Wednesday, March 30, 2011

In a nutshell

My mind is experiencing insane amounts of turbulence at the moment, soaring with my head held high one minute then suddenly plunging down to my knees the next, unfortunately for me, this will continue to happen till next week the latest.

When I summarise in a nutshell what 2011 has brought upon me, it sounds pretty amazing. We're are just over one quater into the year and on one hand it seems like I don't know what I'm doing or heading with my life, but when I sit down with someone and they ask me how I am with me naturally proceeding to tell them what has been happening in my day to day, many people are amazed, almost envious, because when you summarise your life into a paragraph, you actually have experienced/achieved a lot without you even realising.

Until now, I've been told that I regard people too highly. When I meet someone who I find very accomplished and self driven at such an early stage in their life, I instantly become jealous, immediately putting this person on a pedestal and making a desperate attempt in climbing and reaching to their standard. Sadly, I feel like I can never climb that high and without fail, fall most of the time, sometimes even on my face and it's painful, physically and emotionally. When I find myself at the bottom again and again, I get upset and begin to wonder why I am not able to achieve greatness? I continually try my best but I continuously fail in reaching the finish line first.

I wonder what routes these people have taken to get to where there are now and if there are any short cuts because in my perspective, it seems impossible for somebody like me to get to the finish line. But what I've learnt in the past month, there are shortcuts that people know and do use to their advantage, but not everyone is privileged to know them, let alone using it to take you down the fast lane.

These shortcuts are people and I have had to learn the hard way to reluctantly accept the fact that it isn't what you know, it's who you know. I could be working just as hard, if not more than the person next to me, but find myself barely moving far while he/she who may not be as capable moves ahead because of their connections with people. Experiencing this is very disheartening and often puts me in a mindset where I feel like I won't be able to go far with myself because I'm not fortunate enough to have access to 'powerful' people.

But there's only one thing to do if you're someone like me. After days of self pity and doubt of the future, the only thing you can do is to try again. Because while most things is about who you know, there's also a thing called perseverance. My dictionary's description says 'continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty' and really, what other option do you have other than to surrender and fail?

I do put people on pedestals, I do see them in a bright light that shines behind them and I constantly convince myself the grass is always greener on the other side. But it's not always the case, while in 3 months I have experienced heartbreak, falling outs, horrible work ethic and unfair treatment, after going through all the crying and wondering why this was happening to me and if I really deserved all of this, one day, a door opened and guided me out of the darkness to where I am now and since then, more doors have continued to open and it's almost become too overwhelming, to the point where I don't know which one to go into!

I look back now to when I would previously put myself through monotonous repetitive routine and allowed myself to be treated unfairly by people who abused power even in an uninspiring environment just to get by. Without me realising, I had almost let it suck me in and loose myself in what was clearly something no one would ever be proud to be affiliated with. It wasn't until I was attacked by malicious behaviour and personal revenge which pulled me out of what really was a dead end and throw me back out into the world and since then, I have been given dream opportunities, new friends, priceless experience and connections. Yes! In a short time, I have been able to experience living my dream and finally feeling proudly accomplished and I've done it all by myself, without any shortcuts.

The funny thing is, I did not realise all the things I've been through and what I've been able to achieve since then as something amazing until I was catching up with a friend, who looked at me with envious eyes and amazement, making me think back to what I had just told her and realise wow, life and change really does sound amazing when said in a nutshell.

Note: I have my eyes on a specific door, to which I have been giving the opportunity to sell myself and hopefully be offered a chance to become apart of something really exciting, hence the turbulence, please put me out of my misery and call me with good news!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

A couple of months later

I miss what we had. The time where we were able to laugh and be together without any complication. You all came at a time when I thought no one would and was happy to have felt a sense of belonging. I was very happy to be in your company and in a very short time, I had grown very close to all of you, like family.

