After Harry
After my self imposed media ban to avoid potential Harry Potter spoilers, I emerged from the end of the series with a feeling of finality and regret, but at the same time, content. The series did end well, and there's not much more you can say about that.
The end of Harry Potter also, coincidentally or not, highlighted what appears to be the end of the carefree youth of my peers and I. Everyone is talking about houses, careers, marriage. What was once a day to day life of drunkeness and indolence now gives way to a hungry competitiveness of financial and personal success, a pseudo penis measurement contest where the size of your house, the brand of your clothing and the all important annual salary are yardsticks in who's winning the game of life. There always was competitiveness perhaps between certain peers before, but now the game has gotten bigger; the number of players, the stakes, and the pot, somehow more adult. Thats probably the thing that irritates me most - that in the space of one or two years, everyone transformed into adults. Or at least, think they did. They may now wear a suit 5 days a week, but to me it's still 20 somethings playing at being adult.
However, the thing is - why the hell is everyone suddenly so fake? So puffed up on self importance I find it surprising anyone else can enter the same room as them. Everyone's so eager to impress. Not that Yours Truly has been immune to it. You hate someone for all of uni, and then suddenly you're 23 and you see each other again, and you're both pretending to be nice to each other. The handshakes, the insincere small talk. The first question is always inevitably: "So what do you do?". The natural instinct is to seek the best revenge: living well. I did it a couple times and walked away from both conversations with an incredible loathing for myself. Never again. I think I'm going to tell people I sell manure.
"So what do you do?"
"I'm an analyst".
"What sort?"
"Market. Market analyst"
"Where?"
"Synergy."
"Oh cool. I thought you were a dumbarse back in high school. 'Cos you were failing chemistry".
"Thanks."
It's probably a continuation of my period. I am filled with such disgust and loathing for most of my peers (and I use the term very loosely, dropping from my tongue like a distasteful hairball) that I quite possibly may not be able to hold back my caustic invective.
Last saturday, when celebrating my birthday, Dom asked me, "So what have you learned since you were 22?". To which my answer is friendship and loyalty. The knowledge that someone is there because they like you, regardless of perceived notions of rank, money or privilege, is a welcome bulwark against friends of convenience: where you are merely another entry in an ever so busy social schedule, or a sap to help you out when you want it.
Also pet peeve: When you break up with someone and you tell others (ie, me), feigning non chalance and acting like he/she was an object does not impress me. So, sentences like "Oh I didn't like him, so I gave him the flick" achieves the opposite effect: I find it offensive, no matter how much of an asshole I thought the guy was.
Today I am 23
Though I still went to work :(
People always ask me "So how do you feel?" and you know what? I feel exactly the same as yesterday, except today people give me presents for just being born. As opposed to my usual presents for being so damn awesome.
hysteria
I woke up slightly irritable, kicking at the sheets before realising where I was. I rolled out of bed onto a strategically placed stack of cds, cracking some in the process. Shit. I swore again and kicked them away from me. Damn it, damn it, damn it. It was one of those days again, where I wake up hating everything and everyone. Shit, shit shit - I was having my period.
Interesting fact - hysteria comes from the Greek word hystera, first used in the medical diagnosis known as female hysteria. There was no male equivalent. Symptoms included "unexplainable irritability and tendency to cause trouble", to which the cure was "pelvic massage" (ie, masturbation)until "hysterical paroxysms" (ie, coming like a steam train). Alas, backward retreats in medical science have meant that female hysteria is no longer a recognised medical condition and considered hokey science. Some speculate this is the original source of where,when two men are discussing an unexplainably (at least to the men) irritable woman, one of them will inevitable say something along the lines of "sounds like what she needs is a good fuc-". Less interesting fact - whenever any guy says to me "I reckon she's gagging for it", I inwardly wince and die a little on the inside. I've said it a few times though, mostly when roaring drunk. I blame society.
I could never explain why I get these moods, much like how I could explain my need to have to express precisely how I feel about a particular subject or situation. Like how the recent The Cops concert + music was a tedious romp through the familiar landmarks of pop mediocrity. I didn't hate it that much, and I tried to enjoy it, but I'm not much good at hiding how I feel. It got me thinking though. Why do I get these? Why do these persist? and why, deep down, do I relish doing that? That the anger and disatisfaction keeps me grounded, and keeps me driving towards my goals...that saying exactly how I feel is the perfect catharsis to the whiter-than-white-politically-correct-positive-affirmative-action neutered speech of our times, where words have no edge, and reading between the lines is not so much an advantage as a necessity?
"I'm weird, man. About random stuff too, I don't even know why I do it. It's like... it's like a tick" says Sam, Natalie Portman's character in Garden State. And it holds true for me. I recognize my faults, and I recognise that these faults are impediments to being that Great Person I want to strive to be.
But you know what? Maybe I don't want to change. Maybe I see that as who I am, even if I realise it's a fault. It's the imperfections that make us as a person. Like a birthmark, or nervous tick. We may hate it, we may wish to rid ourselves of it, but deep down, its indelibly as much a part of who we view ourselves as the hair on our head and the fingers on our hands. That these moods are the yin to my sunny side congenial yang that I experience most of the time, much like what my hard edged honesty keeps me sharp for what some of you mistake for wit in other conversations.
"Wo yao cho hao ren", meaning "I want to be a good person". However, maybe a little bad is good for a person. It helps us recognise what true good is.
