred?

Besides filling every stereotype of the worldly educated English major, I found myself ashamed of my cynicism. I think its good to see the world through a realistic lens, but then again rose-colored shades are not that bad either. Today I am in love; I am free to be my true self with someone for the first time in my life. I am so extremely happy that I am absolutely paralyzed with fear. I wish I could embrace the corny things in life, post love quotes and pictures of us kissing, but if I show off my love…it will leave.

I’m not sure if this is a condition of my upbringing or just something every postgrad experiences. Sometimes I feel as if our generation is taught how to wallow around in self pity. I mean how many articles do you read telling you its ok to be a sad depressed lazy bum, that not having a job is OK because no one else does either. I’m not sure how much this has an affect, or if I’m really alone in this feeling.

I know no one is alone in this world, but sometimes I wish I could really embrace the happiness of life, hold it so tight that it should explode, but believe it wont. 

by Emory Ann

***

I take no credit for the work posted above. It echoes what i feel so accurately that i just had to share it here.

do you dream that the world will know your name?

Complacency sucks, doesn't it?

Wrapping you up in a warm cocoon of oblivion, then drifting aimlessly with you safely ensconced as the days whiz by.

And, many, trapped in this sense of illusion stay contented of the mediocrity life has to offer until it's often too late.

I don't want to be one of this many.

I refuse to be one of the many statistics in a life not worth living.

And most of all, I reject the idea of a simple obscure life where my footprints will be as vague as the impact I leave when I no longer inhale the air of this earth.

An emptiness where once were flames

It's seven am on a holiday morning and here I am; wide awake from yet another nightmare.

They are never clear cut these nightmares. Always in an abstract form of one or another. Trapping me in another dimension where I'm powerless against my fears. Fears who have been magnified into many a hulk that terrorise the sanity of my mind.

Cornered in my anxieties for what seems like ages only for me to wake up to burning sensations in my heart, stampede of elephants running amok in my stomach, throat all clogged up and a mind which refused to rest itself from the negative what ifs.

Truth to be told, I've never been this afraid before and knowing that the possibilities of my fears coming true are very likely terrify me even further.

Tell me I'm a wreck

Apparently I have an attachment disorder. The surprising thing is that I'm not surprised about it. Kthxbai

I bleed my heart out on this paper for you, so you can see what I can't say

I hate being put on a pedestal.

Because I know myself better than anyone else. I am not smart. I am not hardworking and neither am I the nicest person on earth. In fact, I'm such horrible a person that I wouldn't want to be my own parents nor would I want to befriend myself. This might be perceived as self-loathing but for me it's honesty.

So stop.

Stop saying that I'm better. Smarter.

I am not.

Better means that I'd have been happy on results day seven years ago because I had managed to get first in class.Smarter means that I would have been praised for the marks that I got for my history paper. Being better and smarter means that I wouldn't have flunked my chemistry tests four years back.

On the day where I'm supposed to celebrate getting first twice in a year, I was brought down from my cloud of ecstasy because my brother's sum of marks the previous year was higher and he only got second place.

During the times where I should be grateful that I scored quite adequately in my history paper, when many others had failed, I was told that I disappoint because my brother never makes mistake and achieve relatively high marks for his objective and subjective paper respectively.

And during the moment where I needed support the most, I overheard that I'll do badly in my result and that came from my mother mere hours before I was due to collect my PMR results.

If I am indeed better or smarter these wouldn't have happened.

If I am indeed better or smarter, I wouldn't be cringing in agony every time I see my cgpa.

I'm not bitter about these events so don't conceive the notion that I am, I'm just acknowledging a series of events that had helped to mould who I am today.

Twelve years ago, when I went shopping for the latest barbie doll to commemorate me getting first place in class, my father told me something that my then eight-year-old self might not and would not want to understand but are now eternally imprinted into my mind.

Scrolling through the aisles for a barbie doll that would catch my eyes, he told me to not be so easily satisfied. He told me that, getting number one is good but it's not the best. That I might have gotten first but what about all the other people out there that have gotten first too, but with much higher marks and better grades than mine.