But things change and it's not what it used to be anymore. It feels like everything has been reversed and I'm back to where I started. When I look at everything now, it feels like I'm standing from the outside looking in and in turn, I have pushed away because it's hard for me to pretend that things are normal when it's not anymore and really, I am a little annoyed as it feels like I got the short end of the straw in this whole mess. I'm sure it doesn't affect some, so it makes me a little embarrassed to take this to heart.

I guess its the way it is now because it can't be helped. I miss the way we used to be, it was very short lived and honestly, I didn't expect it to end the way it did, I didn't expect it to end so soon.

--

I wrote this a couple of months back. Didn't post it at the time as it would've been extremely obvious who I was directing this to and why.

I decided to post it now, a couple of months later because even though I still feel the same from when I initially wrote this, what's different is I'm not bitter anymore.

I'm not exhausted anymore by all the frustration of thinking what if? What if I have done things differently, what if I hadn't of done that, what if I was this or what if I was that? What if it didn't end up they way it did? All these questions I didn't have answers for and most importantly, never will.

Because what happened, happened. What's done is done and somewhere along the line, without being fully conscious of it, I accepted it. I stopped wishing for a past to come back in all its blissful glory and reprise itself as my present again, instead there was a realization of how naïve it was of me to ever fantasize about the impossible possibility and being completely out of line to ask certain people to bring back a time they were incapable of achieving.

Because no one can bring back the past and I wished at the time that I was more appreciative of the dynamic I had managed to fit in to and become apart of. But I don't see myself as an outsider anymore because I realize now this isn't true. While the dynamic is broken and slightly awkward for some, I still hold my relationships to some individuals close to me, individually. In doing this rather than shutting out completely, I have received the same love back.

So I still have love and support from them but it's a little different from then to now and I've finally come to terms with realizing that it's not such a bad thing. In trying my absolute hardest not to take the easier route by pushing people away, in turn I have had them reward me with their ongoing love and friendship. I'm glad to still have that. It's not exactly how it was back then, it's different now, maybe better in the long term, less naïve, perhaps a little more mature, but the best thing to come out of this is definitely the knowledge of which friendships are the most genuine.

But thank you for being apart of my life once upon a time and thank you even more if you're still around. You're support means the world to me.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Cheesy cringe

Yes, you caught me red handed! I am a culprit of having exhibited large amounts of 'Public Displays of Affection' to the world. Now it is your queue to cringe and tell me to get a room. But why must you cringe?

I finished my internship for the day, 30 minutes from your usual 5pm finish time because I'm just that awesome at finishing my work a whole lot faster than your average graphic designer, oops, getting sidetracked, anyway, made my way up Church St and headed for the station to go home. I then decided whether to hang back for half an hour to meet with Albert since I haven't seen him in awhile due to his full time hours and yes, I did miss him a lot (cheese cheese cheese), so gave him a call and luck had it our way that the train I was on was the train that he usually catches to go home from work. Thank you cupid!

So after a whole lot of confusion on which carriage I was on, second carriage front or back end? A bunch of call fails and messages coming through late due to no reception when going through the city loop, we finally reunited! This is where the PDA kicks in, hugs and kisses, cuddles and a lot of puppy noises (also in our case, a few made up words and noises that we created expressing our current emotions) and finally, more kisses.

I was lost in our own little world (cringe cringe cringe) and this extreme display of affection lasted until he had to leave to go home leaving me on the train. That was when I realised, having left my world of a gaussian blurred vision and a whole lot of smooches, I was back in the real world suddenly realising how piercingly silent it was on the train. Horribly embarrassed, I hid my face behind my MX for the rest of the train ride to what I assume were people giving me disgusted looks.

But why should I be embarrassed? I know it isn't pleasant watching two people violently make out with each other tongues for long periods of time, but I assure you, we looked NOTHING like that. To everybody else, they probably assumed we just started dating because of all the bear hugs and puppy love that was oozing out of us and I'm guessing the puppy noises didn't help either. But I'd like to think there's a difference between seeing two people attacking each others tongues in a moment of lust and two people smothering each other in cuddles and smooches in the name of love.

