Strength

Strength. Strength.

Is it imaginary?

Do I seek it, do I pray to it or do I envision it?

Empower me. Save me.

I wait for Strength to rise from within.
Not without.

Tears.

I realized that I have been crying a lot.

It is not a bad thing.

I cry when I am upset. I cry when I am (too) happy or moved. I cry when I am scared and afraid.

I used to very very ashamed of how emotionally fragile I seem.

I even tried to kill any emotions I have in me (during JC), because it made me much more efficient in doing work.

But it also make me mechanic.

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 

Perspectives.

"We come back okay. Sooner or later, faster or slower, we all recover." 

There was a point where I honestly doubted whether I would ever walk out of the shadows of an unfortunate turn of events. I remember the last time I was so upset and so affected was when my best friend for four years suddenly refused to talk to me one day, and I felt so lost and so disorientated.

Maybe I was once again affected when I had my first "unfortunate turn of events".

Initially I felt a deep sense of gloom and pall that shrouded me almost all the time. I tried my best to be functional, and in certain ways it worked. I laughed harder (than usual) at jokes that weren't that funny, I smile at everyone and at everything and tried to be extra nice to people around me.

There was a constant nagging feeling within me, and I couldn't quite place a finger on it.

I felt hypocritical in trying to be extra nice and kind to people around me - all I really wanted to do was to look like soursop, clam up and wallow in my own misery. But I kept reminding myself that despite anyone's cheerful countenance, he/she could be having a really bad day (real life example being myself), and the least I could do is to not make their day worse with my unfriendliness.

(There is something inherently superficial and "act-nice" about thinking this way, and if you ask me, I am honestly disgusted by myself at times when I try to be nice when I don't feel nice. You get what I mean?)

Trying to be happy was tiring.
Forcing oneself to be happy was taking up every last vestige of my willpower.

I felt a constant temptation to just let myself fall into an abyss of self-pity and desolation: I am feeling down, why would I still care about how others feel around me? Why would I care if my mom is worried sick about me and my dad took a day off just to enlighten me on issues? Why would I care if my best friend took a cab the moment he booked out from army because he felt that there was something wrong in the way I was messaging?

But thankfully, I cared. I tried to look past all the shadows to see the scintillating beams of the sun that tried that hard to break into my thunderstorm.

Thankfully, I tried my best to appreciate every little thing that every single one of the people around me did  for me. I can't say that I did, because definitely I appreciated some support more than others, but hey, I tried.

For the first week I thought I was depressed since every now and then I would cry for no reason.
First I would cry because I was sad.
Then I would cry because I was angry with myself for being sad.
Finally I cry some more because I didn't know what to do to make myself stop crying.

So to combat the negativity in my life, I tried to be creative and positive. It went this way:

Each time I felt upset, I will learn a new, funky and cool English word in my brand new word-log.

My first word was "scintillating". It meaning sparkling and shining brightly. It is a beautiful word that calmed me down and make me feel at ease with myself.

One of my last words learnt was "compunction" which means a feeling of deep regret, which is also a lugubriously beautiful word. Melancholy can be sweet in its stinging beauty.

Learning the new words helped me a lot for a day. In fact, I learned 26 words in one day when I had the most moments of "down". Tragically, I learnt only 26 words in total because my brain fizzed out and spluttered to a premature death after trying to remember all 26 words, and it is with much compunction that I announce I cannot actually remember all 26.

I also thought about reading the dictionary.
It is a good form of distraction and reading it makes me feel smart. Not wise. Just smart.

I ended up not doing it because I am a hopeless fat piece of lump who would rather stuff her face with Macs than to make herself intellectually wise. (humor intended, I am not that self-deprecating)

Then I started to think about my life and to analyze the whole situation in full.

Have I tried my best? I think I did.

Was there any other things that I could have done? Not without over-compromising on my behalf, which won't be healthy in the long run.

