Flustered Axons

I’m irritated. My notebook got scratched badly. The top case looks like the body of a Subaru after a rally race at a track with the tightest of corners. And how I allow myself to be disturbed by material things is beyond my understanding. I’m guessing I’m not in the right state of mind to understand myself right now?

Let’s digress on to more interesting things. Inspiration! It comes with coffee… Needless to say, I feel energized. I feel under-worked and I feel like I can rule the world. Heck I swear I used to rule the world in my past life (at least I feel so, until the caffeine is metabolized entirely). Thoughts run through my mind about solar power to electrify the world FOREVER and genetically modifying fishes to glow in the dark on purpose just so the ocean looks more beautiful at night.

So if inspiration comes with the fact that I really cannot even force my eyes shut for more than 3.4537 seconds, what happens when the caffeine running my tubes depletes? Do I shut down entirely, or do I walk around like the haggard I dreamt about last night or do I drink another cup of full-fledged, drama-inducing, inspiration-inspiring, thick, strong coffee?

If I choose not to drink coffee, I’m going to milk all the attention I can get later in class by sleeping and pretending to snore out loud during Ms. Jega’s biochemistry lecture. I hope I don’t piss her off though. I’m guessing she’s going to have a laugh together with the rest of the highly caffeinated batch-mates of mine.

I can’t type anymore, because my fingers are going into this constant shake… A constant agitated spasmodic quivering shiver that feels like it would never abate. Shall I throw in a bet that I might faint tomorrow from hypoglycemia?

<Pauses to express to release energy>

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<Deep breaths to recover>

I STILL FEEL LIKE JUMPING OUT THE FIFTH FLOOR WINDOW, landing on my two feet (like in those really cool action movies), running myself to the track to do 25 laps (thats like… 10 kilometres!), and jumping in the pool and drowning myself!

AAAARRRRRRRGGGHHH!!! PFFFTTTT (*drools everywhere)…. I want to fly!!

Living on the high points of life,
S.O.

So here’s to so much I have; from controlling emotions as easily as picking up a glass of water through separating my emotions from each other entirely. I’ve been so good at it that I’ve learned that it’s not always necessary to show a person, I can’t stand being around, how much I hate them with expressions and actions. I’ve learned also that sometimes, putting on a fake smile keeps everyone around me happy and also not too inquisitive about the little details in my life that keeps me sad and always near tears every single day.

See, the fake smile… It’s just there to keep people away from my soul. I won’t say heart because I feel it doesn’t coincide with the literal directive understanding of an anatomical part of the body. In medicine, do we learn “The heart beats in unison with happiness and it’s beat rate is directly proportional to the euphoria a person feels” or do we learn that the heart is just another organ, it’s survival not having anything to do with emotion. So I say ’soul’. ‘Psyche’ would be fetching it way too far beyond the borders of self-esteem securing.

Digression aside, the fake smile keeps people from caring too much about me. If I’m happy, they think everything is okay. But that’s what life is supposed to be all about right? Being happy? Because happy people aren’t questioned all the time. Happy people don’t have to worry about telling people their life’s story in vivid detail just to be judged and scrutinized from every angle and perspective like some anatomical dissection.

But I’ve given up putting on a fake smile. Fake smiles are for people who just can’t admit to themselves that life, well, sucks. I’m ready to admit it. I’m in no mood to get pissed with anyone anymore or fight pointless wars waged only to suppress the rest of what I’m really feeling.

And about my personality switching, I’m admitting that I have a problem. I seem to have good control over a few rather disturbing personalities that I tend to come up with. I hold the leading roles in some weird play that I seem to write spontaneously in my head. Being my own set of different marionettes is hard to handle but it makes it easier to be around people. Oh, but don’t really think I’m fake in my personality. The only differences is the way I carry out my life, emotionally and characteristically.

But as if I’m making any sense anymore, I’m going to feel so much more better letting myself go rather than suppressing all the problems I have. There’s someone out there doing the same thing I was doing – suppressing. I hope you take a leaf out of my stack here and start letting go before your life becomes as messy as mine. You’re probably never even going to read this post, but I thought I’d shoot this a try anyway.

