Jealousy

I think it's about time that I faced jealousy. Y'know, to finally delve into that topic which I dread so much.

When I was younger, I used to watch tons of drama series. And jealousy would radiate from every single movement made, every word spoken by certain characters. These were the characters whom I hated with a burning passion. Then I told myself, I will NEVER be jealous, okay. NEVER.

So when the situations I found myself in whereby I'd be jealous arrived, I'd stick my feet into the ground (and probably my heart too) and deny that I was jealous. I mean, I said I'd never be jealous, so I gotta stick by what I said. Right?

WRONG.

Me denying my apparent jealousy was done in the hopes of convincing myself that I'm different. That I don't feel jealousy. But I had felt that terrible feeling so many damn times. So damn sick of it.

Rewind a few years back and the 'envious' was added to my word bank.

Like what.

I can't even deal with 'jealousy' and now I have to deal with 'envy' too...?!?!?!!?!?! WHAT.

Basically, the difference lies in whether or not you possess that thing. Envy is when you want something that isn't yours. Jealousy is when you feel that icky feeling towards someone else over something that is yours.

Oh okay. So now. I realised that what I usually feel is envy. I mean that sucks because I realise that I don't have a lot of things. At least I can now differentiate the uneasy feelings in my life..?

Yay. Positivity.

With the distinctions in the clear. I may now say that I have to face my feelings of envy.

In light of the bad turn of events that have recently taken place in life, envy has been unavoidable. I now lack many things in my pretty pathetic life. Or rather, I'm more aware of the things I lack. And it's been absolutely heartbreaking.

I envy the grades that people have.

I envy the families that people have.

I envy the financial stability others have.

I envy the mental strength of others.

I envy the physical abilities of others.

I envy the love that couples share.

I envy the times my friends spend together without me.

And it never hit me until now that I need to begin my hunt for an answer to why I have been avoiding this topic. Now that I've answered that question in the 'preamble' up there, I need to shift my focus to how I can deal with my feelings of envy.

Honestly, it's going to be very hard and it'll involve a lot of self-healing. But I've kind of started my process of healing. After all, awareness is always the first step towards recovery.

It's gonna take a whole ton of hard work, understanding, resilience, focus, perseverance, courage and acceptance. Well, I guess it's really time to work on all that.

Regret

There are so many things I regret

Like the things I had chosen to do

The things I'd chosen to not

And the things I'd chosen to prove

Hence, adding on to this short list

would include all the pain I've been through

include all the madness I've got

and include all them I had made blue

Oh! Remember the people I've got?

The ones who latched on me like glue?

They're people I pushed away. Hard.

So now they are on my list too

Remember the ups and the downs?

The downs that I got so used to?

The ups that I do not have much

They so very make me brand new

Last but not least this small part

The one that I try not to do

This may not come as a surprise

Cause what I regret is to rue

Just Reflections Part 2

A few weeks ago, I had a parent-teacher meeting (ptm) that my sister attended as my guardian. And during ptm, I told my teachers that I would put in effort to study during the holidays.

BUT OOPS.

I didn't.

It's now the last week of holidays and that familiar feeling of regret has once again hit me straight in my face. I have so much work undone. And I keep telling myself that I can do this. The reason why I told myself I could do this was because I thought a had gained a back my ex-usual motivation of 'if you don't study, you gon' fail so bad'. My motivation has changed ever since sec 3. Failing A Math in the first semester kind got me accustomed to failing. It wasn't as bad as I thought.

Being comfortable with failure was what I wanted because I wanted an impact that goes like 'Failing is fine, it gives you perspective to help you do better, you will bounce back stronger than ever.' Instead, it had an impact of 'nah, I'm used to failing.'

Hopefully, I can bring back a slight fear of failure to propel my motivation and determination to do well.

It is too late for me to work hard and do well for Common Tests 2.

It's NOT TOO LATE for me to work hard and do better for Prelims and do well for A's.

This is the last shot I got at major major major examinations. And I'm not going to let it go down the drain without me trying to get it back.

