Category: General

Roof of Some Dawson Place

In a fit of perverse curiosity, I went back to the Archives to read my posts from April-Sept 2011. Jesus.

Things that struck me as interesting:

• Terrible fucking vocabulary
• Melodramatic
• A high-octane (facade of?) love for friends
• Anxiety and depression rearing their fucking heads
• I mentioned being depressed a lot, but I don’t know if I was exaggarating or legitimately in denial
• Very VERY self-dismissive and insecure
• Oddly, somewhat self-aware and introspective
• I did horribly in school
• I would slap me
• Incredible immaturity, might be retarded
• Loads of comments!

Yeah. Just wanted to put all this out there so that you guys don’t have to tell me how I used to be.

We were back on the metal stairs, this time leaning against a wall with a significant pile of ash and cigarette filters, an ornate bottle of coffee liqueur, a mug and two packets of tobacco sitting in the middle of our four-man circle.

“Here’s something I ask all my friends,” Mars raised, “If you could rewind your life to a certain point, what would you have done differently?”

I asked in return, “What would you have done?”

“Well… I told y’all already what.” I winced as she snapped back. “I’d go do science instead of languages. Get into engineering. Become an astronaut. Unfuck my vision.”

I’d go back to Sec 1. Join band instead. Butterfly effect. Maybe I’d be way more inspired. Maybe I’d be not fat. Or awkward.

Gio, in his thick Italian accent, said, “I’d maybe do physics if I didn’t like to make stuff. But I do! So I’m pretty okay with the life I’m having now.”

I wowed honestly and found myself in envy of his content.

“Well,” He continued, “My cousin is coming down to meet me at Bangkok in December.”

“What’s he like?”

“Uh, he’s constantly worrying. Not like me at all.”

I grinned. “Like me, then!”

“You? Nah. You seem pretty cool actually.” The rest nodded in agreement and I grinned harder.

Or maybe I’d dump Com Science for Sociology. They know this. I’ve mentioned it a few times. But it’s OK. Nobody really cares. (They do.) Yeah, you know what I mean.

Joseph ruminated. “I’d go back and take it easy. Maybe less on acads and more on talking to people.”

“I thought you’re doing fine!”

“No, not like that. More like not stress out so much, you know?”

Mars told us stories of her squatting at squatters in Melbourne and Prague, an adolescent spirit spending 7 months on her own, fuelled by her hatred for our country, her family being pissed at her, no finances and social anxiety to begin with.

If you’ve nothing to lose, you’ll end up doing pretty crazy stuff. It’s all about faking it. This kind of thing comes with practice. She had a lot to share with us.

As we chatted through 2am, I wondered and I was right: the question didn’t reach me.

But I smiled and was fine with it, and this time, bathed myself in the presence: of strong tobacco that stuck on my fingers, awesome stories and coffee liqueur.

I returned to my room, feeling loved and eager to dream about our potential road trip.

I’ve been running regularly and lost about 3kg (yes!) ; I’ve also been taking anti-depressants somewhat regularly ever since that birthday episode knowing how deep in the pits I’ve been.

I’ve described the fluoxetine in an older post. Taking it nowadays leads to a variety of side effects and nonsense.

The brain is horrible at self diagnosis. The medicine begins by suppressing something. I think it suppresses the chemicals that make me overthink, because I find myself doing that much, much less after taking it. I don’t feel perceptibly more spright or anything, it just is the absence of too many thoughts.

The void of overthinking is then filled up with restlessness. I can’t concentrate well, if at all. Recess week was a blur, but I don’t know if it was because I was wasting my life away or because I was literally forced into a shit attention span. But it’s fine, because I no longer overthink as much. My attention lasts laughably short and I get bored easily.

Perhaps it’s because I used to use 100% of my brain like Lucy and now with much less thinking to do, my brain’s still on restless overdrive.

The bad thoughts still come, but managbly slowly. But so does everything else. I take longer to decide and comprehend. Sometimes I talk to myself to rally myself together, and also because the weirdness of talking to myself gets cast away as a bad thought.

Sometimes I nap even if there’s loads to do; I’m just bored.

If I were to stop taking the meds immediately, all the suppressed chemicals burst forth into anxiety-central and any little problem launches me into a deluge of discomfort and adrenaline. Perhaps that’s why I thought I had anxiety as well.

Upon taking alcohol whilst under the effects of the medicine, the next day is almost always guaranteed to be sombre.

No medicine casts a dull haze in my vision and I tend to act more rationally, with the painful effect of being sensitive as all hell and sighing a lot.

Sleeping is never a problem.

Starfucker couldn’t come to Singapore because they support marijuana. Sue’s present for my birthday is hereby refunded.

I woke up one morning and daydreamed about walking down cobblestone paths in Europe again and just beaming as I imagined all my friends envying my Big Bad Eurotrip where I’d finally get to find myself and go on a magnificent journey of the soul! And other white girl things.  Brought up my SEP application on my phone and a tiny corner whispered the word REJECTED which felt like a flick to the nuts. Odd that they didn’t message me about it, but now all I want is to know how to ask the administrator “why not me”, but in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m crying/raging through my keyboard. 

