It has been a roller-coaster ride. Personally, I think I’ve done pretty well with my life. Most of the choices I’ve made, are the BEST choices I could make at the time. Kinda like this:
QUESTION 1
You graduated, congratulations! However, your father is sick, the family car is at the end of its life, your house is being eaten by termites, only one brother (out of four siblings) is taking care of your father, your relatives have ostracized you, you have no money of your own, your boyfriend’s family hates you because you’re Sabahan, you have no other place than the one in your village, you have no job prospects, you have no job experience, and you are depressed.
Your options are:
A. Work in KL, do the job you love, but abandon your family.
B. Work in KK, do whatever job you can get and take care of your family.
C.Work overseasYou don’t have this option since you have student loans to pay and no-one can support you.
D. Die.
That was my welcome wagon into adulthood. Guess which one I chose.
I felt that my hands were tied at the time, and I couldn’t express much. So many things needed either my money or my time, or both. I had no freedom; (This concept is a bit more different than the one I had in mind when I was younger) but I still had some patches of free time. I could blog, and that was free.
At one point of my blogging I have done what I have set out to do. Even achieved things that I never even thought was possible. I guess my ambitions were small. But it was fun. My blogging was not only about writings of my daily life, or observations or views, but it was also showcasing my other interests (like my drawings). I was shit at it, but I never stopped working at it.
However, I never realized how fragile I was inside. I was failing in being an adult. I was failing in life. With each mistake I made, with each wrong move, I received negative feedbacks. Words hurt, and they can hurt like hell. And people use them very well against me. Because of this, I can’t really receive compliments gracefully, for the simple reason that I don’t believe those words of encouragement. I guess, at one point it just became… abuse. Verbal abuse.
It got too much one day, and without realizing it, I stopped doing the things I was interested in, things that were fun and amused me. I was a mess. I slowly stopped doing anything. I was just going through the motions. I had no more freedom. I stopped telling stories in my writings or my pictures. The hiatus became longer and longer. I became a pitiful, scared creature. I was not even human. I was afraid of pain. It got harder to breathe.
On a particularly difficult day, I lashed out on a piece of paper. That one piece became another piece, and then yet another. This comic are those pieces of paper I lashed out on. It looks good now with the help of Ganaesh, but originally it was done all in pencil and on rough paper.
I wouldn’t ask you to enjoy the story, since it is very bitter. But please read it. Who knows, maybe we shared the same story all along… or maybe not. I had no intention of ever publishing it, if not for Ganaesh’s suggestion. This is my story, nonetheless. I have to accept that part of me.
