Unravelling an emotional low

I have two weeks or so left of my trip in Hong Kong. I haven’t been blogging. I haven’t been doing much writing at all, come to think of it. It’s the middle of the night —early morning, really— and I’m feeling depressed as I think about the day I have to leave. I don’t really know why I’m feeling so down. Even chocolate didn’t help. It’s not as if I don’t miss home. I do. I miss my parents and my brother and my friends. I miss the air, the silence, the weather, my room, and my shoes. I miss my fabulous frocks that I haven’t yet had the chance to wear. I miss the fact that we recycle almost everything and have simplistic meals that come in just one pot. Technically, I have no reason to be depressed. I’ve gotten into journalism school, gotten an internship and a scholarship, and I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, waiting for me to start living it. Sure, I’d been afraid of the Peeping Tom/ Crazy Stalker who’d once urinated outside my window, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t come around anymore, not after the police were informed and a fence was put up. I sure haven’t seen or heard any sign of him. The fact that I’m still worrying about him and the potential threat he poses is a sign that there is something else amiss with me.

As I analyze myself, I realize it’s not that I’m sad that my trip is coming to an end. Hong Kong is a great place, but it’s not one of my favourite places. The extreme capitalist-consumerist lifestyle sucks the spirit out of me, and the noisy assaults from every direction in busier parts of the city switch off my brain. It is, however, the place where most of my family reside. When I leave, I don’t know when I’ll see them again. And then there’s the fact that this trip marks the end of an era.

The last time I came here five years ago, I was a steady high school student expecting two more years of school and then three or four of university. Life was all about studying and academic achievement. It was composed of a rhythmic cycle of class, study, exams and holidays. But now, this holiday is like a goodbye to that life. I’m still a student, but I’m no longer that kind of student. In fact, I’ll be transitioning into a world of professional work. I won’t be a kid anymore. No one will see me as a kid. I kinda miss that, being young. Now that I know how it all plays out, I want to do it all over again. I want to relive my life as a child, a tween, a teen, with all the angst and drama, but also with the knowledge that I now hold. I had fun then. The world wasn’t such a cruel place, at least not in my mind. I could simply obsess about my favourite movie star and his films, and that would be the centre of my life. My biggest problem would be fighting with my parents about quitting maths and that zit on my nose. My biggest challenge was persuading my parents to get me contact lenses and a director’s cut version of a movie I already owned on DVD. The biggest problem in my life was whether the boy I had a crush on liked me back or not. It was so simple, so clean. Everything was routine, and I knew almost exactly what to expect. Although, looking back, I sure had some crazy daydreams about dramatic whirlwind romances and suddenly becoming gorgeous like in those clichéd teen movies.

Right now, I’m at a place where I’m totally unclear as to what is about to happen to me. Once I enter this world of adults and work and grown-up relationships, I’m afraid of losing the kid I once was. I don’t want to think about the world changing because I don’t know what it will become. I don’t want to change me. At least, not the essential core of me.  

It might have been better if the rest of my family weren’t so far away all the time. Family members outside of the nuclear family can act as great anchors, and I’ve got some really great people in my family. I’m separated by thirteen hours, two oceans and one continent, plus two thousand dollars. I don’t have a lot of friends, being the quiet and shy sort who is wary of opening up to people I don’t know well. I’m afraid of being totally alone and isolated. Sure, I like some ‘me time’. All right, a lot of me-time, but I also like human contact. I like being able to have in-depth conversations with someone. I like not being judged by the person I’m having an intense conversation with.

To put it all very simply, I’m depressed because I’m afraid, and I’m afraid because there are unknown factors in my life and a change in direction. I don’t know whether I’ll succeed. Even worse, I don’t know if I can overcome my fears. I keep saying I can, and hoping that one day I’ll believe it, but really, to tell you the truth. I have no idea, and I fear having no idea.

Then again, no one ever gets to foresee the future. Not even the greatest people knew that they were going to be great, unless they were real megalomaniacs who always thought that they were gods in a mortal realm or something. However, those people hardly ever end up being actually great. The greatest people, like Gandhi, the Prophet Mohammed, Einstein and so on and so forth, never knew about the impact they were going to have on the world. I think Jesus knew, but that’s because I believe He is an incarnation of God.

I keep on writing characters who don’t know whether they’re going to succeed or simply fail miserably, but they plough on despite their fears and give it their best shot anyway. Now that I think about it, it’s probably my subconscious or a divine being trying to tell me something.

I can’t get rid of my fears. We are programmed to fear what we don’t know, and the future is very much unknown. However, I can learn to live with them.

 

Bleurgh…no title today

My tricycle arrived today. It’s the type of blue that I like, and after a few rounds, I got rather good at it. Now I just have to pluck up the courage to actually ride it out onto more open roads. My mother keeps on nagging me to get ‘real life’ friends, but it’s so difficult to actually find a topic to talk about to complete strangers. They don’t understand my sense of humour, and I’m not interested in the gossip about their lives. My world is so completely different from theirs; I live through my imagination. My life isn’t just about jobs and money and boyfriends. Well, actually, it lacks two of the three thngs mentioned.