So I scrolled through my own Instagram (that level of narcissism!) and spotted this from long ago:

Picture Credit

This aptly summarizes my new way of looking at my problems (and at my life).

There are always things that matter to me, but I can't "control" all of them, which means that no matter how much energy, time and resources I focus on them, it may not turn out the way I want it to. In the same vein, I realized how I have absolutely no say in what other people (be it your significant other or once-significant other or even your friends) are going to do or say, so the only I can do is to not let what they are doing affect my own well-being. Which also means that I have to look past all of it by accepting that this is life, and simply said, we move on.

Things I can control is easier in theory, but harder in practice. Some things are easier to be controlled, such as how much effort I put into each area of my work; how dedicated am I to my students both as a mentor and as a teacher; how much practice I need for inline-skating before I go past the stage of being a noob. Emotions are a bit harder, but not completely unable to be rationalized. Rationalizing things puts them into perspective and allow me to come to terms with things that I have no influence over, and to let go of things that I cannot change or improve.

In the period of "me-time", I came to realize that being alone doesn't mean you have to be lonely. Arguably, there are moments where I wish I have more company, but I also came to terms with another important thing:

"No one can forever be here for you. You have to be contented and enough with just having yourself."

The previous time this happened it was during holiday. I had all my friends to be with me and tide me through the hard period by allowing yourself to forget about the unpleasant among their upbeat company.

This time it is lonelier.

It is not the loneliest yet, but it is definitely lonelier because there is school and everyone is extremely busy. Hell, even in my malfunctioning days, I had to function to cope with school work and my other responsibilities. I tried hard to compartmentalize, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

But it is also in this solitude that I felt that I matured. I realized that I was capable of handling crisis better alone, though I still have support from my friends. I also realized that what others can do for you is very limited if you aren't doing anything to help yourself. They can give you advice, they can enlighten you, they can cheer you up by a (rather unfair) disparagement of your unfortunate target, but ultimately, I had to lift myself out of the circumstances.

Yours friends and family provide 20% of the support.
80% is up to yourself.

I realize in such circumstances the easiest way to deal with things is to see ourselves as victims in a situation or unfortunate people suffering from a poorly planned (or totally unplanned) situation. It is easier to push the blame to other people and wallow in self pity and bash the other party by sharing our stories with our closest friends in our own skewed, self-victimizing perspective to hear them agree with you how bad the person is, and how fortunate you are to be without them.

I am not ashamed to say that I did that too.

It is one way to cope. Not the best way, and definitely not a way that helps me mature and improve with time.

I also try the ostrich method of telling everyone around me to not bring up the situation, either by pleading them or warning them.

"I don't want to hear about it," I stressed, "I don't want to think about it."

That didn't quite work out either, though it is a good method to adopt if you are in extreme pain but don't have the luxury of time to deal with the pain, blocking it out temporarily is a good way.

Then I went into a period of self-blaming. Had I done enough? Had I tried enough? Was I the one who cause things to be the way it is today? What could I have done better? Should I just shamelessly hold on anyway?

This period is harder to cope with, and definitely need much more rationalizing and support from wiser seniors. My parents, my tutor, my friends were wonderful in helping me to see things from a clearer perspective rather from one that puts all the blame onto the self - that is exceedingly unhealthy.

Putting things into perspective means to see what one could have done better and what cannot actually be achieved through one's own efforts. It also means recognizing that the other party is made up of their strengths and weakness, good traits and bad traits and being able to acknowledge and appreciate both at the end of the day.

It is too often in love that we see only the good traits and in endings that we console ourselves by seeing only the bad traits.

It took me a while to understand and appreciate that both exist in a person.
When I did, I came to terms with things.

I came to terms with myself too - no more self-blaming, and no more self-victimizing.
I came to understand Great Expectations even better:

"I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me."

- Charles Dickens 

Alex Fussel (I am quoting you like you are a master of philosophy) once told me, "Don't focus on the emotions and the bad experience, but on what you have learnt from this experience, and how you can become a better person from this experience."

