Maturity: n. The state or quality of being mature.

Someone very recently told me: "Maturity is being able to force yourself to do something you don't want to do to the best of your ability when it is required of you". For now, we just have to suck it up. It is the blood that a doctor has to look past, the vomit in the bed that the parent has to clean up, and right now, for me, it is the mountain of work that I must conquer in the next few weeks.

Time to be practical. This, my friends, is my job for the next few weeks.

It isn't forever. The end is so near that it is almost teasing me. I can see it. I can feel it. Hang in there... just a little longer...

Adios amigos.

I am the worst at making the best of bad times. I am probably the best at making the worst of good times too. But every time we are faced with a challenge, we must ask ourselves, what can I gain from this?

From netball: I will make new friends, I am given a fantastic opportunity to be a leader, I will have a new coach, I will have an amazing season and the ability to dominate.

From school: I will have overcome one of the greatest challenges of my entire life, I will be proud that I made it through, I will settle my nerves before exams and I might even enjoy learning.

When you land yourself in a shit place, look around you, recognise and acknowledge where you are, and back away. You will end up there - this is inevitable - but you have the power to pull yourseld out of it. See the positives.

Just do it.

M for magician.

I know you're worried about me, I just wish I could tell you that none of it is your fault. It is not your fault that I hate myself. It is not your fault I am scared. It is not your fault that I cannot see any prosperity in my future. If I could be granted one wish right now it would be to fade away quietly without a fuss. To be able to end this all without any commotion. To cease existing without all the pain of loss. To just succeed in a disappearing act and for life to go on as if I had never walked on the earth. I wish the reality was not that ending this would inflict irreparable damage upon my friends and family. Perhaps I should regard myself as compassionate to simply bear this pain instead of watching others feel it for me. But how long will it be before I start to do things for my own reasons, not for those of others? I wish, I wish, I wish...

As for happiness, for that, I have given up on wishing...

Have you ever passed 18 years of your life and wondered, "What the fuck just happened?"?

It feels like yet another failure.
I wonder when I will be able to open my eyes and see the world
Clearly again.
How many blows must I take before I become stronger?
When will this stop feeling like it's just getting longer?
Tears again.
The familiarity of stinging eyes again makes me at home.
Alone.
Hope is lost all over again, and I just become weaker.
The future is bleak.
This has reached its peak.

Yet again, like my dreams of change and aspirations of happiness,

It fades into nothingness.

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

~Unknown

Ctrl + N

Do you ever just want to start your life all over again? To forget the past, to forget everything that you have been, everything you have done, and just start afresh?

I do.

Right now, I want more than anything to escape the grind. Not just because I am entering what is possibly one of the most stressful experiences of my life, but because I simply hate being who I am and want to start over. I have been upset for so long, hurt for so long, struggling for so long I feel that the only way any of this will ever change is if I simply forget everything that has ever happened to me and everything I have ever been.

No more perceptions of me being perfect. No more negative thoughts. No more netball. No more attention-seeking antics. No more over-eating. No more emptiness. No more conformity. No more excuses. No more me.

I have not been myself for a long time - I don't know who I am because I have stopped trying to be this person that I hate. Yet in the meantime, I do not like this person that I have become any more than that. I just want to leave. All I want to do is leave everything and everyone and simply be alone somewhere for a while where I can figure out who I am and what the hell I am doing here. To read about the world and life. To discover nature. To find myself.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
~Alice in Wonderland

Undeviginti

The one question that I often find undermines my very existence is that of the meaning of our lives: what are we doing here? Whether at the age of 15, the age of 30 or even when we hit the big 5-0, every one of us, at some stage in our lives, will be faced with this question. It is a window that, once opened, allows for no going back; once you have asked this question, the search begins. As I have personally experienced, this can be a real challenge - trying to find one's meaning in the middle of high school is a difficult task, but at the same time, it leads to empowerment. The problem is when this question becomes central to our lives, and instead of it acting as a journey through which we explore different pathways, passions and possibilities, it becomes a struggle that undermines our existence. After persevering through the perils of this question for what has literally been years, I think I have finally come to a conclusion. And this conclusion is that we must simply have faith.

There are many things we cannot control in life - when we fall in love, when we meet our dream job - and finding our meaning is also one of these. I think I set my hopes on expecting someone to relay my own purpose to me, only to realise that everyone's purpose is different. Therefore it is only through self-discovery that one will ever find this.

