This might seem a little... different.
This time the question is a lot more personal but no less complicated: Why does this place make me feel depressed?
I wrote a while ago that I'm optimistic. I wasn't lying. But there are some days or some nights when I think to myself, "So, what's up?" And the answer seems to be accompanied with the feeling of an inescapable reality crashing down: "Nothing really."
Sometimes, don't you feel that you're just so sick of the properness of it all? You get up in the morning, you go to work or do the same things, come home, maybe say a few words to your family members, have a meal, shower, and finally sleep. Routine is formality, especially where it entails expectations. The expectations of your employers, of 'the society', of your family. The expectation that you come in at 9 in the morning, the expectation that you should always be diligent till 5 in the evening, the expectation that you must come home to your family.
Right now I want to say fuck all of that.
Would spirituality fill the gap? There's a picture of Jesus on my wall that my mom put up because she thought it'd be a nice reminder. "I am your Good Shepherd," it says. That was my parents' job description till a few years ago, actually.
No, it's not nice, and, no, I don't want to be reminded. Stop telling me what's good for me. I know what is – or I just don't care.
Maybe I'd pick up smoking, just because.
Now a very good ancillary question is this: I have routines when I'm studying overseas too, but why don't I feel like this?
Maybe the place makes a big difference. Somehow I don't feel confined there. Maybe this place just brings back memories of a life spent conforming to rigid expectations, or even exceeding them. It brings back the reality of years of living under the religiosity of my family. It reminds me once again just how stifling this island is. You watched the National Day Rally? Well, I don't give a shit about it.
And maybe it's also because of how everyone seems to be walking away, largely to follow the paths that society seems to have set for them. Only a few good people actually want to see me while I'm here. 3 months, and I can probably count with the fingers of my hands how many people I'd end up meeting up with.
Frankly, Singapore sucks.
There, I said it.
Well, maybe I should do a silly roof raise to bring up what crashed down. It's time to be silly. Maybe I'd go out to party in the middle of the night. How or where or with who, I don't know. Maybe I'd take that awful picture down and tell my mom I don't want it there. Maybe it's time to take control of my life, the control that I have when I'm not here. And I guess, in the end, I'll be gone and I'll never really come back.
And maybe it's time for Singaporeans to take control of their lives and be real.
I guess the real point of this entry is for you to know, when you feel like this, that out there someone else feels or at least felt like you. And there you have a friend.
amen to that.