The obstinate and naive me then, told him in a way that only a stubborn eight years old can, "I don't care. Why does it matters anyway?"

It matters.

It matters a lot, unfortunately.

It matters because if it doesn't, then I wouldn't be on the brink of crying now because I just got out my midterm examination knowing full well that I've sabotaged my own result.

It matters because I see myself in one of my kids and understand her need to be second to none.

It matters because I've finally understood the need for perfection and, unfortunately, my inability to achieve it.

Of monsters and men

Failure is not so much a bitter pill that you have to swallow as the tightening of your vocal cord before you're force-fed a century worth of tears and agony.

There is no other day like results day to shake the foundation of  faith in my own capabilities. And no other better day to cry like today but the sad thing is, I cannot cry. Not that I don't want to but I just can't. At best, all I can muster up these days are those paltry tears; such a small quantity of them that I'm oft led to believe that my tear duct has shriveled up by those layers of armor that I kept bandaging my heart with. 

I want to talk to someone who'll understand and not just one who just proclaimed they do. I want to have a hissy fit. And above all, I want to run to my mom and cry like I've never done before. To cry away all these pent up frustration. To cry and cry and never stop because goddammit I'm exhausted.

I'm weary of fighting these battles especially when it seems so futile with only one semester left. I'm weary and tired of it all. Tired of being the sole champion of my own cause. Once. Just once, I want so badly for one other person to fight these battles of life for me or precisely with me.

Is it really to much to ask?

Poison the hero, back down to zero

It's hard to blog when all I want to do is to fling myself on whoever who'd be willing to listen; clinging desperately on their neck while yakking on and on about how my life is now ever so depressed because the best show ever written on earth is butchered by the insensitivity of an actor (who up until that point, was my favourite and unfortunately still is) and some ridiculous plot line. It's scary how strong a hold on me fiction has. And double that fear if you will, for I'll never learn as I'm diving heart first, yet again, into another show where my favourite has to die and the fact that this is historically true doesn't do much to sway my feelings into a better state than they're currently in.

I've learned the hard way to never let it get that far

Want to know the main reason why I detest love, marriage, fairy tales, prince charming, and the lot?

Because I used to fucking believe in it. I hate 'em now because they used to be the very things that I expected and depended on. But what did they say again; the higher your expectation the harder you fall? Well guess what, I fell. I fell so fucking far from my perfectly envisioned world and landed so hard on reality that I was rendered incapable to bloody be me anymore.

Once upon a time, I was that girl. That optimistic idiot who believes the world is a good place. That girl who used to genuinely believe, trust and like people because she was that innocent. I wasn't born a cynic with a heart colder than the arctic ocean and a wall that's much too high for a mere mortal to scale as its sentry.

I wasn't always like this.

But life happened and I found out about how terrifying the world can actually be. I was awakened to how unreliable this world and the people in it are. In as much as I wanted to believe, trust and love again I cannot. After all, if the people closest to you and whom you so called share the same blood lineage with can do such heinous things like they have done to us then what am I supposed to expect from strangers. No more no less, that's what.

It wasn't my choice to be this cold-hearted bitch. I was molded into it because at the end of the day, a realist never gets disappointed,  the emotionless one will never ever be broken down and money is still everything that matters.

Distance

She genuflects in the worn out bathtub, aware of naught but the big puddle of unsorted thoughts in her barren mind.

Steam rose up around her, clouding up the mirror like how those errant thoughts are eclipsing her feelings.

Try as she might, she couldn't stop the rivulet of thoughts that has been trickling into her conscience for the past few days - and still is.

Thoughts that breed into incessant questions that keep nagging at her for just a speck of attention.

Thoughts that warrant unwanted rumination that keeps knocking at her control just for a glimpse of the past.

Thoughts that are piling so high up on her heart that she's having difficulty in breathing.

