Friday, August 04, 2006 // 11:37 PM

how do i feel right now

i don't know what to say. or i do know what to say, it is jus something inside me that needs to choke on things, to figure them out, to bring them to the level of words. i don't know, because this is not something i allow myself to dwell on, because. because once again i am supposed to be studying, and so i feel a strange disjoint, between me and myself.

i went back to nanyang today. hello, hello alma mater, hello seniors and juniors and team mates, hello blue skies and a sunset that has not left me breathless for a long time. standing amongst all that green grass, with christl, last now, looking up at the fast fading sky, at grey clouds framed in a swath of orange light. i am feeling. i am feeling nothing, and nothing, nothing is the worst thing in the world to be. where once it was things like these which made me feel ever so alive, right now i think back to those moments then when christl's breath was caught in her throat in an appreciative silence and all i feel is nothing. all i feel is: this was so long ago. it is not just being back in my alma mater, it was. it was before all the flipping and dancing onstage and the screaming and the doling out of hugs and flowers, in that moment sitting out on the grass near the swings, by myeslf, in that moment of silence i remember the peaceful feel of the grass and the cool wind all around me, i remember feeling feeling happy to be out and feeling free, but more than anything all i remember is feeling was sad. thinking about that right now just makes me ever sad, because that was the stillest, most peaceful moment i've had in a long time, sitting there looking out at a fast fading sky, i can't even remember what we were talking about, me and christl, for those five minutes, but it just felt like i was slowly starting to feel alive, at ease, in my own skin, again. and. and it is not that i didn't appreciate watching my juniors perform, it is just the briefness of that moment, the swiftness with which it was spirited away, i was spirited away. and all at once i feel lost inside myself, inside a lot of book grubbing and rushing around, inside a lot of passed over people and conversations, inside an over-riding desire to do well just because. just because i have always done well, and to a perhaps equal extent, a desire to fly across an ocean and stay there for the next three or four years.

i'm overcome with panic, because i have been. right now i feel like i have wasted my last two years by leaving things to the point where they have gotten right now, i know things are said like you are smart and you can do it but right now i do feel like i have the clearest idea of how much shit i have gotten myself into, and i don't think anyone would disagree, if i were to list things out: all the topics i have not studied, all that i didn't bother at the time to fully understand, most frighteningly all the material that i do not even have, to even start working on. and i feel a regret that i can't get away from, because i know i am smart, i know i can do it, but the fact of matters is that i didn't. and i have wasted what has been given to me, my intelligence and the environment that i have been put in, being so surrounded by so many incredibly intelligent people, and having money thrown at me to study. i think about gery and elgina and jo and the many people i know who so badly want to go overseas for uni, and who so rightly deserve so, and who will only get that chance if they manage to scrape a scholarship. and i want them to make it so badly because they have deserved what i do not, by applying themselves. the idea of competing with gery for english at oxford makes me not want to, even though even if i did she'd probably get in instead of me, thinking about how she looked when i said i didn't need a scholarship to go overseas. i don't know, you see i have scraped through everything in life surprising myself, waiting on miracles, and it is childish, irresponsible, unfair, for me to want the same again. what is up with this? i have 4 months to slog, to try and earn a place somewhere i want to go, and i feel like i have to suffer to deserve it.

and i've been avoiding talking to people, i'm. i'm ever sorry marcus, i'm ever sorry marvin. there's nothing i can think about, right now, that is not A level Obsessed, University Preoccupied. it is not just my being utilitarian, it is just the fact that i don't trust myself to put What I Feel Into Words, and still function as a normal social unit- it is tiring, being sociable, some times, really, i wish i didn't have to try. there are people with whom i don't have to try, but they are few and far between. it is tiring to try and empathize. it is tiring and already all i feel every day is just tired, tired from lack of sleep, tired from worrying, tired from all the studying i'm trying and failing to get done. and i don't think i realised how stressed i have been until christl li turned around in class that day and asked if i'm okay and i dissolved into tears and incoherence. but, but i am, and this is killing me, the trying not to let this kill me is killing me, i feel like a lizard stuck in a jar that is slowly being sucked clean of oxygen.