Quoting something Ravi said, “Loneliness is a plague whose medicine is within yourself”.

Signing off with a heavy heart,
S.O.

When opportunity crossed my path so fast, almost missing me by a fraction of a femtometer  at 3.00 a.m. on the 11th of January, 2010, I grabbed it by the collar and squeezed the inspirational lemons it had carried with it for a lemon quishe it was planning to make… And the lemonade I made with it:

It’s time…

It’s finally time that I must actually say something. I’m done hiding under the moss tainted, musk smelling rock I call my salvation, feeling the earth rub between my fingers and my palms and my hands, leaving the calluses, blisters and wounds of regret for every shitty, pathetic move I make in my life to hide myself from the truth; from happiness; from very life its self.

You helped me. You came and you stretched out your callused, blistered and bleeding hand and you beckoned me to try, with every last reason I had for life to allow me joy, to reach for it… And you helped me realise the reality. I no longer feel the need to guard the gates of the fortress housing what remains of my decrepit soul. I’m done staying that safe distance of, erm, 275853242 trust meters away from everyone else’s life. But you’ll never know how much that is… Because it was mine to make up. It was mine to make up, so that I could tell myself that if I stayed at that very distance from people, I WOULD NOT get hurt. Funny how it still happens. But who am I kidding if I said you didn’t already know what it felt like…

You’re too much like me to not really know what the measure already means. Wouldn’t that also mean you’d want to stay that far away from me. Somehow, you’re still learning a thing or two about what I am and what I’m not. But because we play out to be soul-graspingly alike, you and me still don’t get each other, but we’ll twist every thought of not being sure about each other into a pretense and lie to each other with the look of admirable confidence, tied at the edges of expression on our faces, that we can read each other like open books.

But you’re within the boundaries of my life as it already is, so it’s time that I attempt to pronounce mere words no where near enough to define the thoughts in my head and the feelings in my heart… Strangely enough, I know I’m never going to comprehend what I’m saying, but you’ll understand this in your own way. Here goes near to as everything;

When you say that you need me, there was only a thought in my mind : That you want me because it was necessary for the joy you had to feel to stay on living. That would mean I had to set apart my life from myself, so I could share it with you, to walk with you, for joy was so important when it was at most, needed by you… And not wanted.

When you tried with all you had to sing a song of comfort, your voice wrapped itself around my being, my psyche, my universe, my essence, drawing ever single note of worth from the lengthy rivers of arbitrary thought streaming endlessly in my mind, only to drain them into the widest of waters of understanding of you and why you needed to share a bit of your life with me. And that was enough to keep me wanting more of your intellectual presence in my life.

And when you were joyfully smiling from cheek to cheek with enough nerve to mess with the possibility of togetherness for life, you made me think about what would have been precarious, and what can be a settled certainity; almost as certain as the tickling of a perfectly tuned piano would produce the notes it had to with the tone and crux of immaculate music, to allow itself a lifetime of expectation and requirement.

And it’s time I allowed you to finally learn to learn me. I’m already done keeping the annoyingly hidden paths to the centres of my heart, heavily warded to everyone. My heart, I now open to you and I know you’ll understand me when I cry out with as much as I have left, on knees wounded by the coarse, graveled silt my life was built on, for you to make enough of an effort, to fight for what you know would be something forever would love to hold on to.

But maybe there would be a time for precariousness to whether out and settle as certainties so fortified and maybe then, hiding under stones would have been a good thing.

Because if it wasn’t, then when could it possibly have been time for me to say what’s really deep in my heart, enveloping the core of my soul? When would it have been time for me to say…

It’s been a whole long year. A lot has happened and a lot has changed. It think I’ve changed. Even more than anything else that has happened.