However, if it is not in our power to determine when we discover the answers to these questions, then what are we expected to do in the meantime? As much as I may struggle to find meaning in it, I believe it is to simply have fun. To enjoy yourself. To try out a whole range of different pathways until one really clicks. And how much fun this could be! To be dragged down by the thought that our lives have no meaning is ridiculous - why does this thought merit any more worth than the simple pleasures of life? Because for now, while we are still searching, that has to be enough, and in the end, it is likely that we will derive an element of our own meaning from these simplicities.

What's more, we cannot let our expectations exceed beyond us when we try to find our meaning in life. We cannot build our lives around this seemingly pivotal discovery, or we are simply reducing the complexity of life to something that does not encapsulate everything that humans are. Humans love, humans laugh, humans cry, humans care for each other. There are more turning points in life than simply finding your reason for being here. Yes, this plays a large role - one of the biggest in our entire lives - yet human life is not this one dimensional. What about the development of relationships? What about the significance of falling in love? Finding you passions? Having children? Watching friends get married and have children? Travelling? Helping others? Broadening our perception of the world?

What about the pleasure and satisfaction we gain from these things?

And viewing bright city lights on a dark night; breathing in night air; winning a netball final; sitting in the sun; singing to music; baking chocolate cakes before training; laughing with friends. The little things.

We are young. We are always young, and there is always time. Things will work out in their own time, and the key is for us to have faith in this fact. Until then, let us take meaning from the simple pleasures - cherish relationships and enjoy all the wrong pathways that we will travel down as part of our journey of self-discovery.

Enjoy being 18.

Again...

The only way to be happy is to simply mask the truth that life sucks and that our lives have no meaning. No matter how many good times or how many bad times, our lives are hollow. Maybe it's easier to convince yourself to bother sticking around if the good ones outweigh the bad, but it doesn't change the fact that we have no purpose and we are simply another organism that is made up of atoms just floating in space.

I do not know how I will ever stop caring about what other people think of me; it is not like I haven't said to myself before "Just ignore it" or "Who cares what other people think?" - for goodness sakes, one of my life ideals for years has been Dr. Seuss' "Be who you are and say what you feel because those that mind don't matter and those that matter don't mind". Off by heart, I know the philosophy. Yet knowing isn't doing? Knowledge is not power until you are successful in acting on it. Caring an obscene amount about what other people think will ruin my life. I know that, because it affects me in so many different ways already. I always thought it was one of those things that diminished with maturity, but now it just seems like an embedded part of my personality.

La crême de la crême: It will ALWAYS be such a goddamn effort to be happy, why should I keep on trying? Perhaps you don't agree with my deterministic viewpoint - kudos to you for having a glass half full attitude on the matter. But not only have I read it, but it is evidenced by life itself: the way we are is a result of nature via nurture. Things happen to us throughout life, but we have some sort of genetic predisposition that determines what these experiences mean to us and how we innately react to them. The funny thing is, I don't think I am like either of my parents. I think there is some similarity between me and my sister, but what happened in all of this? Did we just get some fucked up set of genes. Because I honestly feel like that; I got given so, so, so much - everything that everyone is so jealous of me for - yet there are so many others whom I would trade places with in an instant just because I would so much rather be inside their head. People who are okay with themselves, people who either know what their purpose is, or conversely, don't care. People who are funny, who love life. People who are happy. You rave about how interesting I am all the time, yet one of the primary reasons I fucking hate myself so much is because I am so goddamn boring. You always speak of how intelligent I am, but I struggle to find proof for this in anything. You say that I'm beautiful, yet these days I can' stand to look at myself in the mirror. I am not unique and I am not special.

It all seems so logical, and hey it is probably that twisted type of logic that I have made such a bad habit of, but can you see what I'm getting at? With any of it? The best way to be happy comes with not thinking and being distracted because life does not have a meaning… How will I ever stop caring about what other people think of me, because it is not something you can just will away… and why should I keep trying to make things better when it feels like I am innately predisposed to not be happy - like a magnet is continually pulling me back to what is "natural"?

But you see, you have me trapped again. Because as the quote says, "You have a choice. Live or die". Ultimately, there is only one choice; to live. I wish it could be over and I wish I didn't have to go through this anymore because I am just so tired of feeling like I am never making any progress, even if I am. I am sick and tired of the way that I view the world, of my so goddamn pessimistic attitude, for being so fucking self-centred and everything about me that makes life such a fucking arduous task. I hate my temperament, I hate that I can't sustain any one emotion for more than 5 minutes. I hate my stubborn thought that it will never change, yet I see a world of truth in it.

Lady Lazurus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

~Sylvia Plath

Untitled.

