P.S.

Last weekend was awful and I can't help but projecting the heaviness to upcoming weeks.

It was just week 1 and already I felt worn and torn. And this is bad because when I did so, the ghost of the past came haunting altogether. My strategy was to rationalize the fears and feelings, to step back and see the big picture of it all. And I have to do all of this by myself. I woke up everyday feeling that I am going to have my head cut off my body. This, is almost like living in a cell, waiting for the sentence for the crime I have committed. It is sure to be dead sentence, but somehow, deep inside, I still hope to see that it was not that bad, that I can come out of this in one full body.

If anyone tell me that this is just about finishing school and coping alone, I would laugh at how exaggerated the rendition is. But it is, it is.

Starting week 2 with Mozart's Requiem: Kyrie. If there's a God, He would take pity on me. But there doesn't seem to be any. 

Hello, my old friend.

Been thinking of how deeply in love I am with music. I was high and low, here and there, with and without and survived through it all. As addicting as morphine to my pains, I feel being understood as much as I want to be. Music is a company, like a friend (-only better). In case of obsession, it became like a religion (-only better). Oh maaaan...

In my dream I were grooving with XX's Romy Madley Croft

I have watched several versions of the 'Phantom of the Opera' and I have never loved the musical more than after I watched Sierra Borges and Ramin Karimloo's rendition of it. Ramin especially, played a very endearingly dramatic Phantom.

It took me  a while to be able to digest something as full of emotion such as this story. After what I had gone through last semester, I seemed to be more aware of this bundle of impulses and ignorance that I am. It made me want to curl up in a ball everytime I remembered the shameful things that I did in the name of standing up for the thing that I thought made me human. And everyone else thought I was crazy.

I had my Phantom period. (oh yeah that term 'emo' is so mainstream)

Head and heart a universe apart, yet we battled our whole lives working to disentangled these two. And in this world, of sanity and civility, in any case of battle between our head and heart, the head must win.

The head must win. So only in Phantom's cave can one helplessly scream, wail, long and gaze upon love and loss. And Ramin haunted the audience with these scenes which are not possible in this world; we humans live and move on.

All flowers in time bend towards the sun
I know you said that there's noone for you
But here is one

That's it, it's split it won't recover
Just frame the halves and call them brothers
Find their fathers and their mothers
If you remember who they are

Over and over they call us their friends
Can't we find something else to pretend?
Like nobody's won and we're safe at the end

In the darkness the film machine's spinning
So let's leave it on
We'll be out in the street
before anyone knows that we're gone

That's it, it's split, it can't recover
Just frame the halves and call them a whole
And chip at the bricks and fill up your pockets
With the pieces of the wall that you stole

The hunt is on, everyone's chasing
Everyone's chasing a shot
A shot rings out, nobody wants it
Nobody wants it to stop

That's it, it's split, it won't recover
Just frame the halves and call them brothers
Find your fathers and your mothers
If you remember who they are
If you remember, if you remember,
if you remember who they are

To a light soul with sentimental tow, yours might be the Lord's humming if He likes to sing.
Ouais, elle est amoureux...

Jeff, say hello to Eva Cassidy for me! 

Some tracks that I've been listening to and to which my brain has helplessly attached the memory of the past 4 months.
1. Jeff Buckley - Forget Her
2. Jeff Buckley - We all Fall in Love Sometimes
3. Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over
4. Jeff Buckley - Corpus Christi Carol
5. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
6. Lana Del Rey - Young and Beautiful
7. Pink - Try
8. Alt J - Buffalo Man
9. Les Miserablés 25th Anniversary Concert
10. Churchill - Change
11. Blue Foundation - Watch you Sleeping
12. Blue Foundation - Evo
13. Blue Foundation - Bonfire
14. Fourplay - Bali Run
15. Fourplay - 101 Eastbound
16. Fourplay - Chant
17. Fourplay - I'll Still Be Loving You
18. Dario Marianelli - Atonement
19. Dario Marianelli - Elegy for Dunkirk
20. Phillip Glass - The Poets Act
21. Phillip Glass - The Morning Passage
22. Phillip Glass - The Hours
23. Dave Brubeck  - Bluette
24. Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings
25. Jack White - Love is Blindness