This year was the first time I actually did a solo performance on stage on the 14th of February.
This year was the year I actually did well at something in my life.
This year was when I got into medicine at the university I’m learning to love.
This year was when I learnt that love does hit you hard.
This year, I started to keep my heart locked away from others.
This year, I never wanted to let people too close to me.
This year, I told myself that people can only hurt me more than everything else.
Then, this year, I met an amazingly unexpecting person that all the above was just images in my mind.
Again, then, this year, I figured out that this person was the person in my life that I would want to have as a best friend.
This year, I learnt to slowly trust people again.
This year, I let something that meant so much to me go because it was too painful to hold on too.
This year, I learnt that lies can be masked in so many ways that when you finally find out the truth, you wish you were dead.
And this year, I found out that your life only really matters to someone else, only if they truly love you from the bottom of their hearts.

The last of those, my friends taught me the gentle way and a special someone taught me the hard way. But the lessons and things that happened were only the beginning of things.

My life as a medical student has only just started. I had no time to study for my 2nd Continuous Assessment, so I’m probably going to do rather badly at it. But life starts at 12.00 AM today. Today, everything changes. I’m not the kind of guy who makes new year’s resolutions, because I think only insecure people, who know they aren’t getting enough from life, make them so that they can say to themselves, that “Tomorrow’s going to be a better way”. Me? I screw the resolutions and just start everything from scratch and work harder for the things I want. The difference is, I know I enjoy my life and that I know I can be better at a lot of things. So here starts my new year. Tomorrow is definitely going to be something new for me to look at.

P.S.- Blogging on my PC with a really stupid keyboard that’s killing my inspiration to write, so sorry for the lack of enthusiasm.

Keeping away the old and opening a new book,
S.O.

As opposed to not wanting to update this blog, I’ve been busy. So much has happened over the past month. And I do mean so much.

A few students (by few I mean a whole hoard of really nice people) from Andalas University joined mine and my senior batches. So it was realised by our beloved Dr. Kay that something should be done to help the people of Padang, Indonesia. It was a relief charity effort that she had in mind and a rather quiet one at that. But the moment Prof. Harcharan heard about it, he told us to go all out! So being a Medicine Batch 15 organized event (*proud smile plastered on face), I was surprisingly and very much rediculously picked to be chairman for the event. I sort of stepped down to let Naavin handle this. He’s more efficient than I am when it comes to huge events. So I stayed on as co-chairperson together with Betty and Rahman. It went well. Everything was perfect and we hardly had any glitches or complaining committee members. The Batch 15 Charity Committee was the most enthusiastic group of people I’ve worked with.

Anyway, there were other side charity events that I took part in. Lost a friend in the process as well. I’ll get to that later. I performed in First Beat 6! Did back-up vocals for Michelle and David on guitar for a cover of Secondhand Serenade’s Your Call. Then I performed a randomly unpracticed version of Stand By Me with Vikram. This was so much more different from what I usually do. Vikram was beatboxing to the bass-line of Stand by Me. The night was really awesome with the whole underground thing going on.

The AIMST Catholic Society also organised another Charity for an orphanage near campus (sincerely cannot remember the name). I performed O Holy Night, Hallelujah and did a duet of When You Believe with Syazana. Faris played the piano for both When You Believe and O Holy Night. Again a really good night. Anyway, the gossip starts here. David was supposed to perform Hallelujah with me on his guitar but I kind of decided to go a cappella with the song at the last minute. Apparently, it was better that way. But he’s gone and got it into his head that I’m scrapped his part because I thought he was a bad guitarist. He’s good. He actually practiced hard and all. But it just sounded better without music. So we’re not friends at all right now? I don’t know… Random accusations can be thrown at anyone here.

Gosh… This is depressing. I hate talking about the far past. It’s depressing boring and very demotivating. Takes almost all my inspiration away. You know what else takes my inspiration away? My bloody Logitech G15 First Generation gaming keyboard. It’s a really good keyboard to play games on, but it’s a sucky work keyboard. (*Saving to start typing on Monica).

