What's Next

The saying goes "I wish that they would have told me that when you reach the top of the mountain, there's nothing there." So here I am, at the end of 5 yrs of almost futile study, and my last paper stares me in the face in the morning. I wonder what's the point, and what the hell it could be that's keeping me awake at 2 plus in the morning. Maybe its cos even before the papers end, I'm anticipating the disappointing anti-climax that is bound to follow right on its heels.

What's next, Peng? A job?

Just yesterday when I was at the airport sending my sis and Joseph off, he asked me what was the most exciting thing I've ever done. Night cycling? Nopes. Wall climbing? Nopes. Bungee jumping? Nopes. In the end, its so sad to conclude that the most exciting thing I've ever done was go to NS. I wrote something abt living a life of perpetual inconsequence before, and now I find myself facing up to that reality once more.

Did something that at least brings a little peace back to the insanity of my life yesterday. I bought Grace a present for her birthday, and wrote her a card, apologizing for what I did wrong, from the time we were together till the time we broke up. I guess it was one of those things that God's been nagging me since forever to do already. And I guess with the easing of the tension between us, it makes it easier for me to start forgiving her. At least, today when I bumped into her at PS, I was able to look her in the eye and know that I'm trying to make things right. And so while I don't see how things could ever be the same again, esp as long as she remains so dependant and fixated with Andrew, at least I know I've tried.

I think life can be such a funny thing at times. Sometimes the harder you try, the harder something gets. Some of my happiest moments have caught me by surprise. That moment in time when you are suddenly caught unawares in a mood of happiness, where you feel that your soul is given that lift it badly needs, rather like a flat tyre that gets a badly needed pump, before it goes right back to the process of slowly letting air out again. These curious spells of reversals in one's outlook and perspective. And I guess the more desperate I get, the harder I try to generate these moments. And the harder I try, the more elusive it proves itself to be.

Maybe that's why God tells us not to worry, for tomorrow will have its own worries. To stop seeing the dark clouds looming in every horizon, but to learn to rest in His providence, and stop seeking.

Yet everytime I try to rest, these neuroses comes right back at me, seeking to drown me with their currents. And like Peter, I take a step of faith only to sink right after that. Or like the man who cries out to Jesus "I believe! Only help my unbelief!"

Sometiems I wonder if I'm really mildly schizophrenic. Given how I seem to be two totally different persons in my public persona versus my private. Sometimes its hard to tell which is real, since I either do a really good job of pretending to be happy when I'm with people that I start believing I'm happy - or else I do indulge in my apparent depression so much that I really convinced myself that I'm unhappy. And so as I swing between the two extremes constantly everyday, mebbe that accounts for why I always feel so tired emotionally.

God, I wish I were dead. All those tombstones that say Rest In Peace... I hope calling it the Long Sleep is just a form of euphemism, cos if the sleep is anything like mine, it sure ain't much of a rest, and it sure as hell ain't much of a peace either.

Nevertheless, that Long Sleep from which one never wakes, until judgement day comes... I never thought that I'd be 25 and desperately wishing for that rest. At 12, I was a bubbly young boy with an ego the size of China, so sure was I that I was a good guy who was gonna make something meaningful out of my life. Not even for a second did I imagine that I'd have become the person I am today within a mere ten score of years.

Shit.

Can't sleep.

Ugh!

One of those night again where I'm bound by a frustration that I can't pin down, except to recognize that its a gnawing sense of frustration, that keeps eating away at me, that I can't get out of me, since i can't even tell if its in my head or in my heart.

Taufik won Singapore Idol, by the way. He beat the Ah-Beng Sylvester, and boy did I heave a BIG sigh of relief. No way would I have been happy seeing a bloody Ah-Beng represent Singapore at World Idol. Talk abt negative projection.

It used to be that penning these thoughts down goes a long way to venting my emotions, allowing me the moments of respite where I can have a little more peace to rest. Yet perhaps like the drug that I've come to liken it to, I've become addicted, and it no longer is able to satisfy.

Maybe its time I embarked on a higher form of drugging myself and numbing my senses - time to do some of those stuff that I've never done.

Bah, who am I kidding? I won't last 3 steps out of the front door.

Shit, Im pathetic.