I’d really, really wanted to go for it and I wasn’t kidding when I thought I’d finally get to live an alternate life and possibly reassemble the nuts and bolts of my mind into something coherent and self respecting. Experiences, bad and good, the ones that I long for. I’m okayish about it now, just that there’s gonna be other avenues I’ll have to explore to quench this. 

Met up with Sean yesterday, where we talked bunk (when did we ever start talking anyway? Who started it?) and hit the deep subjects like “does confidence need to be backed up by something quantifiable?” 

I was firmly in the camp of how confidence can and should be brought out of thin air, while confidence from working out or winning competitions is shaky and shouldn’t be relied upon.

Sean believed the opposite, and as such two men who didn’t know what they were talking about tried to convince the other. 

I believe that there’s no one honest-to-God answer (yeah sitting on the fence is really doing well for my ass), that all solutions work fine and that I should really practice what I preach.

A couple of hours ago, a friend posted a screenshot on our (pretty dry) exclusive BMT WhatsApp chat. 

It was a screenshot of a Facebook status, and it told of a friend of ours who had passed away peacefully in his sleep. It might’ve had been cancer. I vaguely remembered that he may have had leukemia. 

Of course, being a decent human being, I was mildly shocked (surprised has a rather indifferent tone to it) and started thinking about his ties to me whilst contemplating my own mortality. 

I remember having a single long talk with him about his interests and what he wanted for the future. Mom said she remembered him. Sickly. Skinny before? Crazy collection of Pokemon cards. 

My eyes glazed over as I tallied my achievements so far, and my mind automatically switched tracks away from such thoughts. 

A while later, I saw Andrea’s post on Instagram of an uncharacteristic photoshoot she got and I was immediately thrown back to wondering what I was doing with my life. 

Reservist a week ago… Went alright. RT twice this week so far. Cancelled the one I was supposed to go for today. Earned supposedly 300 after 2 gigs with a robotics company. Finally earning my own allowance? Went on national news in the background of an interview pushing a fucking trolley. That’s a story. Waiting for SEP. I don’t know if I want it. Losing sight of diet control. 

I’d want to stick to the saying that social media is fabricated and filtered stories, but a huge part of me wants to live those for the world to see and heart and like, which in retrospect is really unhealthy. 

I’ll sleep it off. As usual. 

Back in my unit in NS (a time I reminisce pretty regularly as the “best me there was”) we used to have an officer called Trevor. He was pretty cute in the blur-ish way, and ORDed earlier than anyone else we knew upon being drafted to that unit.

He used to say some pretty odd things which I termed as “Trevorisms” and had written on the back of my notebook.

Just treat it like some… heated laser shit.

-When talking about the SOG Knife

Turn-about. [thinks] About… turn?

-When getting us to march to the cookhouse

Laps & Joints. [mutters to himself] Lap-joints…

– When giving a training seminar

4-coils! Similar to a single coil, but 4

-When talking about concertina wire

You could lose your life, or even worse, your leg- wait they’re equally bad

– When talking about safety

If not enough, you all serve the consequences.

– Ditto

Concertina wire helps you not get your gloves caught on the wire.

– Concertina wire again.

…the smaller of the variety one

– Comparing… sizes.

Your national-day-long national day holiday.

– Before the holiday

Not like the old days when you crushed your fingers to OOC (out-of-course)

– When giving a pep talk

You need the staircase to go in or… you just fall in.

– When talking about entering the operations trench

Bless his heart.

“Alright, everyone. Five minutes and we’ll get on to the next section of the meeting.”

I stood up and stretched, joints crackling awake. 

“Shao, your socks are filthy.”

I glanced at Shawn and picked at the beige spots on my socks, ascertaining that they were in fact not parts of my socks stretching and showing my skin under the purple. 

“Well, I… Haven’t washed them yet. ”

“The FUCK? How often do you wash them?” 

“I can’t re-”

 “You’re supposed to wash them every day! DUDE!”

—

“I haven’t donated blood in some time either.” 

Jurong East via Woodlands, arriving: 3 minutes. 

“Well,” she paused. “Wait. You’re on medication, right? You’re not supposed to donate blood on medication anyway.”

“Well,” I paused. “I haven’t been taking the medicine regularly either-” 

“Fucking hell, Shao.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re supposed to take them regularly to feel better-”  

“I am feeling betterish… ”

“-So now I have remind you about three… No, four things:” Her fingers formed a list. “One, to go running-” 

“I do that a lot now, you already know this-”

“Two, take your fucking medicine.”

“It clashes with the beer.”

“God, Shao. Three, cut down on the alcohol.”

“It clashes with the medicine…?”

“Kan ni na, how do you expect to feel better if you don’t? Every time I message you you’re either drunk or talking about the other time you were drunk.”

I felt myself grin apologetically with my nervous teeth clenched. 

“And four, wash your bloody socks- God, never mind. I shouldn’t mom you around. None of my business.”

“Wait, are you being sarcastic?”

A smirk. “Glad you could see that. Just take care of yourself.”

—

Now, I just tell myself if I can wash a pair of socks in the shower every day, it’ll get better. All of it.

Every night, I sit on the floor of my shower to scrub the black away. 

God, I’m so alone. 

Zhi Ting’s wedding tomorrow.