Shrink Sessions (First Of A Series)

These couple of days, I really don't know whether I'm coming or going. I manage to get at least eight hours of sleep every night, but I'm always bone-tired when I wake; and I've been having such strange dreams too.

One night, a strange woman in my dream was dying slowly, agonizingly, with a red drinking straw sticking out of her throat. Her mouth was a frozen o - whether like she was having an orgasm or whether like a fish out of water, I don't know - and she was jerking spasmodically on the bed. I woke up with a start.

Last night, I was trying to run away from an imminent flood, and I was trying to persuade people to run with me - up, up, and away - to the Empire State Building where we would be high up enough to avoid drowning and to being swept away by the flood. In the dream, I told a woman, I had dreamt of this before, I'm very sure I had, and as I looked around me, I was convinced I'd spoken the truth. I woke up before the flood came.

These aren't nightmares - not by most standards anyway - but they aren't pleasant either. In fact, they're unpleasant enough for me to wonder if I might not be under stress, and the only thing I can think of that is a great source of stress for me is my impending homecoming.

It’s like, one minute you’re on the bus, half-asleep and getting a sore ass from the numerous potholes your lousy bus driver hasn’t bother avoiding, and in the next, this selfsame bus driver from hell has tossed you out on your sore ass in the middle of nowhere.

Then, to make matters worse, your mom calls you on the cell phone and orders you to make it to your sixth grandaunt’s home in some godforsaken housing district with a specific bottle of ointment for your sainted grandaunt’s ailing leg by six o’clock this evening. Or else.

After you have exhausted your inspired use of fuck in a string of choice curses, you realize you probably have only a couple of options open to you: one, you plod your miserable way to where you’re supposed to be, even if you don’t really know where it is and will be just in time to catch hell from your mom anyway; or two, you jump in front of the very first car you see and hope the driver will kindly stop for you and drop you off where you have to be; or, if the driver won’t stop for you, at least find enough compassion in him or her to run you over good.

The problem, as you’ll probably realize, is that either way you go about it, you’re fucked. Completely.

Okay, yes, I admit it - I'm shit-scared, okay?

When I'd graduated from my diploma course, I'd spent one month mooning about at home, wondering if I should just kill myself. After all, I was nothing but a blackhole, a waste of space, air, and other resources. It was a horrific time. I just didn't know what to do - with my life, and with myself.

The other two thirds of my Unholy Trinity couldn't help - Jason still had one year to go in his diploma course, and Germ had failed one module so he couldn't graduated until he retook (and passed) that module. My other friends were only in their first or second year at the local varsities. Everybody - especially my parents - thought I should do something.

"Do what?" I wanted to ask them, but seldom did. I wanted to do something I liked, but - and there was the shittiest thing - I didn't know what I liked; I only knew I didn't want to be an assistant merchandizer. There - three years' worth of sweat, tears, burning midnight oil and my candle at both ends, and (my parents') money, all down the fucking toilet. My diploma could've served as toilet paper for all I care, had its paper quality not been so lousy.

Then one day, tired and ashamed of my bumming, I finally decided I'd actively look for a temporary job. That very afternoon, Janice, my ex-classmate, called me and told me they needed a temp staff to fill in for Karen who would be going on maternity leave; could I fill in? Joy; prayers answered. I said I could start as soon as possible. Besides, since it was the company I'd interned at and worked during my holidays, I already knew most of the merchandizers and managers.

After a month or so, I called it quits. The pay was really good, but the routine was starting to get to me. On the bus, if I weren't blasting Green Day in my ears, I'd be thinking about a line and idea that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and refused to go away: then she woke up ... and died. The idea was that of a girl who had the greatest time of her life, only to wake up and find it all a dream. The shock of reality was so great, it was like being thrown into a vacuum, and she died immediately.

On the train, I'd look around at my fellow passengers and feel claustrophobic, scared, and sad. Occasionally, I'd see young kids playing at the corner of the cabin, and I'd wish I could join them. Other times, when the train wasn't too crowded, I'd fantasized about running amok through it, swinging around the poles and from the railings, singing at the top of my voice. I'd wondered how those weary-looking commuters with their shuttered faces would react - if they would react at all; they'd looked so lifeless. What they are is

... people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.



Charles Dickens, Hard Times

So I'd quit. The company asked if I could stay on for a little longer; I could, but I wouldn't. Start to be what they want you to be / And you'll see yourself as they see you, E had sung in my head, and I'd believed him.

A couple of months went by, and I continued bumming. Then one day, Jen called me to say she was flying to New Zealand to pursue a BA in Anthropology. Since she had already decided on going, I thought I might as well join her. So I told my parents - told, not asked; I didn't ask at all - I wanted to study in New Zealand, get myself a BA or something.

Props to my parents, they'd only said, okay, which university? They'd never once, in my entire life, brought up the question of finances. Whatever my sister and I wanted that they couldn't see a reason why we shouldn't have, they'd get it for us. No questions. My parents have always come through for us, and, if I think about it, I realize I've never once came through for them.

Anyway, it was nearly a full year after my graduation that I flew free of the Island - my first time out of the Island (and on my own) since that school trip to Sweden back in '96. And now, more than three years later, I'm about to fly back home.

To do what?

The few months before Jen flew home, she had been literally sick with worries and planning. She was struggling to find a part-time job here even as she struggled with her essays. One night, we were on the phone and I was helping her brain-storm about what she could do in the off-chance that she'd failed her paper and couldn't graduate with her double majors in Religious Studies and Anthropology. She was also talking about her plans for her future: get her BA, work as a TESL teacher somewhere for a couple of years, then do a graduate diploma and get her Masters or something. I'd been very impressed with her plans.

"Wow. Maybe I should start planning too," I'd mused aloud.

"I don't think you should," she told me. "Going with the flow seems to work for you; things seem to just fall in place for you: you're lucky. Me, it's different; if I wanted something, I have to plan and work for it. Like you've said, you can be happy anywhere; I can't stay in Singapore - it'll kill me."

Or something like that.

Maybe she was right about going with the flow. I sure as hell am not a freaking salmon, and going with the flow is what I do best. A defeatist? A quitter? Fatalistic? Whatever. I'm a terrible swimmer for a Piscean; you won't ever find me fighting the damn currents - I'd sooner drown.

I'd tried planning. When I was sixteen, I'd mapped out two different routes for the next sixteen years for myself to choose. One of them had included being married and pregnant by ... well, what do you know - by this year.

I shudder to think about it. (At ages seventeen to nineteen, I had a big identity crisis. It was never conclusively resolved, but I've since realized I'm really not into the hetero-marriage thing, and I don't think I should ever bring into this world something that might turn out as screwed up as I am. Besides, there's a surplus of orphans in this world - how about we make sure they're all taken care of before we continue breeding like rabbits and literally suck the life out of Mother Earth?)

And that thing about being happy anywhere, it's sort of true. When I'm feeling suicidally optimistic, I tend to think it doesn't matter where you are or what you do, you can be happy as long as you have inner peace and appreciate the little beautiful things in life, and all that crap. (Note: only when I'm suicidally optimistic.)

... okay, I'm out of steam. I would go on, but I'm all out.

And I don't feel any better; in fact, I feel worse than ever.

Bloody hell.