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read between the lines
checkpoint misery summarised five things i have to accept:1. people at the checkpoint (be it jb or s'pore) on rush hour in the mornings are made out of pure evil -- everyone fights to get their way at the cost of others. 2. mondays are the absolute worst in this regard. you wake up earlier than usual and can still expect to arrive late to work (thus a pay cut) and have people jostle you like you're in some poverty-stricken third world country. 3. i seem to have this "cut my queue" face because i don't see anyone else being targeted -- not the old lady, nor the short kid, no, just me and my unassuming, post-depressive (read: happier) look. 4. i also seem to keep waking up earlier and earlier every week (hoping to avoid the mob from hell) only to find that, so does the stupid crowd that joins me in crossing the border. urgh. 5. deciding to keep longer hair and a slightly more feminine appearance does not pay off in rough places. time to toughen up. week 7 milestone week 7 has just passed. before it started, i prayed that this week, with this number of perfection, would be markedly different from the other six. and it was...in a bad way. so basically i got what i asked for, but not what i wanted. seems to have been the theme for this week...hah.u2's line from original of the species comes to mind: "I’ll give you everything you wantnote: just found out it was written for The Edge's daughter about her growing up into an adult. how apt, cos i feel it's like my Heavenly Father trying to do the same. my prayer requests and surface-level desires were met, but the deep yearnings of the heart were not. but then again, looking back, this week could have either been an opportunity to enter a deeper level of faith or a stumbling block, depending on my reaction. unfortunately, i let the latter happen. i did everything (or at least a lot of things) i was told not to do. and then self-condemnation took the opportunity to creep in the minute i stopped guarding the door to my heart. i only noticed this intruder very late into the week...which could only lead to more self-condemnation or the resolve to get a move on. i was telling god on tuesday that i would rather forfeit all the requests he fulfilled throughout the day if he could just fulfill the one request i really wanted to see answered. but later on i realised i just wanted to have my cake and eat it too...which was possible, if only i would believe and wait long enough for Him to act. so what was the purpose of giving me seats in jam-packed buses to sleep in, people i wanted to see and so on, but not giving me the satisfaction of reassurance? it now looks like it was because god was trying to tell me He could be trusted. who is He, the Creator of everything, that He should tell me such and who am i to doubt this Being whom i say is so great? i guess that's how i know He really cares, because like any normal Christian, i struggle at times to believe His promises. what's not normal about me is that i tend to [post-entry note: i will never know what i intended to write beyond this point because i have long forgotten...i originally left this post unfinished as a draft.]
checkpoint woes part 2 warning: (words of) anger will follow before resolution because i know if i don't let this out i am going to explode in the next few days."Unfortunately, the cost of forgiveness is too high for many people. Consequently, they invent and turn to cheaper versions of forgiveness, ones that will enable them to "feel" or "think" better about themselves -- or simply to "cope" with their situation -- without having to engage in struggles to change or transform the patterns of their relationships.if that's the case, i've been dying to self a lot (or at least trying to) this past week. i guess with the previous week's opportunity to rest, i'd blindly assumed nothing bad would happen to me, that somehow by some supernatural force no one would step on my toes at the checkpoint...or if they did i'd have the inhuman ability to just forgive them and move on. clearly, i was wrong. bad things did happen. and i got so pissed and broken down again. monday night was bad enough...further developments on the home front. and then tuesday was the bomb....i really had it with all these people trampling me down at the checkpoint. at one point it got so bad that i had to yell "stop pushing!" because a few idiots at the side were pushing everyone so strongly that i almost got swept away from my queue. that was when three people cut my queue, after i finally managed to get into one at that crevasse full of overflowing people at the thumbprint access area. so i, feeling unfairly wronged again, decided to try the tactic i tried last week on the smiling cheat. i refused to let the last person through and tailgated the second last person the way my mom does it when a car tries to cut into her lane. unfortunately, unlike last week, the person didn't back off. this feisty young twenty-something finally spoke up in mandarin, an alien language to me, at some point when it looked clear i wasn't going to budge. so i responded in english. i said it wasn't fair that i lined up all the way from behind. i said i had already let the front two people go...and now i had to let her through too? she actually gave me a pissed look, muttered further stuff in mandarin, and actually started shoulder-shoving me out of the queue. of course on