merit, worth, and love.

you know, i think i've never grown out of the constant hungry need for the approval of others. especially that of my loved ones, even though i may not seem to outwardly hold their opinion in especial esteem. i thought it was a phase that one could grow out of, a bad habit i'd kick with the passing of time and the passage into adulthood. fool that i am, i think that growing up automatically makes me wiser and less insecure. i have found out today that that is absolutely not true, and i've been happily deluded all this while. i'm sorely insecure about too many things, therefore i need the approval and affirmation of the people close to me. i cling to their approval as if it were a life raft, and i'm beginning to think that the positive opinions of others are more important to me than i previously thought. sometimes, it's all i cling on to to stop myself from freefalling down into an abyss of nothingness, of utter worthlessness. now, perhaps there is something wrong in all of this, this extreme form of self-deprecation that i put myself through. and i know it. i can see how it is so wrong, and yet i just indulge in bouts of insecurity, needing the approval and praise of others - just for that temporary high. that'd make me a junkie in a sense, just chasing that high. living from high to high. then when the high of the approval fades, i start to crashland down to reality and push myself to do well again so that the high of the praise seeps in again. the approval of my parents, the affirmation that my friends give me, the acknowledgement of my own achievements as precisely that - i'm addicted to it. i need it to be okay.

so, lately, i've been feeling like the stupid kid in the house again. i'm not sore, i'm not jealous - far from it. but somehow i can't help feeling like my parents overlook me as a moderately intelligent person, and see me as some sort of unclever and ordinary. too dull compared to my too brilliant sister. and i wouldn't mind it so much, except that i wish it didn't get to me as it does. i thought i'd outgrown comparing, outgrown trying to prove that i'm some sort of brainy, perhaps. and it saddens me that hey, maybe it'll never leave me. it gets to me how stupid i feel when i think about myself in that sense, as if somehow i haven't achieved anything worth mentioning in my academic life in the past 21 years. so maybe the news that i got the double major for literature and communications & new media got lost in the whole whirlwind of whether sister should go to SMU law or not. i mean comparatively, i've achieved nothing, it would seem. it's just a double major, not a double degree. even though i'm carrying the equivalent workload of a double degree student. so maybe law or medicine or life science, even, is easier to remember than "literature and communications". i'd like to think it were so, instead of allowing the thought that maybe they just can't be bothered to pay attention, to remember, to seep into my head. i'm a big girl now, i don't need my parents approval of my school life to make me feel as if i'm actually something. i'm worth something even if it appears otherwise. so maybe i'm not the brainy one in the family, i can deal with that. i am just telling myself incessantly that being smarter does not merit more love. although logically speaking, being smarter would mean that one is worth more in terms of lifetime achievements - and that would hence naturally attract more attention, love, and concern. but nevermind, i will try to keep the silliness at bay. i am upset and have been upset for some time, finding tears trickling down my eyes at inconvenient times of the day whenever i think about all this. but there has to be a better way to deal with this, other than just feeling sorry for myself, and crying utterly useless tears for seemingly no reason.

PRISON BREAK

so, while i watch 10 episodes of Prison Break back-to-back, i've been working on my chicken cross stitch. which, for some reason, makes me happy when i stare at it and trace the patterns that the colours make on the cloth.

my Prison Break marathoning has made my boyfriend a tad mad at me though, and i'm not quite sure what to make of it at the moment. especially since i'm at the time of the month when i wish i were anything but female, being beset by nauseating belly cramps. i am a bit distraught, but find myself unable to do anything else except continue watching my dvds cos there seems to be nothing to say about everything. - i do want to watch, but i do know that i should be more understanding and compromising about everything. and less selfish.

why Prison Break is so interesting to me, i must admit that the Wentworth guy is pretty darn fine. but let's pretend i never said it. omg he just kissed her?!! GASP i am like in. okay. well. what was i saying. i forget. i am watching Prison Break now.

schizophrenia

you know, it just hit me. maybe i'm Lonely.

and Insecure too, to boot.

but then, these don't make sense to my brain at the moment because i should have absolutely no reason in the world to feel alone. insecure - well, yes, maybe lately, especially since i feel like i'm becoming uninspired and drab. but lonely? with a perfect boyfriend, family, and friends? sounds a bit rich, you might think.

