Procrastinating before my assignment because I feel too much

Sometimes I think I'm pretty chill, other times - such as today - I tend to overdramatize.

There shouldn't be any difference between these two people, but there is. One is an entitled douche, the other is a beloved - albeit bossy - cousin. I willingly put my pride aside when it comes to the latter but with the douche, I feel like my pride has been forcefully taken from me.

I have yet to experience romantic heartbreak, but I can't imagine anything feeling worse than having my pride and dignity stripped from me. Beggars are human too.

Not that I'm trying to belittle people who beg for a living by comparing my family to them, but in a way we are all beggars trying to stay alive in this world.

I do believe that nobody can make me feel inferior unless I let them. But I'm not strong all the time. It's hard to stay upbeat when it's an internal struggle just to feel sad. I feel guilty when I'm wallowing in self-pity because there are people with no drinking water out there and here I am, wailing about my pride. Sure, everybody's self-centered, but sometimes I wonder if I'm too much of a narcissist like my two best friends always say I am. (And yes, I am being a little sarcastic here because I am still hurt that they say that to my face. I could defend myself but that's being narcissistic too.)

What does the universe want from me? I just want to be able to go to concerts and eat nice food and have good company but money gets in the way of everything. So does pride. Damned things.

Blood

My heart broke back in my [even] younger days when my mother called me during class, crying her throat hoarse. All because her pride had been trampled on by a judgmental stranger. And I wept, for her pride and my own, because what daughter would be okay with being helpess while her mother bawls hopelessly?

That was the day when I realized fully how much it broke me. It being my dad's mistakes and my complacency and my mom's wilful ignorance.

It got to the point where I was so jaded that I laughed at their splashes of paint and called them artistic attempts.

You could say I was positive and unwilling for life to keep me down but now I feel like I'm not as hopeful as I once was. I don't know what's gotten into me. When I'm with friends I feel perfectly fine but the times when I go all broody and sick of life are becoming much too frequent.

And I feel guilt.
It weighs me down.
I spend my money on frivolous, selfish satisfactions. Like concerts, CDs, good food, brithdays, movies, etc.
It'd be prudent of me to put that money towards paying off my home, but the mere thought of passing up a concert of my beloved bands makes me want to sob in anguish.

So I'm perpetually in between wanting to blame my family and myself. I know I shouldn't blame anything or anyone and that I should make the best of my situation and be all glass half-full but sometimes I want to smash that freaking glass against a wall and hope nobody steps on the shards. Because then I'd be blamed for real.

That doesn't even make any sense.

Brunch, dunch, linner, dinper, supner

Dinner time came and went and I hadn't eaten a bite. Naturally, I'd started whining. But the project at hand was important so I'd stopped myself from grabbing dinner (also, to save money).

When we ended our discussion, it was already 9pm. I reiterated my whining about our lack of dinner and my Malay friend commented, "Is it a Chinese thing? That you must have dinner at dinner time? Because I realized my other Chinese friends are the same."

Which led me to ponder: is it really a cultural difference, or just disparities in our upbringing?

I replied without much thinking, "Maybe it's because my family has always made me eat at certain timings?" To which my other groupmate rebuked (albeit jokingly), "Eh what are you trying to say? Our families don't feed us?"

For most Chinese families [that I know of] it has always been this way. We had to eat breakfast in the morning; lunch at lunch time; dinner during dinner time. Any meal skipped or had in between those timings would be considered "不三不四" ("not three not four" which basically means "neither here nor there").

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that Malay families are more relaxed about meal times. For example, my groupmate's family wouldn't get angry at him if he ate lunch later than they did; they'd just be chill about it. Most of my Chinese friends' families (including my own) would throw a bitch fit. It's a crazy thing to be angry about, really, but I'm just so used to it that when I'm out with my friends, I feel compelled to get food into my system when meal times hit. (Yes, I am aware that that is also just my personality.)

It's interesting to note that this could be a cultural difference and not just a personal thing. Makes me feel like less of a glutton, probably.

