Martian and i aren’t always happy. we both have our own fears and insecurities about our relationship, our direction, ourselves and each other. sometimes these fears and insecurities happen simultaneously, and we fight. there are the fights, and then there are the REALLY BIG fights that involve crying, screaming, swearing, hurtful statements and walking out. then there are the break-ups, the exchange of cruel words and spitefully hissing what we hate so much about each other. by no means are we the perfect couple. there are days when i cant help but think that we are just so wrong for each other.
yet at the end of the day, after each fight be it big or small, we fall back into each other’s arms, spilling over with murmurs of i’m-sorry’s, frantic kisses, hungry grasps and all the love that we have for each other. we ache to make it up to the other person, to hopefully erase from their memory all the mean and callous words said in the heat of anger, to win our place back in the other person’s heart again. in these moments, as we kiss and make up, i’m always thinking.. how could i have screamed at someone like him? how could i have gotten angry? how can i not realize what a good, amazing, perfect thing i have in my boyfriend? to squander our precious time away by fighting… what could i have possibly been thinking?
i’ve always believed that love, essentially, is loving the other person more than you love yourself; putting their happiness before your own. it is measured by how much you are willing to sacrifice for the other. it is big things like trying your very best to become a kinder, more patient, more thoughtful person so that you can make her happy, and it is small things like missing your favorite tv show just so you can pick him up from football practice. so when i read this line in an Oscar Wilde book one day – ‘to love is to surpass oneself’, i felt like i had found a precious gem of universal truth.
i want a lot of things. i am a lot of things. but i give up, and change, all of these because i love Martian.
two years ago, we sat at Martian’s dining table at his apartment, weeding through Antoine de Saint Exupery’s ‘The Little Prince’ to exhume two metaphors from each of the 27 chapters for my college assignment. that’s a grand total of 54 metaphors, and we were pulling an all-nighter trying to get the assignment done before morning. i later found out that Adrian had given me the wrong information, and it was really only just two metaphors for the FIRST TWO chapters.
when i found out about the misinformation, i scolded Adrian for causing me to waste my time like that. but i never got around to thanking him and giving him a big hug for inadvertently giving me one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.
that night, on the 4th of July 2006, while taking a break from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince, Martian held me, closed his eyes and told me that he loved me. that night, i told him that i love him too. and that is how we started.
happy anniversary baby. i love you so much. i’m so sorry i bluffed you about coming out to get a glass of water but i really ended up blogging and chatting on MSN, and now you’ve fallen asleep :\
July 4th, 2008
it’s been long day after long day; the big Columbia clock keeps ticking over my head. i am drowning in to-do lists. my inner child wants to just sleep, but i cant because i am constantly kept awake by the atrocities that happen in our daily lives and the world. why are people hypocritical? why are there political assassinations? why do people fight? why do people get sick? why are principles being discarded? why does spite exist? why are people so concerned with looks and money? why is our air getting hazier? why do the evil and the scheming triumph? does sincerity exist anymore?
my head is swirling with iron deficiency. i havent been eating much lately, either. tomorrow i will be back in the arms of my Martian, and he will make sure i am eating well, but tomorrow feels so far away. i worry the world will implode before then, collapsing into itself from the wretched burden of itself, which means that i will never have my tomorrow. tomorrow, America’s skies will be littered with fireworks; tomorrow, mine will be littered with uncertainties and love. two years ago, i felt this way too. i was bound by the paralysis of caring too much. i was frantic and frightened. i am still.
did you know that it’s already july… doesn’t time fly. i wish time would freeze and i could enjoy chicken wings and la-la at jalan alor forever. have bubbly in bangsar every afternoon until i become one big gas bubble. i also wish i didn’t get hurt so easily. it’s becoming so hard to love people when they all seem so caustic and uncaring.
there was a time where i used to come home from school, eat apples and play Roller Coaster Tycoon. it was a time of fish porridge and pure bliss.
i am tired. i dont feel well.
i have a sudden urge to go swimming.
i have a question. it’s a simple one. what is love?
July 3rd, 2008
i went back to my high school today with 5 other classmates to give a motivational talk to the upper secondary students. even though it was an extremely last minute arrangement, it was also easy and fun, so we agreed enthusiastically to do it. three of us spoke off the cuff: darren spoke about aims and goals, kezanne on how grades are not everything.. and me.. i spoke about how we should never let anyone – be it the school, our teachers or our classmates – put us down simply because we are different.
darren and kezanne gave great speeches, but i feel the need to clarify what i said today. i started my speech by saying that when i was in high school, i would probably not have been attending this very assembly because i would not even be present in school anyway. it’s a pretty known fact that i didnt have the best attendance in school, simply because i didnt LIKE being in school. school bored me and i felt like i just was not made to be in this environment at all.
this attitude got me a lot of flak from teachers, and it was also something that i fell deeper and deeper into as my high school years went on. i remember how sometime in form 4, i had the strongest contempt for teachers and students alike because i thought they were all so narrow minded, rigid and self-important.
like how i was once accused of cheating in an exam by a new teacher because she was ‘warned’ about me and was very surprised that i got good grades for her paper, which i studied my heart out for. another time, i wasn’t allowed to run for student council president even though i got the popular vote. i also had this CF president who liked to remind me how undisciplined or ungodlike i was. countless times i was told to my face how i’d be the one person who would pull my class average down, flunk SPM, that my parents should be ashamed for bringing me up wrongly, or that i should try to be more like my classmates.
