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read between the lines
agony "I wake up, it's a bad dreamNo one on my side I was fighting But I just feel too tired To be fighting Guess I'm not the fighting kind..." -- A Bad Dream, Keane there are some nights where i feel like no matter how much i cry, scream, shout, argue, wail, complain, or do whatever, i still can't do a thing to lift myself from this agony and am just forced to sit it through until the phase passes, which can be anywhere from days to months on end. tonight was one of those nights, those horrible, horrible nights where the wave of negative thoughts threatened to wash away what i knew to be truth and where i was so desperate for a way out that i tried almost everything to distract myself from my old friend called depression. but in the end i was forced to come to terms with my wretched self, my wretched situations and my wretched mood. to call it agonising would be putting it mildly. but thank god for a little light at the end of the tunnel, which i think was god relenting on his part seeing me suffer like that. because it is in times like these that i find myself asking god the usual questions. why is it that i seem to be going through a greater degree and higher frequency of shit than my peers (i.e. people my age)? why, if god wants good things for me, must he make me suffer and torture me with tide after tide of bad tidings after short spurts of goodness? but god, being god, knows that these are the same rhetorical questions i ask that i already know the answers to. because you are different, my child. because you are set apart for something greater. because you asked for more wisdom and understanding of the things that really matter in life. because i need you to learn certain lessons that can only come about through suffering. there are times when those answers make me feel worse instead of actually comforting me. because i am not that strong a person, contrary to what people who don't know me tend to think. it actually wearies me that there's nothing i can do about my pain and the only balm to it is when god gives a revelation or i consciously distract myself. and now i have to go because mcdonald's is closing. damn. being open dum de dum de dum....i can't believe my life is so pathetic right now that the only thing i can do to lift myself from depression is use the net to pen down my thoughts. and then i don't know what to do with the rest of the night once this place closes.having absolutely nothing to do makes me feel redundant and useless. thankfully today was not as bad yesterday, because i came prepared. i brought my own stuff to do discreetly, though i have to admit my resume-sending was pretty blatant, since my company laptop faces the door where anyone can enter (since it's not even my office anyway). however, at the end of the day, the realisation of a day fully wasted tends to deject me somewhat, and so i have to find something to do to distract me from my thoughts or else i will go crazy. and this was the most cost-effective solution possible (so thanks again, friend). one topic that comes to mind as i think of what to write about here is the frequently-commented issue on my level of openness. therefore i have decided to kill two birds with one stone and be open about being open. (mwahaha...i know, my sense of humour is unusual!) more or less, people like to know why i am somewhat reserved and not that open. however, friends who know me long enough will give me credit and point out that i have opened up more over the years, which is both a good and bad thing. it's good if what i'm open about makes other people happy or conforms to their notion of what is acceptable, but when it's not, that's where the problem lies. and more often than not, i express things in an autistic-like manner that many can misconstrue wrongly. better to be seen as mysterious and neutral than notorious and hated, i should think! also, i always feel like people should get to know me gradually instead of me letting it all hang out, which in my opinion, would be boring if i was in their shoes. when i want to know someone, i do so by discovering more of their experiences that they relate to me through each time we meet, instead of just reading their blog. and if all they blog is all they are only ever really about, then they would be somewhat shallow to be considered deep enough friends, no? relieved thank you to the friend who let me log in using said friend's password.i have just blogged a nice, fat post about everything i wanted to let out in my pent-up life at this point and time and i feel so...much...freer (it's a new word i invented). sometimes i don't know why there are people who even bother about me when i am arguably the most misunderstood person in the world. and i can't believe i finally said what i wanted to say on sunday to someone. and that it went so well instead of it exploding in front of my face like things always seem to. too bad this place closes early, or else i'd be here all night blogging. i saw it first for some reason, the movie music and lyrics keeps getting publicised, more so than in my hometown, and since my colleagues have been talking about it, i feel the need to give my two cents' worth on the movie since i watched it before anybody here (heheh) when i was in my hometown last weekend (i would like to thank the friend who told me there was an S$8 taxi ride from here to jb and a mere RM10 for the trip back, thereby eliminating the need to endure the mob that pushes and shoves their way into the buses at the customs and never fail to fill me with genuine fear).in terms of a romantic plotline (which seemed to be the pitch being proposed in all the movie's collaterals), i thought the development was not quite there. but, since i'm biased, i thoroughly enjoyed the visuals. hugh grant in that funny 80s-style hairdo and clothes (in a duran duran-ish music video), songwriting sessions, grand pianos, ProTools (industry-standard recording equipment i loved playing with back in school)....what else interests me more? and they had that all in one movie, despite the fact that the script could have been worked on better.
