People talk about giving up, about wanting to let go. I finally understand what separates the people who give up easily from the people who know when to let go. I never did give up easily. I just didn't know how to let go. No matter how bleak the end looked, how non-beneficial it maybe, I always tried to finish what I'd started, unless there was someone there to put a stop to it. And even then I'd still be thinking of it, thinking of how-if's and would-have's and should-have's and would-be's. It was just this habit that I had. Sort of another one of my obsessive compulsions. Any parent would have thought it was a good thing. I finally decided to do ACCA during the midst of my Foundation year. At that point, the counselors told me that ACCA did not accept my foundation and that I had to start from CAT all over again. I refused to accept that and continued on with my Foundation anyway. I finished it, barely passing some of my last papers due to obsessive compulsive playing and loitering around. But the main point is that I finished. And ACCA did accept my qualifications because of my average grade. However, everyone forgets that even good habits have negative effects. Early last year, my friends and I decided to share a condominium in Lagoon View because we didn't like the fact that we had to share our room with strangers and have them touch our things without our permission, only to find them lying around somewhere else, in a non-usable condition. As in every case, I was the brains of the operation. But as luck would have had it, complications never even imaginable popped up. I don't know why I meet stupid people like this that get me into trouble. I swear. Fortunately, I wasn't dealing with one of those cut-throat agents and I managed to negotiate my way out of the whole mess after weeks and sleepless nights of exhausting all resources. That was the day I learnt to give up. The day I learnt that we can only plan, and the rest is up to God. He will have it any way He wants, only with the exception that we have to give it our all. That is knowing when to give up. When you've done all you've can, and you're certain you can do no more. It's so easy to explain, but so difficult to put into practise, because even those who give up easily will think that they're certain they can do no more. I guess it can only come with practice and experience.
Back to the main topic, I've been going through the Kubler-Ross model like a vicious perpetual cycle for the past three months; Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance, only to start right from the start again. I think I've done all I can. I know I've done my part. I fulfilled my promise, but I can't do no more. It's time for me to be selfish. Because I have a life too. Here I am, trying to simplify life for others, accommodate to them, with my own life only nagging at the back of my head. I need to learn that if I'm not selfish for myself, then no one will be. No one will be as accommodating as I am. No one will simplify my life for me. No one will study for me. And no one will decide my future for me. No one will do what it takes to reach the targets I've set. Well, my mum tries, but she fails miserably, and makes an even bigger mess for me to clean up.
After two decades of not seeing eye-to-eye with her, I'm slowly coming to terms with her. I still may not see eye to eye with her, but I'm slowly starting to understand where she's coming from. I think it's only when you let go of that stupid idea in your head, and make allowance for other possibilities that you realize that there is at least a slight tinge of truth in whatever that is you're fighting against.
They say that mothers know best. I used to disagree whole-heartedly. But now I understand that mothers THINK they know best, but they aren't exactly entirely wrong as well. For example, my mother told me that she really didn't like me staying in that house because she thought that I'd be bogged down with many other responsibilities of which aren't mine. In accounting, we call this substance over form. In form, there really wasn't much to it. Everyone would have thought it was a fantastic deal. But in substance, there are many other requisites to be fulfilled, some not even written in fine print, not even carried out as if it was expected of me, and some even denied down to the core. It is an Asian culture to respect your elders. You do not scream at them, you do not yell at them, you do not tell them they're wrong, and you definitely cannot confront them. I think that is where I picked up that I should never say 'no'. Why write them down, you ask. Well where else am I supposed to release all this anger? I cannot deny that having the brat was great joy and great companionship. But I had to constantly remind myself that he was not mine, that was the part that desolved what ever glue I had to hold myself together. In addition to that, I always had to deal with unnecessary stress. Of which I still have to deal with now. They don't know, because I keep quiet. I'm so tired they hear it in my voice, but I never tell them the reason. And the lies that they told me, to make me feel wanted to make me feel good. All just for their own benefit, it's like how you bribe the kitchen God with sticky sweet food every Chinese New Year so that they'd give a good report to their superior. I was fat with all the praises and I forgot who I was. My mother brought me down to earth. I did what she wanted me to do to keep her off my back, but I had to do what I want to keep my promise to my friend, and now that I have fulfilled my part of the promise, I find it fit for me to live my own life and I now find myself looking for lies to rid myself of the other person on my back. The difference is that this person isn't my actual mother, and I can't tell her the truth. I must remember that whatever I say can be twisted and turned and reported to a higher authority, of which I either have to answer to, or would be so filled with lies that I wouldn't even have a chance to defend myself. But I have done all I can, and I think it's time for me to be selfish.
