data transcribed from SMS logs

[REDACTED] [20:48:51]:

Go marry [REDACTED] then. Someone who doesnt understand you. As feasible as it sounds.

to [REDACTED] [20:52:05]:

Wow. I'm surprised that you still read my blog. Or did [REDACTED] tell you

[REDACTED] [20:56:16]:

I read it. But this bond we share is bittersweet at best, so we might as well forsake it

to [REDACTED] [21:04:19]:

Perhaps. But the bitter part doesn't come from me but from you. An ultimatum of change or distance is perhaps inevitable.

[REDACTED] [21:11:42]:

I am bitter? Lol why do you say so?

to [REDACTED] [21:23:21]:

It would seem that typically, you are the one who hurts me, rather than the other way around. Correct me if my impression is wrong. At any rate, it would seem apparent that what you require is transformative change, which, the past year has made apparent, does not seem to be something i can offer to you. Despite this, i nevertheless end up persistently being hurt. This being the case, withdrawal might seem the superior option. But it is up to you. Perhaps you have no choice in the matter but that is characteristic of life in any case...

[REDACTED] [21:30:34]:

Withdraw, then. Thanks

to [REDACTED] [21:33:15]:

Good luck.

[REDACTED] [21:32:54]:

With?

to [REDACTED] [21:34:15]:

Life.
________________________

So I just terminated one of the most important relationships in my almost-17-year-long life.

What now?
________________________

Summer, when the day is over,
there’s a heart a little colder;
someone said goodbye,
but you don’t know why.

Somewhere there is someone keeping
all the tears they have been weeping;
someone said goodbye,
but you don’t know why.

Is there a reason
why a broken heart begins to cry?
Is there a reason
you were lost although you don’t know why?
Give me a reason
why you never want to say goodbye.
If there’s a reason,
I don’t know why.

Always looking for a meaning,
all the time you keep believing,
but I don’t know why
you won’t say goodbye.

Even when the sun is shining,
you don’t see the silver lining.
But I don’t know why
you won’t say goodbye.

Is there a reason
why a broken dream can never fly?
Is there a reason
you believe and then you close your eyes?
Give me a reason
why you hide away so much inside
If there’s a reason,
I don’t know why.

Is there a reason
why a broken heart begins to cry?
Is there a reason
you were lost although you don’t know why?
Give me a reason
why you never want to say goodbye.
If there’s a reason,
I don’t know why.
I don’t know why.
I don’t know why.
I don’t know why.

This week has been a fun week. Or the past three days, anyway. Ignoring Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. Admittedly, three days does not a week make, but.

21 hours of practicals spread over 3 days. I thought I would hate it, actually, but it turns out that my appreciation of labwork is far greater than I'd thought it to be.

It perhaps bodes better for my desired career. When I grow up and become a researcher, perhaps I'll be able to immerse myself in my work way easier than I thought I would be able to. Hell, I could come to like hanging around in the lab.

And perhaps I won't have to worry so much about being in a lonely profession. You see, something I'm terribly worried about is that my line of work may not provide the social stimulation I require. I really need other people to be around, and I'll actually likely end up burning out if I don't have that. But hey, maybe if my research teammates are fun people...

I guess, over the past few days, I've enjoyed the environment as the work itself. I like being around people, even if it sometimes doesn't involve an overwhelming amount of chatter. It's good to see familiar faces, good to see people whom you can call unabashedly friends, without any of those trappings of darkness, pain, or mutual despair. Good to call people friends without the but.

It's good to see innocence.

Because I like these flippant conversations, filled with merely laughter and joy and mirth and nothing more. These conversations where everything can be shrugged off, everything is a joke, everything is either heartwarming Epic Win or heartwarming Epic Fail.

It's so wonderful to be in other people's company without having to fight to be heard or having to fight to speak, where silence and conversation are intermingled in equal measure. Beautiful to be able to socialize without worrying about your moves being perfect, beautiful to be able to screw up utterly and collectively laugh and shrug it off.

