A Greedy Sort of Ache

I looked him in the eyes, all I managed to say was “nothing”. “Nothing,” I repeated unconvincingly before I burst into tears.

“You can tell me if something is wrong,” he persisted, “we are still friends.”

He, who once told me that he couldn’t live without me, has just made me feel like a friend. It was I, who taught him with full confidence that life goes on, without a second thought that I would need him like this.

All I wanted in that moment was my place back. All those times, he would make me believe that I sat on the top of the world with a throne on my head and I had his undivided attention.

I didn’t want to tell him to come back when I had doubts, but it pains to know that time will tick us further apart.

He went on to tell me that he must have a child before he leaves this world. Once upon a time, he told that he didn’t care about anything else as long as I was happy. If it meant not having children, he was willing to accept.

I knew I have lost my place. There are other priorities in his life now. Every action there is a reaction. Even if we were to return to what we were, I have caused too much drama for us to have what we had.

Importance of breaking out from comfort zone

Generalisation is a human nature. Often in life it is somewhat convenient to categorise others and put them inside a box. But it becomes dangerous when you start categorising yourself, resulting to limitations in your own life experiences.

I never thought I would find myself in middle of a pole dancing workshop. That is not to say, I had anything against pole dancing. But you know... I had no special interest in pole dancing, why would I take time out of my week and fit pole dancing between work, family time, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, down time for myself, catching up with friends, exercising... (the list goes on)?

Yesterday, an awesome friend of my, N (single) invites me to share the celebration of her 27th birthday and her recent passion for pole dancing. Little did I know what I signed up to, I went expecting an end of semester performance by her pole dancing class. Rereading the invitation again would help in the future. When I showed up, my first hint was there are no seats for audiences. Still, I did not expect myself to be doing any dancing. For one, I am out of tune when I sing, if I dance I will be most definitely be out of rhythm. For two, I initially told Nikki that I would like to watch, and Nikki said watching is fine. See? There is no reason that I should be involved with dancing.

It was not long till I realised everyone who turned up is Nikki’s friend, and not part of her pole
dancing class. Some like me showed up expecting to watch, while other showed in gym wear ready for pole dancing. Due to the small number of people who came to dance, the teacher encouraged us all to pick a pick and dance along.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed watching the promiscuous side of everyone, and laughing at people when they make a fool of themselves. It was just nice to exercise and mentally loosen up. At the same time, the experience has bought to my attention the amount of muscle that I have neglecting in my everyday living.

 It got me thinking about all the different classes out there that I can be signing up to, and new people I can meet. Why have I not yet? Why is it that Nikki can make the time and I can’t?

Well, there is something I do not want to admit: when I am free, I spend time to my boyfriend. So do I spend too much time with Mr Boyfriend? Certainly not according to him, and I do not think so either. We only see each other on the weekends, and call in the evenings during the week. There is no standard for how much time one should spend with their significant other, therefore there is no such thing as too much or too less time that you spend together. But regardless how much time you spend together, it is still time. It is still time out of a lifetime, time out of a limited span of time.

 People in relationship will have less time to explore whether it is to a slight extent or enormous extent. It makes me wonder why I have not ever appreciated it when I was single. It seems that you need to have been in a relationship in order to know how to be single. You need to know where all the relationship constraints are, in order to take full advantage of all your single privileges.

Perhaps this is where the 80/20 rules comes in. The rule states that approximately 80% of the production comes from 20% of the activity. Maybe I only need to be a girlfriend 20% of the times. 80% of the time should be spent on me. Because there are so many things I want to expose myself to before I die. There is so much I have not seen, yet alone done in this whole wide world. I refuse to let my youth go just like that.

She was ashamed of having a stroke

Too often we attend to places, face the world with fixed ideas in our heads.

Grandma was on a bed with heart rate fluctuating between 110/min to 150/min. She made sounds, but barely made a word. Her right side has been paralysed.

I knew she had a stroke before I arrived at the hospital. Whether she makes it or not, we can only leave it to fate. I accept the fact that she may not make it this time. I can only imagine her pain is not death itself (or is it?), but to be struggling before the ones she care for the most in life. Her face was expressionless, except for her eyes.

We both share an extreme form of stubbornness that gives no mercy once we have made our minds. Never ever, ever, ever should there be a day under the sun where we depend on someone else. There we were her pride has been diminished so much that it was visible to the eye. She did not want to be the reason we ran to the hospital for. She did not want to be a burden in our lives. Maybe it is a pain no one else will understand.

In the six days that went by, I smile like nothing is wrong. It breaks my heart to see her ashamed. It there anything I can do better? Should I take a day off work to sit next to her because I may never have the chance again? At what point in time, does one start acting on an assumption?

