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.
May 2013
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
I was overwhelmed by the sudden call from FoS on Friday morning , after another sleepless night, telling me to vacate my room latest by that very day or not I will get kicked out of the room.
I was very upset because the last thing I read from OSA was that they were processing my request for extension and that they will update me as soon as possible. Ya I was upset that they did not have the courtesy to tell me that the extension was rejected and tell me to vacate my room within a day or two. I had been looking for a house and been out whole day for house viewing and got chased by a lot of pushy housing agents.
I decided to just move out because I was calling OSA and FoS and UHC several times and nobody cared enough to help me and they kept throwing me in between. Their best suggestion was to vacate the room and stay in the hotel outside. But I don't know what to do with my stuffs. But then I was too sick to pack my things up and even in my best shape packing up by myself in less than a was quite impossible. I did not even have cardboards to begin with.
And all my friends were having their exams, people in Raffles Hall, even them, did not accept storage because it was exam period.
So I called sister Jocelyn and asked her if I could stay in the retreat house. But she asked her head nun and said no.
I finally called a housing agent and told her that I would take one of the house (which was quite expensive but I really need the place then) but damn that housing agent told me to sign the contract and pay by that night but she said she could only confirm to me whether or not the house could be rented by 9 May. And then around 10 numbers kept calling me that day, asking me about house viewing schedule and this or that unit. And people from Kuok Foundation had been calling me, bugging me to get out of the house. It was hell. I really felt like throwing my phone out of the window.
I finally went to IKEA to get cardboards. but then it was already 4 pm when I was back. I was very depressed, I really did not know what to do etc. And packing was especially hard , I threw away a lot of stuffs, my kitchen appliances and almost everything in my room were gifts from brother Dom. I could not stop crying that day.
Ferninda told me to go to FoS and asked them whose decision it was and see if I could get any help. So I went there and told them, as OSA told us, that it was faculty order. But FoS insisted that it was from OSA. I got very upset and I screamed in their office and cursed the lift. I really think I was going nuts.
So FoS changed their mind, I think they realized that it was a wrong decision to kick me out of the place but they cannot do anything about it. They deemed me to be too unsafe to stay outside school. So now, not only I have to vacate my room that day, I also had to GET OUT of Singapore by Saturday and return home.
What the hell. Really, I was thinking what the hell. I told them that I think they want suicidal people to just kill themselves. I cannot seek help and apply for LOA, I should just keep it to ourselves and get by until one day I should just hang myself dead like that Cinnamon student.
It really does not make sense. That other guy I met from IMH was also from FoS and they can keep his room for him. I just need the time to resolve my hospital bills and I really need to make sure everything is okay or unless they would charge 8000 sgd. I understand that I can no longer stay on campus, and that's why I need to find a house. How was I supposed to find a house in Singapore within 2 weeks? I asked them if OSA prefer me to stay illegally with my friends in PGP. Such a non-sense... And my counselor wrote to them telling them that it would be best for me to stay in Singapore to do my follow up treatment and especially I cannot get those back at home.
In the end I packed my things till 11pm that day with the help of Ferninda and Paul. I put my stuffs at Ferninda's home, which I did not fancy at all. She was the last person I would want to trouble with.
Ya but I was stomped by these things. I really felt I have no more self-esteem. All the people in FoS and OSA just looked at me as if I was crazy, talked to me as if I was dumb, made the decisions for me like I was unfit to live by myself.
This is not self-pity. I am sick of this too, my depression. But these series of events seemed to keep strangling me when I gasped for air, kept pushing me down when I started to pick myself up. But yeah, it is a hard lesson to learn, a bitter medicine to swallow. I get to see clearer once I wipe out my tears and breathe deeper once the air is free.
And spit. I will die living.
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.