I suppose that this is what I really want. Let's face it, the sharing of darkness, even at its best, is a bittersweet liquor that burns your gullet as you drink deep. And that "best" isn't in sight, for I've come to realize that most people simply can't, or don't want to, deal with that darkness. For which I don't blame them.

And I've also realized the true meaning behind that line - "Hell is other people." Yes, it's come to embody magnificently my own life. Those who have had shadows fall over their lives can only darken the lives of others. Even in our mutual confidence, our cowardly huddling against the face of evil, we hurt each other - we probe deeply each other's wounds, and we hurt each other.

Do I want that?

...

...

When I grow up, I want to marry someone who can make me happy. Someone who can make me laugh. I want to marry someone with my sense of humour. I want to marry someone cheerful and buoyant and unassailably happy. I want someone who doesn't care about whether I mess up now and then, and cares enough to laugh hard when I don't, someone who's there with me always, alongside me always, even though there's a part of me always that's sighing alongside them, a part of me that's always grieving - a part of me that they never see, and never even realize they don't see.

When I grow up, I want to marry someone who doesn't understand me.

There is simply no recourse for me anymore. Hope, unlike its advocates would like you to believe, is unfortunately a finite resource, and I have run out of my supply.

There is simply nothing to fight for anymore.

Everybody I know has either betrayed or disappointed me. So terribly many ways to do so, yet it seems primarily that either people are overwhelmingly inclined to judge, or overwhelmingly incapable of doing so. Perceptivity and amicability, what uncomfortable companions on the scale. It is singularly appalling that nobody can muster the forces to attend both.

Too ready to condemn what they do not understand. Too open to rejecting what they snub as flippancy. Too easy for them to be cruel.

It's not the disappointment that makes me despair the most. It's the betrayal. The backstabbing, sabotage, condemnation, judgement, unqualified assessment, discarding, reprioritization, selfishness, arrogance, hubris.

It makes me sick.

The fact that I can sit unperturbed amidst all of it perhaps only makes this even more so.

Perhaps this would be better if I had someone whom I could entrust to watch my back. Someone else who understood as clearly the base cruelty of the world and who nevertheless was willing to guard against it with kindness.

Someone with MY MORAL SYSTEM.

But of course, there is no such person.

I wonder why I even persist in trying. There is no reward for my doing so, after all. This only drains my energy, sucking me dry from dawn until dusk when I crash onto my bed, fall asleep, and reawaken the next morning for the cycle to continue. There is no reward in helping people only to be disappointed or betrayed. There is none. None. None. None. None.

Social suicide has never looked appealing, and now that PW and the olympiads are soon to be over, never more possible. Uninstall MSN. Delete my Facebook account. Stop replying to SMSes. Bewilder people by suddenly skipping, en masse, all outings and gatherings, even those I have fought so hard to gain. Become cold. Aloof. Distant. A loner.

Humanity seems so profoundly worthless. Hope does, too.

I am out of reasons to try and love. Out quite completely.

PS: I got into SBO prac round, in case you're wondering.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any crazier. Seven hours of practicals today - three of chem and four of bio. 2 QAs, 12 titrations, 4 plant dissections, and 1 indirect food test. Gau.

Well as long as it all turns out okay in the end, I'll be happy. Of course, the natural corollary of that statement is simply unthinkable. But there are many things that we avoid thinking about in life.

SChO theory round yesterday. The questions were atrociously easy, and I'm not being elitist or whatever saying this. Case in point: 10 marks for a simple integration question. That's not even chemistry. It's barely even math. It's secondary school introduction to calculus. Which is appalling.

And unfortunately also very bad for people like me.

I know for a fact that I slipped up on question B3 (the equilibria question) because I got three point something and everybody else got 1.8. I'm not sure how many marks I'll get. If I lose all ten, that is seriously bad news. I don't have much left to buffer with - I'm losing probably around 3 marks for putting an E2 mechanism down for the dehydration of the pseudo-Robinson-annulation product. (It should be E1cb.) That, and the MCQs will cost me a couple more marks. It's all rather disconcerting.

