i'm just this close to snapping
I was settled down for coffee and a snack at the dining hall with my mum, when my sister sat down with us and we ended up talking about what am I to do when I graduate. And the age old argument regarding the usefulness of literature comes along. Let’s just say that I got increasingly agitated when the conversation got steered towards a highly negative outlook on my future by my sister’s patronising views about literature and my mum’s hyper magnified pragmatism…which made me so worked up on top of this week’s build up of stress and annoyance, that I ended up breaking off in the middle of one of my retorts to give in to my immense urge to cry. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and absolutely weak whenever I cry in front of my family. Crying is not allowed here. It’s a militant state - my home, my mental & emotional prison - I was so upset. I am too now. They went on, talking about how ridiculous it was for me to cry over something that’s normal and practical and realistic in life, and that literature is indeed this useless. I know, I know literature is useless, thank you for your blatant and ohsocomforting practical reminder. I know my place in the house, I know my place in society. I know I’m going to starve on my meagre salary - if I can even earn one - when I graduate and never ever can see the ambition of getting masters in literature. I know I’m a failure in life, ever since I left science for arts in JC. I know all these. Yes. Thanks for reminding me. Thanks for damning my efforts to do well in school and get a nice pretty degree all for the aim to get a preferably relevant job (to do with the arts) so that I can gain relevant real world experience for my possible future return to school to do masters. Thanks for saying that all my efforts are for “yi zhang fei zhi” (a piece of rubbish paper); thanks for condemning me to a bleak life ahead and not even allow me a spark of hope for a better job or better means to earning my dough and stating plainly that I’m not even going to have a chance to even fight for a way towards these; thanks for making me feel useless and futile in even trying. Now what. It’s not even phrased as a question. It’s a rhetorical statement, the kind that you murmur when you realise everything is in vain and what is the point in anything you do right now, or in future. Utter disappointment. No, disillusionment - I feel so pained so deep inside me that I just stormed to my computer and cried to myself - as embarrassing as this sounds - with my back towards them still elaborating on all kinds of bleak scenarios of me. Don’t I look pathetic now. It’s times like these when I really don’t know why did I give up on psychology, the ohsoimportant field in the ‘real world’. Anything scientific is good and stable, clever and useful, full of potential and admired. When everything is measure by money, fame, recognition - how am I to find even a mountain trail towards ‘success’ in my current field of study, oh wait, it’s not qualified to be a ‘field of study’ isn’t it, it’s just another arts subject. I never thought Literature could be something that defines me. But today, I feel it in me, it’s my head and my heart. And today, both of us suffered a crashing defeat. We are classified as the dreamers. We’re from the realm of non-reality and frivolous concerns, completely removed from how the real world works. And because society has no place for me, I’m not to even try to achieve anything, simply because such things don’t exist in reality for me to achieve in the first place. What the fuck am I doing being alive.