Feel (From Jules in Jumbles 24 May 08I've never felt this tired in my entire life. I'm physically and mentally tired. My soul is tired. I'm so tired having to move my fingers all over the keyboard to type out this post is a struggle. My dishes are not done; the laundry's in the machine and i have no idea what to do with them; the unpacked boxes remained unpacked; Al is begging for something and I haven't the energy to find out what it is; there are so many calls to make that I just can't be bothered anymore to make any of them. I should be updating my resume and sending them out but I have neither the motivation nor the inspiration to start work on it.
I'm officially the laziest and most useless person I see around me.
I've lived 35 years - 20 of which I lived exactly as I was taught to live by my dad, who was my role model, my idol, and the pillar of my strength and my life. It never occurred to me to question the rationale behind the way I was raised. I was brought up sheltered, overly protected, and isolated from the rest of the world. I was raised like a boy, and one that was expected to be without blemish. I hardly wore a dress, never really behaved like a typical girl, and never showed any signs of meekness. The only authority I submitted to was my dad's. It didn't bother him a bit that I was almost every teacher's nightmare. After all, I was bright, I was bold like a boy, and most importantly, I was not beyond his control.
I was a good kid by today's standard -
I smiled and greeted my parents every morning;
I smiled and greeted every adult that I met that was a friend or an acquaintance of my parents';
I never failed to express my gratitude for any services rendered to me;
I always asked politely for people to get out of my way;
I always apologized and smiled ever so sweetly to boys I beat up after bashing them up and after their parents complained to my dad about my bullying;
I never hit a girl (not really, I've slapped a pair of twins - which made them TWO girls - at one go);
I never whined;
up til I was 20 and married, I never reasoned with my dad over what he dictated that i should and should not do - suffice to say that how I felt about those ridiculously strict rules imposed on me was not of material concern to him - and on occasions that I so much as asked "why", I would get in every instance an angry "because I said so" response;
I did my workout, practiced on my electric organ, swam, ate, drank and slept at the time designated by my dad;
I kept no friends and therefore never really hogged the phone like the other normal teenage girls and guys did (the first person I spent longer than half an hour on the phone with was my baby sister's classmate, and the reason I bothered to talk to him in the first place was because he had loads of second hand books for sale and I loved books...anyways, we really clicked and hence chatted frequently, mostly about books and about his hunky brother who was incidentally a star athlete in my school...had I known that all my phone calls were actually tapped, I would never have talked about his cute brother that I was then insanely infatuated with!!);
I was chauffeured everywhere, and I do mean EVEYWHERE, by my dad so it was impossible for me to get into trouble anywhere else other than within my school compound;
my dad hardly had to see the principal more than once a month for her to complain to him about what a rogue I had been;
I never hit my maids;
I never tortured any living things - their deaths were swift (whilst I would supervise the blowing up of toads with fire starters, my baby brother, on the other hand, was covertly conducting vicious experiments like freezing grasshoppers to death, in jello...);
even in frustration over being confined, I always came out to greet and hug my dad after turning my room into a war zone (anger, or, to be precise, the free expression of anger, was something which was totally accepted in my family, as long as the expression bit was done in the privacy of our own rooms);
I never burdened my dad with meaningless grievances or annoyed him with the cliched "you don't/ won't understand" retort, because I was fully aware that I had not earned the right to be heard and understood;
I knew as a 4-year-old to not bother my parents with how bad I felt about anything - except about death - because having or showing emotions other than positive ones is a taboo;
as a 4-year-old (that was as far back as I could remember), I had mastered the art of giving a sunshine smile upon request, even when I was upset and feeling like beating the daylight out of the very person I had been asked to smile to (the only thing i couldn't smile to was the camera);
I never bullied anyone smaller (in size AND in age - I might be young but I had my principles)than me - why bother when my beating up of anyone male and bigger was fully condoned;
I knew what I wanted, asked in grammatically correct English (to say that bad English is frowned upon is a gross understatement) for whatever I wanted, then waited for my request to be processed, and whenever the outcome was a "no", I always had the option of throwing a fit behind the doors of my own room, and I would be spared the cane so long as by dinner time, I was all smiles again - negotiations and appeals were never part of the process, not that it mattered to me since they never existed in my dictionary and it was only a week ago that I realized it was not unreasonable, and definitely not a crime, for a 16-year-old to negotiate and reason with her parents;
and the list goes on...