(*Logged in on Monica)

Ah… Much better. I already feel the creative juices flowing. I don’t know, but I’m telling myself this change in writing perspective has something to do with the sophistication of any one computer I use to type on. I use a MacBook Pro (Late 2008) if you wanted to know. And it’s one of those gadget’s you classify a sophisticated and classy notebook yet a very powerful workstation but a very sucky gaming computer. Anyway, it’s getting me through my daily life very well, so…

I just did a check of what I typed before using the MacBook and I realized that I’m too lazy to make it even the slightest bit more interesting. There is no way to spice it up. It’s dull and depressing… Much to the point you’d think a aging zombie, in health, relatively comparable to a cup of fermenting milk, actually typed the earlier part of this post.

Anyway, here’s to what’s happening and to come. To start with, Ellie and me are done. To an extent anyway. I need a lot of time away from her to finally say that I no longer desperately need her to be my saving grace and my life-giving air. I’m trying to be a better person for myself and all I can say is that I need to find a way to do it properly and I’m starting by not lying to myself that my relationship with Ellie is going places because she’s never going to do what she has to do. Here’s to Darius telling me things over the last few weeks. At least I’m confronting the problem this time. I wish she would just be with me so that I can finally tell her the things I’ve been dreaming to tell her. No, ‘dreaming’ here isn’t the right word. I have so much that I’ve been hiding deep in my heart only to think that if I told her, she would still stay with him and make me feel like I’m not worth the pain at all. Am I not man enough for her? Does she see more in him than she sees in me? Don’t we all know that what I have for her is even more than what she plays it out to be? But the game will come to an end sometime soon, and she’s going to realize that it was all just a phase in her life. I’m done running behind her and expecting so much with my heart so vulnerably hanging of the hems of my sleeve. I’m done wishing she could love me as much as I did. I’m done waiting for a reason to say, “You and me, we’re forever and that I promise you from the corners of my shabby heart”.

There were 20 reasons, anyway, as to why I wanted to leave her… I can’t remember them all right now because I wrote them in my little blue book of which I left in campus. 20 reasons to leave my Baby Ellie. But only 1 reason to stay close to her and heed her every need and want. That reason was because I loved her so much. I still do. But the funny bit is that the 20 reasons why I wanted to leave her, were the 20 reasons that would make me happy enough to live my life to the fullest… IF SHE WAS MY GIRLFRIEND. But how do I live my life knowing that the better half of me is being wasted and insulted in the arms of a mediocre simple guy with nothing to offer but words of hurt and an undying desire to make people think he’s ‘a man’. Ah, 20 reasons why my Ellie would have made me so happy, the same of which I want to leave her because those 20 reasons right now make me want to cry so hard at night to sleep if not for me suppressing everything. Darius and I are idiots for doing what we do. Suppressing just makes it feel really heavy in the end.

And talking about Darius, he’s one person I’m learning to trust with everything. The only people I’ve gotten that close to are Benjamin (who really is an arse and who I still think looks like an old woman in that picture with those medical dressings) and Bernard (of whom I’m proud to say is like a brother to me after 14 years of a relationship I’d never want to dent). It’s only been about 5 or 6 months since I’ve gotten to know the little nut, but I feel so close to him. We both agree that our personalities delve deep into a pool of resemblance. He’s so like me. Almost everything he says sort of annoys me to a certain level but only because I’m already thinking it… AND he’s amazing. He’s got this really funny thing going on about him – like he wants to say something but holds it back a little. But that’s just me telling myself that. And he’s a very interesting singer. Irritatingly competitive at times, but a really interesting singer. And the fact that we can actually hold on to a conversation for hours… He’s actually one of the few things I thank God for letting me have. But this here’s only to a certain level of expectation. I really don’t know what he thinks about me. If you read this D, say something, Okay?

Christmas is coming and I’m suddenly not in the mood anymore to see a happy time through it. Ellie has until the 25th of December to make up her mind if she wants to stay. Christmas day. To me, it’s always been about starting a new life. I mean God did actually come down to earth to clear us all of every sin and every taint in the depths of our souls; to wash us anew, if I may add. My new life begins then. And it’s up to her if she wants to be a part of it or just another person I know in my life. There’s just a prayer and a hope that would keep me through the week. I’m almost ready to flip that heavy leaf I’ve been hoarding under the hearth that’s started to line the inner surfaces of my heart. I’m almost ready to start my life over again and this time, in a new light, a whole lot differently.

