when i was much younger, i used to think the whole world was against me, and so i went about behaving with a siege mentality - always competing against everyone, going against convention, acting rebellious towards my family and what few friends i used to have. i was locked up in my little mental fortress - keeping myself in, and others out. little did i know that this protective shell, long since discarded, would have kept alive some sliver of my sanity, my dreams, my soul..
for a long time, i alienated myself from the world which i kept thinking was out to do me in. mum was always busy working, and dad had left us since i was 2. from the age of 8, i started learning to be independent and did everything by myself as much as i could. i travelled to school and back home on my own; i washed my own clothes; i cooked my own meals; heck, i even wrote letters to cover my frequent absenteeism and signed on consent forms for school trips and what-nots on my mum's behalf, without her knowing, most of the time. looking back, i now wonder why my teachers never raised any suspicions - were they incurably ignorant or morally magnanimous?
in school, i was rude to everyone. i enjoyed cracking mean jokes about people. everyone in school had a nickname, and i would laugh myself to tears when i saw the disgusted and embarrassed looks on their faces as they walked past and got ridiculed by me in front of everyone else, whom i might add, always thought i had a wicked sense of humour, as long as they weren't the ones suffering. i guess that's how i learned the meaning of hypocrisy.
at home, i would lock myself up in the room, reading books - comics, novels, encyclopaedia, history books, dictionaries, the bible - basically, whatever i could get my hands on. i did well in school in those early years, regularly achieving 1st or 2nd in my class, which was also the best class in school. i remember i was always competing against this other boy named bernard or something for that 1st-in-class spot. anyway, i got into the top stream in the education system at that time and was invited to join the gifted education programme, but for reasons that escape my mind now, i failed to attend the selection test. i guess, on top of being rated in the report cards as a "truly gifted child with vast innate potential", it was my dark disposition coupled with my family background that gained me sympathy points, because i won the envy of my peers for being every teacher's pet student.
after my 11th birthday, i experienced a major twist of fate. the awfullest thing that could ever befall a boy happened to me - i was approaching the peak of puberty. although i had read about it quite a lot in my books, nothing could have prepared me sufficiently for this wildly confusing and awkward phase in my life. there was also this other significant event in the history of the world that would change the course of my life from that point on - the arrival of the internet era. now, instead of books, i could turn to the fountain of knowledge which was the web to quench my thirst for knowledge and, possibly, the truth about life. my pc was a prehistoric, handed-down 486 running on dos, and i remember installing windows 3.x using floppy disks. back in those days, you could tell if your software was corrupted by looking to see if the disks used to store them had any mould growing out of the circular hole in the middle.
as i discovered, i had quite a talent for computer programming, constantly trying out new coding with QBASIC, VBASIC and other ancient developing platforms, and it was through developing scripts in mIRC, a virtual chatroom network, which captured my interest most. i honed my skills with a religious fervour, even skipping school several days in a row just to perfect the coding for an mp3-player-cum-filesharing-bot or a compendium of trivia games, much like hangman, where people in the same chatroom could play at once. i found a great sense of satisfaction and achievement each time i received praise for my work, and criticism had an effect of spurring me on to do more, and to be better than my comparison other. i must also concede that i was very comfortable with the concept and workings of the virtual community, which i do think is a surprisingly ironic antisocial form of society. i was slowly but surely spiralling down, losing myself to this blackhole.
in school, my attendance had slipped to below 40%, and my mum was less than pleased with the growing frequency of those 'meet-the-parent' sessions regarding my truancy. however, in truth, my grades were still top of the class, and i was still 'teacher's pet', as long as i was physically present. i gradually stopped talking to my friends, whose past-times included playing 'catching' and ping-pong during recess, trenching through gutters to catch spiders and playing 'war plane' card games after school. didn't these fools realise that the world would just pass them by if they didn't spend their time more productively? in retrospect, i was a fool for trading what remained of my childhood with useless, outdated computer skills that, if included in my resume now, would look like a run-down rickshaw in a lamborghini showroom - an utterly redundant eyesore. as epic as it was to the rest of the world, the advancement of technology was too rapid for a one-man show like me, and my ambition of being a world-class computer programmer was left drowning in its wake.
then along came a new form teacher - this angelic being, whose grace and beauty transcended all boundaries, would have brought peace to the most troubled of minds, and whose unflinching virtues of patience and perserverance would have turned charcoal into diamonds. being brought up in a catholic school hadn't convinced me that there was a god, or heaven, or hell, but she was living proof that, either there were angels on earth, or my raging hormones had completely eradicated all rationality in me. rejuvenated by this new-found motivation to go to school, i began to find myself developing a brighter disposition. attributes like 'sulky' and 'bully' were soon replaced by 'quirky' and 'friendly'. in essence, i started to behave like a typical pre-teen for the first time in my life. i hung out with everyone; i played 'catching' and football (at times, simultaneously, making it more like rugby) in the rain, getting thoroughly soaked and laughing our heads off at the silliest remarks; i trekked mini-forests, looking for the fiercest fighting spiders and receiving nasty cuts and bruises for my efforts; i went to friends' homes to break their high-scores for 'golden axe' and 'sonic the hedgehog' on sega megadrives - as far as i can recall, those were, and probably will be, the most fun and carefree times in my life. like all fools in despair, i wish i could turn back time and stop the clock there.
from then on, my defences against the harshness of reality had been breached. i saw things in a more positive light. optimism and faith entwined to paint, with the colours of kindness, compassion and generosity, a pretty portrait of humanity as perceived in my mind; through the years, i have gradually come to realise that there is no delusion more dangerous and more suicidal than this to conceive, and having left myself so vulnerable to uncountable, immeasurable manifestations of hurt, deceit and exploitation, i am now left with a hopeless heart, mangled mind, battered body and savaged soul.. a man exposed to the cold, stinging winds of destiny, devoid of confidence and esteem in himself, and of those around him, seeking nothing more than a swift liberation from the cruelty that is his life.
jaded and disparaged as i may feel, to rid myself of guilt before the bitter end, i am adamant in pulling myself together to complete my final mission of gratitude, which entails clearing of debts, returning of favours and fulfilling of promises.. but i'm so tired, and with each sigh escapes a little more of the energy and will to think, to do, to be..
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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