If I had stayed on wherever I was, I definitely wouldn't have all these problems. Now even the other person is going to think that I intentionally left the hostel to help them. I didn't. I just wanted my own space, and I thought that I'd have all the space I want there, but it turned out the total opposite. Now that I'm back, I see that my mother was right. The house is the root of all the problems. But like I said, my mother only THINKS she knows best for me. She only gave me a few days to find a place to stay, and if she had waited a bit more, I would have saved us both a lot of money and frustration. I'm back under the hostel, and I have no complains because I have no boyfriend or even boy friend to want to sneak in. But I am reminded constantly of their inefficiency and their stupidity and their sheer laziness that I really regret even wanting to come back. I cannot for the life of me understand people who do not have passion for their jobs. Why bother working in the first place? If you're unhappy with your job, you should constantly be looking for another job that suits you. I do agree that you need money to put food on the table, but if you know you don't like your job, just carry on until the opportunity for you to find a better suited job comes up. But no, they'd stick to this stupid job, and make life harder for everyone. I don't want to shoot myself. I want you all to shoot YOURSELVES. Plainly because you deserve it. I know I live in an idealistic world of my own. But don't you agree that if you want something so badly, if you want quality of life, you have to work for it? You have to constantly look for windows of opportunities opening up? No one ever got to where they were just sitting down.
Like I said before, it's a privilege to have hit rock bottom. Because the only way to look when you're way down there, is up. Billie Jean said that pressure is a privilege. These are the little things in life we moan and groan about, but we do not realise that these are the things that make us who we are. I was and always am under pressure. But I love it, and whole-heartedly embrace it. Because I know that pressure is what got me here, and pressure is what's going to take me further. Sure, you can become somebody if you've never hit rock bottom. But you don't realise your full potential. It takes way much more effort to be able to pull yourself up and rise again. And once you're at it, you'd be able to pull yourself all the way up to the top. THAT is something that people who have never hit rock bottom will find difficult to achieve. I love the fact that I am obsessive and compulsive. I love the fact that the littlest detail has to be perfect before it surpasses me. I love the fact that I get paranoid that it's not. I love the fact that I get emotionally drained because things don't go my way because I see them to be so perfect in all their entirety.
And what is rock bottom, you may ask? In the simplest way described,
When you see all the doors slammed in your face,
When you look around and find that no one understands you (usually a delusion),
When you knowingly perform a self-destructing act consecutively just so you can run away from reality,
When you want to cry, but the tears won't fall and there's something stuck in your throat,
When you lie down in bed,
and feel as if your brain is pleading for your heart to pump,
for your trachea to open up for air to enter and exit,
your lungs feel as if they've they have a 20 tonne weight on each of them,
every single passage in your respiratory system seems to have shut its doors,
it feels as if the air has to force its way through the trachea,
the larynx,
each bronchi,
every bronchus
every bronchiole
until each and every aveoli,
only to find that it would need to force its way out again.
Your eyes are closed,
you lay in complete silence,
the air-conditioner is the only thing you can hear,
but your thoughts are racing through your mind,
they won't let you sleep,
in pitch black silence you feel as if you're surrounded by voices reminding you that you need to wake up tomorrow,
you wish you'd fall asleep,
you wish you'd never wake up,
only to wake up tomorrow,
knowing that you have to face all that all over again,
wondering when it would end.
I think the hardest lesson for me to learn is to speak up for myself, to rid myself of this low self-esteem, to know that I am as important as everyone else, and to let others know that I too want to be happy. So far I've only been able to do that to the closest of my friends. And even that, sometimes he misunderstands me. Let me rephrase that, he always does, and he has no idea how important he is to me. But I know that I was, but never am, of same importance to him. That's life. When you move past that stage of depression and all-time low, you only remember the person who was there for you, not what he/ she did for you. I think, right now, I really can't be bothered if he ever found out what I think about him, because I think I trust him enough to know me not to confront him with such things. So am I now in the acceptance stage, or the bargaining stage?
It's weird how these wise old people come up to you and give you advice about life. They're not exactly wrong, but they aren't entirely true either. It's just that the advice they're giving is way too general, and they've past that stage way too long ago to remember the finer points. I like days when I make sense of it, only to uncover the exceptions to the rules written in fine print.
Please excuse me, I have to go and pick up a cheque that is not mine.
post note: I need to ascertain time and time again that he is NOT my boyfriend, never was, never will be. And I most certainly do not have a crush on him. Our relationship is purely platonic (I know it's hard to believe, but I found a keeper) and will never go the other way, I wouldn't want it to go in direction. He's just a very big part of my life, because he was there when I bloomed, and he helped shaped me and mold me. He will never know this, but I owe much of my character to him. I was lifeless before I came to KL. I only got my personality after that. And he was with me all the way, until now. That, is another story for another day.
All my blogs are of anger, depression, frustration, disappointment. I need something else to write about!!!
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