slowly but surely, though, some semblence of dark loneliness is creeping into a corner of my increasingly shrinking heart and consciousness. and i don't know why it's so, or how to reverse this alarming happening. as i see myself retreating further inwards, i don't want to do anything to stop it. it feels almost like a spectacle, sort of. where i'm just sitting by the sidelines and watching a sad freakshow. sheer abjection. i see myself being permeated by dark, gloomy thoughts - and all i can do is watch as i become ever more dejected at apparently nothing, for seemingly no reason. perhaps it's some form of quarter-life crisis, if you're the kind who likes to trivialize things. whatever is happening to me, i can only watch it unfold with some sort of detached horror, while secretly, meanly enjoying what's happening to such a picture-perfect sort of life. it's almost as if there're two people in me: one helplessly watching as a pitch-black tidal wave of misery washes over her life and sweeps her away; the other somewhat sneering at the fate of plastic Barbie and her too-perfect world.

and after recklessly typing this avalanche of dark thoughts out into words, all i can do is sit here and scratch my upper lip, as i am increasingly aware of a rather stupid prevailng sense of nonchalance for the inevitable.

the banality of my existence.

the days are really slipping by me.. just like that. the more i try to stop time from passing so quickly, the faster they seem to fly, it seems. i try to fill my days with meaningful activities, to do stuff that actually matters. anything, to stop my time from spiralling down into utter insignificance. so much time, and yet i end up doing practically nothing at all. as i grow ever older, i become more and more resigned to some sad facts, that some dreams must be let go of. unfulfilled, or not. as much as i am convinced that i am more than just that, i am becoming increasingly aware that i am as much just that as everyone else might be. even more so, perhaps. not some kind of special - more like some kind of ordinary. i see the rest of my life stretched out before me, still wide wastes of unspent years, if nothing untoward happens to me before my old-lady time. but at the same time, that life i see is one that is petered out and almost bland. i know that it's up to me to live the kind of life that i want. but i'm feeling so dull and lacklustre these days, it almost seems fitting for me to live a similar kind of boring, dishwater-dull life that i abhor. it seems almost as if i feel as if it is perfectly my place to mire myself in that kind of banality, being the insanely boring witless person i feel i'm becoming. it's as if i deserve it, when in another time when there had been a lot more fight me, i would vehemently deny it of me. yes, that's right. i feel as if the fight has been sucked out of me. i sound so jaded, suddenly. so tired, so sick of it all. but i'm not - i'm not actually like that, i don't feel this way. i generally don't feel sick of life, and yet maybe a part of me feels as if i've had enough. i generally feel still some kind of special, not all kinds of banal, but an increasingly huge part of me is teteering towards the facelessness of sheeplike crowds. i feel an increasing need to read, indulging in a form of escapism my immense imagination allows as it takes flight and comes to life in a plane of its own. Lord of the Rings has been my latest read - a daunting volume at about a thousand pages that makes my arms ache if i hold it up for too long periods of time as i lie in bed reading. i am fully aware of the need to look in the not-too-distant future of graduation time, when i will have to decide what i want to work as. or more importantly, i will have to secure for myself tenureable employment that is some form of bearable to me. daily journalism is no longer something that i can see myself in. the local press does not appeal to me at all as i read more and more of the trash that is produced. in their defence, i also know that the press has to perform its role in society, journalists have to write to do so. i want to be a writer, but what can i do in this unimaginative society that i live in? what kind of book can i write here that will make writing a viable career? i need to think of something before i graduate, something has to work out in the grander scheme of things.

on a more banal note. cycling yesterday was great - but my legs are exhausted. i'd do it again, but maybe not too soon. heh. next on my list of things to do on a date would be the building of sandcastles on the beach! apparently, you can rent sandcastle building stuff from a shop for a reasonable rate for the whole day. that would finally let me see my castles in tangible sand and not just in the immaterialness of clouds. heh. - okay, so not funny. i am currently watching episodes of antm cycle 10 on youtube now as i throw out clothes from my wardrobe. i have so many pieces of clothing i have no idea what to do with - i don't want to give them away for good by giving them to the Salvation Army, but at the same time, i don't wear them quite as often enough for them to occupy hanging space in my already bursting cupboard. also, i am currently not doing any dinners/lunches with ANYONE because i am SO broke it is not funny. i have no idea where my money all evaporated to - it always turns out this way. sigh. and, i have to start packing for sydney soon. like get all my winter clothes from Trina. i wish i could borrow boots from her, too. but her feet are like 3 sizes smaller than mine. :(

so many things to do, all so insanely banal. woe is me.

the extraordinary of ordinary.