i was in the top class every year, where everyone was mostly studious and meek. most of them could and would not flout rules, and a handful had a kind of condescending attitude towards those that did, as if the fact that they attended school day in day out made them so much better and smarter than those who didnt, or the fact that they followed rules diligently meant that they were somehow more superior and learned beings. my class also had a bit of this ‘every man for himself’ kind of thing going on. one time i had this huge screaming fight with this teacher who was making all sorts of rude and uncalled for remarks about me in the classroom as if i wasn’t even there, and when i spoke up to defend myself, none of my friends stood up for me or even dared to look up from their desks even though i was crying and crying. this same teacher later picked on another girl from another class by repeatedly pushing her head, and immediately half of that classroom stood up to defend the girl. so cool, isnt it? that’s what friends are for. i dont think that kind of vibe existed in my classroom back then, and i’m so glad that things are very much different now that we’ve grown up and allowed our friendship to develop in an unstifled and competition-free zone.
high school was a very lonely and angry time for me; many times i felt so terribly discouraged by all the comments, refusal of opportunities and just that really shitty feeling that people didnt place any hope or belief in me. you can say that i probably deserved this kind of treatment, but my logic was that i was harming no one, and that my skipping of school or not doing homework was not THAT big of an issue anyway. besides, i got good grades. i was pleasant, friendly, nice. i had lots of friends. i was involved in and knowledgeable about things outside of the classroom. i wrote and debated well. i organized lots of events and fundraisers for the school. all these things, to me, more than make up for sucky attendance. success is more than being a drone.
and it is important to me that other students know that. i have a really strong sense of determination and also many good friends who always knew how to get me back up on my feet, which despite the odds, eventually resulted in my success and happy ending in high school. but not everyone could be so lucky. discouragement is a big, serious thing that should not ever be flung around carelessly; i know this because i still have all the hurt and anger inside me that are scars of carelessly-flung discouragement. it is important to me that other students know that they dont have to be like their classmates simply because herd mentality dictates so, and that grades are not the only measure of success in high school.
honestly? i dont think that the head prefect or the assistant head prefect or the student council president or all the prefects in my class or all the teachers pets are in any way better, smarter or more accomplished human beings than me. i dont think it’s right that people are made to feel that they are lesser than others. i dont think it’s right to allow arrogance to fester in these supposed ‘top students’, nor do i think it’s right that these ‘top students’ strengths and goals should be imposed on other people. i do, however, think that we are all equal people who are all awesome, but awesome people who are diverse and are good at and enjoy doing different things.
i love my teachers and my classmates, and i think my classmates are some of the most brilliant people i have ever met, but.. i cant be expected to be just like them. i was not born to be. in fact, i like how i turned out. i like that i got 12A’s in SPM and i like that i was a warm, popular, active, well-liked and open-minded person both in high school and college. i like that i am going to Columbia University in two months’ time. i like that i have a bright future ahead of me, that i have people in my life who love me unconditionally, that i have this blog where people who read me are so kind and reach out to me with such encouraging feedback whenever i face problems. i like that i have had the beautiful blessing of my family, best friends and my boyfriends who know me inside out and have been with me through thick and thin. and all this… after how i went through all those years in high school being told that i had an attitude problem, that i would never succeed in anything i do, that i was just not as good as my classmates, that i was an epic failure.
my life and all that i have achieved with it is not a failure. so i skipped school. so i wore my skirt short and wore a pink scrunchie to school. so i stood up for myself even if it meant raising my voice at a teacher. so i broke rules. but so what? :) at the end of the day, i am still not this failure that they thought i was and would be. ‘they’, by the way, are not and will never be the ones who decide what my success and failures are.
my message during my talk today was essentially this: that we are all different, and we should not be discouraged by people who try to bring us down for it. i know my school has this culture of suppressing radical creativity and individuality, and it makes me sad to think that every year, there are students like me who are graduating with half of their spunk and verve ironed flat out of them.
i think i delivered my talk very poorly today, because the audience seemed to get the impression that i was encouraging truancy and that the gist was “you can succeed even by not attending school”. well, it’s not. if you think that is my point, then you have missed it entirely. that is of course my fault, because i winged my speech with entirely no preparation and i was angry when i was speaking. sigh. so, to anyone reading this who was there for my talk, i hope you understand that i’m not telling you to be like me or that i’m giving a sort of stamp of approval on my own behavior. i’m sure that with this long supplement, you guys are intelligent and mature enough to see now what i meant to say this afternoon.
i’m also tired of people giving me that ATTITUDE = 100 thing. i mean, yeah, it’s a very cute attention-grabber for motivational seminars and all that, but it is neither a fundamental principle of existence nor the best benchmark of human qualities. besides, we all have different perceptions of what a good attitude is, so dont come and tell me that your idea of a good attitude should be mine and everyone else’s. attitude, contrary to the popular belief of motivational seminar attendees, is not everything. no one decides what ‘everything’ is.
haih. am i being ranty. sorry :( i just felt so uncomfortable after that talk that i just really needed to clear this up.
okay lah so serious already, must lighten the mood abit. i shall show you some pictures of Ben and Freddy rolling around in the sand at Perhentian.
#1 roll
#2 roll
#3 roll
#4 someone’s been reading the kama sutra!
#5 wheelbarrow hahaha
i heart Ben and Fred cos they’re never too afraid to have fun.. they are the coolest :) and here is one of my favorite Perhentian pictures – the guys holding up their pants after peeing in the sea! :
July 1st, 2008
