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
March 2013
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.
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.
