I’m
- proud
- mean
- ambitious
- a hypocrite
- narcissistic
- weird
- impatient
- hot-tempered
- rude
- critical
- selfish
- lazy
- eccentric
Is it too late for me to change my negative traits?
Thank you for standing by me. If you think you deserve my gratitude, you probably do, so thank you again. I guess even the worst people have friends.
The reason why God created good people was so bad people like me wouldn’t be too lonely.
“When can I go home?”, she always asks whenever I visit her.
It tears my heart apart whenever I hear her say that. I can almost hear it ripping.
“Till you get better”, I always lie through my teeth.
I know it’s a lie. I know it. And I can’t do a single thing about it. Sure, I can visit her. But that’s not what she wants. She thinks it’s unnecessary and meaningless. She doesn’t understand why she’s staying in the nursing home. She hates it. I hate seeing her in this state. I blame myself for not earning enough. I don’t earn enough and that’s why I cannot buy her a house and hire a personal nurse for her. It’s my fault.
But it’s not my fault. She’s my grandmother. And I’m only 20. What can I do in such circumstances? What are my parents doing? What are my aunt and uncles doing? I ask myself why she’s in this state now. Why does she live in a nursing home? None of us are poor. All of us can afford to have her living under our roofs. Yes, she may be ill, but it’s nothing critical. She can definitely return home. So, why?
My parents don’t know, but I secretly blame them. I know my aunt and uncles should have done more and it’s definitely true that they have the space to house her while we have none. But love is not about asking why others can’t do it but asking what one can do for others. I’ve volunteered to give up my room for grandma. I know my parents love me, they want me to have my private space. But they don’t know how much I would have given to let grandma stay in my room.
I wonder how much guilt I would have to go through when she leaves me forever.
The last time I went to visit her, I had to leave while they bathed her and the others. I explained I had to leave for a while and I’ll be back shortly. And as the nurses pulled the blinds across and cut her vision of me, I could hear her calling for me to stay. I could hear how much she didn’t want to let me go. It’s too hard to put the feelings of pity and sadness into exact words of that time. Too painful would summarise it.
I don’t want to regret and live in guilt in future. Regret that I didn’t do anything for my grandmother while she’s still with me. I don’t want my parents to regret either. As I hold her hand, my heart rips. I hear her voice asking me when she can come home, my heart bleeds. I look at her in old age, my heart breaks. She’s separated from her family when all she wants is to look at her children and grandchildren when she wakes up. I don’t understand why it is so hard for adults to feel her pain and understand her deepest desires. Has she given up so much in her younger years for all of them only to earn a place in a nursing home?
Hypocrites, I whisper. All the talk about love when there’s none. Talk to the wall, for you have no sympathy nor interest from me for your excuses and your ‘predicaments’. And while you are at it, may I suggest that you knock your head against the wall with all the force you can muster for your absolute lack of filial piety. “She’s sick!”, you protest loudly like an empty vessel would. “Whatever helps you sleep at night”, I scorn.
At this point, I hate myself for not being able to help. I want to punch something. There’s this anger within me. Sympathy snakes around me. I feel like I’m suffocating. There’s so much I want to do but I can do absolutely nothing. The mental pain drives me crazy. I want to cry, but the anger quells my tears. It swallows my tears. My head aches. Imaginarily. I scream, silently, but there are still echoes that ricochet within my body like bullets.
I don’t want to live a life without having held my grandma’s hand. I want something to remember her by.
As she lays on the bed looking at me and me at her, I’m falling into the abyss of pain and insanity.
I’m going to buy her something. Something she can relate to while she’s suffering under the roof of a nursing home devoid of love while I’m sleeping in my air-conditioned room filled with material possessions and basking in love. Oh the irony! But I’ll ignore what those hypocrites say. I’ll ignore all their useless questions. I want to make her happy. I’m painfully aware it’s never enough love to give or happiness she’ll feel. She has no material or physical possessions anymore. She doesn’t have money. She has no emotional possessions either. No love, no happiness. Only emotional liabilities like the pain of having her children put her up in a nursing home, and the pain of not being able to be with her children and grandchildren. And the best thing I can do now to ease these liabilities would be to buy her a stuffed toy. Pathetic, my conscience chants. And it’s pathetically true how pathetic I sound. But there’s nothing more I can do.