But why does it even matter to me what kind of a kid I had been? I'm 35 turning 36 for crying out loud!
It matters because after having lived for 20 years in accordance to the rules (some adhered to and 90% broken, nevertheless, my thoughts and actions were all in some ways reactions to them, and they are what I have been using to analyze everything and everyone around me)dictated by my dad, I didn't know how to live after he died suddenly and tragically shortly before my 21st birthday. He had left me no instruction on how I should think and behave as an adult, so I continued to see the world and live my life based on the same set of rules set by him. The result of not having developed my own rules as I was growing up was a mishmash of moderate success in certain aspects of my adult life and colossal failures in the aspect that matters the most to any human being.
I realized, having come so far in life, that I can't feel what I'm supposed to feel, let alone express them. I can't feel me, and I can't feel others. I can analyze, and I excel at engineering and evoking desired responses from people (I read a lot, love psychology, sociology and anthropology and has a degree in human ecology - what I know about people I've really learned them from books, not from having experienced the full range of human emotions myself or by observing and understanding others) but I generally and genuinely can neither FEEL their feelings nor appreciate their right to feel the way they have chosen to feel. I just KNOW for a fact that THAT’s what someone’s feeling, and my inclination is to immediately – instead of acknowledging and giving it support – attempt to establish if there's anything constructive I should and can do about it.
I realize today that I've got to be the most self-centred person I know - I had expected everyone around me to see the world as I see it... And I would never have come to the realization had it not been for D's devastatingly heartbreaking "you're a 16-year-old trapped in a 35-year-old body" comment and the 5 hours I spent with my therapist.
When my therapist gave me 2 assignments - the first was to recall incidents from my childhood and describe my feelings about them; the second, to start identifying my feelings and EXPRESSING them when interacting with D - I didn't show up for two consecutive sessions because I couldn't do my homework. I thought about them everyday and dreaded the very thought of them by the third day. The only feeling I ever knew and understood and expressed without reservation was rage, only to be told that anger or rage is not even technically a feeling but merely a manifestation of a set of deep-rooted feelings. Kill me, please, someone, anyone.
But I did it. I went back to see AiMei with my completed assignment. And at the end of the session, I was told that I need to start giving myself and others the PERMISSION to FEEL.
I'm stumped again. I can't help but adore AiMei for her ability to keep giving me things I would actually bother pondering on, exactly what I need to distract myself from all the things that I shouldn't be thinking about in my current state anyway.
But I'm exhausted. I don't know if I have the stamina to reorganize my very messy life and I don't know if I can go on pretending that I can totally live with all the hurt I've caused others. For the longest time, I've convinced myself that as long as I'm willing to bear the consequences of my own actions, I am free to do whatever I decide to do. Never once had it occurred to me that my actions could cause people around me irreparable emotional damages. Because until recently, I've never felt - my heart was an uncharted territory - it was virtually impossible to break me because I always recovered from pain in matter of days. So I thought. And I expected the general population to be like me. I couldn't have been more serious whenever I said that "I have no choice but to get out of depression - I have a short attention span".
But now I can feel. I can feel a little of what I should be feeling, and a hell lot of what others have felt. Justice is being served at last. I'm being punished. The feelings of my victims are so overwhelming I feel like I'm lugging 200 tonnes of weight with me everywhere I go.
A small price to pay for self-knowledge, I suppose.
She (From Jules in Jumbles 12 Jun 08)I can't help but noticed how much I'm talking to myself these days. And I don't mean talking aloud to myself or talking to my mirror image. I talk to a copy of me in my head. It's as if there's another me living in me. The one that's been locked up, suppressed and muted since I don't even know when.
I know I'm not crazy. But it's a fact that I keep seeing her. She crouches by a dark corner somewhere in my head and never once spoke to me. She's so little and so frail that I can't bear to scream at her when she refuses to even acknowledge me. I know that we're not on the same wavelength and she's too immature to understand or respond to me but I desperately need to connect with her.
I desperately want to be confined again at CDC. The one month that I was left in total solitude was by far the happiest days of my life. I guess it was during that period that she was allowed to come out from hiding, and she was happy.
Mumbo JumboMost of those who have come to know me really well would tell me that I should start writing a memoir. To them, my life has been a drama and most people don't want to be me. To begin with, most people on this safe little island wouldn't have chosen to take the path that I've taken or made the choices that I had made that landed me in one trouble after another. The bulk of those I know live a peaceful, uneventful life, and they seem contented that THAT is the way to live.
