It is cliched to turn to a blog when you think you are sad, but I don't know what to do.

I have been trying to trace back my footsteps, trying to pinpoint the exact moment or decision that has brought me here, to this very moment. What made me decide to stay here, anyway? What phase of my life has shaped me into becoming the shit-scared, ambition-lacking, messed-up lost person I am now?

Have you ever suddenly realized that you have become someone you didn't think you were, and people you thought were worse than you are actually better?

They were showing Fight Club on tv, and there's this scene, the one when Tyler kisses the narrator's hand and then pours lye over it. And there's Edward Norton screaming in agony, and Tyler Durden's trying to make him see. "Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you".

Things have not gone my way, and now I've become someone who doesn't bother trying. I am chicken shit a lot of the time now, and screwing up has become expectation. I never thought I'd be someone who'd roll over and play dead.

You see, I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I realize that I cannot think that my continuous string of failures are acts of punishment by God. I realize I must take responsibility for my own outcome and not blame it on external factors, divine or not. I am supposed to be aware that my problems are actually okay, and I will get through this like I get through everything, and things will not seem as dramatic as I paint them to be in my head. Two hours from, two days from now, two weeks from now, two months from now, two years from now, things could and will be different. I am supposed to take charge of my own misery and bounce back with a fierce resilience. I am supposed to get up and do something, goddamnit. And above all, I am supposed to get over myself and just do the best I can.

But fuck all that for the moment, and let me get this off my chest. I don't have a job. Six and a half months as a graduate and no fucking clue what I'm going to do. I have a PR application pending on a medical exam that just won't come together, thanks to blood pressure issues I seem to have acquired. I stopped trying somewhere along the nth rejection, and I don't know how I could have lost all sense of confidence, in myself and my ability to do anything right. I have tried to keep this in, because I know I don't have the right to complain, not until I can say with absolute certainty that I have done everything that I can, but as a result I have never felt more alone than I do now.

It's silly, isn't it? If it wasn't this, I bet it would be something else. In an alternate universe, I have a job I'm miserable in, one that would still result in high blood pressure, and a bunch of co-workers who tolerate me, and maybe I'd be fed-up with how I do my work and be pressured by my boss such that I lose confidence in myself and come up with this exact same post, only in different terms.

We all have to hit bottom some time.

Should I give up with this disastrous endeavor? Cut the chord, accept defeat. Sell off furniture, apply somewhere back home, explain this 6 month gap as a failed attempt, laugh it off, ruefully explain it didn't work out when someone asks. Consider all of my parents' money spent sunk into an investment that flopped, start work somewhere new, put aside minuscule amounts for them each month in an attempt to even begin to say how sorry I am to have wasted their time and money. How sorry I am that I wasn't as good as I made them think I was, that I overestimated my ability to make it here. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

I understand I'll be okay. This is unemployment and a severe lack of self-esteem, not the end of the world. I'm sorry for writing it here like part of some celebrity tell-all autobiography. I just feel like shit at the moment.

One thing that bothers me these days is how angry I can get. It comes swiftly and with an intensity that is disturbing, when did I get so bitter? And as of late it seems to manifest itself more often through physical action, through gritted teeth and clenched fists and a desire to destroy. I punch walls and kick bed frames and slap surfaces, something to ruin, something to hurt.

**

Guess what? Tadi aku keluar pergi makan dengan kawan aku. Bila aku balik rumah, tengok-tengok mak aku dah siap lipat baju aku yang baru basuh. Terharu siot. Clean laundry, all folded and ready! Magical.

Thoughts

Thoughts, thoughts.

The Tour de France is on at the moment, I stumbled across SBS broadcasting it live a couple nights ago while tv-surfing before bed. And while I am absolutely lost in regards to competitive cycling, it was mesmerizing. I don't know why. Something about the repetitiveness of all the legs pedaling, I guess.

I have to admit, reading the Tour de France's wikipedia entry didn't exactly enlighten me on how exactly it works. I ended up googling 'Tour de France for dummies', which yielded some reads that shed a bit of light, but it's all still very vague and confusing. Oh well. I'll just take advantage of the hypnotic qualities of watching it, I guess. It helps me fall asleep.

***

My mom's visiting me at the moment, and I am thankful.

I have been feeling low lately. Its cause is nowhere near severe as something like a terminal illness or an unspeakable tragedy, and I suspect it is merely fueled by self-pity and nothing but my own mistakes. Nonetheless, I have been sad. And while I am no stranger to bouts of self-centered blues(have you read some of the shit I've posted here?), it has been feeling like I'm in a rut I can't quite get out of, that I've screwed up too much or have been screwed with, that I can't do anything but keep numb and have the decency to keep it tightly capped, as much as I can, anyway.

Before mom came, feelings of relief that she was coming was smothered by notions that as much as I want mom to come and make things okay, I am an adult now. She can't clean up the mess I've made of things, and I can't ask her to save me anymore.

But right now, it feels like she has, like she is. Not in the sense of literally resolving my problems, but in a way that feels like I have found a bit of faith in myself again, like I can do something. She's kick-starting me. I hope to God the feeling's not temporary. I hope to God it doesn't go away.