Oh… My… God… Just when you thought I was done (AKA I quit – LOL. I’mma lil quitter. My dad doesn’t find this amusing at all, btw) rambling on about my so-called ‘life’, here I am again.
The thing about being 19, is that I’m smart enough to study a sequence and prove… Eh… Some stuff? By mathematical induction… And, umm. That’s about it. (Actually, this statement is up for debate because my answers are wrong 9 out of 10 attempts.)
I don’t really know anything about life. But I don’t freak out because I read a quote on Tumblr about how nobody else actually does – not the corporate executive, not your pot dealer, not our president, not the cashier at 7-Eleven. The real problem is that I don’t really know anything about myself.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius tells his son, Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true”— and then, blah blah blah, a bunch of far less quotable stuff. Since then, this advice has been dispensed approximately 9,574,733,825 times. As a young and growing person, who is no doubt still young and very much growing, living in an era where self-centeredness is unfortunately on the rise across society, I hear it a lot. While I think it is a sage and catchy slogan, suggesting, as it does, purity, righteousness, and a consistent personality of some sort, in a world where everyone seems to be pulling each other this way and that, there’s one thing that kinda bugs me about this popular wisdom: I don’t get it.Is it as simple as Dwayne says it is, “You do what you love, and fuck the rest”? I know being myself is supposed to be a straightforward and uncomplicated task, but my ‘self’ doesn’t seem like a definite thing such as a bookshelf or pencil sharpener. As much as I hate to get all “philosophical” on you and come off sounding like an aloof liberal arts student, is it possible for us to really know who we are?I do know a few things about myself, of course. I know my allergies and shoe size. Though not set in stone, I know my beliefs and can predict most of my actions. My thoughts and feelings are, to a great extent my own, despite influence from various external factors. But my personality and habits have not been completely the same since birth. Between 10 and 12 years of age, I lived in nothing but a baggy Paddington Bear t-shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts. These days, sundresses and funky pants spill out from my wardrobe onto my desk and bedroom floor. In my first year at junior college, I refused to talk to a girl because she looked like a cat but by our graduation I had her back and knew she had mine. I discovered I had sort of a knack for writing and intended to study journalism at university and even put myself through a 3-month stint as an unpaid editorial intern, only to do a 180 and enroll into design school to pursue a course in fashion. My routine of stumbling home at 5am after a night of tequila induced dancing has been replaced by late nights hunched over a sewing machine. I hate sand, seawater, and the sun (not in a vampire way) but have been bugging my boyfriend to take me to the beach.Strip me of my clumpy mascara and worn out Chucks and I’m nothing more than a walking bag of contradictions and erratic behavior that I don’t understand and can’t explain. I feel foolish now for trying all this time to define myself (uh?) in order to know myself (huh??) in order to stay true to myself (shut up), after realizing how defining oneself seems limiting and my priorities shift from year to year and even hour to hour. To quote a certain Greek philosopher, “Change is the only constant”. Fun fact: People change. We should be free to recreate and redefine ourselves as and when we want to without being unjustly accused of being unsure of ourselves and/or selling out. It’s odd that change of any form and at any degree is often seen in a negative light and widely interpreted as not being true to oneself, when there can be so many real and valid reasons that prompt change in a person’s character. I may be listening to electronic salsa music at the moment, but I won’t be forever and it won’t be because someone told me to stop or because I’ve lost sight of who I am.Anyway, typing all of that made me more confused than before and I don’t know what my problem is/was anymore. I just feel like I’ve been too busy entertaining my childish hankering for a perfection that doesn’t exist and too preoccupied acquiring and internalizing values, desires and opinions from everyone else to the point where parts of my life and myself didn’t feel as authentic as I’d imagined them to be.