Do you know what the funny thing is, whenever I try to sing recently, I want to stop and do something else… This has never happened before…

Wishing everything would turn out well sooner than expected,
S.O.

So I’m in the cafe… On the campus’s sucky wireless connection. I’m not in the mood to do anything but sit and eat, so I’m going to do just that.

People are staring at me… And Kani is sitting in front of me and commenting about my eyebrows, and now he’s just left.

Ellie is dead next to me and I feel depressed. Don’t know what to say to her right now. Going to figure it out in a few minutes. At least until I click publish…

Boring days ahead people… Boring, BORING days…

S.O.

I find life to be dull. Yes, D-U-L-L, Dull! But here’s the twist…

I can go around pretending to be someone, but then I realise I have more friends when I’m being myself. But wanting to be someone else makes life exciting. I mean, I could be a rough guy, pretend to fight about things, I could mope around and fill everyone with my sorrow, I could laugh and pretend that life is perfect; but life really isn’t that easy… Is it?

I want happiness… And guess where I find it? My friends make me feel like I belong. The more people I meet, the more I feel like I’ve touched someone deeply. Deep inside I feel that I light a fire and make them grow with me, even closer to a point of grasping our hands in a silent prayer, begging God to never allow us to let go.

Oh, I crave the company of people. I love how everyone seems to tell a tale so twistingly different from the other and sing songs, so vividly harmonious in accord with the lives they live.

I want more friends out of life. More people to meet, more hearts to touch, more effigies in the form of souls to entwine my very own with.

I want to grow. My prayer, the one I silently and unknowingly pray, is as so…

Dear Father in heaven,

I pray You give me my life in the form of the people you crafted so differently in the palms of Your worked hands.

I pray You send them to me as your angels to keep me safe and to keep me on the right track in life.

I pray You send them to keep me company in my dark times and in my hours of dispair, when hope only seems like a story mothers tell their children to make them feel safe.

I pray You teach me to love them the way I love You. And I truly and deeply pray You give me strength to keep them close to me, or to grow closer to them, and to live in one voice with the melodies and stories they share with me.

I pray this in Your holy and precious name. Amen.

I can’t stand them at all! It’s so annoying. It’s like having people live under your skin… only you find them to be a parasite, sucking away at your blood and living a good life. At least until they fall flat on their faces. When that happens, what do we do? People like me would feel sorry and just help them out anyway. It sucks being me. It just feels okay sometimes, only that I get hurt…

I hope people would change… I hope I would change!

Leaving here on a note of irritation,
S.O.

I walked into KFC at 10.30 pm today and I payed RM 15 for a dinner plate and Cheesy Wedges…

Let your imagination cascade into the depths of this thought – You being poor for a change.

What if you had a family (your spouse and maybe two kids), and you’re the only one working for a living. You probably only earn about RM 1800 a month, most of which is presumably spent on monthly commitments. To have the kids living in an expecting community, where status means everything to the world, would be hard on them and to have your wife cry to you at night in bed about how everyone has the little pretty things she doesn’t.

All you can do is work so hard and try your best to choose what to do with the money; this much goes to rent, this much goes to the bills, this much goes to the loan you took on the brand new Proton Saga that you bought over the 5 year re-payment plan with high interests (your government service gives you a lax on that, however), a little bit of it must go to daily letting the kids spend about RM 2 at school, and what’s left, must be saved.

You work for the government so you can have a good health coverage and there’s everything else provided for – A safe job and one of the only few lights in your life.

But what’s really on your mind when you really put yourselves in the worn-out soles of the torn shoes I attempt to portray? Are you happy or are you asking yourself if you should change something? What would you really want to change? Would you want to try doing something that you’re really good at maybe; a choice talent perhaps? Would you want to go back to college with whatever you can save up and maybe make life more interesting for the whole family? But then what would you do about the money when you have to pay for tuition fees of your course? And how does that tie into your daily, monthly and life obligations? Will you then have time for the kids?