The countdown begins NOW. Four Months and 1 week left.

Just Reflections

So lately I just finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie yet again.

I read it again because I had forgotten whether I had read it before and decided to simply read it.

I had found joy in reading when I was younger, but as I grew up, I was drawn away by other distractions. I had found reading to be "unpopular" /I can't find a better word to describe it/ and then stopped myself from reading in order to shed that 'nerdy' image of me. The worst part is that I even tried to stop my ex-classmate from reading.

Good thing is that she was unwavered by me and continued her reading. /Sorry Jacqueline :((((((((/

The way I thought and acted was really immature and undeniably inconsiderate. I was trying to change the actions of others that had no need to be changed. They have a choice to do what they want as long as what they do does not impact anyone or anything negatively.

-oops, sidetracked-

Okay, back to what the focus of this post is meant to be. The book I read is irrevocably enlightening and enriching. It's funny how many of us know what we know but we act as if we don't. We know we are dying, and it's expected that we do something, right? But, no. We continue to live in a bubble of ours. We don't indulge ourselves in the moment because we are too preoccupied with everything else. Sometimes I look back on my past and have that uncomfortable feeling called regret because I didn't live in that moment as much as I could. I didn't absorb all the nitty gritty details and store them in my memory. This is all because my mind was all over the place and it sucks.

Sure, we can't just simply let go of everything and end up being too narrow-minded. Therefore, we need to have a balance. And that is knowing when we should let go of certain things to bring more focus on the things that should be taking priority. Like maybe friends. I have many friends /or acquaintances. I call a lot of people friends because I love the idea of being friends. Friends friends friends./ But my time is limited, so is theirs. The fact that both sides have made an investment of their own precious time to hang out with each other shows that the interaction is valuable. And after this investment has been made, we should make conscious effort to sink ourselves into the moment. Y'know, maybe let loose of your little inhibitions and be more at ease. Ride whatever waves of emotions that comes at you, whether or not they are as little as ripples or as big as tsunami waves.

These are a small fraction of what I have interpreted and internalised from Tuesdays with Morrie. They might not be exactly what is meant to be taken away, but I am happy with what I have gained.

Many quotes and aphorisms have been constructed because of experiences as shown by the many aphorisms Morrie Schwartz had made. One aphorism from Morrie Schwartz would be "Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live." He spoke this from experience and something in me tells me that I should keep this in mind.

I have always been a fan of quotes. I love quotes so much that I know quite a lot of quotes that I end up forgetting them because there are too many that I love to read and ponder about. However, there are a few favourites of mine:

"You don't write your life with words, you write them with actions."

"Notes you spend are money, notes you keep are just pieces of paper" HAHA I like this one, but it's not good to follow this.

Okay, there are more, but I just can't recall them right now. I'll type more when I can.

Taking these baby steps to being a better human being. To be a better part of the community. And I hope starting with myself can show others that we should constantly attempt and eventually succeed to be better versions of ourselves.

U

I see U everywhere.

EVERYWHERE.

For real tho, cause I have straight Us for Common Test 1. Except for GP, I got an E for that.

I had to meet to P. THE BIG P. In her office. With my sis :)

This isn't something to be proud of. And it has really motivated to study harder. I only have 5 months left to A levels to learn everything from this year AND last year. I hope to raise my grades by at least 2 grades by Common Test 2. I hope I can.

But I'm not sure of it.

I feel like I've distanced myself from my friends to study harder. It kinda works, I don't know. I just know that I'm putting in more effort to do work. And I'm starting to put in the same amount of effort as before because I'm starting to understand schoolwork.

Previously, I was very discouraged to learn because the way I learn is kinda different from my friends. I really need to understand something before I can learn it. If I don't understand it, I can't learn. If I can't learn, I can't remember it. Only when I've truly understood can I learn.

So I always ask weird questions that people usually don't ask.

Most of the times, teachers would just go with the flow and teach me in the way that I understand.