How I struggled between dream and reality

I had a dream. I was driving with no headlights. I wake up. In darkness, I remembered I was driving with no headlights last night. No, that was the dream. No, that was last night. No, it only happened once and it was in the dream. Wait, it was twice, it happened last night that was why I had the dream. I don’t know anymore – 5 min to alarm.

Sometimes, each day feels like a dream. Struggling to find what is real by questioning the present, and questioning the past. Dreaming becomes a part of reality, just as vice versa. They become an equivalent of each other.

I was once told reality is what you gather from your senses – see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. And if proven reality is otherwise, what does it matter if your senses are all you know? I loved ‘The Matrix’ so much, because it challenged the idea of reality. What do you trust, when you can’t trust yourself? How do you know what your senses are telling you is real? It could all be ‘Brain in a Vat’.

Luckily, not everyone need to know what reality is, as long as we can all live. Some accepts that life is full unknowns, others do not. Some need to live as far away from reality as possible in order to keep their sanity.

Often the daily decisions I makes each day, none of them seem real or hold any significant values. Until consequences hit, right there a focus is found, thus reality.

Something about a new year

People often like to think of a new year as a new beginning - a fresh start. Just like spring, where the birds would sing and the ecological cycle restores life in itself. Embraced in a new-found optimism (and in a non-suicidal way), another chance is given to life. The world has shown mercy in the brutal cold of winter, giving warmth and hope to humanity.

Yet, it leaves us wondering: What has led us to all this craving of a new beginning? Was there something so terrible in our life that we must escape? E.g. An apocalypse that we have dedicated all our technologies to forget, but traces still remain in our subconscious?

Did something really bothered you in 2012?

Gone yet?

He messaged me again after a month or over. When is it going to be too late? When is it going to be over?  When do I stop responding?

Have I finally met someone who is even slower than me? Sometimes I get so irritated with myself that I feel the rest of the world has already moved on. Why has this person messaged me after I have already accepted that it's over? Why?! Is this how logical minds work?

The longer I live the more it becomes evident that whatever I can do, someone can do better. Whatever I cannot do, someone else can do worse.  No need to compete in either directions, I will never win.

Some people I just do not understand.

I miss him.

Make it happen

They say education is a lifelong process. Every time I begin a new job, I like to ask myself ‘What have I learnt?’ and ‘How have I changed?’ As I am beginning to feel settled recently, I asked myself exactly that.

In this job, I learnt to make things happen. In the past, I have only ever been taught to request for jobs to be done. Whenever the job was not done, it never mattered much to me as long as I have done my part. I accept whatever the reason was, because I accepted obstacles and failures to be part of life. In property management, I find myself following up with certain people and pushing for actions to happen on daily bases. When plan A fails, I seek for plan B, and C, and D… etc. Persistence is the key to real estate. If I gave up every time there is an obstacle, nothing will ever be done. If a sales person gave up at every obstacle, no properties will ever be sold.

It is only the end if we accept it to be the end.

It's a right to be free

Sometimes I get upset – heartbreakingly upset. I wonder what I am living for, what I do it all for?

I brush my teeth. I watch myself in the mirror. I wonder what products can cease my skin from aging. There are times during the day that I feel agonising pain along my back. I adjust the chair; I move around, nothing helps. I can’t scream out loud – because it is a slow agonising pain.

When I am alone, I visualise the week ahead as shown below.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Work 8:45AM - 6:00PM	Work 8:45AM - 6:00PM	Work 8:45AM - 6:00PM Prepare Tutoring Material 8:00PM-9:30PM	Work 8:45AM - 6:00PM Volunteer Tutoring 7:00PM – 9:00PM	Lunch date with Rebecca 11:00PM – 12:30 Work 1:00PM - 6:00PM	Work 9:30AM - 2:00PM Catch up with Miles 3:00PM ->	Domestic household duties 9:00 – 10:30 Work 12:00PM - 4:00PM

The question is: why would the week after be any different? Why would weeks after that leads to the end of the year be any different?

There are people I really want to see. I feel selfish to ask them to go out of their way to see me for just an hour. So I schedule people to call after work. The truth is I don’t want to distant myself from my friends. It upsets me if they do not pick up. Though, it’s not like I tell the people about my schedule that will be a bit ridiculous.

This is the part I cannot explain. Why do I choose to live like this? Surely with all the alternatives, I could have chosen a different career path. Why this? Is it because I am already here and this is path of less resistance? Or do I secretly want this life? Do I want to test myself?

It is like freedom is a privilege the rest of the world is entitled to, but it should be a right.

