Life Of A Typical Malay - December 1999
Yeah, I'm still alive...
Sunday 19/12/1999
Oh,sorry folks, sorry for not updating this journal. I'll be back soon. More colorful, more vibrant, better than
ever...hope so...I hit "rock bottom" the last couple of weeks and
that was the main reason why I was not online.
There were a few other reasons too - bitten by that millenium bug was one of them...*lol*
Note:-
I'll be going to Saudi Arabia to perform my small hajj (Umrah) Dec 28th for 18 days and will InsyaAllah be back January 13th, 2000. I'll InsyaAllah make a complete journal (with lots and lots of photos)
of my journey. I really am looking forward to have my journal back online again.
In the meantime, here's some of my thoughts, my ramblings, my rantings, my words....just don't take it seriously. But most importantly, don't feel sorry for me. Cry if you want to but just don't feel sorry for me.
What's wrong with this guy anyway?...
Ok,let's get straight to the point. It has been quite a while since I last
updated this journal. I guess it was one of those those days when you just
don't feel like telling the whole world about what you have been doing. You just drop everything and go.
Poof...The same bloody thing happened to me, I was not that busy but part of me
refrained myself from continuing writing this diary, for a few weeks at least.
Just as you thought I was gone, here comes a bumper issue...*LOL*...
I'm back online now, back to journaling I guess. I consider journaling to be one of the best secrets of
success. I personally believe it brings better and deeper results
than any other growth tool. All I need is a little discipline, a little time
and some drive to experience a tool that can change my life.
Journaling is a key to knowing oneself. If you say, "I know who I
am," but you've never journaled, you have surprises in store. It
enables us to better understand who we are by studying our
thoughts when they are written down. Different journaling
exercises encourage us to think in different ways. In our records
of our thoughts, we can explore different sides of our nature. We
can see beliefs that hold us back. We can get a glimpse of our
potential and then see ourselves realize it. We can discover
insights, creativity and wisdom we didn't know we had.
Journaling enables us to work with the vast resources of our
subconscious minds. On the one hand, it causes information to be
anchored more deeply in the subconscious because we can see the
written word, some people sub-vocalize it and we become
kinesthetic as we write. On the other hand, it allows us to
retrieve information from our subconscious that is not normally
available to us.
By writing things down we capture our flighty thoughts.
(You
think about 60,000 thoughts per day. How many are you aware of?)
Our minds work at about 1000 words per minute, but when we write,
the mind slows down to about 100 words a minute, allowing
thoughts to be recorded more deeply and supporting a more
focused, creative thinking process.
So, ok...
Where do I begin? I don't know. I did this once before - at some ridiculous
hour of the night, when I was up only because I was too depressed or just
didn't care enough to go to sleep. I need to vent somewhere. If I don't I'll kill myself.
No. Just joking. I can't talk to my
family, I'm drifting from my friends and I'm sure they don't want to hear it
anyway, so I'm using
my journal just because I need to pour this
out. No, I'm not looking for sympathy. Far from it. I just need to type.
What am I doing?
I don't know what it is, but I'm beginning to feel like everything around
me is wrong.
Seeing new people annoys me. Seeing old people annoys me.
Writing messages to the same old people annoys me. Writing messages
to some new people annoys me.
I feel like every conversation I have,
I've already had before and everything I'm reading, I've already read
before.
Surfing the 'net annoys me because I feel like there's nothing
new and exciting anymore. Not surfing the 'net annoys me because
I think that I may miss something new and exciting.
I just can't get
rid of this vexing feeling of having done, seen and experienced everything.
And so no matter what comes my way, it seems stale and vapid and
boring. And then I'm tired of being me because I feel like I've already
discovered everything there is to know about me.
The most exciting
thing (..*LOL*..) about myself, I used to think, was the fact that there was always
something new that I would learn about myself, but I haven't discovered
anything new about myself in a long time and it's getting boring
already having the same thoughts (even if they have some variation),
the same predictable reactions, the same feelings to things.
Sometimes,
I want to skip certain parts of my day or of my life but I can't because
I'm always trapped in being me. And it's just so tiresome lately to
be so predictable. And that was the reason why I kind of
refrained myself from updating this journal. I hate to be predictable.
Or maybe I'm just grumbling because 1999 is almost over and I'm beginning to
feel reclusive now that I failed to fulfil my resolutions.
Shut all my windows, shut all
my doors, listen to Aztec Camera and not let anyone dare threaten
me with doing something fun. Blah.
* * * * * *
There is a different demon that I've been up against lately. It is not
angst, or terror, or fear. It is simply an intense, unmitigated boredom with
life and everything related to it. It is a dragged-out drear -- a fine mist
that permeates to the very core of my being, sapping my strength and blunting
my feelings. It muffles any sparks and dampens my soul until there is nothing
left worth whooping for.
It set in nearly a year ago, like a early morning sea-fog that slowly creeps over you
and you wake up in its midst and see nothing but gray. Even sounds don't echo
anymore. There is no end in sight, either. I keep telling myself that it will
lift -- that the sun will burn it off and I will hear birds and notice rainbows
again and life will move forward and I will feel ALIVE. But no. I fear it will
be like this day after day, week after week, year after year, until my body
withers, fades, and crumbles into dust.
I realized that everybody can do it. Most people better than me.
* * * * * *
Get back to the core, find out who I am, only it's falling endlessly
inward and all that's at the center is one of those green sprouts you
find in onions that've been on the shelf too long.
* * * * * *
Who *am* I? I know who I want to think I am, who I want you to think I
am, but those feel like thin paper stretched over hoops and after the
national anthem godonlyknows what's going to leap through. So let's
hope they never stop singing.