3 weeks ago, after I was officially announced to be cleared from dengue fever, my uncle and his wife asked me to go out with their young kids. They were taking the kids to play at an indoor theme park in a mall. They thought they were giving me some kind of recreation, but seriously, I can no longer be hysteric over trampoline after what I had gone through. I thought I had suffered enough that I can no longer feel my trying-to-please button. I had been playing with 7, 5 and 2 year old kids during the day and cried to yearn for sleep in the night as the memories of throwing away my beloved kitchen tools in the eviction came upon my mind. I had one of the kids sat on my lap as I played 'Oggy and Cockroaches' cartoons for them- I wonder if their mum would still let me do that had she known how I almost killed myself two months ago.  I felt that I was deserving to be pampered after my closest experience to unintentional death.

 I felt like a limp inside an armor that kept me on the pose other people ever knew I had been; an innocent girl-next-door on a break from her study. I needed to hide for a while so I could just give in to the gravity. The nearest place I got was studio 1 at the cinema in the mall. They turned off the light and people were seated facing the screen so nobody could watch you. Even just for 120 minutes, I shall have my darkness.

So, I watched 'The Great Gatsby'. The movie was full of visual effects, that I felt my senses were kept being fed with something so grand. It didn't feel right, but alright it did looked aesthetic. However, to me it was not Gatsby's superb house, neither his awesome parties that made him great; it was the opposite. I was expecting more well-timed silences and blandness which I could afford when I read the novel by myself. It was a good movie, only not good enough to be 'The Great Gatsby' movie. I still prefer the BBC old movie version.

'Are you sure? It was ME who played Mr. Gatsby.'

I fell in love with the novel as soon as I read it. It really took a talent to be able to present triviality and superficiality in a most poetic manner, almost as if they were a virtue. Even though it was written by someone who lived very far away from where I was in a completely different time, there were so many things resonating along with the situation I was facing then. I could relate with Nick's exasperation growing just by standing by the side of the arena where the careless people frivolously smacked everything on their way.

“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

I adored Gatsby's determination to become a self-made man, his ability in keeping finding himself amidst all the things he was not, and I shared his blindness upon being crazy about someone who was not crazy about him.

“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.” 

But there is this one thing. One thing that I think I can never relate with is Daisy's beauty.

"she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

The movie played Lana del Rey's single, 'Young and Beautiful' during a montage where Gatsby and Daisy romanced their reunion, which I found to be so fitting with Daisy's character and her level of understanding of everything around her. It has been on my playlist for weeks until now, and I think there is no better version than her studio recording version. She can't sing live yet , and nobody can do the haunting audio effect of sound engineering.



"When a man fell in love with a woman, he would do anything for her.", my uncle told me during the (long) montage, and I sensed his nudging me for what he thought to be my delusion of actually being loved by someone I had just lost.

But who am I, what am I to be so demanding of someone's love. Then, St. Francis came to my mind reciting his famous selfless prayer: "O divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love."

Perhaps that's how a divine love saved a soul; how it drove one crazy to desire a love. Stop there and quit seeking to be loved. But seriously, can you just stop there and accept it fully without any resistance? Why was I not wanted enough? What's not in me that keep people from wanting 'to do anything for' me? There was an ocean in front of my eyes and if only I could cover its depth...

Disclaimer: the following is endlessly trivial.

I think I am not beautiful enough to be loved as such. And by that I am stripped of any privileges to be average, mediocre and sometimes, miserable; which ironically is what I am. Shit.