It will ALWAYS be such a goddamn effort to be happy,
why should I keep on trying?
I give up right here and right now
because it has been too long
I am too tired
I am too hurt
I am too broken,
like the swallow without wings I long to be
free. I cannot lift myself off the ground.
I am not trying hard enough -
I have yet another excuse - I am
exhausted. No reinforcement for my efforts, but instead a large perpetual
circle, round and round and round until
I cannot spin any further.
Give me a lethal dose of the opiate that will take this pain away.
I hate the world... I hate myself.
Where is the you or the we?
Selfish, careless, lost to infinity.
I have failed and it has not even started;
to be born was my biggest failure.
Perhaps the best thing I can do is just to undo the damage
I have done.

Note to self:

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

Thank you.

Although I should really never pass a day without thanking God for my friends, I often do. I guess when you become so used to having something all the time you begin to take it for granted, but when I step back and take a look, I can appreciate how damn lucky I am. I never, ever, ever want to lose them because these are some of the most amazing people I think I will ever meet. Gifted, beautiful, loyal, wise and so much more.

For my friends, thank you. For the laughs, the smiles, the support, the music, the artwork, the thoughts, the tears. It is not your fault that I still feel lonely, but it is your blessing that I see something worth fighting for.

Life.

Things to do:

• Go skydiving
• Live on a farm / in the country / country town
• Ride an aircraft to the edge of the atmosphere
• Dive with sharks
• Live and work in France, speak fluent french
• Visit every continent (except perhaps Antarctica)
• Do a cross-country bike tour
• Learn to dance/tango
• Learn to surf
• Be part of the Rio Carnival in Brazil
• Volunteer abroad
• Go skinnydipping
  

Places to visit:

• Live in a french cottage in the French countryside and read for a month
• Revisit England, Venice and the New Zealand south island
• See the lights in Las Vegas and visit the Grand Canyon
• Visit Iguazu Falls and the Amazon forest in Brazil
• Go to egypt and see the pyramids and sphinx
• Volunteer in India and visit the Taj Mahal
• Visit Victoria Falls and go on an African safari
• Visit the Great Wall of China
• Go diving in the Great Barrier Reef
• Visit Niagra Falls and the Rocky Mountains (Canada)
• Go to Bora Bora (French Polynesia) and relax....
• Visit the fjordlands of Norway
• See the Himalayas
• Visit Japan

I awoke
Only to find my lungs empty
And through the night
So it seems I'm not breathing
And now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be
And I'm breaking down,
I think I'm breaking down
And I'm afraid
To sleep because of what haunts me
Such as living with the uncertainty
That I'll never find the words to say
Which would completely explain
Just how I'm breaking down
Someone come and, someone come and save my life
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead
But now it's like the night is taking sides
With all the worries that occupy the back of my mind
Could it be this misery will suffice?
I've become
A simple souvenir of someone's kill
And like the sea
I'm constantly changing from calm to ill
Madness fills my heart and soul as if the great divide could swallow me whole
Oh, how I'm breaking down
Oh my life
Someone come and, someone come and save my life
Could it be this misery will suffice?
~City and Colour

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”

Forty-five.

Fuck you. Fuck everyone. Fuck you all for being on my back. For not being on my back. For only being there when it DIDN'T matter. Fuck you for trying and failing to be a part of my life. Damn your pathetic efforts to make some sort of meaningful relationship with your own fucking daughter. Fuck you all for just assuming that it would be okay, that things would just turn out alright; fuck you for being so damn blind. For standing so fucking far away that when I needed you, you were too far out of reach. Fuck you all for being so goddamn disappointed in me, like you never expected it. Well open your eyes you dumb fucks! Did you think I wasn't disappointed enough in myself? How goddamn smart did you think I was; did you think I'd get away with a year without studying? I'd like to see you get a fucking 7 in Standard Level maths...

Fuck you for giving up on me. Don't you worry though, because I'll show you. And when I do, I'll make sure you don't get a cent of credit for it. I will remind you how you didn't believe in me, how you didn't put the effort in. Unless, perhaps, it all turns out the wrong way round..

You want to know the truth? The truth is, I didn't put in the effort. I didn't put in the effort and there was very little that you could do about it. There. I said it. But you'll never hear it. I couldn't bear to expose your ears to the horrid words. Your money, your livelihoods, your lives - all devoted to me, the selfish brat. Stop trying to blame everyone else, M., it's all your fucking fault.

Fear: n. A feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger.

