Friday, November 23, 2007


Am I hoping against Hope?

I submitted my PAE choices 3 days ago. Fearful for what my future might hold for me, I was reluctant to press the “Submit” button. I scanned through my choices again and again and again. Like a man on an adrenaline high, I kept messaging people on MSN and they too, returned the favour. I think it’s just the “kiasu” aspect of choosing a JC because so many factors come to mind when you try to make the best choice possible.

What I considered when choosing the JC were these few factors: friends, family, location, reputation. I questioned others about the aforementioned and I’m not exactly satisfied with every answer provided, because I think at the end of the day, I’m the one who enters in those course codes for the JC. Then again, I felt awfully stressed because after hearing conflicting views from my friends, it ended up in me being even more confused and stressed as ever.

Decisions, decisions, it’s so hard when you want to make a good one but you have a fickle mind.

My fellow Sec 4s, how did you guys feel? Some of you seem so jovial about it, but I haven’t met someone exactly stressed out, unlike me. Maybes it’s because I have such pathetic results that it worries my guts out, but it’s too late to change anything now. I do think I am hoping against hope when I enter the course codes of some of the top-notch JCs that seem almost too far away for me to grasp.

Somehow, I feel that I am struggling towards something that is out of my reach, I yearn and I long for it so badly, to get to where I want. It concerns my future, my happiness; I don’t want to live the next 2 years of my life feeling miserable, vulnerable, and full of spite and jealousy.

Ah, the vortex of emotions that engulfs me everyday. A part of me yearns for that coveted spot in the JC that I want to go to and the another part of me whispers, “It’s okay, that JC may not be the best, you can always try harder.” Hah. Even I’m a conflicted mess.

”Try harder” the ringing of these 2 words in my head seem almost laughable. Deluded?
I think I really am at this point in time.
How apt!

Then there’s the teachers… they tell me the choices made are based on the individual and if I think that’s the best choice for me, I should just go for it. They say that it doesn’t matter which JC you enter. You can be in the best JC and score all Ds or an average JC and still score all As. How can I argue with that? I just take their “advice” as they come and smile at their words whilst nodding in “agreement”.

But wait, there’s another obstacle that blocks my path: Family. My mum, my dad, my brothers… Yes? No? Yes? No? And the battle for what I choose to be a part of my life is shattered into shambles when my mother comes into the picture. We end up quarrelling, butting heads, whining and feeling like shit at the end of it.
I feel so useless, yet so used, so manipulated after such exchanges.

I want to stop struggling and chasing something that I doubt that can ever be caught. I don’t want to feel disappointed when I look at my results next year.


I don’t want to be emotional and depressed when I find out that the results I receive next year will not live up to my, or anyone’s expectation for that matter.

I don’t want to run out of the school hall in tears, lock myself up in the bathroom and sob my eyes out. I don’t want to be the “odd one out” when everyone is basking in jubilation and I, revelling in my misery and cursing myself for my own stupidity.

Stupid Nicolas, I would say, you call that doing your best? I will be a broken 17-year-old, supposedly meant to be happy in this fresh new phase in my life but ending up stuck in a shadow of my former self, having to face even more inner demons. Broken pieces of me, like glass shards that I will try to pick up one by one, when that sharp edge of glass cuts into me, when that drop of blood trickles… I’d probably smile, close my eyes, feel the pain throb through me and say, “But I am only human.”

The day I woke up, Tuesday, was the day I entered in my PAE choices. It seems the stress from the previous night had eaten into me, because it was one of the harshest ways that I had woken up in a long time. Get this, when I woke up that day, I dug my fingernails into my own palm really really hard, hence jolting myself awake. The impression on my palm can still be seen today even though it had healed from an angry red mark when it was still fresh.

See, I have a tendency to hurt myself when in my sub-conscious state. I just hope something like that doesn’t happen again, because when I woke up that day, I felt so unsure of who I was anymore, like it’s so unreal. If it feels this bad just for a PAE exercise, I don’t know how I’d withstand the pressure of selecting my JC after my O level results are out.

And for the better of it, I did manage to pluck up enough courage to click on the “Submit” button at the end of the day. I did break into a smile out of relief because I’d finally gotten something so damning out of my system. I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Though here I am, grousing at the fact that I had gone through so much just to submit my PAE results… People make choices all the time. I've made my choice, have you made yours? It’s just that sometimes after you have made a choice, you forget for a minute that it was the right one… and it boils down to something called “Hope.”

A statement that I felt strongly about when I saw it is:

Hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments. But when the world says, “Give up!”
Hope whispers, “Try one more time!”


I find something like that hard to do… don’t you think so? It’s hard to determine whether you have actually tried because it’s something so profound, so difficult to gauge. Then it goes to something called your own limit.

How hard and how long do you try before you can say, “I’ve done enough?”
Is letting go actually something wise to do...?

After everything that has happened…
may I just say that I think I’m deluded?
But a deluded person (me) wouldn’t know that himself, would he?

After all, he is who he is.

_____________________
Hail Mary.


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Nicolas Yee
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30 Jan '91
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