As for me, the time for me to want to swap places with them has not come. Maybe 30 years down the road, when I look back, I might regret all the wrong turns and pointless detours I’ve made in my life. But for now, I’m contented with what I’ve been given – the people I love and the good and bad things that happened -, and I accept who I am today as a result of the decisions I’ve made in response to each event that unfolded in my life.
That said, what happened in the past few months did make me sit up and reflect on many things I have done which I can’t say I’m proud of.
For months I berated myself and allowed others to feed me with information on what makes a decent lady. For the first time in my life, I wished I had conformed – not that I’ve been making it a point to be different.
But as I slowly picked up my shattered ego, I learnt that I don’t have to fit into moulds cut out for people who can’t live unless they are accepted and loved by all. I began to appreciate that there’s nothing fatal about not being the kind of woman that appeals to the general male population.
And this is the part that I’m most glad about: in the process of dealing with the aftermath of D-day, I was forced to confront one of my greatest fears – that of having to acknowledge that I’ve caused others hurt.
It was a necessary step in my quest to find myself.
Because whenever I’m lost, I’m destructive. The whole time that I struggled to fit in, I was bitterly angry that the expectation of people and the society I lived in necessitated such an endeavour on my part. I didn’t know who I was, why I reacted to things differently from many people around me, and why it was so difficult for the person who mattered to me the most to love me for who I was, whoever he had figured me out to be. And when I did make an effort to be “perfect”, I became angrier, and defensive, whenever I felt I’ve fallen short. The way I’ve chosen to cope with a perpetually disappointed D – who had by then built a fortress to shut me out - was extremely vindictive: I gave what I thought was everything he wanted from me to someone else.
It was not pleasant at all to play someone that I wasn’t. And the ending of the story sucks big time.
To the person that’s crossed my path at the wrong time - I can only say I’m sorry. Everything that I did, I’ve done it because of D and for D. I needed an escape while staying put in D’s life. Had I been a stronger person, someone who at least knew who she was, and was comfortable in her own skin, things between D and me would have turned out very differently and I wouldn’t have needed an outlet.
I’m no longer striving to make up for what I’ve done. I have accepted that such is a time when not doing anything is probably the kindest thing I can do for the person whose life I nearly destroyed because of my wilfulness.
And today I’ve come to terms with the fact that disappointment with people and things is inevitable and in fact a norm among the human race, and hence I should feel no less of myself whenever others feel let down by me.
My only responsibility now is D.
Pilot said this to me one day when we were on the topic of “should”s and “should-not”s: “There’s no such thing as a universal rule (when interacting with people); there’s only your rule, or my rule. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll only feel bad if I break my own rules.”
Pilot never fails to amaze Seabloke and me.
Hate to be loved (From Jules In Jumbles - 28 May 08)I used to think my mother hated me. Today, I still don't think she loves me. I knew she hated me when she was asked to give up her business (which was not doing well anyways, because running a profitable business is really not her forte) to stay home with me as I prepared for my "O" Levels exams. Each day she'd tell me how she hated having to make sacrifices for me. Most of the time, I would ignore her and make serious attempts to focus on my studies. It got to a point where my dad had to send me to my granny's so I could get the peace I needed to concentrate on preparing for my exams.
It never occurred to me back then that her blaming me for her lost freedom would have profoundly affected the way I handled relationships as an adult.
Right after "O" levels was over, I was sent to Canada alone to further my education. Life was a bliss. At 16, I was finally free - free from the tight chains of my dad's control and free from the constant yearnings for a cold mother's love. For a good 5 years, I never once thought about home and I wasn't lonely. I had many friends and I always had a boyfriend. I was always good to my friends, expecting very little from them, and yet always making a point to be there for them when they needed me.
My boyfriends were not so fortunate. Looking back, I realized I demanded the world from them. I was able to convince them, without having to put it across explicitly, that to make me happy, they would have to make huge sacrifices. Yet, when they did, I would immediately lose whatever feelings I had for them and would make a dash for the exit in lightning speed.