i can't help but think that beyond all this ordinariness, there must be something really extraordinary just waiting to happen, beyond the corner. here i am, mired in the most inane, ordinary life you could think of, restless out of my mind and yet not wanting to move from my comfy inertia. i cannot help but still dare to hope that there is still a lot more of my life just waiting to unfold. unfold, mind you - not for me to stumble upon.

pick a star on the dark horizon, & follow the light -
you'll come back when it's over.

receptionist-for-a-day!

sleep eluded me last night for almost three hours, leaving me extremely exasperated and grouchy. work doesn't become me - at all. i look like an absolute train wreck, and i feel like one. on the plus side, i actually enjoyed my 6km run last night. a rare occurence, i assure you, that the words "run" and "enjoyed" appear in the same sentence, especially with no negatives involved. i think i finally found out what it means to be on a "runner's high", cos i wasn't tired after a certain point in the run - and it was quite exhilirating. i need to start losing weight. the new weighing scale i bought from Ikea yesterday showed that i weigh an appalling 47kg - 3 up from a mere two months ago. which is strange, considering how i probably did zero amount of exercise prior to end-of-exams. maybe (and i'm sincerely hoping) the weight gain can be attributed to the amassing of muscle.

manning the reception is not as boring as i thought it'd be. but i think i'm doing an absolutely horrid job. i keep accidentally losing calls, pressing the wrong buttons on the switchboard when i try to transfer calls. making all sorts of wild guesses when people call and ask me if they can book rooms. signing for deliveries and not knowing what to do with them. i feel quite positively useless, actually. but - it's okay! cos it's a one-day stint only, thank goodness. or i'd create even more trouble.

i am feeling quite restless at the moment. i am hungry and itching to do some of my cross stitch all at once. wikipedia has been feeding my insatiable appetitie for trivia on the most inane things, as usual. i only wish i could plug in my earphones somewhere and watch antm on youtube. i haven't had enough bum-around-time at home to do that.

Narnia is my newest craze, by the way. i love the cinematography of the two movies that have come out, i love the music scores, I LOVE THE FANTASTICAL NATURE OF IT ALL. i want to be a queen of Narnia! i want to wear those pretty medieval-looking dresses that Susan and Lucy wears in the movies. i want to not be ordinary anymore.

one life.

so many thoughts swirling around in my head - which one to catch hold of first, which one to release on the pretext of now but perhaps maybe for good? i'm no longer fool enough to presume that everything i think of in a moment will stick around with me past that instant - life's too fleeting and transient for everything to not be merely momentary, for anything to be anything less than ephemeral. whatever i manage to pen down here, it's but a snapshot of my mind-scape at any one point in time, nothing more. sad, but true. i wish i could put into words everything i think about in a day, all the feelings that come to me and make me feel so alive and yet so aware of the time slipping through my fingers each day i'm alive. when you think about it: every day i'm alive, i have one less day to live. it goes away for good, i can't do anything to call back the moments that have passed me by.

i have felt anger, rage, so many things in recent times. wells of emotions that i thought have left me, all have sprung up to reveal their ugly faces to my aghast. jealousy, insecurity, cattiness - all these are the familiar unbecoming feelings that have been a part of me for the longest time ever, and i've more or less figured out how to deal with these when they vie for my attention so that they can be given tangible form in this all-too-tangible world. i take a deep breath, convince myself of the sheer lack of comforting logic of the annoying emotion, and turn my back on it before it comes out in frightening form. but the anger that has lashed out at my loved ones lately is something quite alien to me - which isn't to say that such wrath is beyond me, but simply has been placed under control prior to this. then there's such a thing called disgust, outrage, and a strange kind of disbelief at a type of weirdness that is just beyond me.

displacement seems to be the new feeling of the day. displacement in all its forms. and when you think about it, displacement is just the kind of feeling that one never quite gets used to, because it is the very stuff of constant change and discomfort.