Who doesn't like a beautiful woman? Who could ever say it truly, free of any denial whatsoever, that deep inside his/her heart he/she does not like a beautiful woman? What is more true than liking what our senses have been made drawn into? Everything else is denial, moral flipping or a consolation, you name it.

What could be the worst of being a beautiful woman? She could be a foolish and superficial person. But isn't that the most wonderful thing to be in this miserable world? To be intelligible is to be found out anyway. And if that's not the case, what would be more perfect than a beautiful woman who desire something more than what can be seen and touched?

What about someone who does not like what she is and wants to be beautiful? She got accused of being shallow despite of her condemnation of such impulse in her  mind. I thought that it is such a shame for those who fought for feminism, for us, who demanded women emancipation; the ladies want to be treated equally with their brothers the way they are seen as a man within and without, and not ultimately based on what is pleasing to be seen. But there the ladies are, worrying about how plump and short they are without the high heels shoes.

They say God thinks everyone is beautiful the way He created people be. Alright, He is God so He has the very right to impose His idea on what's beautiful- for a good reason, I wish. But I cannot lie to myself. I wish I were taller, slimmer, edgier; I wish I were something else. This is not about someone sanctioning something based on popular culture, that fat is bad, flabby is ugly; I just wish I had something better to cover my incompetence and my shortcomings. I felt that one need to be good looking enough to have an excuse to pass people's merciless carelessness. On the other hand, one could matter nothing at all and still have people's sympathy when she is pleasing enough to look at. I am feeling so bland, halting, and without any conspicuous talent. There I typed those out. Never uglier than ever.
And perhaps the moral story of John Merrick's biography 'The Elephant Man' was on the existence of mysterious social element in looks. We hate to admit it, but we cannot deny it. What drew me into the story of his life was not because he could embrace his distasteful look- he never wanted to be ugly. He once said that his plan was to live in a house for the blind so maybe someone could love him without having to see him. Now, you don't listen to what beautiful people say about being not beautiful.

Oh, just shut up, Emma. Look at yourself.

I have everything bad for a girl that my mother said I have inherited from my father (good job building my self-esteem, mum).

So, the answer to Lana's question: will somebody still love me when I no longer young and beautiful?
Nobody will. Nobody ever did, cos I never were.

Enough enough.

Looking out the door I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water
And maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind so you never know

Broken down and hungry for your love with no way to feed it
Where are you tonight, child you know how much I need it
Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run

Sometimes a man gets carried away, when he feels like he should be having his fun
And much too blind to see the damage he's done
Sometimes a man must awake to find that really, he has no-one

So I'll wait for you... and I'll burn
Will I ever see your sweet return
Oh will I ever learn

Oh lover, you should've come over
'Cause it's not too late

Lonely is the room, the bed is made, the open window lets the rain in
Burning in the corner is the only one who dreams he had you with him
My body turns and yearns for a sleep that won't ever come

It's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her
It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever

Well maybe I'm just too young
To keep good love from going wrong

Oh... lover, you should've come over
'Cause it's not too late

Well I feel too young to hold on
And I'm much too old to break free and run
Too deaf, dumb, and blind to see the damage I've done
Sweet lover, you should've come over
Oh, love well I'm waiting for you

Lover, you should've come over
Cause it's not too late

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

There is no warranty that you would feel any better by doing this. That one could come up with this kind of thinking is an 'advantage' in itself. Indifference, frivolity - for we can see something lowlier than these shallowness, we must give in and creep from beneath.

Imagine the worst thing you think about yourself.

How would you feel if the one person you trusted the most in the world not only thinks them too, but actually uses them as reasons not to be with you?

21 is really not the time you look out of the window and committing the thoughts of "life is..." - it becomes scandalous because it is more of "life is but...". The rest of the world paced their way to different places they would like to go to and passed through me as if I was a ghost.