But if you really didn’t have a choice and all the work you already do takes up so much of your time and you get a measly amount of money for it, you wouldn’t be able to do much but work harder and wait for chance to slap you right in the face. Chance used to come knocking on your door, but these days, it just walks past and you have to be sharp enough to grab onto it’s shoulder, turn it around and say to it right in the face “This is me and I want to take you seriously!”

But if you work so hard and that’s all you really can do, does it make you feel sad? Or does it make you feel happy? Do you feel like that all you can do is want to make your family happy because you’re desperately in love with them? How does it make you feel when you finally see the smiles on their faces and the glee behind the sparkle studded eyes of your kids when you finally get the chance to spend about 60 Ringgit on a meal at KFC for the whole family and not feel guilty about it?

I guess that’s where God comes into play. Chances aren’t really anything. They’re probably just random irregularities in your un-noticed agenda to fulfill something in your life; something you’re craving for. God’s the only thing that really matters then. Somehow, he’s the one that leaves your hard work to help you make chance exist – to make chance deliberately long and desire your wanting.

Would you finally want to turn to God and say, “I’m tired, Lord, and all I want from you is a break and the gift to let people realise that I matter enough to be someone worth wanting. But with what you wan’t from me, I don’t know if I can even be as close to being, but I’ll obviously try my best. I’ll try my best for you, the wife and the kids. The only few that I really want to care about and can only care about because I’m near that point at my breaking and I really need to be free again… I need you in my life and I don’t want to let go. Please don’t let me let go. Please don’t?… Amen”. Or maybe you already do pray something of the sort every night just before you hurt your heart to sleep, and you knowthat’s just God’s plan for you for now. All he want’s is that you be patient, because he’s got more coming your way, in probably the best sense possible. But are you even strong enough to accept it?

This is for all of us rich people, either born with a painstakingly crafted golden spoon delicately placed at our tender lips or worked so long around the clock that our hands, our eyes and even our skin tells the tales of our hardships for the money we have. This is for us wealthy people who have everything – so much so that we are seemingly and even sometimes deliberately and stupidly unaware of the many people we see who fall right at home in the painful and hurting walk of life I describe above.

Feeling for the lost, the broken and the needy,
S.O.

The continuous assessments have ended (PRAISE THE LORD!) and there’s nothing much to aim for just about now. Here’s a few things that have changed over what seems to be eons of me actually not updating this blog.

I’m running for a spot in the Medicine Students Association (MedSA) committee. The strange requirement for that is for me to cut my hair. The thing looks like some dying species of a parasite at times but people still come to me with compliments about it. So I’ll have to leave campus tomorrow and go into town for that long overdue appointment with my hair person here. Anyway, ignoring the digression, I’m only running to get people in the medical course to start living it up again. It’s so dead-boring doing medicine here in this campus. Everyone only studies and sticks to their own individual activities like sports and hanging out with friends and music and studying some more. Here’s to change, people! Here’s to change!

That aside, the Musical Fellowship is picking up from where we crashed the last time. We got turned down brutally from performing at the campus’ official convocation event. The scintillating light being shed on the moods of the members is rather welcoming but we still need more singers. We lost two bass singers, so we need to send out that message of calling some time soon (hopefully not too late). Our current members are so committed and really into what they do. Did I say they’re all awesome singers?

And talking about singing, David, Michelle and me auditioned last night for First Beat VI. It’s a Halloween-ly themed event and I’m guessing this is going to be one of the most amazing nights on campus. I’m dying to see how this goes. We’re doing Hallelujah and Your Call and we’re hoping this goes well. Darius… DARIUS was supposed to join us, but he’s got exams and all. I just thought I’d mention him just to bug him a little bit (Good luck little man!).

I’ve started my studying already. But it really isn’t going well. It’s just bad. I’ll just have to work out my time management though. I’m guessing that’s my problem…

Leaving on a question,
S.O.