Easy(?)

These few days have been tough on my friends.  On one hand, I've a good friend struggling with the loss of his home, with his family now living in a rental place and coping with the death of a loved one, while he and his siblings are struggling with financial needs to complete and pursue their respective degrees.  It's tough to watch this one as a bystander.  But he doesn't want my sympathy, just my understanding.

On the other hand, another friend of mine decided to run away from home after an argument with a relative.  I found out about this as my Whatsapp message feed blew up overnight.  I'm trying to be objective here, but after my altercation with said friend, this will indefinitely sound lop-sided.

Here's what happened: she drove off at the dead of night, in an already unsafe Malaysia setting (see previous post), ignored phone calls and messages from her friends who were way more concerned for her own well-being than herself, and her parents even filed a police report to look for her.  

In my opinion, this was downright childish: she had everyone worried sick and didn't understand the repercussions of her actions.  So I gave her some tough love, along the lines of "sit down and talk about your problems versus running away to avoid the issue".  And what does she reply in kind?  

"Easy for you to say, Fang.  You don't understand.  You just don't."

Clearly, I was offended at this point.  Easy?!  No one has it easy in life.  If you think I have it easy, then you're no more right than I am wrong.  Plus, to say I just don't understand is plain absurdity.  If I don't understand, make me bloody understand it.  The assumption that she is herself, having it worse than others screams naivety and immaturity.  We're freaking 22 year-olds for crying out loud!  Still, she rather acts like she's still in high school.

News flash here: Everyone has struggles!  You think I wear laurels of them and expect to be cooed and whispered sweet nothings to?  Life goes on, and if you refuse to adapt, you are going to die.  Plain simple.

Easy for me to say?  That's gotta be the worse joke I've heard in a long time.  Utter bullshit.  Shame that this disagreement will affect our friendship.

Expectations - Brika

Chaos

My country is falling apart and I cannot take this barrage of idiocracy for a long time.  Riots in Bukit Bintang, people waxing lyrically that sexual abuse is ALL RIGHT, racist bigots assaulting gentlemen for bringing a thief to justice, having the Wall Street Journal show reports of money laundering to the Prime Minister and First Lady in the millions... all in the Holy month of Ramadan!

This has to stop.  This is breaking my heart.  This is killing me slowly.  And I sit here in the comfort of my apartment halfway across the world in Iowa, while my family, friends and loved ones are open season to such atrocities.  

How am I to sleep well knowing that danger looms around everyone I cherish?  How am I to believe in the decency of Malaysians if shit like this catches wind of the world news on a constant basis?  How can I remain optimistic that I hold a bit part of the future of a nation as crippled, as broken, as perverted as this mess?

My heart bleeds for my nation.  This time, not in a good way.

Mercy - Muse

Count

Note: Don't dig up nostalgia when you're about to sleep. Not a great idea keeping your mind on overdrive all through the night.

Also, invest in a good bed and chair. You'll be spending 1/3 of your life interacting with one. Wish I realized that earlier.

posted from Bloggeroid

Cheryl

This story goes back a long way for me, stretching over about 6, 7 years. 

Cheryl was a quiet, reserved girl who lived a block away from my home back in Malaysia.  I knew her since primary school, at about Standard 5 or so, the equivalent of being 11 years of age.  She was a smart girl, acing exams all around, but her genius was (in my opinion) overshadowed by her introverted personality, which made her the subject of many bullying cases and name-calling.  I'm not gonna lie; I was one of those punks who used to call her names.

I was exceptionally stupid back then, always trying to "fit in" in some twisted delusion that being in school was all about social status and that I wanted to be with the "cool kids".  This had led to me being a puppet to these said kids and always ended in me pulling pranks and doing things that I'm not proud of.  So Cheryl, if you ever see this post, and however weightless this might be, I am truly sorry for my actions as a kid.

Now, back to the story.  The both of us had completed primary school and had gone to the same secondary school.  Unfortunately, the abuse didn't stop there; with new faces comes new forms of bullying and degradation.  By now, I had matured a little and had quit being a bully altogether.  If only she got out as easily as I did.  Before she could, she had cracked.

All that piled up pressure got to her.  School had just ended and some of her delinquent classmates had followed her out of the school grounds, bringing along their verbal abuse.  Now, I wasn't there when it happened, but this was what I heard from multiple witnesses at the time that it occurred.  Cheryl decided enough was enough, and in an attempt to get away from it all, dashed out onto the main road.  A road filled with many cars of parents eager to pick their kids up from school.

One such car saw her bolt onto the street, and was too slow to react.  It ran into her, sending her flying a few meters forward.  Cheryl was hospitalized for trauma to the head, but we know that her emotional state was hampered already.  Months went by, and she finally was discharged by the hospital.  Sadly, the damage had already been done.

Last I've heard, she's been having spurts of mental breakdowns, as she made them public through Facebook.  To make matters worse, her younger sister went through the same traumatic ordeal of being everyone's verbal punching bag at the same phase in her childhood.

So if there's one thing to take away from all this, is that bullying doesn't make one stronger.  Heck, it's the complete opposite.  Bullying is for the weak, reserved for scum who cannot comprehend the power of words, nor properly channel that energy to positive things.  If you ever see someone being bullied, stand up for that person.  

Empower others, and don't you bloody dare put others down to reach a higher pedestal.  Because by the time you reached the top, it'll be that much easier to drag your sorry ass back down.  The damage done to this brilliant girl was never, ever deserving to a kind, gentle soul as hers.  And so long as this blog exists, I will not forget that.

Illuminate (Umbra Remix) - The Kite String Tangle