21 could feel like a thousand year when you have been here and there. I have gone away to find my home, I have felt being not at home, have thought that I have found a home and have lived to see how it left me homeless. There can actually be no place for a soul here on earth, and my desire to leave this life is not that I know any place I could call home somewhere else. There is no place where I could rest my worn out body, there is no good father's gentle stroke on my sweating head, there is no sweet voice telling me how life has turned me this way; everywhere is but a spared space in someone else's house.

Time does not change anything, it only enfolds things as they are. I live only for that I have not died. It happens at 21 that I lost myself.

Life spit back on me, with saliva contaminated with dengue.

Now I am eligible for Les Miserables

Human A
Condition : wanted to kill himself
Dilemma : He knew that by the time he sought help to professionals in the university clinic things would just get uglier if not better. By the time people knew about his condition they would deem you unfit to live his own life, making decisions for him and leaving himself stranded even more unheard.
Solution : Kept everything to himself, met friends to play soccer and shut himself up when the breakdown came; just try to get by... Until the moment he could not take it anymore.
Result : Human A hanged himself to death in his dorm room.


Human B
Condition : just wanted to disappear, too scared of the pain of dying
Dilemma : same with human A but certainly with more problem with loss of hope to humanity, religiously attached
Solution : Sought for professional help, got clinical diagnosed, treated medically, opened up to people, took the break she needs, slowly gathered the strength to recover.
Result : Witnessed the reality of her dilemmas, killed by prejudices, as heroic as a thumbdrive survived in a washing machine.
Remark : The pain of dying is something, but the religion attachment made her think death is even more optimistic than living dead.

Human C
Condition : mentally and socially homeless
Dilemma : needed to be where he was treated unfairly, but he had nowhere to go. Needed help to sort his anger but getting it on the surface only got him questioned by suspicious party; condemned forever guile until he could be proven innocent.
Solution : Got upset, blamed the world for everything, subscribed to hatred and fatalism.
Result : Got really really angry, exploded bombs that killed innocent people

It is a shame for the world of psychology, really. I pitied these people who worked so hard to study the subject, believing that what they were dealing with was something as noble as treating a dying cancer patient. The world is not yet -perhaps never- ready for humanity. It would all make sense when someone came to me with his horrified face and told me that we were actually living among robots. I don't know, maybe we are living dead humans. That's why they put you to a purgatory called mental institution. I'd rather go to hell, or maybe I am curious to see how it is there. 

By right we should just kill ourselves when we are suicidal.

Dr. Treves: I pray to God he is an idiot. 

My mother's biggest fear for me is not that one day I would get pregnant by some guy or commit something that makes me end up in a jail. It is the fact that I feel more than most people do and (perhaps without the capacity of it) think about it.

As dangerous as they are, my thoughts and imaginations have also imparted the most potent humanity of myself. Other people would say knowing the physics of rainbow just kills its charm, but I think the complexity that somehow coexists with its seemingly just-there-to-be-seen physique is something that makes me appreciate it even more.

Mr. Merrick: People are frightened by what they don't understand.

We humans miniaturize this gift that only God bestow on us. We term it as being 'sad', 'unwell', 'happy', 'broken', 'excited', 'uplifted' - even worse, label them as good or bad. Lie to yourself, but there it entails the truth that makes is the humans that we are. It is the truth that we can not afford to escape from. It grabs us down and bring us to our knees.

And who are we to judge our emotions? Jesus wept when He lost His dearest friend, He agonized to blood in the garden, He got upset in the temple; how He was truly human. Some people can feel so good of their emotional detachment. But I think like this: however appealing it seems to live a life so efficient and pleasing to others, the truth is that some part of one's life requires him/her to walk along the 'stupid' winding road and how it takes so much more to just be there with all our true selves than making up something based on our convictions.

At least for me. Only by these it all makes sense to me; the-used-to-be cheesy terms of Divine Love, Faith and Hope. That I am loved despite of my ungratefulness and sloppiness, in this very miserable and human way that I am. It is Love in its most loving and unconditional way that I know. That one's life could end up as morbid as suicide, that it could not be thought how things can get any better either in this life and eternity; it is really not our 'hope' and 'faith' that change anything or save any souls. I think it is the vastness that comes together with the realm of God; God is the Hope and Faith in our most hopeless and helpless truth. That my fatalism does not change any single bit of These.

