There’s always those guys who don’t have to try too hard. In NS, while you’re dunking your crotch into milk tea mud, they’re lounging in an air conditioned office, cracking jokes about which sagging DXO they’d rather smash. Years before, they’d be merman-lined jocks tossing Ultimate Frisbees through a similarly muddy field, girls swooning over the chiseled abs that seem too out of place on someone in his eight-or-so-teens.
And that’s the thing that gets you, that they seem so effortless in getting into good shape while you… You don’t put in effort anyway. But you’re the good guy! The funny guy. You don’t need effort. Your moral high ground and belief in karma dictates that you must somehow be in the second low point of a Pixar film and that things will uptick pretty soon, and that means that these hunks must be the bad guys, because you fear being made fun of by them and the longer you believe this, the less you have to do about obesity and a shortened lifespan.
End scene.
The camera pulls back. I’m standing on the train, going home halfway through the work day. A dry cleaned blazer is hanging off a hanger, hanging off my lanyard (yes, you can keep the branded lanyard, HR responds), and I’m toting a Cold Storage bag for my desktop headphones. I’m listening to an ebook. Dan Harmon speaks with vitriol and I’m so inspired that I end up tapping these ramblings out. But it doesn’t matter, but there’s a sense of how I’m not “legit” because I’m a hack, the idiot at the peak of the Dunning-Kreuger effect. Like Icarus aiming for the sun, with the key difference that even Icarus knew he had to go outside first. I just headbutt the ceiling lights.
The train’s left the tunnels. It’s way too bright to think.
Next day, last day of work.
I’m wearing the lanyard, this time without the all small caps novena square card in it. My (ex-) coworkers laugh at it and I wave it off as a metaphor. I give Susan a hug as she sees me off at the exit gates of Novena Office Tower B.
I text Ariane, and revisit what depression is. I feel vulnerable, which is making me feel sad about how vulnerable I’ve gotten. I freeze. I get on the MRT and put on some ironic songs.
At Newton, I get a message from Selma. She invites me to a Christmas party. I remember missing the Halloween party because I was shy, and maybe because she missed my show. I resolve to predrink before this one and yo ask if I can bring a plus one. “She must’ve read my card,” I think and I blush a little, because she’s a woman. Still sad.
At Somerset, I get a call from Selma. “We miss you too much,” She says in her French-dripping voice. “You need to come back to sign another form.” I’m already so deep in some inexplicable sadness that any frustration pings off my hide harmlessly.
“The sadness doesn’t come from anything,” I protest to myself. And it’s true, I’m not sad about leaving. Everyone’s leaving. Not in the existential sense, but literally everyone is quitting because apparently nobody really likes to work there. I’m still raw from remembering depression.
Time jump, 1.5h to KR mrt.
I look around and all the girls in KR are in yoga pants, and I wonder how many people have ever looked at me with that same amount of lust. I am not a narcissist, just curious. I know at least 3 girls used to *like* me, which oh so astonishingly enough does not translate to self-love. Also, how many yoga studios are there in Singapore? And does yoga actually work?
I scorn the fat people I see, “at least I’m not a fat bastard like him”, and then one morning I take a piss and I realise that my belly obscures my toes, and then I also realise that my belly obscures my dick, and then I connect the circles and go “ah, shit, I’m fat.”
I then pledge to lose a bit of weight by doing this tabata thing daily while mom makes salads for breakfast. These efforts usually end in a week and I forget about tabata, and I cry to mom because I remember how depressed I am, and I lament that my drinking isn’t a problem but is a coping mechanism and that she should just understand instead of judging. I decide to treat myself to everything I see, and I am surprised once more, two months later, as I don’t seem to have lost any weight.
It’s really easy not to eat something. Just… Be mindful of how unhungry you are, stop blaming depression for your clouded judgement and stop using it as a shit source of endorphins. It’s just so easy. Just don’t eat it.
It’s such a long, multistep process that it’s impossible to visualise that if I don’t eat this MOS burger, then I will start loving myself. Don’t eat the burger. Don’t get fatter. Lose weight. Get a girlfriend. Sabotage it. Regain that weight. Get another girlfriend. Realise that it isn’t tied to your self worth. Sabotage that too, and die alone, but not before loving yourself, whatever that means.
—
I’m terrified, you guys. No more work means more time lazing means time spent overthinking means an expedition of regression into depression. My brother suggested that I gym every two days, but I don’t want to be that guy who does nothing but gym. That guy’s not funny.
I revisit my texts with Ariane in an attempt to flesh out the paragraphs above, and realise that my turmoil does not show up in context. I’m a little relieved, because that means she can think that I’m stable, but feel guilty that I’m faking stability and this back and forth self arguing is too much and I’m gonna just hit publish.