And so, under the torrents of hot water that were pelting furiously down her back, she stays alienated from everything around her.

A lone figure secluded by a dingy hotel bathroom in a country as foreign to her as her thoughts and feelings are.

Once and for all

WARNING: HIGHLY LENGTHY & EMOTIONAL POST BELOW, READ AT YOUR OWN TIME AND EFFORT.

It's astounding how you of all people are the one who demean me in such snobbishly offhanded manner; the one who managed to make me feel so awful for doing something that I'm suppose to do. No, scratch that, for doing something which I shouldn't even need to do if only you had the sense to do it without me begging asking for it. I'm not going to be trite and perpetually harp on it so I'm only saying it once.

I'm not a fucking beggar.

In fact, I am financially independent for over a year now. I had ceased getting allowance from my folks ever since I started working at Celebrity Fitness January last year and even after I stopped working to pursue my tertiary education, I had never resumed the habit of asking money from them. I paid for my college and hostel fees through my scholarship and loan. I earned my allowance by working part time so you - and everyone else for that matter - have no bloody right to make me feel that way! 

Yes, it's true that nobody can hurt me without my permission, but Mohandas Gandhi had overlook an aspect when he quoted that; we human are especially vulnerable to those whom are the dearest to us. And often because they are the ones who are the closest to us and whom we assume would never intentionally or otherwise hurt us, we let our guards down and freely gave them consent forms to screw with our feelings and emotions as they like.

So here's the verdict: If and when we (this apply to everyone) ever go out together, whether it's for a meal, a movie or a trip and I so happen to foot for the bill first, please kindly just reimburse the money to me without me begging asking a millionth time for it. Just try to put yourself in my shoe for a minute, can you. Do you like to continuously remind people to pay up for the meal/movie/trip? Particularly when the one in question is someone who is close to you. It's not a pleasant feeling, no?

Personally, I hate begging asking for money that one should have had the common sense to give it to me without waiting for me to beg ask for it. Besides, I'm sure no one likes to be incessantly hounded by others to pay up too. So be mature and sensible about this and pay back as soon as you can and not when your highness feels like it or when you are being chased after for it. I get it if you have bad memory and you forgot about it but when you're reminded the first time around then just pay it back then, don't wait.

What are you waiting for anyway? For the sky to drop down a wad of cash? Or for cats to grow horns?

I absolutely abhor being hounded to pay up when I'm having a good time. So I always, always, pay back the minute after someone else paid for the bill. If due to any circumstances that I cannot do so, then I pay back asap and usually before said someone asks me for it. Is it too much to ask to be treated the same way? It's a simple request that I'm pretty sure can be carry out easily. So why then must I ask you for a gazillion time and even when you finally decided to pay up you must show me your bitch face? Is it wrong of me to ask for the money which you are supposed to pay me back in the first place? 

To you, you might think that that few dollars is not an adequate amount of money for me to start hounding you like I did. Well newsflash, I'm not like you. I don't have parents who give me money for everything. I do not have the privilege of sitting idly by and wait for hand outs. I wasn't brought up that way and neither would I want to do so too. Even when I was a kid, my folks don't just give me things because I asked for it. I have to earn what I want  either financially or through academic wise.

So yes, every penny counts for me.

If you have never had to work for anything in your life then you will never understand what I'm saying, and it will be too much of an effort for me to get it through that thick skull of yours so I'm not even going to bother to try. All I have is one bloody simple request and it will be highly appreciated if it is adhere to: Pay up when you're suppose to without waiting for me to beg ask you for a gazillion times like a beggar because I ain't one and am never going to be one.

'Cause you ripped me off, your love was cheap

I don't do love/crush/infatuation.

At least not anymore. Because I hate that feeling of vulnerability. That feeling of desperation in you, just to have a glimpse of him - even if it's just a passing glance; the happiness that bubbled up when you saw him and the dejection that overwhelms you when you don't. I also abhor how that one person will easily managed to crowd in on all your thoughts until all you could think of was him.