Of course I don't know what's in God's mind. But I am saying this at least for me, at least for people like Joseph Merrick and many other people with 'broken life' be it for his own 'fault' or something grander than that. Psalm 23 may not be the most beautiful thing human ever wrote and (true that) it takes a Joseph Merrick to show me how rich it actually is.

Mrs. Kendall: Mr. Merrick, you are not an elephant man at all. Oh, no... No... You are a Romeo.

Fashion world is trivial. That is even more why we like it. We can just be careless in so believing our senses, exempting ourselves from having to penetrate the depth of life. It is as if horrible things like wars in Middle East never happened, we forgot how broken human's heart can get that looking good no longer stopped people from detonating bombs, we stop bothering thinking of how some people were debilitated with genetic disposition that heavily detracted how others see them as human beings. We look at those lean figures dressed on everything that reminds us of how pleasant and indulging this world can be; the field with wild flowers, the playground, cotton candy, cakes, childhood Disney princess movies, cute puppies, butterfly, willow trees...

It all started with this leaf

It is hard to explain how I am not a bridezilla and end up looking at the latest Oscar de la Renta Bridal Collection. Some parts of myself told me that I AM trivial. Darn.

That someone can imagine a dress like this, wearing the veil that way.

And people can use asparagus as wedding bouquet

And these Vera Wang's wedding dresses really changed the way I see toilet paper

Josh Groban, the guy with angelic voice. Even he is not spared from this.

It is not just me. The live audience laughed so hard when they showed how Ross looked like in his younger year.

We called him and he stood up and started to walk towards us very slowly. Then, as if he had become convinced it was us, he ran towards us, threw himself on to us, knocked us over, knocked George over and hugged us, like he used to, with his paws on our shoulders.

Food industry is jumping off the cliff with this

Tis true, my form is something odd
but blaming me, is blaming God,
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you

If I could reach from pole to pole
or grasp the ocean with the span,
I would be measured by the soul
The mind's the standard of the man

Rinso knows better

"The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel...

Sin is a gravitation" -

I could note sleep again last night. I was tired physically and emotionally, I assure you that. I had been talking to myself in my room the whole day while I was studying the paper titled "The ABC of ADC". I got excited getting to know how to convert analog numbers to binary numbers. Something which trembled me when I was in high school. No matter how many times my Physics olympiad trainer explained it to us, it just did not knock any sense to my head. And I looked around myself then, all my peers said oooh and aaah, some nodded, they all understood those blar blar blargh that my trainer did. I hope I would never face any binary thing anymore in my life ever since then.

It was not important at all for my thesis but there was this urge inside of me that push me to understand how people do that. And I did it! I converted 51 to 110011 and 156, any number you name it! I told myself: "See brain DOES develop!"

I talked to myself, trying to explain the things that I did not understand to myself, some part of me was like a coach. It's like Rocky's coach (what's his name) "Damn it, Brig. You are repeating yourself all over and over again. Think, woman, think!".

I would stroll around my room and walked as if I were thinking of something serious. I was trying to make sense of how the error of my data reading should be something that the paper wrote. And then I went to the washroom. I washed my hand and looked at my own face in the mirror. I put acne gels that made a series of white polka dots especially on my chin and my forehead.

I could not believe it, I was flirting with myself. I really said it there , "Hey, you actually look pretty with those acne gel polka dot."

Then I went back to my room, and looked at myself on the mirror. I didn't look pretty, I was all messed up. I yelled at myself, "SCREW BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE CHARACTERS. IF YOU WANT TO PLEASE ME, COMPLIMENT MY CHARACTERS."

