because I don't know, really. I just don't.

as I ate my lackluster porridge it used to be better in humdrum under an even more lackluster weather of heavy rain but thankfully under a sturdy zinc roof that is a roadside stall in Ayer Panas, I sat with my good friend, C, who feebishly ate his chicken rice. I've been spending quite a lot of time with C, mainly because the both of us have coincidentally graduated around the same time (yes, I am done with my tertiary education people!) and are altogether in that weird, don't-know-what-i'm-supposed-to-do-with-my-life stage.


what was supposed to be a Major in Psychology with a Minor in Mass Communications has been reverted back to just a Major in Psychology due to time and money constraints. I am not one to have regrets, in fact, it is quite unlikely that I have regrets because I believe everything that we choose or naturally happens in our lives has a lesson to be learnt, propelling us to be better for whatever comes next. but every now and  then, especially after spending hours on JobStreet, I wonder just what it would be like, had I pursued a degree in something else.


if I had stuck to my original plan of taking up a Degree in Journalism at IACT.
or better yet, if I just went to La Salle to study performing arts.
or come out and work three jobs and be a struggling actress.
i kid at the last one. well not really.


I wonder to myself; how different would my life be? would studying Journalism have equipped me better for available writing positions? would I have higher opportunities at scoring a place at publishing companies? but I was not ultimately sure either that I wanted to write. then again, I'm not ultimately sure either if I want to write. heck, I'm not sure what I can do. one job interview at a highly corporate, money-and-sales-based company and I'm already terrified of the idea of a 9-6 job making desperate calls to clients, pitching sales ideas and getting them to sign this deal and that deal.


this could be just me over-worrying because I had only sent out my resume to twenty companies two days ago i kid, it's just ten companies and only two have responded to me. I know that it is a much longer waiting period but damn, did they think I was not qualified? did they not want a Psychology graduate? why would they want someone with a Psychology background for? was it because I lacked credentials?


one thing I do regret slightly or maybe a lot is not having any samples of my writing. I remember doing well in my journalism class I was one of the very few who got a flat 4.0 but I never kept the writings. I contributed to HELP's monthly magazine but I didn't keep those either. I suppose I was quite foolish in not seeing the importance of these things once I graduated. the same way I never saw the importance of all the random part time gigs I did for my resume. I just did it because I needed the money.

'I don't know. I just.. I just want to be extraordinary.'

the weight of those uttered words ineffably sunk into my bones. if not extraordinary, I just want to do something where I feel... fulfilled. something in which I feel like my skills and talents can be fully utilized and I can wholly believe in the work I am producing. at the same time, this wait for companies to respond to me is making me feel almost Sylvia Plath-ish. the whole, I-am-not-really-good-at-anything shindig. which is both silly and true, for I am and always have been a jack of trades and a master of none. 

seriously God; what am I gonna do? 

putting Tom Odell's face here because he's cute and he looks just as lost as I am

at the same time,
I don't want to be an adult. not  yet.


Yamaha- Delta Spirit

because being alone is a universal feeling.

31st August; 2:30 a.m.

I am sitting closely by my window sill, accompanied by a barely visible pot of chamomile tea because the lights are out. i am comforted by all the little bright orange lights that light up the wavy streets of Melawati and the distant sounds of cars driving by on the highway. i am reminded of several years back when i was also in this same position; blogging, cup of hot tea somewhere within reach; i was sitting by the balcony of my previous home in Cheras and i was starring away into the lights that lit up the highway, the winds gushing into my living room softly. 

something about being alone at night that i really enjoy. the fact that I am the only one awake behind these comfortable walls that is my beautiful house, i feel like my mind can be on its own. selfishly free from having to harmonize into the thoughts and wellbeing of others around me. fortunately free from having my mind infiltrated by the opinions of others that i do not want to listen to. it's like my brain can finally breathe at its own rate and increase/decrease at its own expenditure. 

it's so contradictory how we tend to feel alone. but if we think about it, like really think about it, there are people everywhere all around the world who feel just as we do. don't even talk world, just look at the city you live in. i can see people sitting at the mamak downstairs. i can see motorists driving in and out of Taman Melawati. right now, there are people unst unst-ing away to some presumably good trance or rnb music at Zouk. there are people mindlessly wasting away on their computers, immersed halfheartedly in their work, and thinking endlessly as they roll around in their empty beds. 

and out of all these people,

the countless many who are having lonely hearts.

how often we wish for someone to talk to, someone who would listen to our random rants about what happened to our favourite tv show character, someone to have lunches and dinners with, someone we could spill out our most deep and darkest secrets to, someone who doesn't judge us on hormonal days, someone who doesn't mind eating ice-cream at 1a.m with us whilst we bitch about that one asshole that screwed things up, someone who would let us wet their shirts with our snots as we cry on their shoulders, someone who empathizes on behalf of our first world problems, someone to care for us.

so many of us,

a great lot of us,

are just about the same.

of late night coney hotdogs and conversations about friendship,

i am reminded of how even the simplest things in life can be rather, complicated. that things can be both easy and difficult at the same time and that's okay. that expectations are hard to set aside, but having expectations puts any sort of relationship on a whole new level. that what we hear is not necessarily the truth but we choose the truths we want to believe in anyway. that we let the opinions of common outsiders pollute and reinforce our thinking, without realizing that the opinions of others are biased to their own thinking as well. we assume the worst of the other person without realizing how baseless assumptions can be. and how easily we let assumptions become our truths. 

then it becomes a game of whose ego is bigger.

nobody wants to back down.

nobody wants to apologize.

nobody wants to save what is left. 

see, that's one thing that coney hotdogs and friendships have in common;

good to have, but boy can they get messy.

"she was my person; she's the only one who knew me best."

because most of us are alone when we don't have someone who understands us. 

while mindlessly rolling around in my bed last night, mindfully thinking about recent events in my life, i am reminded again of why i don't and try not to expect anything out of anyone else but myself. because people don't owe me anything; not an apology, not an explanation, nothing. who am i to subject some sort of expectation out of the people around me? it sounds and comes across as sounding spiteful and/or bitter but truly, it is not! in fact, life is immediately much easier and lighter when you don't take everything to heart and just appreciate the fact that there are people surrounding you, loving you in only the human ways that they can.


then again, I play a good game at keeping my true identity hidden beneath the selection of masks that I polish and clean every now and then. for I am a plethora of personas within a body, and I have learnt that there are those who see one persona, those who see more than one, those who have seen enough to realize it is too much, and those who have seen a lot and choose to love me anyway.

and perhaps that is why I can be both easy to understand,

and equivalently difficult to understand.

because I keep myself hidden. I swim in this solitude of knowing that I am the only person who knows just how many masks I have. and despite the term 'mask' coming of as negative, I see it more as me adjusting to my surroundings at all times, adapting as I go. and with that, my true self is alone. and so I wonder just how many of those like me are out there; alone in our many amplitudinal states of being alive.


Possibility- Lykke Li