But I have been adopting this "eat when you can" philosophy instead of my usual "eat when it's time" recently, and it drives my mom mad. On Sundays when I wake up in the late afternoon - too late for lunch, too early for dinner - my mom is so livid at me that she goes off on a tirade about how I'm killing myself and at the same time getting fat because I screwed up my metabolism. I just go, "LOL Ma. You're overreacting."

Not a smart thing to say to an overreacting mother.

So now I have learnt to wake up at a time that's still acceptable for lunch. Or dinner. Nothing in between. It's like a minefield of meal times.

Exhaustion

Defensiveness is a bitch. I never knew that being defensive would lead to so many problems but it has, and I can't help it. It stems from a psychological issue of feeling inferior or having low self-esteem or just the feeling of being judged. However, most times the other party doesn't even mean anything but one takes it out of context based on one's insecurity/guilt and things spiral out of control.

I may not be making sense but it's perfectly clear in my head. Human emotion sucks.

Reading

There are more than twenty books in my room, waiting to be consumed by my idle mind, but I find myself browsing The Book Depository and adding more to my wishlist.

The one book that I really crave is Neil Gaiman's Ocean At The End Of The Lane. It has to be a certain edition though. So far it's only at Kinokuniya that I've seen this edition but I'm still undecided because it feels superfluous when there are cheaper editions online. This is a purely superficial dilemma.

I can't help but sigh when I run my fingers along the jagged pages and feel the weight of the words in my hands.

Fuck it, I am going to buy that edition and continue being broke. I've put it off since July and there is NO LOGICAL REASON FOR THAT.

Done

Disheartened
Dejected
Disillusioned
Deflated
Dumb
Denial
Disenchanted
Demoralized
Disaster

But I'm on the up and up, I swear.

Julie's 21st

The party that my secondary school friends have been talking about for months has finally came and left. It was really fun to karaoke with Julie's mom and aunts because the songs they sang were my favorite kind to sing: oldies.

And they had moves, too! I bet they went to the discotheque a lot when they were younger.

Afterwards I kind of just wanted to chill out at the hotel room, pig out on ice cream and talk about boys, but Julie was the birthday girl and she wanted to club. So we walked to Clarke Quay and the best thing happened: this dude outside Attica told us it was free entry.

My empty wallet cried in ecstasy and relief.

So we went in, and the music for once was legitimately good. After a while we went upstairs and the music was even better. Nothing gets me higher than good beats.

The night ended with the requisite McDonald's breakfast at 5:30am and the rest ot the morning was spent regaling stories of what had happened in the club to Sophia and Anzhu, who'd stayed in the hotel room to do homework, the poor things.

What cracks me up is that out of all the different races of guys in the club, the one that I ended up dancing with was Malay. HOW APT, UNIVERSE.

I don't know what to say that will make you happy. It's like you guys always want so much from me and I'm a bad friend if I don't automatically put in the effort without being told.

Fine, I'll admit it. I'm a bad friend, and a horrible human being.

That doesn't excuse me from my behavior.

I just need you to know that it takes both sides to create friction. It's not always just my fault. I just don't want us to be fighting over each other's tone and intended meanings so I apologize on my part. Then it just seems like you take my apologies and chalk it up to yet another Cheryl screw-up for your scorecard.

I know it's just me feeling like a sub-par person that's making me think this way. You're just doing what a friend does by telling me my shortcomings and helping me to be a better person.

But I have a lot of shortcomings. So much that it seems like every day I'm fighting my inner demons and the external ones that say stupid things and make ill-judged assumptions. It's getting too much for me to take. Hence some days I need a reprieve from you because you get mean at times and my ego is much too bruised by myself to handle criticism from you. Even if it's deserved.

No one can make me feel inferior unless I let them. But sometimes I let the whole world because self-pity is a guilty pleasure.

Double standards

I realized quite a while ago that I am selective about secondhand cigarette smoke. If the person is a friend of mine, I'll be fine with any amount of smoke. But if it's a stranger or someone I detest, it feels as if I'm suffocating under the high risk of lung cancer.

So one should be assured of my affections when I mill around taking in one's secondhand smoke.

That is all.