blessed to learn on the other hand, i can't complain that i don't have a challenging and somewhat engaging life. engaging not only in the sense of eliciting strong responses from me but also in the sense that i am able to understand and taste the reality of certain abstract concepts in life's book of lessons which i have never quite learnt or understood before. engaging also because it is so vivid and full of change (both good and bad) that i can't say my life is boring, dull, monotonous, useless or aimless -- the very things that deflate a person of his or her reason to live.and the journey still continues. i think there's rarely ever a day i wake up (since the new year) where i am not conscious of the blessings my god has bestowed upon me, some so unbelievable that they stir up the realisation that i am not worthy nor deserving of them. of course, all blessings are undeserved, but it is not for every blessing that i realise so pointedly that i never earned it nor count any personal credit towards it. another thing these blessings, as a whole, have pointed out to me is the significance of timing. most, if not all, of these blessings (since the new year) have been the result of delayed yet answered prayers, prayers (others and) i have so fervently repeated for as little as a few months and as much as a few years, some of which i almost or totally gave up on due to the tendency we humans have towards narrow-mindedness (in terms of seeing one's life in the perspective of eternity). i should say the lessons thereby derived from the realisation of the significance of timing (of which eclesiastes' verses, the ones that spun a hit oldies song, popped out again in my bible-reading) are of perseverance and patience. however, considering the fact that i have a history of having very little patience and giving up if i am convinced there is no point in hoping any longer, and yet these blessings arrived, i would say that these lessons are more suitably named as characteristics that would prove beneficial (emotionally, mentally, spiritually and even physically) while waiting for god to reply. so what are the lessons then? that it is by grace that we get the things we could only dream of but could never achieve of our own pathetic efforts, and that when something ends in a way that it dies before our very eyes, sometimes that is not the end of the story. like how christ was resurrected, christ can resurrect dead things from the charred ashes of our histories and prove us wrong. special thanks, as always, to the ones who pray, regardless of whether i am told or not. i am not ashamed to say how dear you all are to me.
what do you do? what do you do when the landlady conveniently forgets to tell you the previous tenant urinated on the bed you're sleeping in, and you have to find out the hard way by sleeping in urine and having your clothes and brand new bolster stink of that putrid smell for months while trying to figure out its source?what do you do when someone promises you, or at least proposes to you certain beneficial terms and conditions, but then takes them back as the months pass by? what do you do when someone moves your stuff without permission several times, yet expects you to not touch theirs and tells you off when you do, just once? they promise you a full rack to hang your dishes. but gradually over the months, they reduce it to half a rack, and then suddenly you come back one day and your dishes are all smashed up to less than a fricking quarter of the rack. not only that, you can't find your milo spoon and when you finally do, after hours of hunting among their own utensils, you find the stainless steel scratched, as if it got scraped by the metal rack as they were moving your stuff. they tell you you get two racks of slippers inside the house. then they move the rack outside the house, where during windy or rainy days, your shoes get covered in sand and particles that feel like thick dust. and one day the entrance door even ends up slamming on your fingers because of the wind, which wouldn't have happened had your shoes been inside in the first place. so, of your own initiative, you decide to carry the slippers of the day into your room, but decide not to transfer all for courtesy's sake. and then one day you come back, and find they have decided to reclaim what they promised and put their slippers in place of yours. and when you reshift things so that your slippers can squeeze in, they put their slippers on top of your clean office sandals. they allocated to you two toothbrush holders in the bathroom, so, rightly enough, you make use of the space. then, over the course of months, you find your toothbrushes constantly rearranged like toothbrushes are some kind of substitute for musical chairs, and then one day, one of your toothbrushes gets chucked to the side in some cup nearby? what do you do when you're in your room trying to do your own stuff, be it read, pray or work, and you have to put up with the incessant wailing, screaming, shouting and crying of a child for an hour on average, every single *toot*ing day that you come home early? to top it off, you have to hear the parents threaten and shout to no avail, and if you're 'lucky', you get to hear all four girls conducting verbal sparring against each other. this 'luck' is usually more likely on saturday mornings and serves as your alarm clock. and these are just the peeves i haven't gotten over yet. i haven't even mentioned the rest, and i don't intend to here. the normal reaction, if confrontation fails to change things, would be to scold, to lash out, to retaliate....or to avoid. fortunately or unfortunately, since i am either too nice or formal or diplomatic or just plain dreadful at being firm and expressing my intentions clearly without compromising the level of amicability, i am handling thesituation terribly and have opted, rather uncomfortably, react in the form of the latter. |
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