Fear. My life is a series of beads strung on a thread of fear. A
teacher once trained me to react to negative emotions with a search
for the fears underlying them, but today this feels like pawing
through a mass of cold spaghetti. Everything sticks to everything else
and no easily definable strands stand out. I am afraid of everything,
and nothing. I am afraid of being alive, but the void beyond terrifies
me.
* * * * * *
My world is simple now, self-contained. No one bothers me. I could
die tonight and it would be a few days before anyone knew. I feel
an urgent need to *do* something, make my presence known, scream to
the world that I'm real, I'm here, I'm alive. But it doesn't matter.
Like the world gives a ****. This apartment has five floors of
people, all of them just as intensely alive and all of them
noticing me about as much as I notice them.
Most people make it in some way or another. It's all about establishing links
and connections, isn't it ? I don't know for goodness sake, but somehow I never made it.
Somehow,
I was always outside. I never realized why. Were it always the fault of
"the others" ? That answer would be to simple to accept, especially since
I tried to start all over in different environments. It all come down
to the same end: I didn't make it. So it must be my fault. I really never
wanted much, I never longed for anything than being normal and being
treated as normal. I made an effort towards it, but people denied me this
acceptance.
Maybe I didn't try hard enough...
Last night, these thoughts came to my mind again. Maybe I'm just at a
momentary downpoint, although I doubt it. It's more of an expectation
of the future, what can I expect of myself ? Where is my life going ?
Where will i stand in ten or twenty years from now ? Maybe I should just
change now, if I wanna make it someday.
But I never had enough courage
or self-confidence for a change. And how can you change if people expect
another thing from you ? I never believed in the "just do it"-theory.
But what can I expect from myself ? I try to tell myself that it's not
me who wants that, but it's society. I found out that I was wrong. It is
something in me, and I don't know how to fight it anymore.
Maybe I should just put up with it. I was convinced that was the way to
go earlier on.
But things are changing, and I am not as convinced as I
was before. Sure -- I can tell people that I am happy like that, and
probably most of them would believe me. But those who got a clue wouldn't.
...and it wouldn't change a damn thing for me.
* * * * * *
Talking to people can help, but sometimes you realize there is nobody there to
talk to. And many people just don't understand. Maybe it's because they
don't want to, maybe it's because they have their own problems on their
mind.
Those establish walls in our society, keep us seperate, although
we might think we're together as a group. But once you look beyond this
thin shell on the outside, you realize that most of us are alone. I don't
believe I'm the only one with that feeling. It's just an unableness to
communicate.
Maybe we would all be happier if we would. But it's hard - so
hard. Most people always gave me a hard time about it, nobody ever
came up to me. Yeah, right, they always say "make the first step!", but
what if you slip out and fall before you go anywhere.
I can't tell anymore.
* * * * * *
A thickgray cloud looms over everything I do. My stomach is constantly
knotted; my mind ever preoccupied. Why did I do that? That's
so stupid. You should be doing this, not wasting time doing that.
Get a hold of yourself. Take charge. Take control. Do something!
Yet I'm afraid. Paralyzed from taking action lest it make things worse
off than they already are. Afraid to be hurt. Afraid to be ridiculed.
And just plain damned lazy.
Nothing makes me happy. Nothing makes me sad. I'm just here, day after
day, wondering if I'll ever regain control of my life; wondering if
I'll ever even want to try again. Things are simple; things are comfortable.
If I do try, I might upset them. I might end up worse than I am now.
But I can't go on like this. I'm so bored. I need to have some
fun! I need the feeling alive. What will it take to break free of this
intricate, impenatrable shell I've so carefully constructed over the
past years?
* * * * * *
I look around and see other people that seem to be content with their
lives and I *just don't get it*. Maybe I was born without that gene that allows
me to be happy. My happiness comes in unexpectedly. It sneaks in every now
and then, when I am not ex
pecting it, and takes me by surprise. And it tricks me. It tricks me into
thinking that yes, maybe there is a reason to live afterall. And then-boom-(or
whatever)- it's snatched away from me and I realize that no, I am not
like other people and I can't find happiness out of life. I realize that it is
just a trick of nature- to make us think that we can be happy - so we keep on
living in order to keep on searching for that happiness- and then nature is
satisfied 'cos it got us
to fufill its plan: reproduce our species.
But anyway, what led me to writing this craps again? I just got back from visiting some friends
this past weekend. And it was horrible. I thought seeing them
would take away my lonliness. But it didn't; it only made me miserable because
I realized that once again I had separated myself from my friends. Caused yet another set of
friends to fade away. I do that a lot. All of a sudden I feel distanced from my
friends, and then I purposely, while at the same time screaming at myself
inside my head to stop doing so, distance myself more. I can't maintain a
friendship. I do this to myself, but I can't stop myself.
What is wrong with a person that has a bunch of
people looking for him Saturday night 'cos they want to party with
him, but he hides behind a tree and doesn't let them find him, and he sits
there and TRIES to blame himself but can't, and just lets his friends go off
without him and keeps
on doing this until yes, he has completed a whole self-fulfilling prophecy:
so convinced that nobody understands him and that he must be alone in life,
that he causes himself to become that way. And he can't stop it.
He just can't.
Why do I do this? I'm making myself miserable.
And why do I stay up all night, knowing that I have to go to work the next day
and will not be able to function well if I don't go to sleep? Why have I
suddenly started taking up smoking, a habit that I find disgusting? Why do I
love to drown myself. Why am I so self-destructive?
I hope life just isn't a big joke, 'cause I don't get it.
End of Part 1. Click on "next" to go to Part 2.
[Home][ Main ]
[prev][next]
[cast][archives]