My favourite kind of teachers are those who don't discourage me from finding out more in order to help myself understand. I really hate teachers who tell me to "just memorise". I'm not learning anything. And I reeeeeeeaaaaaally hate the teachers who tell me to "just memorise", and when I comply and just memorise, they scold me for simply memorising. Like, I did ask you how and why things work but you told me not to understand. UGH.

If you are able to teach me something, it's great. For you. Because it takes some skills to teach me how things work because I always see things another way. You would need to change my perspective.

I really thank the people /not only my teachers/ who have had the patience so far to slowly teach me even tho it's really frustrating to do so. It's some tough work. I think if I were you, I wouldn't be able to teach myself.

School of Thought

CAUTION:

 LONG-ASS POST AHEAD. DON'T JUST SIMPLY SKIM THROUGH IT. EITHER READ, OR DON'T.

I love my tuition.

Yas, I said it.

I LOVE MY TUITION.

Many people have tuition so as to bring up their grades. Okay, that is basically the main reason why students in Singapore have tuition in the first place.

But I have started to view tuition as enriching. Seriously. I have learnt so many things in my time at my GP  tuition. Not examination skills /heh, which I should have learnt simultaneously/, but thinking skills. I have been mind blown so many times at my current GP tuition. Things that I have thought about, but I have not given serious thought to, has been discussed so many times in SOT. 

Take for example, a GP question that we discussed today was "Discuss the importance of religion in today's society". Which was translated into "Is religion important in today's society?" And we talked about whether we can be religious, even when we do not have a religion. Are science & tech and religion really conflicting? I am not going into detail what I have learnt, I'm just going to put this out here for whoever may read this to ponder about.

So basically, it was mindfucking. Really. Mr Chng would always ask us some questions and we wouldn't know how to answer them. These questions, I'd say, are actually really important in shaping our views and opening our eyes to the things that we often overlook. These things have so much impact on our lives, but we just do not know it.

We need to start thinking. I know there are people out there, including me, still, who can't seem to stop ourselves from thinking so much once we have started to think. But don't let that stop you from thinking as it has stopped me.

I realised that I stopped thinking a few years ago. I started to avoid thinking. It probably stopped when I was in Sec 2. When I was trying to fit in with my friends because I was kind of ostracised in Sec 1 for being emo and hot-tempered and probably viewed as unreasonable. Overthinking, it had killed me. I hated how I was so stubborn and how I was unwavered by people's opinions. Now I actually miss those parts of me. It gave me character.

Now I'm actually literally afraid of people hating me. When I learn that someone dislikes me, I'd want to find out why and no matter what the reason that person has, I'd change that part of me that people do not like. I wouldn't think it through well enough to realise that I need to understand why that particular part of me is being disliked. And I realised this probably, last year? That's pretty late. Now I try to put serious thought to it to decide when and what I need to change.

And what frustrates me is that not everyone is as sensitive as me /though I can be really really insensitive at times/. Ever since I stopped thinking, I tried to be less sensitive. Because my sensitivity just amplified my character. The littlest of things affected me and I hated that. No one can understand why I feel a certain way and the worst part is that I do not know how to translate it into words, afraid that I would express myself wrongly and people would interpret my thoughts incorrectly.

This leads me to what happened today. So Ethel, Huimin, Halizah, Keith, Colin, and I are in this group named "Keith is the lousiest /insert poop emojis/". We had actually decided to watch a movie together. This movie is called Insurgent. I was so excited to watch it. Extremely excited. After tuition, I wrote in the group that I was hungry and asked whether they had eaten. What I did not expect was them saying that they had bought the movie tickets. For Fast and Furious 7.

That's right, I was fast to be furious in less than 7 seconds.

I was so fucking angry, and I still pretty am. Like all I wanted to say actually was, 'fuck,'what the fuck', 'the fuck?'. But I held myself back, and told myself that I needed to not lash out at them. So I spammed Pebbles. I sat in the toilet for maybe 5 to 10 minutes to text and rage. I just had to get it out of my system before I met them, so that I do not say things to them in a moment of heat.

