Saturday, November 13, 2004

Live to Hate, Hate to Live

Drat. Woke up this morning and felt like crap. I haven't felt like this in a long time, so I suppose the nice rose-tinted glasses must have broken, and things aren't looking quite so rosy any more. And somehow I want the glasses back, even though it feels freaky to be so optimistic all the time.

All this is nothing to do with yesterday and yet everything to do with yesterday. Yesterday was fun. I went to Johor Bahru with the legendary Tun Tan, as well as David, Stella, Pak Ling, Linus, Clara and Dawn. We watched The Incredibles, which was hilarious and really enjoyable, which was a very good thing because I was quite insistent on watching it, as compared to the alternative which was Shark's Tale, a movie that I think is full of rubbish, and if it was done to emulate the success of Finding Nemo well it won't. The Incredibles is a lot better, though I probably can't make a very objective opinion since I haven't watched Shark's Tale.

After the movie we had lunch and went walking around City Square (I hope that's the right name), subsequently having some very sinful desserts at Secret Recipe. I had a Moist Chocolate Cake, which was delicious. One of the highlights of the day was the small game of Boggle we had at Macs after dessert. I suck at it, but playing games is always fun, like the time in RJ when our class was gripped by this Monopoly craze and we would bring Monopoly sets to school to play every day after classes, even after A level practicals. Dinner we had at a line of roadside stalls, but without Stella, Pak Ling and Linus since they had something on and had to leave first. Char kway teow was nice, but a bit too greasy for me to fully enjoy, and it left me feeling quite bloated for the rest of the day.

All in all, the JB trip was an enjoyable break from normal Singapore shopping trips, and I spent so little I regret converting S$20 (I only spent about 20 RM).

To end off a spectacular day, I met Pak Ling, Stella, Wee Ming, Emily, Hope, Jereme and Jon Chia for supper at the Blk 85 market in Bedok where we had the famous bak chor mee. I was still feeling the bloated after-effects of the char kway teow so I didn't eat as much as I normally would, but meeting up for supper is a smashing experience. I really wouldn't mind missing my bedtime if we had more of these supper sessions, and also if I had someone to send me home, like Hope did yesterday. Thanks Hope!

So why do I feel like crap today? How can I not feel like crap, after having a day that was almost an eighteen-hour long high in itself, and when I wake up the next morning to find myself at home and faced with a pile of work to do, and with my brother hogging the computer the whole morning, how can I wake up finding myself in such a situation and not feel like crap? This is the reason I hate holidays, because even though you enjoy yourself during the holiday, the act of crashing back to earth from whatever castle-in-the-clouds you were skipping around in is horridly painful.

I find myself faced with the insistent need to talk to somebody, and yet I don't know who I should talk to.

I hate having to wait for my brother to leave the computer before I can get any work done. I hate having so many things to do and yet nothing to do; the wait to rush, rush to wait feeling that was an ultimate nightmare for me in NS. I want to do things in a more efficient manner and yet I can't, because I have to wait for people to do certain things before one stage of the planning is complete and it is possible to go on to the next stage. And I can't expect people to get back to me immediately because they have their own agendas, their own plans and priorities which obviously are different from mine.

At some point I realised that with all my complaining about the things that people do that I can't stand, I was becoming increasingly paranoid that I was doing things that people can't stand, and it started getting to me. I might be neurotic, and I know that being paranoid is a self-defeating cycle because paranoia feeds itself, and yet I know that this paranoia is a manifestation of the guilt that I feel, condemning people for the things that they do that I can't stand, at the same time unreasonably expecting them to accept the things that I do even if they can't stand it. I know that I have no way of supporting my actions, yet I have acted and cannot possibly retract those acts. I hate being tolerant, and yet I expect others to be tolerant towards me. This is the essential paradox that haunts me every day of my life, and possibly the only solutions I have are either to become a tolerant person or to not care if people hate me for what I do, and to continue doing it. The former I would not do, and the latter is difficult when you know that interpersonal relationships are invaluable in life and you know is does you no good to go around offending people.

It's incredibly difficult to use words to describe the conflicts that arise from the different facets of my personality, and even putting them in words is a futile effort at trying to solve them by formalisation. No one can help me resolve the conflicts except myself and how I decide to live my life, which I am continually called upon to make some kind of decision about. No one said life was going to be easy.

In the end I realised that all that I thought was wrong with my day wasn't the real reason for my crappy mood. I feel like crap because I know that I acted like a jerk towards someone I had no reason to treat in that way, because I was impatient for things to happen, and I wish beyond anything in the world that I could take my actions back, but I can't. I am so sorry. Sorry Wee Ming.

Sigh I haven't posted a post like this in a long time, and I was kind of hoping that I would never need to do it. But things never stay the way you hope they will, and I suppose it was good while it lasted. Channeling all the hate into a blogpost does help a lot; a form of catharsis, you could call it. And cheaper than seeing a shrink too.

Avaris / 11/13/2004 02:33:00 PM

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