Section written on 9 Oct

My knees are pretty busted. They began hurting about three weeks ago, when I got a sharp pain a day after a 5km run.

Of course then, I’m out walking now. I feel tightly wound from being indoors all day and today being a Saturday makes it worse.

I think this is something I sort of buried in the back of my mind, but I feel like I’ve never really deserved to be in Hwa Chong.

When I got my PSLE results, I was supposed to get into ACS(I). I remember feeling like I was supposed to be ashamed, but I didn’t know how many ACSians a Hwachongian was worth.

My dad had a friend in the staff room, who helped push my appeal along and I got in.

I always felt like that runt from a Pasir Ris HDB, who wasn’t supposed to be there. I even felt that back when I first got into GEP. Everyone said I was the smart one, but I don’t think that even made sense to me.

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Ping once mentioned this term of “thrownness”, which means having the feeling that you are being “thrown” into your current life; I.E. things are happening to you and you didn’t explicitly ask to be born.

Very similar to the Buddhist concept of Dukkha, which is fundamental dissatisfaction. Pain is an unavoidable phenomenon.

In turn, explainable using evolutionary theory; there’s something engraved in our minds to improve our everyday, we strive for clout, we want more of the good feelings, which in turn have diminishing returns, etc.

All I’m saying is, fuck.

My Dukkha is that I don’t belong here, where my feet are planted. I simultaneously feel that I deserve to earn a lot more and yet I deserve to have flunked out of uni.

A Schrodinger’s bank account and educational certification. I feel that fundamentally, I am important enough to deserve a house with a staircase in it and yet if I lived in a one-room it would make sense.

Like I’m cast into space and being torn apart by what the world expects me to be, when it is actually all the pressure I have on the inside gunning hard to get out, manifesting as bursting blood vessels and popping eyesockets in the vacuum of space.

This is when the Meeting of the Goddess occurs. Metaphorically, IT represents realisation that something must be done, something must change within me, for my situation to improve.

The explosion, the meeting with the Goddess, has surfaced countless times.

A passionate plea to my mom, twice in the past week, to tell me that everything will be okay, and that I am enough, only to be met with a stunned silence – no matter what she says, it will not be enough. My mother cannot provide me the comfort I think that I need. My annoyance towards her is a rebellious teenage tantrum, the core of which is me asking “Mom, please tell me I’m going to be okay.”

An entire pack of cigarettes, smoked over a short pier in Batam, as I frustratedly cursed my trip mates. I am at my wits’ end… Or am I? I toss the last butt into the waves and clamber my way back into the shitty resort. We all get on each other’s nerves sometimes. None of the conflicts will last any longer than they need to.

END 9 OCT SECTION

I return to this armed with a few insights-

I’m at my pasir ris house. The air is cling-wrap cool, and the standing fan moves the air around this surprisingly small room.

My mind is buzzing from the past two weeks’ of Disco Elysium play. I toy with the problems in my life as Thoughts in my Thought Cabinet, requiring a certain amount of time to process before a synthesis can be found. In short, if something bothers me, I will take a while to not stop being bothered by it.

In the new shaft of light introduced by this shift of perspective, Ping raised a fair point; is there really a need to solve everything?

Acceptance… Acceptance encompasses letting go of the need to solve problems too.

If your improv group doesn’t want to spend money to rent a space, while you feel that saving money (for what exactly?) is stupid and obstinate and defiance for the sake of it, that doesn’t mean that you have to investigate what the hell is wrong with your idea of expenditure. That also doesn’t mean that everyone else will find you a wasteful asshole.

Both parties can be right. This thought can be put down. Signed, sealed and delivered into the void.

Shao, not everything is a problem to be solved.

You feel that if you’d only solve this one problem, you’d be closer to having a still sea.

You feel that you’d be finally able to rest, once your boss gives you the pay “you deserve”.

But the thing is, you’ll never be able to rest forever. Briefly, sure. But never indefinitely.

Brew a cup of camomile. Sit and feel the cling-wrapped air. It’s not so bad. There’s… Fundamental dissatisfaction, sure. But where you are right now? You are in charge.

Your knees are getting better, now.

You realise that you need her slightly less than before.

You stop yourself from mindlessly listening to music or buying drinks.

You’ve considered going to the gym.

Sometimes, things will feel bad. But always remember this insight, that you don’t have to solve everything.

If all else fails… Mandarin Orchard has really cheap staycays. You wouldn’t mind going for one again. You found your heart again, that one time.