Okay. I do not recall ever talking about watching that movie. Even if we did, I would have turned it down immediately because never have I ever had interest in watching any of the Fast and Furious movies. I interpreted this as being angry that I do not get to watch Insurgent because I had cancelled on my friends a week earlier so that I could watch it with them.

Then this anger coursed into the wtf, they changed the movie without saying anything...? Not getting my opinion and simply getting the tickets. For a movie I did not give a fuck about. Like my money and time was about to be wasted /in the end, the movie wasn't that bad/. The anger just heightened.

Afterwards, it was the "maybe I have no right to be angry in the first place!" phase. I thought through it and came to the conclusion that I do. This phase is the phase in which I often get stuck in. Because I don't want to show my anger and scare away my friends. Really. Like, legit. So I don't do anything and just remained angry and stay that way. I don't want to get stuck here because I feel like I need to really analyse just why I got angry.

So I analysed. I had plenty of time to think before reaching Jurong East. I realised the main reason why I got so upset and angry that I didn't get what I believe that I deserved was that I was disappointed.

I was disappointed in my friends for not taking me into consideration, for not being sensitive towards my feelings enough. I was disappointed that what I looked forward to was simply cancelled and changed. I was disappointed that the time and thing /in this case, watching Insurgent/ that I had set aside solely for them was just simply taken lightly. And disappointment to me is taboo. I hate it to the core. My anger is just amplified a thousand times.

But the thing is, what right do I have to be disappointed in them? They don't owe me anything at all. And neither do I.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. So I kind of showed my discontent. I didn't want to hide all of it.

I know that they felt bad. I kind of did too.

/I need more perspectives on this situation :(/

Putting so much thought into this has drained me out. I'm beginning to think again. And I will not be afraid to analyse things. I will not avoid things like this anymore cause all it does is just hold me back from growing. I'm extremely tired of being stuck and not moving forward. Everything is at a standstill and I'm ready to make changes and move forward.

CNY 2015 DAY1

Alllllll the fooooooooooood.

That's right.

My aunt was my saviour. I actually had no new clothes for cny and had pretty much planned to wear my usual clothes out. Luckily, Da Yi bought a skirt that I could wear and soooo I wore that with a spaghetti top. And I wore shoes that were bought last year but I had never worn them. Umm, so that is just for today & I'll reuse my previous cny clothes for the next few days.

The day started out good, then I kinda had a small quarrel with my mom. All was well afterwards tho. Yi Yi Pei Lee was supposed to come pick us up to go to my grandma's house, aaaaand she came an hour late. After reaching popo's house, we /Popo, Da Yi, Uncle Ambrose, Ade, Jie, Edward and I/ went to Adou's house.

It's tradition to visit the eldest in the family first. Hence, Adou.

We chilled there for roughly an hour or so...? I can't remember. I just remember hiding in the kitchen, eating bak kua and helping my grandma out with making the popiahhhhhs. I also remember feeling pretty sad about the fact that I can't communicate with Adou. She's about a hundred years old and she's pretty frail. All I said to her was "Gong yi wa sai" Which is Hainanese for gong xi fa cai. None of us will ever be able to understand what is going on inside of her head.

Then we went straight to second Ah bo po's house. Like, wow, the food is just hands down the best. My relatives on my mother's side are all good with food. Love love love eating there and chilling there. My uncles are all so friendly and funny, damn it feels good to be there. Buuuut, I'm still pretty reserved when I'm there. Tho I am starting to open up a little bit :)

Edward was cranky and kept expressing his discontent with him being outside, so after we left second Ah bo po's house, we sent Edward home and told him we'd pick him up later for dinner. Uncle Ambrose wanted to drink coffee, so we went to Dempsey Hill for tea at P.S. Cafe. Damn was the food great.

P.S. Cafe

We headed back to polo's 

-okay, so I stopped here, and I can't remember what I wanted to type.... SO THERE IT IS-