EPTI fondly recall my first blog. It was around around 11pm or so, that I decided that I could no longer have all the angst pent up inside of me. I needed a place to vent. Remembering that I have seen many other people on the site pouring themselves out as well, I did the same. Resolving to get some advice from TLers and hoping that I would feel a slight bit more comfortable with myself, I got out of bed and started typing away.
If you were so inclined to take a peek at my first blog, you will realise that I had a bunch of inane, baseless generalisations that I spewed out. Judging people and perhaps myself more harshly was and still is a problem. I happen to have a massive inferiority complex and tend to be quite insecure. Some people may not completely understand what the world is like to someone like me, so allow me to elaborate.
Whenever I'm living, doing something, I act based on how I want to be perceived. Sounds quite normal, right? Well, I'm convinced that the major difference is that I have a voice in my head ( Very subconscious-esque, but I'm aware of it in the moment ) going "What would -insert somebody here- think of this?" Sometimes it'll be the girl I'm infatuated with. Will she frown upon this action? Sometimes it'll be friends from school, particularly two of them who will probably read this blog. Will the consider me to be of lesser worth if I were to do this? I consider these two friends of mine to be superior to me in every way conceivable if they were one collective consciousness.
Allow me to go on a tangent and talk about these two friends. One, I will refer to as X. He is a rather artistic individual, pompous at times, eccentric, and has multiple personalities that he assumes to what I think is to hide from reality. Academically capable, but dismisses praise of his prowess in the manner of that douchebag who always scores amazingly well and cries out in class lamenting how low his score actually is. The main problem I have with X is that sometimes I am unable to tell if he's being genuine or not. Whenever we converse, I sense an air of grandeur from him and he more often than not comes off as condescending. After making a statement, he will usually reply with a curt "Yeah." and nod his head. Make three or four more statements trying to prompt a longer, more thoughtful response from him - "Yeah, yeah okay. So what's your point telling me this?".
The second friend I will refer to as Y. There is not much to say about Y because to me, he always keeps his emotions in check and words of him always seem to be drained of their blood and left to dry under the Sun for a week. Talking, there is a severe lack of passion in any topic. If anything, the only thing that does not make him appear as a robot is the one emotion that he cannot seem to control. Frustration. There always seems to be something eating away at him. Whatever it may be, god knows.
Some traits that X and Y share is that they are both, in my eyes, intellectuals. They may be pseudo-intellectuals in the eyes of someone much smarter than I and they, but to me they are what they are. Overly cynical, and with a superiority complex that they may not know exists.
Now that I'm done with that, let me continue. One concept I'm trying to swallow is that there will be somebody better than me, and I cannot do anything about it. I have to accept that there are going to be people that I am going to meet on the bus, on the train, in a restaurant, in school, just about everywhere and anywhere, that are better than I am. This is in no way bastardizing my very existence, but a way of acceptance of what I am. To give a relevant example, I take a public bus to school everyday there is, and I see many students who attend an elite school and are academically superior to me. I feel as if they are judging me because of the school I attend (made obvious because of my uniform. Students have to wear uniforms here). Childish as this may be, and I can remind myself as many times as I want that it doesn't matter, but it is hard to forget all the indoctrination of Singaporean culture. You're bad academically? Well fuck you, because you're worthless and you've failed your family.
Of course, I have realised that a person's value is much more than what numbers are letters are printed on a piece of paper that has his name on it. So what if I'm not good enough to handle 12 subjects in school or win some national competition? I will be content with a middle-class lifestyle with a job that I love. Is that not what we want in life? All I want is to have a loving wife, kids, an adequate home, a job I like, and some spare change for the occasional vacation.
One coping mechanism that I'm playing around with recently to deal with inferiority is reminding myself how insignificant everything is in the grand scheme of things. I look up to the vast cerulean sky above, and perhaps some patches of clouds will prevent me from getting a full view, and think about what lies beyond. I look at the horizon and think that I'm actually in a sphere that is gravitating around another immensely bigger sphere. I fawn over the perceived curve of the sky, with the Earth being a sphere and all, and revel in the fact that with the plains of the Earth already being so vast and huge, how big the entire Universe is in comparison.
I like to believe that I've made a few friends on TL for the time I've been here. Off the top of my head, OpticalShot is one. ohsea.toc and Plexa, are others. Be it through private messages or open discourse in my blogs, it feels great to have some sort of connection with another person. Even if it's through electronic data that is very much lifeless.
I would like to thank the amazing TLers for being part of the community. Except if your only purpose on this site is to post blatant baseless hate and to troll, then go away please. I would like to thank the moderators for doing their best to keep this forum nice and clean. I would like to thank Nazgul and R1CH for making all of this possible.
Team
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OH I DID'NT JUST DO THAT!
Anyway, I hope all of you have enjoyed this blog. Here's to many more!
Anyway, I hope all of you have enjoyed this blog. Here's to many more!