Why is it when something horrible happens right infront of our eyes, no one cringes. Instead we can't keep our eyes away from it. We keep staring and we don't blink. Don't you remember back in high school, whenever there was a 'punch on', everybody would run just to go to have a look. Whenever there is a car accident on the road, people would slow down just to have a look. A person lying unconscious on the city floor with paramedics at aid is usually accompanied by a crowd of curious eyes.

Why is it that we are so fascinated by the image of violence and devastation, but most of our society has a problem in witnessing public displays of affection? Isn't the form of love something EVERYBODY wishes to possess and ultimately lives for? Love is the only thing worth living for and in its purest form, it's something that I find rare to have, let alone witness. I'm not just talking about love between two people, I'm also referring to love between friendships, our mentors, complete selfless love from our parents (the only thing that makes me believe in the term 'forever') and love for ourselves.

But for this rant, I'm going to have to specify the love I have with Albert. I hope you like cheese, because yes I do love him quite a bit and I'm not embarrassed with showing it. I'm very proud that even though we have been in this little thing called a relationship for a pretty long time now, we continue to act like we're 16 and on our first date every time, well most of the time, we're not perfect obviously.

I'm sorry if you were a victim of my public displays of affection, wait, no, I'm not sorry about that. I apologies if my public displays of affection with my boyfriend has made you feel uncomfortable, but... well, get used to it, HAH! Keep cringing if you like, I'll just think that you're cringing because maybe on the inside, you're a little bit jealous!

Though, I can not wait till we're 80 years old, wrinkles and all, walking around the city parks at 0.5km/ph, hand in hand, hugs and kisses and finally people will stop to look and stare and this time for the right reasons, that love is a beautiful thing to witness.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

save me

I'm usually pretty vague with my blog post's, not really gearing the post towards anyone specific but rather, I talk about how I feel about the current situation. I can't really with this one as it is about myself and how anti social I have become.

I have become so horribly anti social. I haven't stayed at home consecutively this long in years. Usually, I just use my home to sleep and as soon as I am awake, it'll take me 45 minutes max to leave the house again and I'm usually home the following day just to recharge before repeating the same cycle. But lately these days, I have been hiding away in my room, even re arranging the furniture (which I've never done before in my life oddly) to turn it into some sort of fortress of solitude for myself.

At first, I was happy to finally have some down time for myself, to be able to clean out my room, re arrange my wardrobe, sort things into categories, basically acquiring an OCD with my room. If you know me well enough, you would find this mind blowingly strange and out of character.

I wasn't worried until today. I realised I have been giving myself the excuse of not going out lately because I simply can't afford it due to recent experiences. But for a long time, I have attended every gig Albert has played for roughly about 8 - 9 months, even if I was the only person watching them, I'd still be there. But today/last night, I told him I wasn't going to his gig tonight purely because "I just don't feel like it."

I have become too comfortable hiding away in my room, I struggle when people ask me to come out, sometimes even bailing on them purely because I just don't have the motivation to get myself out of the house anymore. I have become afraid of large crowds and making the effort to hold conversations with people.

I was someone that thrived on connecting with people and social events, but now I've become a coward who is just too afraid to leave my room and would rather spend the night alone, not because I want to, but because I've led myself into believing it's easier this way. Save me. Even if I turn you down, please don't let me. Help me get out of this hole I've dug myself in.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

pain and joy


Life is hard and sometimes beautiful - this fact is a theme that runs through the beautiful animation called The Illusionist.

A story of pain and joy, reward and loss, a magician had suffered great loss in his life, but it did not make him bitter or cruel; it made him kind and giving and even when he had invested so much love in the girl for no motive other than to GIVE; he was ready to give her the moment to pursue her youthful dreams of young love. As in all experiences of life - love and relationships are transient which I find The Illusionist portrays very beautifully.

The ending to this hand drawn animated film really affected me, without spoiling, it led me to wonder, is it true? If it is, how sad and cruel is the world and the people living in it, myself included. We're letting something really beautiful and enchanting fade into the face of cold modernization.

abbey lee


I love her. She inspires me in a lot of ways.