How he is there at the edge of your conscience when you decide what to wear, what to eat, what to talk about and what to do. It just spells pathetic. I'm not pathetic. I'm wayyyy over that stage and I don't want to go back there.

I don't want to go back to the old me where I would happily relinquish the power over myself to someone else, because I have grown wiser. I'm smart enough now to know that it's just plain stupid to hand over your heart and your emotions on a gold platter to someone else. Someone who can easily break them into millions over shattered pieces with just one of their cruel words or ignorant glance. Foolish isn't it? To depend your whole well-being on some stranger.

You guys reminded me that I'm won't be the only one to give over the hold on myself. That the other person would give me the same power over their feelings and heart too. But what if I'm the only one who cares? What happens when I fell for someone who don't fall back for me? Then wouldn't I be the only one who resigned myself to the endless heartache, sorrow and self-pity? What happens then?

I can tell you in vivid details what will happen, I'll become a shell of myself. One who mope around with my unrequited love. One who drains the happiness and joy of those around me. I would be so out of self-esteem that I will undeniably question myself every second of the day. And that is a self-deprecating phase that took years for me to crawl out from. 

And all that for what? A crush that will probably last a few weeks, but will damaged my confidence and happiness for years to come. Or a relationship that will last a few months but will morph me into a more insecure and damaged person than I already am.

Hence, I vow to not go back there anymore and yet you came, at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons. You  showed up when I was warned to stay away from this ludicrous game called love. You walked into my life when I'm already content and happy with everything else.

And worse of all, you evoke some dormant feelings in me that I never want to feel again. You might have -just might - have made me develop a minuscule crush on you and I hate myself for it because it scared the hell outta me.

the two links

george carlin once quoted that inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist and now sitting here, at nearly 3am in the morning, typing this entry i wonder if this idealist is me? had i been so severely disappointed by life that it had jaded my views on it? or did my virgo instinct compounded by my perfectionist nature and mercurial attitude kick in during inopportune time to mold me into this person who is constantly critical of the motives of others? the reason behind this post is that i've just watched chris medina's audition for ai (its more than a tad too late) and read about xiaxue's love story (also about two years too late) and pondered about being too cynical in my views of life and love. both scenarios portray love story that are too good to be true — stories that one might have thought that they were being fabricated from one of disney's many fairytales, easily found in fictions but never in reality.

one is of a guy who stood by his fiancee through thick and thin and till death do us part; a guy who choose to sticks around with his fiancee who suffered from traumatic brain injury, miraculously survive and yet stands a slim chance of being who she was before instead of fleeing at the earliest chance to find the next love of his life; a guy who some says define what love really is. and the latter is of a guy who risks everything he has to travel and finally settles down across the globe for a girl whom he stumbled upon on the net. i'm not going to lie and say that these stories do not touch me because if it don't then there wouldnt be this post at all but neither am i going to make a big confession and proclaim that they changed my cynical view that this world is not monochrome but filled with rainbow colours of joy because it didn't.

because seriously how many people out there, notwithstanding genders, are willing to do what these two people did? how many so-called 'true love' out there can still actually stand strong in spite of the inevitable hardships, obstacles, difficulties and such? : not many.

truth to be told, i'm still a lil too bemused to sort through the jumble of emotions and thoughts of mine to search for the real reason behind this post, but through the sleepiness that's fogging through my brain and my eyelids that are threatening to shut down any time soon, one reason that i can only think of now is that this post is solely for my own benefit for who knows maybe ten/twenty years from now this post can be use to either support or refute my cynical sentiments.