When they go, you can cry. You can wish you had done something more.
But you can never turn back time.
I realise I’m missing so much from not studying anymore. I’m missing on being able to catch up with friends that might have studied in the same school as me and I know this is one part of me which I will never be able to experience. All of them are graduating soon and where does that leave me hanging?
It’s not too bad if you have a lot of people you still keep in touch with. As much as I’d like to believe it, I don’t think I was ever much of a people-person. Maybe it’s just the way I carry myself. Too much pride, some would say. Some people just have it all made for them. They have that natural charisma that draws people to them. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. Sure, I can speak well. I articulate well. But I guess that leaves you nowhere if no one bothers about what you’re saying. Hypocrite, they whisper.
I’m not lamenting. I’m happy with the people I keep in contact with. But it’s just too sad looking at friends gathering but you’re not involved. I know it’s not because they didn’t want to invite me (that would have been much worse if I let myself think that), but because we’ve simply just lost touch. And it’s heart wrenching looking at photos of friends that once studied with you, even those you’ve once hated in your childish years. So much feelings just by looking at the screen and staring at those pictures. You want it so much, just to reach out and be able to touch their faces, and tell them say, I’ve really liked you once. To tell them, I’ve disliked you before, but now I want to know you once again.
I miss my friends. I really do. And I hope somewhere and someplace, someone out there is thinking of me. Thinking how good it would be to talk to me again. Maybe it’s because all these times I’ve not experienced someone I would really like to keep with me forever. I’ve once had this feeling, and I want to keep it with me. But it’s slipping through my fingers. I don’t know why it’s becoming harder communicating with people around me. I just want to see someone, hug them and tell them how much I’ve missed them. How much emotions have poured through me, into me and out of me as I sit here typing these out.
Maybe it’s because I’m becoming less adept in using words to communicate. Maybe I’ve never been able to talk about my feelings, or show them. Maybe it’s because I’m too proud to show them. But nothing can materialise the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’, or in my case, ‘a picture speaks louder than words’, more than looking at them having fun. The joy on their faces. Their lives documented in pictures and videos, but I’m on the other end of a lifeless screen. Nothing more than heat coming out from the desktop. No warmth, no friendliness, no love. Nothing.
And it’s on all these days that I feel worthless. Feel that I’m a total failure. Regret my actions in the past. Why didn’t I do this, or why didn’t I do that. Regret and remorse is multiplied ten, hundred, a thousand fold in these times. The emptiness of nothing eats at you. It devours you till you can’t see yourself anymore.
Looking at those photos may show I’m not someone worth keeping in touch with. It’s not a fact, and I know it, but it proves that human relationships are as fragile as it seems. Maybe even more. I’ve taken granted of all the times I could have made my life a little better, for then, the present or the future. I too, have lost touch with people I want to hold dear to, but sometimes one wonders where the fine line is between keeping in touch and being a bother. I try to tread carefully, too carefully in fact, that maybe I allow others to forget me.
I think it’s because I don’t have enough love in my heart to give. That’s why others don’t find enough love to give to me. Life is very fair, and that is how I want to see it. If I give enough care and concern to someone else without thinking too much about how they would view me, maybe one day I might reap something. I’ve deluded myself all this time in thinking love doesn’t need any kind of reciprocation. You give and expect nothing back. Sure, when I give I don’t expect anything. But when you see others basking in love, you want to be on the receiving end. You want it so much words cannot even begin to describe it.
Friends. You think they are something that comes into your life. You take them for granted. You love them and expect them to stay with you forever. One never expects them to leave. To completely erase you, or vice-versa, from their lives. Not by their will, but by time. One never truly understands the importance of having friendship. It’s too deep a knowledge to quantify or study. I know and I want to believe I have a place in their hearts. As big a place as they can give me. I feel like I’m slowly being squished out of everyone’s life. They are slowly forgetting me, and it’s beginning to look like the only evidence of me ever crossing their paths is my email on their MSN contact list. That thought in itself is totally heart wrenching. Everybody tells you they care, but sometimes one cannot help but doubt the extent of truth in such a superficial statement.
As reality sets in, I can’t see where my place on this earth is. But it’s right here, at the place where I am.
Where I’m standing, I feel like I’m slowly losing myself to time.
