DETACHED
I feel a tad detached from everything these days.
This blog, inclusive too.
People I met, too.
I find it hard to make new pals, cos it takes very little for me to retreat into my protective shell, and stay away for a long, long while.
Just like a mimosa.
I clam up and shy away in a split second when I feel threatened by potential hurt, yet I never quite learn, and would be back to the gullible self the next.
I don’t know.
I didn’t quite feel the urge to blog simply because I realised I wasn’t quite putting the real emotions into my entries like I did before.
I imprisoned myself in this invisible bubble that shields me away from people.
Perhaps that’s why I sometimes appear aloof and cold to some, despite being pretty skippy and girly usually.
That’s when the wall is built up.
Say, when I meet a new group of people, and I feel unwelcomed.
I would make myself scarce and avoid meeting up in the future, cos I believe I would spoil their fun.
Weird thoughts there, but that’s what I would feel.
It’s no wonder my paranoia is pulling me further, and further away from reality, and people.
I grew increasingly detached, as the veil separating me and the real world layered itself thicker, and thicker.
I hardly feel any emotions going into my entries these days, and it became just a documentary piece with words, not feelings.
I could feel the difference.
It’s almost similar to constipation.
Muahahaha.
Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s just me and my congested nose.
The gooey stuffs jammed up my airway so much that, oxygen is not getting to my brain at all.
Hence, it couldn’t work well.
I felt no great need to be near my monitor, and the screen made me queasy.
MSN, email, blog.. all these failed to rouse me. I blogged emotionlessly, stating the factuals, throwing in a punch line or two when I felt like it.
Once finished, I dove right into my read, and built up the fence to my world again, a world that only has me in it.
And thus, I refrained from blogging more thought-provoking issues, so I would not be emotionally drained, at all.
Maybe, it’s my way of detaching myself from those issues, too, as if they don’t concern, nor bother me.
Gee, I am repeating myself ever so often these days.
But these few days had passed in a daze.
***
MTV channel aired this song, with a soothing melody that accompanied it.
Catherine.
Was stirred, and I switched the channel.
It’s my way of escapism, it seems.
I was tempted to surf back to that channel, and there was a great urge for me to tear.
A love-hate relationship with his mother, the song was said to be about.
It is a pretty raw song, not the usual ohmumyouaresogreatandflawlessandsowonderfullynobleandiadoreyoutobits kinda of song.
Do I love my mum? I do.
Do I hate her? Not anymore. Or did I ever?
I may have detested her at some point many years ago, but hate? Is it too strong a word to use?
I snapped at her just last week when she once again mentioned names of ex-classmates, whom she used to compare me to.
Primary one.
I remember I once resented her so much, cos even though I was already in secondary 4, she never failed to bring up those names, probing which junior colleges they got into, asking how they fare for their ‘O’s and such.
Now? What did they study in university? In which industry?
Oh. Jianhan? He’s now a pilot with SIA.
Hmm, that one? He’s now with Citibank.
Oh, her? She’s now an accountant.
So-and-so? In Australia doing his masters.
Ah, and the other one? In UCL, doing medicine, yet to graduate.
Yongcheng? Last I heard, Oxford studying law. Bar now, perhaps.
I am amazed with how she could rattle off the names of my ex-classmates as if we just graduated yesterday.
‘Oh.. they are doing soooooooooo well, huh?‘ She responded in a mixture of ridicule, disappointment, envy, and whatsoever emotions that I was too offended to decipher.
I clammed up and shrunk back further into my own world, bricking up the wall that I had dismantled previously.
I had tried so hard to mend the rift, and to let down my guard, so I wouldn’t be all that hostile when she’s around.
I snapped.
‘Well, you can always disown me if I am that much an embarrassment to you.’
‘Go adopt someone else who would bring you a degree and a glorious career.’
Yes, I morphed into that rude bitch I despise, again.
But that’s my raw spot. Always have been.
She never failed to make that inferiority complex drown me dead with her comments.
She had been competitive since I was just in kindergarten.
No meals if I failed to memorise the 1 x 1 to 10 x 10.
A thunderous slap in the public if I joined the neighbours for a game of police and thief, so the other kids would outcast me and make me butt of their jokes.
A brutal treat of caning if I came in 2nd in the class for spellings, tests, and exams.
Endless daunting words that pricked and needled deep. Like, ‘With achievements like yours, I wonder who would want to be your friends..’
To a teenager going through her rebellious phase, that wasn’t the wisest things you should say.
Yet, her intention was the hurt, cos she knew physical abuse derived no emotions from me, anymore, at that stage.
I would just stare at her defiantly when she rained slaps, showered kicks into my face. Not even the blue blacks from the broom, hangers and canes could induce a single drop of tear from me.
I became immune to pain.
But not from words.
The only time when I would weep uncontrollably was when she totally shattered my self confidence with the worst thing a mother could say to a daughter.
‘You’re so ugly that the sight of you is detestable.’
‘You don’t deserve those friends, you’re just a scum compare to them.’
‘Why don’t you go and die? A dog is better than you.’
Of course, there are worse stuffs which I tried blocking out of my memory that proved a tad too painful to remember.
The usual names that topped the class were Yongcheng, Jianhan, and Weiyang for the elementary 3 years in primary school.
Despite the break I had from them in primary 4, we met again in the same class when we were grouped into the top stream for primary 5 and 6.
17 years on, the names still hang loose on her lips.
‘So you still in contact with Jianhan? What’s he doing now?‘
Despite the words spoken in the past was with the intention to hurt, and those spoken now are just tactless expression on her part, I still find it hard to accept.
It worked instantly, like an emergency button of some sort.
Like just the other day I briefly mentioned some friends whom I met up recently.
‘You have friends who are lawyers, doctors and people high up on the corporate ladders? Why would they want to befriend someone like you with no degree and no career?‘
WHAM BAM!
I was hit back to the cold, hard, concrete floor.
I froze.
The insecurities crawled back in.
It’s the same ghosts that came haunting me ever so often.
I could feel the cruelest of words repulsing themselves out of my system instinctively, and I fought hard against it.
I stormed into my sanctuary, sentencing myself to more solitude, away from the source of hurt.
Those years moulded me, and the broken and violent relationship I had with the mother.
It became a terrible vicious cycle. A slight cut to the pride was retaliated with equally devastating comments to hurt the spot where it hurts most for her. That was how things were.
The war had since ceased.
Yet, it was a brutal reminder again during my days in Johor last week.
It’s no wonder that when a slight touch on the scar, triggered my reflex reaction that day and I spew forth those harsh words.
Scar? Or was it a wound that never closed up?
I’m sorry.
***
It’s a quiet Friday.
Feels too sick to be out there.
My low and husky voice has a nasal hue to it right now.
My life is such a boring script.
Then again, I don’t need anything too dramatic.
Something romantic and sweet, will do.
Hehehehe.
Happy birthday to my dearest pal, Xiuzhao.
Nope, I have never forgotten it for the past decade.
Sometimes, it’s just that there’s some reluctance within me to express some of the more intimate thoughts.
It makes me feel vulnerable, you see.
I have you in my thoughts, my dear, and may it be a fruitful, and blessed year ahead for ya!
*Hug*