A fear resides within me: a fear of doing the wrong thing, a fear for the world, a fear of hurting other people, a fear of hurting myself, a fear of failure. I feel sick with nerves and a cold chill shivers down my spine. It is stress at its peak – simultaneously paralysing and motivating. Perhaps if I didn’t overanalyse absolutely everything I wouldn’t feel like this. Perhaps if I didn’t overanalyse everything I wouldn’t be so damn exhausted. I lie awake at night, just willing myself to go to sleep, without success. Thoughts wildly run through my mind and I long to tie them up and discard of them, but I feel powerless to stop their antics.

I write and write and write in an attempt to expel from me this poison that flows through my veins. It becomes an addiction because part of me wants to believe that writing has a therapeutic effect and that if I just put everything I feel in words, out of my mind, then I will be free. But it is only a fool’s game. There is no relief in writing, and rather than cleansing my mind and body of every ill thought and sinister deliberation that resides within me, it draws me deeper into myself, sucking my thoughts further and further into this black hole. These ineffable thoughts finally put on paper offer no form of relief, because in the end, they are beyond the description of mere words. Well, almost.

"God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering." ~ Sylvia Plath

Ms. Plath captured it pretty well. Not just the idea of loneliness, but where this comes from. She does not speak of physical loneliness, nor is she suggesting the loneliness of life without the company of friends and family. No, for loneliness exists even in the presence of such amazing people; no, it is loneliness of the mind. Never feeling completely understood, a unique way of viewing the world, and an incessant feeling of desolation over one’s purpose while we’re here. The fear of other people not understanding that and not accepting that, and accepting that it is a part of you. And it does become a part of you. I have lost myself in a spiral of depression over the past few years of my life. I have felt so alone and in such despair for such a long time that I almost feel like I am defined by it. I do not know who I am, and I do not even know the reasons behind my very sentiments. All I know is that I struggle. A lot. And I have only recently realised that it has come to the point where I don’t know how to build a deep relationship with someone except for on the foundations of these debilitating thoughts. Perhaps it is so hard to let go of it because, without it, I wouldn’t know who I am or how to create a such interpersonal relations. Sylvia captures the essence of life’s superficial joys, with the “opiates” and the “shrill tinsel gaiety”, all serving to sustain our joy, yet doing so with no apparent purpose. And the false-grinning faces – how often I have worn this mask… And then the climax. The day that you can finally expel these thoughts from your body, verbalising everything that has been stuck in your head for so long, the words that have scarred your mind and soul for what seems like an eternity. You take a deep breath, and you release them. But the effect is nowhere near what you anticipated. There is no relief, and if there is it’s only temporary. The real pain is in knowing that even verbalising these thoughts does not create change and does not ease the accumulation of confusion, frustration and hurting that has built up over the years. We are given hope all too often, in the forms of friends and delights, moments of ecstasy and elation. But Sylvia was right, it’s never enough and in the end, the loneliness prevails.

Ode to Chemistry

By M.

You make my brain sore night and day,
From Boyle to Charles’ to Faraday
You force upon us all your laws
But no one cares for these useless bores

You make the world seem black and white
With constants: Avogadro to the Speed of Light.
Why they count in “moles” is well past me,
Why not just say six-point-oh-two times ten to the twenty three?

Bohr, your name is a convenient pun,
Because who in the world finds atomic structure fun?
Electrons whizzing round electron shells
Like thoughts in my brain during crazed chemistry spells.

To scientists Aufbau, Pauli and Hund,
I tear out my hair out when I read what you found.
Chemistry was already hard enough for me
So I ask you, were subshells really necessary?

Van der Wal, instantaneous dipoles were you game,
But just one thought: could you get a real name?
Covalent, ionic and metallic bonds, you’ll be
Forever stronger than chemistry and me.

Born-Haber cycles, you aren’t too much fun,
Atomise, ionise, lattice enthalpy – and you’re still not done.
Give me a two plus charge and your dead,
Cos adding in second ionisation is too much for this head!

Kinetics, kinetics – “It’s all practical work,” you say?
Well I checked the theory – we’re still 16 syllabus points away!
I think you’ll find there are some equations to learn
And Maxwell-Boltzmann has got some nice curves.

Arrhenius, sometimes I think you are trying to confuse me?
Oh sorry, I didn’t realise it was as simple as k equals A times e to the power of negative Ea over RT.
As for the log equation, hardly brain power raisin’,
Isn’t it obvious that natural log of k = negative Ea over RT plus natural log of A is a simple linear equation?