This happened to whoever that summoned enough courage to pursue a person as difficult as I was. I desperately needed to be shown love and to be shown that I was worth the sacrifices that one had to make to be with me. Yet I was repelled and completely disgusted by ardent suitors who seemed happy just breathing the same air that I was breathing. For a long time, I thought nothing of the disturbing trend. People around me thought I simply loved toying with men's feelings. I never bothered to defend myself because I knew that that wasn't my intention. But whatever good intention I started with, the outcome was always bad and someone would always end up being hurt by my sudden retreat, at precisely the point when they were the sweetest to me and thought I was "the one" for them.
This has caused me to wonder if the reason that I'm still with D today after 15 years is that I never ever got what I wanted from him. D's one of the most brilliant and ambitious persons I know, but he always seemed so distant. I admire and adore him and always wish he would one day be sweet to me like the others had been. And just like the way I waited for my mother to give me a warm, loving hug (all I really hoped for as a child and then as an adolescent, was just a gentle touch on the forehead by her, and I wanted it so badly I began to get recurring dreams of her doing that!), I waited - albeit impatiently - for D to show me some fiery passion, and some signs that I'm all that he's living for...
My life has always been filled with dramas - and I had no one or circumstances to blame but myself - and I've gotten so accustomed to them I never really bothered to learn anything from them.
But what happened 3 months ago was traumatic enough to stop me in my path and make me ponder on the things that I've done and the effects they've had on people around me. I decided at last that it was time that I seek professional help.
One of the many reasons that I think AiMei is amazing is that she's so far the only person who could convince me to go into the very place that I've made a point never to get anywhere near - my heart. Upon her demand (well, it's an assignment...), I gave visiting my heart a shot and took a peek inside for some signs of life. I survived to attend the second session.
After the first session, I was asked to revisit episodes in my childhood - something I used to condemn counselors for doing to their clients (to me, bad memories are best left where they belong - in the "Delete" folder, for permanent obliteration upon our logging off from life) - but something about AiMei made me trust her and I've since the first session been retrieving from my "Delete" folder memories of events and incidences from my childhood days.
Something that kept coming to mind today was the scene of my mother blaming me for her being stuck with me. She felt like she was sentenced. "Looking" at the scene as an outsider now, I feel terrible for her. She was stuck with someone she couldn't love, and probably didn't want and didn't need. I wondered if this had somehow at some point in my life caused me to draw the conclusion that if someone would willingly give me his time, his energy, his entire world, his life if need be, then that would be proof that he indeed loves me. If it did cause an impact in the way I evaluated my relationships in my adult life, I sure as hell was not conscious of it.
So why did I feel like bolting whenever someone offered his full devotion and entire being, even if he was someone I was initially attracted to?
I begin to look for answers in my mother. I imagine that I acceded to her request to meet up and catch up, and, she hugged me.
That very thought of her making physical contact with me, and her attempt to connect with me emotionally, immediately sends chills down my spine. Not only am I NOT looking forward to her affection, I detest it and am freaking afraid that I would be obliged to reciprocate!
Now I'm truly troubled. Have I been projecting these feelings onto those that I considered capable of breaking my heart, the same feelings that sent me fleeing once the object of my affection started giving me more than what I thought I deserved?
Or is there a remote possibility that I've simply gotten comfortable with just LONGING to be loved and cherished? Could it be the case that whenever someone came into my life to fulfill that yearning, it always left me feeling as if I no longer had what was to me the most powerful force that drives me to better myself everyday? And hence my immediate reaction was always utter disgust; and natural inclination, to immediately expunge the unfortunate guy from my life. Is that really who I have become?
Goodness gracious, I do have a malfunction.
But wait, Seabloke loves me and shows me her affection freely and yet I adore her and totally enjoy being with her! It's baffling. But I do have some sort of a theory: if I were to look at my life as some kind of cruel experiment that comes with variables of all kinds, Seabloke has certainly been the only constant in it. She was always the protective sister who gave up her tidbit, her money, her time, her energy, basically, her everything, to make her siblings happy. She is still today the same affectionate, albeit a little bossy, sister that she was when we were all children.
While my dad loved me and gave my life meaning and direction, he left abruptly, without warning. But even my dad had expectation of me. The only other person I feel who truly loves me, and is still in my life today, is Seabloke. And she never judges me. We always joke about how we lament having no choice over who we have as siblings. But really, given a choice, I would pick Seabloke over and over again. In fact, I won't want anyone else as my baby sister. I don't and I won't.
Land loves Sea!!