The first dinner

Up until 45 minutes ago, I was supposed to dedicate my first post of the year to something huge and interesting but then something changed my mind: I had my first family dinner in 18 years. Let me explain this vague but shockful statement. My family never really had proper family dinner everyday and what I mean by proper is that we never sit down together to have a meal unless it was for Chinese New Year's reunion dinner which was once a year. Due to circumstances like working hours and the desire to watch television, we usually pile our plates with food then proceed to the living room and have our dinner on the couch with our eyes glued to the tv, with the exception of my mom. So to come downstairs today to see that the table had been set up and to have my very first proper family dinner, I was a little overwhelm. In 2011, I never had many family meals due to the fact that I was working like a workaholic for the first quarter of the year and then spend the weekdays of the other three quarter of a year staying at hostel. My mom don't cook on the weekends and usually every friday, the day which I usually got back from hostel, she usually cooks simple dishes like fried rice or fried noodles and for me, that doesn't actually account as a proper meal. This is actually a very mundane post but I can't help but want to pen it down. A simple home cook meal of three dishes and a soup might not mean a lot to one but to me it is significant because it reminds me that family does matter even if that family is kinda dysfunctional most of the time. I believe 2012 is going to be a good year.

of three years ago

i remember there were once in my life when i kept ranting on and on about how love hurts and how much i had been wounded in relationships and sorts. it was about three years ago and eventually i grew out of that long and self-deprecating phase but even then i never really let myself immerse in unnecessary feelings anymore. i barricaded my emotions and steeled myself from having feelings that will eventually become the ruin of me.

i thought i would happier that way but i was wrong because after all the efforts and years it took me to mould myself to be who i thought i should be i was not any happier than i was before. i was even more confused and upset and so i played the blame game; i blame it on love and then i blamed myself for falling for the wrong guy(s) but it was not until recently that i realized i am to be blamed but it was not for the reason that i thought it was.

i did not fall for the wrong guy(s) because i realize that i didn't fall for them at all.

three years ago was one of the most difficult phase in my life. i was faced with one problem after another challenge and being the female that i was, i latched on the the nearest life saving buoy: knight in shining armor. i deluded myself into liking people whom i thought would be able to lift me up from all the loneliness and rejection that i was feeling and needless to say i was wrong and it's no wonder that none of those 'relationships' work out.

i thought i like them but the truth is i like the idea of them or specifically i like the idea of love. it was childish and very damsel-in-distress-like of me to do so but i would never reprimand myself for doing so because i did what i have to do. it was wrong of me but unless you're in my shoes you would not understand all that i have been through.

i don't exactly know why i'm justifying my actions here. maybe its because i feel the need to tell someone/everyone or maybe its just the need to admit my mistake publicly so that i wouldn't repeat what i've done.

but what i know for sure is that: after countless of depression that I've sunk into and millions of self-doubts that i've been through i have finally gone through that phase. yes, i still have moments when i doubt myself and moments when i'm not happy but these moments are getting lesser and less frequent in between.

i'm still sporting the scars and wound from that phase; scars and wounds that would never fully heal but would always be there to show me what i've been through and to keep me strong.

they try to tell me how to feel

there are times too when the writer in me fails; times like these when my thoughts are way too convoluted to put in meager words.

i hate you. i really do

sometimes when its too much to bear, i want to scream at her with all my might. to scream my reason on why i drive her to the walls. to scream at her the consequences of what she had made me do 3 years ago but mostly i didn't because its just too much. to talk about what he was like is akin to asking me to relive my hell all over again as i'm not sure if the words that tumbled out of my mouth would be just to the action of his. how he tried to caged me and made me into becoming who he wanted me to be. how i detest the sight of him. whenever i hear her call him, i always had the urge to tell her the truth; that the saint that she painted him to be is a far cry from who he really is. but again i didn't because talking about it made me ill with disgust. disgust at him and her for making me who i am today - the cynic who really didn't know how to be happy for i was brought up in a mess of a family and then tried to be molded in a docile traditional female in my adolescent. i hate him with all my heart and because of that i begrudged her for chaining me to him thus the attitude.

i'm not sure if i'll ever tell you what had happened between me and him because these events are greater than what mere words could tell and i'm even less sure if i'll truly ever forgive you for pushing me to him because you're the one who is suppose to protect me not hurt me. instead you didn't because you didn't know, still this excuse is too flimsy a one to heal the wound that both of you had made in me.