instinct i did the same...add shouting from both parties and you get everyone staring at you. thank god the guy in front of her finally said "nevermind, you stand in front of me okay?" and i just gave her a pissed look while she kept scolding me in mandarin, and i moved in front. the next few minutes this b**** behind started swearing and cursing at me in mandarin. i really thank god i don't understand the language otherwise i would've felt way more hurt. the only english word she knew was the F word and even then she used the wrong tense for it, so i wasn't angry by then. in fact i was more scared that she would retaliate...like that crazy lady in january who whacked me with her jacket when we reached jb town all because i apparently injured her wrist, without me even knowing. so i decided to hide in a slow bus line...which made me super late for work. to make things worse, that happened to be the first day my company decided to enforce the logbook sign-in rule (thanks to one of the temps marking his attendance for the one week he wasn't around), which means my lateness gets reflected in my hourly pay. and when i exited the mrt, another woman who was rushing for the train banged her stupid bag into my right pelvic bone even though i tried to avoid her. that pissed me off so much because her bag, just like an average ladies' bag, weighed a ton of bricks and hit me with such strong force that i was in pain right until friday every time my bag got slung around that area. i was so upset i couldn't focus on work for an hour because i just could not compose myself. i was crying out of anger and out of hurt. i felt so wronged and that i wasn't vindicated, and that god wasn't punishing these people and they were getting off scot free. i felt so tired of having to wake up earlier and earlier for work and having to go through all this shit every day and not knowing when it was going to end, because the news says the checkpoint authorities will remain vigilant until that terrorist guy gets found which is like, never...or at least a year until the money to keep this going runs out. come to think of it, i felt the exact same way two weeks ago. just when i thought it couldn't get any worse, another guy cuts my queue the very next day, this time on the jb side while i was lining up for the bus. i know i was told to just give in, but i wasn't thinking again (and i still wasn't really keen on the idea of allowing myself to become someone's doormat) and asked, "can you line up?" in an annoyed tone of voice. thankfully he stepped aside and lined up behind me before leaving the queue after a while, because if he had gone against me i really don't know what would've happened...it's very likely i could've ended up in the hospital. and then today, this cleaning lady in jb just had to wipe someone else's koay teow onto my bag...and when i told her to wipe it, she smudged it all over the bag and then walked away quickly when i asked her if she had a wiping cloth. i got really pissed at her attitude, ignoring me like that. it took so much in me to just walk past her and not do something to her cos i was really at that point of wanting to retaliate. i had the bible in my hands and the only mental bookmark i could remember to flip to was ephesians...but somehow it just didn't seem to cool my anger. okay, so maybe it did because i didn't walk up to her and give her an eye for an eye, but i still didn't feel settled. i prayed and prayed...with the end result being a numbness to feelings, but there needed to be a resolution. i went to the christian bookshop one level below and sourced all the books (within my sight) on anger or forgiveness...and it seems the central theme they have is that the way to overcome anger is to forgive, and that to forgive is to cancel a debt someone owes but will never pay you back. the books also reiterated something from scripture i keep being reminded of by friends but still fail to comprehend: just as jesus forgave the underserving me, i am to forgive the undeserving others. i still find it hard to swallow, but one of the books offered some form of restitution for me when it offered the suggestion that i must look at it from the viewpoint of having already gone through this phase "with the eyes of faith". it also reminded me that "this small and temporary trouble we suffer will bring us a tremendous and eternal glory, much greater than the trouble." (2 corinthians 4:17) how i keep forgetting that i do not know. so from that, i can glean that i should keep looking to the future to make going through this tolerable. and i should probably come to the checkpoint with the mindset that i am going to be wronged again...and pray real hard in preparation for it. and earlier on as i broke down before god, i found there was more in my heart than i knew of this issue. i started with the "i'm not being vindicated" complaint which led way to "god, you're not protecting me...you're supposed to, it's your role" and "god, you don't care" and me wincing in emotional pain as i recalled feeling this very way about my biological dad...yet i felt this strong dissonance when i said these things about god, because deep down i knew He had and always has been protecting me and will always care about me and love me for as long as i live. let's see what happens in the 6th week of the checkpoint's human pileup since the authorities decided to tighten security. |
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