Phew. Then I talked to myself again. I think I just like hearing myself talk. I hate silence. Not that awkward silence when you were with other people you were not comfortable with. I hate my own silence. And I really shut myself up when I am with someone else. Or I think , it was not me talking.

It was 12 pm. Time to sleep.

It had been two hours since I took my night pill. It was not working again. I tried to remember what my doctor said. Just rest, even if you cannot sleep.

But icky thoughts came upon me that I can't get rid of.

My room was all dark. But I had gotten used to with the darkness. I saw the fan and thinking of slicing my head with its blades like how they slice silicon wafer tube.

I turned off the fan so I could stop thinking about opening up my skull. Now I lied down on my bed. Closing my eyes. I lied on my back and opened up my hands because of the heat. Then it reminded me of the position with which people who fell down from stories were found.

Icky thoughts came upon me. You need to climb enough stories to make sure you die.

I changed my position. Now I lied on my side. my head rest on my left hand. Then I was thinking of getting a razor blade from Guardian and cut my left wrist. If it were my right wrist, I might not be able to write or draw anymore if I did not die.

I don't know. I did not intend to die.

And the thoughts of blood drenching all over my bed and room, made me feel tired because then I have to wipe it all clean and wash the blood stain from my bed sheet. No, I have no time for that.

Icky thoughts, I begged thee to go.

I wrapped myself deep into my blanket. and then I imagined strangling myself with my blanket. I looked at the ceiling, realizing there were not any single post where I could hang the clothes. If it were any, it would be the door. But such an ill thing for my neighbors to wake up to see a dead body hanging in the morning.

I was tired of all of these. I looked at the Winnie the Pooh calendar I got for myself earlier this year. I was wondering if I would still be alive in November. What a trouble it would cause if I really had the gut to do such stupid stuffs that I thought about. How would the rest of my family carry on with their lives.

And if I did not die, I would have to stay in the hospital or psych ward for some days. How much that would cost me. And I still did not submit my thesis too. And I lost my only job offer after my prof found out what a sick person I was.

I don't have to be happy, I just need to stay alive, right. And what do people know about happiness? It all feels so surreal to me. I am not sure anymore if I were ever feeling genuinely happy in my life. Or perhaps I just forgot how it feels. Or perhaps the term is being overused. Nobody is happy. Everyone is too stupid to realize that what they feel is not happiness. It is a mere delusion. That's why ignorance is a bliss. My biggest fear in life is to be stupid. I AM stupid right now, but why am I not feeling happy yet?

That means I am smart.

OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!

Oh help me make me die in my sleep

Everyone laughed at her when she got rejected by her crush, who chose to went with another sweet girl despite of what this sad girl had done for him. She jumped up and down, all the way to win his heart. But in the end she was left alone. She failed.

Perhaps that was the first lesson I learned of the cruelty of this world.

I am walking in this tunnel, dark tunnel that wakes you up in the middle of the night, dark tunnel that put me somewhere else in the day away from the rest of the world. Everything else happens out there in the light. But the light blinds me and frankly, I do not want to see.

My God says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

My God says that. I can't help but feeling so distorted and shattered.

All electrons in an atom have a negative value energy, if it were positive it would not be bound to the proton. It would behave as free electron.

But negative it is, thus free it is not.

I feel you, Maam.

I am feeling so utterly damned right now. I remembered I read an anonymous poem with this famous line : something something if you must, but don't something.

All this while I have been so sure that it is :
"Die if you must, but don't rest."

I quoted that to a friend who instantly signaled me how wrong it sounded to him. And I went to google to show him the poem, because I think it was famous enough.

There's no such thing, fool brig.

It is "Rest if you must, but don't quit" -unknown author. Perhaps the author was saying that to his friend who was on diet and exercise regime. Definitely not to someone who messed up her mind after sleepless nights, overslept days, unfinished deadlines and even more deadlines.  Dare you tell her to rest.

Of course unless some elves come and do the works while she rest. 