Oh well, if I do indeed fail miserably, then that shall merely be another item in the Series of Unfortunate Events that constitutes my life. (Strictly speaking it's a series of extremely unfortunate and extremely serendipitous events, but well.)

I realize that this is the first post that approaches a recount post in the past month or so, but that's to be expected when you take on two olympiads at once. (That said, I am actually remarkably happy with the quality of this month's blogposts thus far. I suppose that arises at least partly from the recount blogposts all being gone, which serves to make the blog thematically much more coherent.)

It's simply exhausting, and I can't wait for it to be over. I have a lot of work to do. I really need to start writing The Saviours, for one. And there's a reasonably epic blogpost brewing back in my draft archives somewhere - topic will be innocence/darkness/recountfortheyear. (When I say "reasonably epic" I do tend to mean something on the scale of 5000 - 10000 words, so yes.) And of course I need to settle some stuff with friends of mine, both old and new. There are a number of Deep Dark Secrets that I feel it's time to tell various people.

All in all, December will most likely be a month for revelations. Heh.

PS: November and December rock because of the rain. I love monsoon season.

Such a terrible word. Such a wonderful word too.

It all boils down to this.

And now my heart is empty again. I'm not sure whether it ever was filled with anything to begin with. But it feels disconcerting to have nothing to occupy yourself with - to be, abruptly, cast adrift without anchor in a world that now seems profoundly absurd and meaningless. There is no pain in such a world, perhaps, but there isn't joy either.

Somewhere far up the road despair arches its back and gives a long indulgent yawn, somewhere far up the road anxiety is tensed in a careful waiting poise, filing its fingernails and warily glancing down the track. But I feel only their shadow at most, a quiet disease churning away under my skin, not enough to go beyond palpitations, muscle tension and the urge to go for a run, but not enough to go beneath them either.

I should be working now. I've been toiling away for so long after all, and it should be ironic if I should fail merely now, because of this, in these last days which are so important. But I can't. It's odd, but I can't really find that resolve I had in earlier terms - Term 3 particularly - when I could finish all the assignments weeks before they were due, and proceed to do chemistry during every lesson.

I simply don't have that focus anymore. Not enough to say "Okay, let's finish this before 11 pm and get 7 hours of sleep tonight", and proceed to do so; I dally until the wee hours of the morning, moving at a leisurely pace. Yes, I know I've been through the other extreme before too - crazy fluctuations between oversleeping and sleep deprivation that have made other people ask how I survive doing it. That's tiring. But regulation too is tiring in its own way - constraining one's own freedom, limiting oneself to achieve a goal that seems barely even a mirage.

I'm just very tired and I want a break.

It would be easier if I had something to hold onto, but I don't really have that anymore. Yes, I know it's strange how somebody else's realization can lead to you letting go in turn. But it happens. Things are back at the equilibrium position now, and unlike they say I guess it's not better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.

An element of independence in this perhaps. No longer do I feel as if bound and fettered to a hope without a dream. But then no longer do I feel as if I'm in company either. I just feel alone. Not that piercing, agonizing loneliness that arises from being too close and not close enough. Just a numb loneliness, born of being far away, a numb loneliness that feels as if you're wrapped in a shroud of cotton.

It's not as if I'm grieving...but it's not as if I'm happy either.

I'm just tired.

Sigh.

Things change in my life with novelistic pace it seems. Hard to get used to anything; tragedies and comedies collide at breakneck speed, like protons in a particle accelerator. Hard to reconcile yourself to reality.

But I've been surprised, again. More than I've been surprised by anything in months, I believe. It is...stunning, how such potential for change can exist right under your nose, and yet not be recognized up until the point where it blows up in your face, landmine-esque. It is quite amusing how far things can be stretched before they finally break.