(I think I rephrased what he said to make it sound quote-worthy, heh)

In short, love irrationally. Let got rationally.

It has come to my awareness that all of the photos of my past advertorials and sponsored posts and personal posts have vanished and been replaced by an awkward "no image to display" picture.

This is terrible.

What is more terrible is that my computer has just crashed recently and in it is a backup copy of most these photos.

What can I say?

It never rains, but when it pours, I get cats and dogs.

*resigned shrug of shoulders*

It is invariably this way: I try my best to hold onto everyone who is important to me, but they all end up being angry with me anyway.

Why?

Because they still feel neglected at the end of the day.

I am trying really.

I am trying my best to make everyone around me happy and pleased and un-neglected to the point that I am neglected my own feelings and my own issues.

I made time to meet my friends who are down and need me even though I have tests to study for.

I made time to placate my mom or please her even though she is angry with me half the time and disappointed the other half. I have no idea how not to disappoint her. Does making her happy means a complete sacrifice of my individual contentment? I feel that I am compromising as much as I can.

I am really trying.

I am bottling up everything that hurts inside me and trying to be positive all the time, maybe not for myself but for those around me. I know that nobody likes to be around a soursop so I try my best to be cheery for myself as well.

I am not bitter. I am merely feeling very defeated.

I already said I was sorry whether I was right or I was wrong unfailingly. I'm saying sorry because right and wrong doesn't matter when it comes to my closest family or friends, yet things don't get amended.

I have the limitations to how much I can balance too.

I am really sorry if anyone still feels neglected, but when you do, please - just please think for a moment that I am already putting you in front of myself.

Expectations

Expectations are dreadful things.

You don't begin with expectations, or maybe you do, we wouldn't know.

My point is that expectations are usually created in you.

They are created slowly, gradually but definitely through repeated positive actions that make you expect more.

Because each time a smaller expectation is fulfilled, a bigger expectation is created. Not consciously. You may not even realize it until the said subject fails to fulfill that unexpressed expectation, and you feel disappointed.

Disappointment is a terrible, terrible thing. Even more so than expectations.

Logically, neither expectations nor disappointment can actually be fully justified. (I would go as far as to call them unwarranted emotions, but I still do feel them from time to time.)

So how are expectations created? Like I say, it begins with a small expectation.

Creation and Ultimate Destruction of Expectations (click to enlarge, I drew it!)

To summarize the drawing, the fulfillment of a smaller expectation leads to the creation of a greater expectation.

Por ejemplo, you score 60 marks in a test. Your parents say it is pretty good (says no parent ever in real life, but this is make believe), but now they want you to improve to 70. And you did. The next test you would need to score 80 to fulfill their expectation or you will be termed "stagnation". That is the creation of expectations at work.

Anyways, my main point here is to not let yourself fall into the trap of expecting or hoping excessively.

Also, it would be wise to occasionally lower other's expectations of yourself by screwing up.

Like, what I am doing now.

You are probably expecting a really cool post, but it is actually kinda screwed up.

Heh.

In the

In The

In the recesses of my mind, I think about you.

Not once, or twice. Multiple times.

In the vague moments before sleep, I dream about you.

The prodding of dreams tell the truth.

In the spaces of my heartbeats, I miss you more.

The palpitations tell me that I am incomplete.

In the pauses between my breathing, I love you.

Then it resumes, and I am once more normal.

(50 second poetry: yep, it is probably poorly written because it took me less than a minute to write it)

This is how...

This is how I learn to be independent
In the accumulated moments that you didn't care.

This is how I grow used to isolation
When I don't have you around for company.

This is how I grew up
When I call and the dial tone rings then dies

This is how much I need you
And only to realize that you don't need me back.

This is how I stopped believing,
When promises are mere words spoken and forgotten.

This is how I forget,
When there is nothing enough to remember.