I could not concentrate throughout my 6pm nanostructure class. I have made a point to myself to show up in the class, and not only that, this time, I have gathered all cells spiritually to focus and try to understand what the professor talked about when he pointed the jargon words and some funny shapes of nano objects which so far only made me think of cookies (made by a complete noob).

I was all ready by the time I finished my 4pm class. Got the spirit right, asked my prof a question after 4 pm class. Not that I care, but I need to make myself believe that I care about those stuffs and not that sky color is changing or that the world would stop turning just because of this horrible things inside my mind.

Then I met this girl. She was a classmate in Physics. She was that type of student who were always telling you and showing you how panicked she was because she thought she was not doing well enough with her Physics courseworks, which I tried to tolerate everytime she did that to me. She was a paranoid. Her worries never happened. She had always been a 5.00 GPA student. I am not envious of her at all, because I know she got that by rejecting spending time with me or her other friends for lunch when she didn't feel like it, by cramming and studying all semester and not caring about her friends at all, and I remembered how she refused to share her notes or to teach me things that I did not understand in the lecture that we took together last year.

Fair enough, I do not care much about her. I saw her walking 5 steps towards me, I told myself to looked down and pretended not to see her, but it was too late. She grabbed my hand and said she was  depressed. I was skeptical. Ever since I went to receive treatments and therapy from psychological unit in university clinic last year, I always wanted to look at the person in the eye and asked if she/he really know what he/she was saying. I do not like the term being overused. But I tried to be normal, right. So I just fake a sympathetic smile and offered a listening ear. At least I know, that particular person won't understand what I am going through. Because I knew how it is killing me to shut everything to myself and this blog only. I would talk to her, try to show her how appreciable it was to have someone to listen to your rants.

She was worried that her perfect GPA score would get affected by her thesis, which she thought she had not worked hard enough for. She whined to me that she had just started writing it yesterday. Shit, I have not even started writing anything yet, and I still needed to take some important datas. If she is worried about her GPA, I am worried if I can even pass my modules by this semester after getting a warning letter from the dean's office and one of my tutor. I am a mess now, I understand that she would not feel better for the fact that she is much better than a mess.

I even told her my problems, which I am not proud at all. Not to console her, but to tell her that I am struggling too . That I was like her, I defined myself with my productivity and my achievements and by that measure I am a complete shit right now. Zero self esteem. These were days of failures, failure to understand and remember what I read, sometimes failure even to be courageous enough to face the test or even to show up in the class, failure to study as well as I planned myself to do today and at the end of the day I felt so doomed. Sometimes it was hard to sleep, but it was always hard to get up of the bed and face the day too.

She told me that she must have perfect transcript and records for her grad school application. Come on, it is Physics grad school, people need you there. And if it is research, her supervisor even had told her that her transcript does not matter, my supervisor told so too, those are top profs. So it is not just me saying that. I need a job and I have a very awful transcript. I told her that I tried to keep in my mind that my transcript did not identify who I am, which I still found hard to swallow, but I had to sound convincing to her. She even asked me what if my interviewer asked about my D and C and what I gained from my education. I am proud that I am still alive right now and I carried on one blow after another. I tried to show my supervisors and my lecturers that I always wanted to be better despite of my very poor performance. My GPA does not tell them that, but I know myself. My D and C are my becoming, they teach me something the A students did not have. I can take my time to have my brain developed enough to understand all those things that does not make sense now, I would read the books again, I would ask people. But my becoming, my not giving up and getting toughen up, this is my trophy.

I told her what my mum told me, she should not be worried about her GPA. Even if it is important to her, it would not help her if she kept worrying. Her motivation should be to train her character. If she thought she had not worked hard enough, then try better. In the long term it is her character and her passion that matters. Having those, even if she could not get to her first choice grad school because they think her transcript is not amazing enough, then it is their loss.

She told me that she has ambitions in life.