Those days gone by

There is no denial that my mum is a superstar, both morally and motherly. She is logical, straight forward, and kind. Though, it does not change the fact that I wish we lived apart (same city still preferably). The more we live together the more reluctant I become to do daily chores, such as doing the dishes in the morning, cooking when parents are out, or taking responsibilities for my own decisions in general. All of those skills that I have gradually gained after many years of resistence are ever so slowly fading since my parents have moved in.

I used to clean up after myself as almost instantly like reflex. It was as if I lived by those rules:
- If I don’t act, it will never be done.
- If I don’t have time now, why would l have time later?
- If I don’t take responsibility for my consequences, then no one will.

It effected beyond my household chores. It was not just about doing the dishes. It was the fact that if I don’t look after of myself, no one will. And I miss that feeling.

Underneath the stars

Walking underneath the stars, there is that sense of security & relief. At the end of a long day, it is a reminder of reality, it is an escape from stress, and it is the only time I reflect on my day. From time to time, I wonder when will there be that special someone who walks home with me. When will be that day my philosophies are reciprocated by an equal level of interest and contribution.

And then he appeared. I do not know if he is special. Still, I walk home in the dark. Still, I speak my mind to him not, because I do not have an extra breath to spare. More so, I am simply incapable of trusting another male.

Thus, I walk alone under the stars. I feel much safer being exposed to social dangers rather than emotional risks. I walk... I blindly walk into the night.

A little reminder

Before I begin, I understand I am not in a position to drag about great hardships in life. But there was a time when I did have suicidal thoughts, standing on the edge of life. Perhaps I have had it too easy all my life that I simply could not cope when sudden difficulty raised. One day towards the end of my high school, "the love of my life" left my side. I felt so alone like I have missed the train and no one understood.

I cried myself to sleep and went to class the next morning. My eyes were puffy. Everyone stared, but no one dared to speak to me that morning. I wagged class to catch a tram to a place where I could be alone yet amongst a crowd. I tried to study, but nothing went through, there were only tears in my eyes. I caught the tram back to school, I felt like in the middle of nowhere that my life has stopped and I did not have the strength to fight any more. My eyes blurred again as the stranger who sat opposite of me on the tram gave me the same look as my class mates did earlier that morning. I knew she wanted to help; I did not want her to help. She seemed to know that she could not help. It was that moment, life reduced down to – to be or not to be?

For the first time in my life, I realised how much resources have gone into me. Regardless that they are my parents, they raised me with hope and love. Regardless that I have paid for food, society has created a system that allowed me to access food. Regardless that air is a common good, if I was to die all the air that I have ever consumed would have gone to waste while it could have been much better utilised for rest the world. In that single moment of truth, I reflected on how selfish I have been. So what if I missed my train? So what if I could not have what I want in life? Why have I made the assumption that I was the only one who mattered in the world? How selfish could I possibly be – wanting to die just because life did not go my way? After all the resources that I have taken for granted, the least I could do is contribute a little into the world.

It was then I held myself back from going to the extreme. My problems stopped being problems. I vowed to help others.

Since then time have went on, four years have passed. Like every other history, same mistakes are made again and again. Here I am, upset over what?

Change in time

The very first time my family moved house, I believed my new home was going to take my parents into their retirement. Little did I know, and little control did I have over the circumstances. Three years later, we moved. We have moved to a larger house with an extra room for studies, plus all the shopping and public transport convenience. I was convinced that was it, we were settled at last. Two years later, the same scenario rose again. My parents planned for retirement, and took an even larger double story house. They have decided to rent two of the rooms and avoid government pension. Perhaps it is finally the last time we would move as a family and perhaps for the first time, I had evidence to believe my parents were here to stay.

A few month ago, my parents had purchased another property nearby and made plans to move into the property. Was I naïve to have foolish expectations of permanence each and every time we moved? Like love, with each new relationship we hope and believe that is our last. It is the only way to maintain the presence and give our maximum. Maybe this is what motivates us to push our potentials and develop in new areas, to believe a 100% and give 100%.

A few months ago, all I wanted was a job. It seemed like the hardest milestone I will ever cross in life. What would I have not given for an employment social status and income security? After landing with my current role, my new challenge became how do I do my job well? I grew so much respect for others in my trainee group that I wonder what I have done to deserve this position. Did I over sale myself?

That is the power of the present. The immediate challenges of our lives forever undermine future challenges or past accomplishments in our lifespan. In our naivety, we tend to expect the present circumstances to remain stationary and unchanging. Thus, many of us have actively made plans into the future assessing on our current wishes and criteria.

Marriage commitment takes the words “I do” to conclude to “I will”. I cannot begin to assess the fallacy of this argument. The fact that he trusts her now is not an automatic lead to he will trust her in the future. The reality of our world is that everything changes in time, not necessary for better or for worse, yet simply different in form.