Oh well, this is one of those times. Breaking point, and a good thing. Revelation, epiphany, anagnorisis, call it what you will, it's here and it's here to stay. I don't forget things, and though it might seem that what I purport to be epiphanic in nature has little impact upon the status quo, the reality is rather to the contrary. If anything, it's the weight of past experience that provides the inertia against innovation, the weight of past experience that leads to a seeming dearth of movement.

And it's the weight of past experience that blinds.

I would say that there comes along, every now and then, an instant where I discover how horribly blind I've been, how utterly and appallingly unperceptive, insensitive, and thoroughly unamicable. But this isn't an "again". This hasn't happened before. This is wholly surprising, because what I've done has had no parallel in my past experience.

...Surprising, then, to recognize that I could have been so cruel, so foolish. Surprising to recognize how hypocritical I could have been. Surprising to recognize my own betrayal. Surprising to recognize, most of all, that I could have hurt someone so terribly, inflicted wounds that have never been inflicted by another upon me.

True, perhaps that's because I am more confrontational, more easily ticked off; anybody who's annoyed me sufficiently will quite understand that I am not nice when you frustrate me. Most people aren't. But that is neither excuse nor mitigating factor.

Sometimes you have blind spots. I guess that's inherent to human experience. Sometimes you witness, subconsciously, an awkward problem, and shy away from it, because confrontation is simply uncomfortable. Sometimes you completely internalize all the cognitive dissonance you experience, procrastinate attacking it, and the days and the weeks and the months fly past and suddenly, you're left standing right in the middle of the problem you've created, the wet embarrassing puddle with no defense. And the damage is done.

I am amazed at how anyone could have so much faith in me. Can I really do that? Inspire to that extent? How is it possible that I could ever come to be so important in anybody's life?

And how, how could I have abused that power so terribly?

I asked myself many times in that period What have I done? Then I went onward to How could I have been so blind? Dread and despair stole over me in the face of an interminable abyss and I asked When will this end?

But there are few questions which can serve as answers. There is one question at the end of that period, which does perhaps serve as an answer in some form.

How many times will I say sorry?

Yes, novelistic indeed. Too many times it seems that coincidences of tragedy and comedy arise; too many unions of chance. Higher plans? No, not ones that I believe in, though in my writing I seek their evocation.

Understanding then, that this is another lesson to my self, another year upon upon the chronology of my mind. Telomeres sustain as they are, but I know that even though my body ages normally, my mind does not. One day after I've grown old enough - in spirit, not in flesh - then this, my spirit, must necessarily end, and with it my flesh.

And I still do not know how anybody could buy into what I offer so easily. Why can I dare to offer it? Simply because I know that it will not be valued enormously. Simply because I know that it cannot possibly be bought into in full, simply because I know that it cannot hurt in reciprocity. But when it is offered must I not offer disclaimer and warranty?

A 1 in 10 chance of schizophrenia. Perhaps a 9 in 10 chance of depression. A 1 in 1 chance of suicide. Ask me about it if you want; I can tell you everything that your security clearances will allow, which, no matter how distant you are, will still likely be more than you already know.

But how to ask this of someone else? How to force this down someone else's throat, how to make someone else understand? And this is what I don't understand. How anybody could have that faith in me. How anybody else could give, so unconditionally, knowing that I can't give in return.

And this is what makes me wonder. Not wonder, as in ask why, but wonder, as to marvel, as to shake your head in awestruck bewilderment, as to gasp breathtaken at the dazzling beauty of the world.

...because I knew then that this will be someone who will change the world - if I can just keep him alive...

Novelistic, yes, novelistic. Hard sometimes to remember that I'm not the only writer out there, but that each of us write ourselves into our own stories; hard sometimes to remember that I'm not the only one with magnificent throw-away lines.

And easy, sometimes else, when you're reminded.

Novelistic, yes, novelistic.

Two things, then, that I suppose I have to say, because no story is complete without them.

I'm sorry. And yes; thank you.