What? Did I make myself sound like some hippies who did not try to achieve anything?

She told me that we have to be realistic. The employers, and the grad school admission boards, want spectacular resumes and fantastic interviews. She told me she believed that even more after taking NUS Career Center Development module (which I took as well and found how a complete arse people in working life could be). She said I was the opposite of her because she believed that she should aim to please the employers or admission boards in this rat race by having a perfect resume, masking it with so-called 'active' verbs, networking with right people, dressing up to give good impression. It is not that I disagree with all that. I agreed but the root of those impressions were the characters they tried to claim they have, right. So, I told her that it is good to do those what career center people told her, but first-thing-first is to really have those characters.

Told her to try to change her mindset, that she was not her GPA. If she could not, at least do it for the sake of her friend, like me, who were losing in our GPA. I really wanted her to do that because I was like that too. No matter how smooth everything was for me, I kept feeling pressurized to achieve more and more. And I sincerely feel awful everytime I remember that pressure, the friends I lost and the time that passed.

I knew I wasted my 2 hours when she said, "Well, what if you were me, who has all the perfect CAP and all that, won't you scared of losing it? You should really go to an interview and see what I meant."

It was awful, it was killing me inside. I could feel my hulk genes started to circulate all over my body. I got up of my chair and I said to her face, "I won't let the world define who I am."

Fuck you.

There I said it. Now I can swallow it along with my night pills.

Do you know how antidepressants work?

It makes you think of silver linings upon encountering the word 'diffraction' on your physics notes.

Magic.

When my counselor suggested me to go to bookstores, she mentioned Kinokuniya, Borders...

I felt like crying remembering that Borders had closed down.

Friends can only be friends. It is easy to share joys together, but that's it.

Your lover loved you only when you were together. Well, he said he would still be praying for me, 'wyatb'. I hope he really remember me in his prayers. I guess I should be grateful with that thinking of how sad it was to be completely cut out of his life. Thank you very much.

Family is the only 'us' who stand by me when the rest disappears.  Time proves so.

In this proud land we grew up strong
We were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
Ive changed my face, Ive changed my name
But no one wants you when you lose

Stupid hormones, let me introduce you to my three new friends.

Don't bother knowing their names, they are hard to pronounce.

I have known this all along: being in love is to be vulnerable.

Only Heaven knows what has been in the heart all this while.

As for me, I won't forget.

I am glad it did not work with that guy with a lovely smile. (He is the victim, I am the villain)

and also the plan to secure every semester's dean's list, the prestigious internship I tried applying in year 3, the leading role in a musical production I auditioned for, the idea of being talented in arts, ...

I have lived almost 4 years of contant epic fail and I still do not believe that I am actually a useless person.

so there the list goes on...!

I am secretly having crush with cigarettes. Wouldn't it be awesome on lonesome nights like this one, when flashbacks of the past played and when the regrets came along? Or when the thoughts of tomorrow has exhausted me, ceased to be appealing to this worn-out soul.

Last things. I could die tomorrow, then I would die a lonely person. If God permitted me to wake up again tomorrow and stay alive for some more years ahead, I would know how awful it is to live like this,  to be known as something by everyone, yet nothing by anyone. Time passed and it would never came back to me, for me to live with someone to grow up with. I gave it up when I decided to find the answer to my own worth, I left them all. And I think I am seeing an answer.

I missed that momentum. Then, let this be my last chance: a dog friend to grow old with.

I wish I were short-minded enough to smoke.

Once upon a dream, 
I was lost in love's embrace, 
There I found a perfect place, 
Once upon a dream. 

Once there was time, 
Like no other time before, 
Hope was still an open door, 
Once upon a dream. 

And I was unafraid, 
The dream was so exciting, 
But now I see it fade, 
And I am here alone. 

 Once upon a dream, 
You were heaven-sent to me. 
But it wasn't meant to be, 
Now you're just a dream. 

Could we begin again? 
Once upon a dream.