This is how we all fall apart,
When I am always here but you are never there.

Inferior

Inferiority. You don't feel it all the time, just like how you don't feel sad or under-accomplished all the time.

It strikes you at the moments you least expect it to.

The effects are lingering and pervasive.

It makes you question the validity of your existence, and the basis of your daily confidence.

It makes you wonder about the things you don't usually ponder, and look twice into the mirror and still think to yourself, "I am not good enough."

It makes you afraid of meeting another: could they see the fear behind your mask of certainty; the tremor behind your beams; the insecurity behind your straightened back and relaxed shoulders?

It makes you think less of yourself (than you already do).

It makes you wonder if you should indulge or skip the next meal. It makes you vulnerable to the views of other people that should have never mattered. It makes you consider criticism (that may or may not be valid), and agree with them, because in the depth of your consciousness, these are the same criticisms that secretly haunt you in your dreams.

Inferiority. It makes you question why you are loved and worry about the sustainability of that love.

Why?

Because in the abyss of momentary inferiority, you are never enough.

Inferiority. We keep it at bay with our conscious logical minds and we strut confidently in our amours of sanity and reassurances. Yet it creeps in every now and then, like slow acting toxins, its effects insidious and damaging.

Inferiority doesn't strike me that often.

But when it does, I am nobody.

Bioré UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel

Sponsored Review

Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel

Singapore is one of the best places to live in around the world because it is one of the safest, cleanest as well as most food-delicious places ever! However, there is of course always one key gripe.

The sun is too bright, making the weather hot all year round.

It is extremely easy to get sun burnt here if you stay out for extended periods under the grueling heat, and in case you didn't know, an overexposure to the sun can actually be detrimental to your skin! In the long run, it causes skin problems like wrinkles, freckles, spots, increased aging and sagging!!

Yes, you should feel horrified!

This is precisely why the use of sunblock is so extremely important, especially to us who live on such a sunny island. I know many of us are either to lazy to use sunblock or we find it too sticky, too oily, too thick thus making the skin unbreathable.

So, what if I tell you that there is a sunblock that DOES NOT have any of the above problems?*

*Based on writer's experience; may differ from user to user.

Bioré UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel 

Benefits of Bioré UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel 

That's right, it is the new Bioré UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel!! Not only does it have a SPF of 50+ that provides us with maximum protection against harmful UVA and UVB rays from the sun, it also has a watery texture that spreads easily and evenly on the skin, giving a matte finish!

Apart from using it on the arms and neck, it is also perfect to be used as a makeup base as it brightens and whitens the skin, giving us a bright glowing look without our face appearing to be too oily!

Let me try to show you the before and the after:

Before application of sun block

Application

After application

Woe betide the limitations of my iPhone camera and its abysmal capturing abilities. However, if you look closely between the hand (yes the hand, not the arm) of the first picture and last picture, you can tell that the post-usage hand became fairer, and looks strangely moisturized. Yep. So in this aspect, I agree that the sunblock is moisturizing and also has whitening effects!

Perhaps one of the best things about this sunblock is that it is suitable for use both on the body and on the face, which means that just buying this one sunblock is enough for your getaway to any sunny place on planet earth!

Personally, I have been using this sunblock frequently since I received it, and I find it surprisingly comfortable on application! Unlike some of the sunblocks that I have tried last time which may either have the common "sunblock" scent or increase the oiliness of the skin, this one smells refreshing and leaves the skin matte for at least 4 hours (for myself) before my skin starts getting oily. Logically, even if I don't use the sunblock, my skin will still start to get oily in that amount of time, so we can't really pin the blame on the sunblock!

If you guys are interested in the product, you will be pleased to know that it is available at all leading pharmacies, hyper and super marts, departmental stores and beauty stores! For just $18.90, you will get a bottle of 90ml sunblock to use for a very long time!

So what are you waiting for, remember to protect your skin starting today~!