Posted at 3:48 AM 0 comments (+)
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I sit alone in my room, not yet changed out of my going-out clothes, reading the final few chapters of The Fault in Our Stars with some K-Indie playing on my laptop until the sun goes out outside and it gets too dark to read without turning on some lights.

I vaguely remember a point in my younger teenage years when I did something similar. Sit alone in my room, not yet changed out of my school uniform, listening to some Chinese ballads until the sun goes out outside and I sit in the darkness thinking about whatever was bothering me. Problems that seemed so big at that point in time that I can't even recall now.

This is how the opening sentence of The Fault in Our Stars goes:

"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death." 

I remember I decided that I wanted to buy this book based on that sentence alone. At that point I had zero idea about the entire hype over this book and its author, John Green. I was merely interested about the protagonist's seeming obsession with death, I wanted to see if she said that because she felt the way I feel about life. Of course, as I would later on read and discover, said protagonist is a cancer patient and had spent a majority of her life sitting near the edge of death. And suddenly that reduces the significance of whatever I feel about life to the size of microscopic particles.

It wasn't a good time, then. It almost never is, but lately I've been better, I guess.

...

I just came back from a short getaway trip to Bintan with Kexin and Shixian, which I suppose I'll write about soon (no promises). I'm aware that half of the things I said I'd write about never actually gets written. Just know that there are currently no pending posts in my drafts right now, which means I'm probably not going to write about my birthday which was 3 months ago and various other things....yup.

While we were there, I talked to them briefly over dinner about whatever I've been feeling about life and... the things in it. And that was when I realised that I don't feel better at all telling others how I feel. I don't feel the cliched 'lifting of a burden off my chest' just because I've shared with someone about things that bother me. To me, that's just me explaining (informing?) them about how I feel about these things, and nothing they say to me can make me feel better because I already think certain things that they can't change.

Sometimes I just sit and think about what is the point of everything. All the struggles in life. To get through uni and get a good job, keep up with your friends. What is the point of it all? Sometimes it all feels really ridiculous to me because I feel like I don't even care about all these. I just want to be happy doing what I want and chasing after all these things I don't care for are not going to make me happy. People tell you you don't have to be certain things to be successful, they tell you your results are not the only things in life that defines you. But everybody just runs on ahead anyway, they judge you when they know you're no good at studying anyway. It's confusing.

It's true that I'm not alone in this, but so what? The fact that everybody feels the same at some point in life doesn't take me out of it. It doesn't make it hurt less when people don't give a shit, it doesn't make my life any less meaningless. This is one instance where I can't take comfort in numbers simply because there is no comfort that can be taken.

But at the same time, this was also when I realised that I refuse to lose at life. That even if I really don't feel like prolonging this meaningless struggle, there is really no way else to go but forwards because I don't want to lose. People always tell me to find something that really makes me want to work for, think about the future and the things I can do for myself. But there is no such thing as 'thinking about the future' and 'doing what I want to do for myself' to me because I don't think about such things. You can say I'm kind of just blindly running forward, through life. I am. I feel like I really just don't care about anything anymore.

I wonder if I'm at the age where I get confused a lot about life and the future, or is it just me? There's nothing clear ahead of me as of now, and uni is partly just here to distract my attention from whatever is going to happen in the future, partly just because I'm not ready to go out to work. I'm an adult now but I've never felt more lost and unsure about life, because there's nobody around to guide me through anymore.

I feel that, sometimes, when you talk about the things you feel too openly, people don't take you seriously. They only believe you when it is something have to bother you for. That's why people don't take what I say about death seriously, right. They can't see the thoughts in my head.

For now, I'm actually kind of looking forward to school starting again. It's just...this weird thing I tend to feel whenever I've failed pretty badly at something. To get in the game and try again. But...it never actually ends where I want to because I'm a punk student. Ha.

My head's pretty messed up. I'm missing a lot of things I really want to say but it's nearly 4am so I'll stop now.