I guess I’m just not a social person. Social events such as parties make me want to run in the opposite direction, simply because I detest modern ‘music’ (i.e. pop, rap, hip hop etc.). The fact that I can’t stand these things means that I don’t often meet new people. There isn’t exactly a writers’ society out there either, and even if they was, they would dismiss my stuff as ‘not serious literature’ because it doesn’t reflect modern society. My work’s just pure fun. I don’t do it for any reason other than to put a smile onto someone’s face or make someone laugh.

 

Idiots and…wise people?

The other day, I was making up a statement concerning freedom and wisdom and I needed a group noun for wise and smart people. Being the relatively studious sort of person, I went and got my Oxford Thesaurus off my bookshelf and tried to look for something which would suit. One of the few words I knew which meant someone smart was ‘genius’, but as there was such a fine and fuzzy line between genius and madness, I couldn’t use that for my saying. I looked up ‘genius’ in the Thesaurus. That didn’t yield any good results (‘Einstein’ wasn’t exactly what I was looking for) so I went and looked up ‘intellectual’ instead. There were very few synonyms, but after a while, I chose ‘sage’. The word ‘intellectual’, while appropriate, didn’t have the right rhythm. The thing is, I didn’t find many nouns which meant ‘smart people’.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the word ‘fool’. That was the other word I was using in my statement. There were so many synonyms listed there that it would take a while for me to type them all out. I found ‘idiot’, ‘ass’ (very insulting to donkeys, in my opinion), ‘halfwit’, ‘blockhead’, ‘dunce’, ‘dolt’, ‘dullard’, ‘simpleton’, ‘clod’, ‘dope’ etc. just to name a few. The most important observation was that there were a lot more synonyms for ‘fool’ than there were for ‘intellectual’.

So what does that tell us about society? It was just a curious thought. Why are there so many words for a stupid person? Do we live in a society of idiots, or are we just a defamatory society which delights in putting people down? Either way, it doesn’t look great.

 

Technology–the new conqueror

Yesterday morning, I discovered that my new mp3 player wasn’t working. It might not seem like a big deal, but to me, it was. See, I had been planning on taking it to university so I could work under the influence of music. The malfunctioning of that tiny machine stressed me out so much that instead of studying (which I should’ve done), I wrote a two thousand word chapter of fanfiction just to de-stress myself, and that only made me feel just a little better. All right, so I wasn’t thinking about the mp3 player while I was writing it, but I was so stressed out that it only took me an hour and a half to write it.

This little incident, even if it is in no way out of the ordinary, has made me reflect on our reliance on technology today. Without modern technology like computers and cellphones, many people, like myself, would not be able to communicate as well as we want. I’m quite reliant on the computer for many things, especially for socializing, since the real-life people I meet are hardly ever interested in the same things as I am. The internet is a lifeline for introverts like me because we can hide behind this artificial alter-ego. I love the internet, and when it stops working, my brain ceases to function properly until the problem is fixed. I wonder if I can even survive (sanely, that is) without the internet now. Three years ago, I would’ve said yes. Now, I am definitely going to say no.

 

Truths, Lies, and the Human Condition

It’s cold today. The sky is grey and dreary. I went to choir practise at church this morning, and then waited outside for my dad to pick me up. The icy wind was like the rush of an ethereal cavalry. It tore at my clothes. I stood still in the cold, wrapping my arms around myself. The sun was shining then, but it was a cold cheerless light, a lie, for there was no warmth, even though the sun’s rays were reflecting off the dark wet concrete. And the truth about this world is that it is full of lies. The media warps the truth so we can no longer believe anything that we read in the newspapers or hear on the news. I certainly don’t trust them anymore. According to them, my favourite actor would’ve had three marriages, all to the same person. He’s still a bachelor. According to them, a feudal system where the serfs were treated worse than slaves is better than a communist government that tries to bring the locals to modernity and expose them to the outside world.

The funny thing is, many people would rather hold onto those lies than face the truth, because they don’t want themselves to be shown in a bad light. We would rather die than admit that we were wrong. Is that not part of human nature? To humble oneself is such a difficult thing, but it is what we have been encouraged to do throughout the ages.

Speaking of this, the Church has always said that we must reconcile and forgive one another, and yet, so many people have committed atrocities in her name. The Crusades, for instance. No one has apologized for the massacres which occurred in that time. The hatred still lingers, causing a divide between the east and the west. The other day, I passed a billboard with an advertisement for an insurance company. It happily urged people to ‘join the crusade’. They seem to have forgotten that the crusades were not very noble at all. In fact, if I mention the word crusader to the average person in my city, they would most likely think of the local rugby team, the Crusaders. Why are the shameful parts of history so easily forgotten and covered up with lies or euphemisms?  True, some of the crusaders were honourable men, but we must remember that many of them were not. Those crusaders whom I admire were not honourable because they were crusaders. It was just part of their nature to be honourable.

***

I have not written anything today, except for a few reviews, review replies, and this blog entry. I know I ought to have gone through with my morning journaling session, but bed was very warm and good. It is the weekend after all, and I am allowed to go a bit slack on my routine. Anyway, there is a lot to study this weekend, because I have test on Monday.

The magpie hasn’t returned. I wonder what has happened to her. Yesterday I saw a pigeon. It was fluttering from window to window, as if it was trying to attract attention. It might be a very normal thing to see pigeons, but to be honest, I haven’t seen that many where I live. Albatrosses and seagulls are more common in the city square. It was special, and beautiful. I do like birds, and I would love to be able to fly. It seems so free. Then again, I am afraid of heights.