my life which seems so fulfilled and filled with meaning on its shiny glossy surface is increasingly seeming to me to be empty, aimless, and sadly lacking in any form of meaning whatsoever. i don't know why i'm doing what i'm doing anymore, increasingly. when my results for the semester came out a couple of days ago, i was initially beset by all these feelings of being upset, disappointed, and then the determination to do better washed over me. to get my second upper, to push myself to do the best i can. then, when all these feelings left me, i was left wondering why i'm working so hard to get a certain set of results, a certain goal i have placed on a pedestal in my own head - a suddenly conflated sense of false importance has washed over everything i once held so dear and high in regard. even the shopping i wanted to do with my newly earned money, i don't see the point in it anymore. i don't see the point in dressing up prettily when i go out, putting on my makeup to look presentable, learning more to make myself a more valuable piece of real estate when the time comes for me to find a job for good - all these have suddenly diminished in their glitzy glamour and have dulled into the reccesses of my mind. i no longer know what i want with my life, i no longer know that i want to have a high-flying career, i no longer know anything save i want to live comfortably for the rest of my days just seeped with love.

perhaps it's from realising how insignificant it all is in the grander scale of things that's making me so disillusioned and disinterested in everything. all my hopes, my dreams, my fears - they're nothing more than a speck in the universe, which makes me nothing more than a full-stop or a comma in the sentences that make up life. when everything's going smoothly and i'm achieving all i want, it all seems to make perfect sense. everything seems to be steeped in grand meaning, seems to bear the promise of dreams to be fulfilled. but then, when something in that little pathetic insignificant ambition fails to click into place, falls slightly out of step with the tune that everything else marches to, nothing makes sense anymore. ambition seems pathetic, almost romanticised. the promise of the future seems to unravel into its sparse threads and evaporate into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a mere whisper of how tiny and transient it all is.

songs seem empty, happy tunes grate on my nerves. the only things i want to surround myself with is fresh air, and melancholy. the books i read are all about the past, about fantastical universes i want to be a part of but know for sure that they are but whimsical figments of someone's imagination. i want it all to mean something, i want my life to mean something. and somehow, it feels as though the harder i try to make it mean something, the closer i feel i'm drawing to the fearful abyss of nothing. seeing it all played out on screen would make me feel so much better, that it is actually some kind of grand, some kind of significant. but i know that i'm just one of the millions in the world, closer to some sort of faceless and voiceless than anything else. perhaps it is that which grates on me so much, knowing how pathetic my sense of self-importance is, carrying on that delusion that i finally mean something to someone - when truth is, i could disappear from the face of the earth in a heartbeat and noone would realise, no clouds will weep for me, no eclipse of the sun will mark that moment in time. nothing. everything that i have toiled for would just cease to exist. the room that i've lived in my whole life would just stay as it is, all my things collecting dust and the wood crumbling - and eventually, all my things would be packed away into boxes. and i'd laugh at the irony at it all, at how my life has been sorted into maybe seven different boxes and kept away, just like that. and all the unimportant things, they'd just be thrown away - just as i'd be thrown away when i'm dead because my body is no longer important in this cruel existence that stops for nothing, no man, no death.

sometimes i feel as if one life isn't enough for me to live. it's too short, i'm too limited and bounded by time and space. there're all these other existences i'd like to live in, and yet i can't because i'm only alive but once. and the moment i stop to breathe, it's over, my journey as a life ceases. i'd like to have lived in a king's court in 16th century Europe - something i read about now and ooh and aah over, but in truth, really existed 500 years ago. i'd like to have lived as a peasant girl, having to worry only about my marriage options and maybe my chickens and whether my cows have been milked. i'd like to live in the modern day West, that which i can only look at through a simulacrum, nothing more - because i'm Asian, and i belong in Asia because of my skin colour, my facial structure, my hair colour, eye colour, height etcetra. so many lives i'd have liked to lived, but i'll only ever know my life on earth as it is now. of course, there're all these questions that follow such a fatalistic outlook of things, but what else can i do but accept it all as it is?

i want grand romance, i want epic adventure, i want mystery. what i have, i don't seem to want very much. but i daresay when i lose all that i have, i will realise that i want these too, but i will only want them when they are no longer mine to call my own.

it started out as a feeling,

which then grew into a hope.

which then turned into a quiet thought,

which then turned into a quiet word.

& then that word grew louder and louder,

'til it was a battle cry.

i'll come back when you call me,

no need to say goodbye.

just because everything's changing,

doesn't mean it's never been this way before.

all you can do is try to know who your friends are,

as you head off to the war.

pick a star on the dark horizon,

& follow the light.

you'll come back when it's over,

no need to say goodbye.

now we're back to the beginning,

it's just a feeling and now one knows yet.

but just because they can't feel it too

- doesn't mean that you have to forget.

let your memories grow stronger and stronger,

'til they're before your eyes.

you'll come back when it's over -

no need to say goodbye.

The Call

Regina Spektor

from the Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian OST