With school out of the picture for the time being, I channel my time and energy towards misadventures in ‘job promiscuity’ as Sophia Amoruso calls it. I work as a customer service officer at a call center for an Australian drug company. My shift starts at 6am, I follow a script, it pays pretty well, but the office pantry sucks. I work as a barista at a café. Mind you, this is BEFORE latte art is even A Thing. The most challenging part of my day is balancing three cups of cappuccinos on a tray. I work as a retail assistant at a concept store. I’m lucky it’s one of those ‘indie’ type of places, where I’m not required to do much talking or selling, both of which I am terrible at. “Hey, you! Have you seen our rabbit lamp? I think your life would be so much better if you had this rabbit lamp in your bedroom. Look, you can even turn it on. Ooh… And, off! Aah… Isn’t it just so cool? Only $390.” I volunteer at a fashion festival. It’s my first time attending a fashion show and rubbing shoulders with fashionable people. I don’t understand any of the hype, but pretend to get excited by lace dresses and mohair shawls. I act in a short film. I’m the protagonist and thankful it is a non-speaking part. I break into a Filipino accent whenever I concentrate on my voice too much – remember those vlogs I made? LOL. I intern with a lifestyle magazine and write reviews about hotels and beaches that I’ve never been to in my life. The aspiring journalist in me dies a little.
I cut my hair like a boy. I’ve long had a history of self-sabotaging behavior, but this is unprecedented. This is just outright self-hatred. Like cutting your wrist, but cutting your hair instead.
I take my first vacation without my family. I go to Bangkok with Rah and Char. I arrive six hours before they do, so I do some shopping on my own. I buy a wig. We leave Singapore with the impression that we will meet up with Nut at some point, because she is also there holidaying with her family. She never picks up our calls. It is a super fun holiday of foot massages, coconut ice cream, impulse buys, traumatizing ping pong show and dancing.
“OUR LAST DAY IN BANGKOK”FADE IN:EXT. DREAM WORLD – DAYSun is scotching. I already have a headache from the heat, mild dehydration, cab ride to Dream World, and my wig.RAH and CHAR are ecstatic to be at the theme park. I hate theme parks. I hate rollercoasters. I ride one rollercoaster and need to go back to the hotel because I feel sick.INT. CAB – DAYI get into a cab alone and fall asleep. When I open my eyes, we are moving sluggishly along the expressway because the engine is about to fail.The cabdriver turns off into a small street. I think I am being kidnapped, but not throwing up in the cab is my top priority for some odd reason. I close my eyes, cross my fingers, and try to keep my lunch down.The streets get quieter and narrower, until we reach some kind of workshop area and – praise the Lord – there are several other cabs. My cabdriver apologizes for the inconvenience in Thai. (I don’t understand Thai, but I understand body language very well.)INT. ANOTHER CAB – DAYI get into another cab and I’m back at our hotel within minutes.FADE OUT.THE END.
But, no. When God plays a practical joke on me, he usually likes to go for the kind with a double punchline.
I get into the elevator with three other people. We were upgraded to a nice suite, so we’re pretty high up. Somewhere between the eighth and ninth floor, I puke in my mouth. It’s another ten or so floors before I can get out, and there are three other people in the elevator with me, dammit. I struggle to keep my vomit in my mouth. (I can be really, really, really considerate when I want to be.) It’s the most intense elevator ride of my life.
I start dating someone nice. At first, I don’t even like him in the way you’re supposed to like somebody you’re dating. I guess I’m just so shocked that someone likes me. (OMG, me??! You like ME? Yay!) But I convince myself that I do. I don’t know if you see the pattern yet, but I can and will tell myself anything that I want to tell myself. My internal monologue is THAT powerful and persuasive (and delusional and neurotic and disturbed).
The local university isn’t particularly impressed with my mediocre grades of BBCB and rejects my application. That’s what studying three weeks before the A-level exams gets you, kids! I don’t despair, though. I only applied because all my peers were applying, and it seemed like ‘the right thing’ to be doing. I mean, what else can you do with your A-level score? Make alphabet soup? I muster some courage and enroll in the fashion design course I’d been pestering my parents about since I was 16.