End point, equivalence point, what’s really the dif?
Oh yeh, the latter YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY SEE.
Sorry to mess up my rhyming scheme there,
At times my chemistry emotions are too strong to bare.

From pH to pOH, to pKb to pKa,
It’s all so confusing and there’s not much more to say.
Indicators, buffer solutions – you drive me insane,
Chemistry is taking over my precious brain.

The equilibrium constant? I don’t really care,
After all, my birth certificate doesn’t say Le Chantelier,
Escalators at Centro and peddlos at Albert Park,
I was just watching that video thinking ‘What the farrrrk?’

Organic, could you be any more of a pain?
Twelve hours for standard level, plus HL is ten!
That’s twenty-two hours all up, oh heavens,
For Psychology, French – think of the sacrificed sevens!

No time to be a free radical while studying this,
Nucleophilic substitution and homolytic fiss.
I’ll never quite know why ‘optical isomer’, they be,
When in fact they are something you can’t actually see!

You ask me how to get from an alcohol to ketone,
And I say ketone… is that like a trombone?
SN1, SN­2 – substitution takes me a while -
And why fear men and young children, when there's nucleophiles?

I have often considered how to escape this grind,
And the mass spectrometer came into mind.
Being an isotope would be okay --
Vaporise, ionise, off and away!

Chromotography – didn’t I do that in Year 3?
And even then it wasn’t fun, there’s a trend, don’t you see?
Absorption and adsorption, the both look the same,
A ‘b’ and a ‘d’, come on, that’s pretty lame.

So I come to the end of my chemistry rant,
And now I must work, but quite simply, I can’t!
Thanks to this subject, I am a procrastinating queen.
Oh Chemistry, Chemistry, what a year it has been!

Untitled.

I found a place to hide away beneath the the busy flow
Of people rushing here and there, a place for me to grow.
To grow into my ill-fit mind, too big for me to comprehend
The reasons for me being here, to stay until the end.
This place began to draw me in, a bottomless black hole
Where logic was a weapon and delusion was the goal.
Governed by irrational, this place, it trapped me so
Having survived an almost fatal fall, I could not stay nor go.
When I emerged from years of black, my vision was impaired,
I had not seen the light in years but no one really cared.
Still I cannot see things straight, I see the world a different way
I analyse and criticise every minute, every day.
But past these dark black cataracts, one day, perhaps I'll see
The beauty of the natural world and a peaceful melody
Of songs soothing as bath salts, a tune to calm the soul.
To undo all this pain and hurt, so again I can be whole.

Invictus

(Just another ideal)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

~ William Ernest Henley

Anger and hatred

I hate you. Sometimes I just fucking hate you. You have no idea how much your words hurt other people; you just throw them away without anticipating repercussions. Language cannot express the anger that I feel towards you at times. Sometimes I think you have ruined my life… Sometimes I think this is all your fault. Fuck you. Seriously fuck you. For being a bitch. For using and exploiting everyone. For always thinking about yourself. For always hurting other people. For not knowing how or when to listen. For not seeing. For always arguing. For thinking you're always right. For refusing to accept that sometimes, you're actually wrong. Fuck you. Every time I think about how hurt I have been for so long, how much I detest myself and have spat upon the person that I am, it is because of you. Younger, smaller, always inferior. I was only a child, and you were a bully when I needed a friend. I lost two strong feet to stand on years ago. You stole my voice, and now my cries are all but internal. I hate to think back to everything I could have been. You ruined me, but you have no idea - and in a way I'm glad of that, because strangely enough, I love you too.

The Pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, often children or students and employees, the better they perform. The effect is named after Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor in a narrative by Ovid in Greek mythology, who fell in love with a female statue he had carved out of ivory.

The Pygmalion effect is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, and, in this respect, people with poor expectations internalize their negative label, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regards to education and social class.
Wikipedia (2010)

Perhaps Rosenthal never had experience being that person burdened with expectation. Perhaps the authors assumed this theory could be generalised to every of personality type. Perhaps I have internalised the negative label I placed on myself many years ago to such an extent that no positive external label could ever permeate my now heavy-laden mind...

I saw my life...

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
~The Bell Jar

God, but life is loneliness...

"God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering." ~ Sylvia Plath

I Lost A World

I Lost a World

I lost a world the other day.

Has anybody found?

You'll know it by the row of stars

Around its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it;

Yet to my frugal eye

Of more esteem than ducats.

Oh find it, Sir, for me!

~Emily Dickinson

Who in the world am I?

'Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!'
~ Alice in Wonderland

I just want to be something.
Someone.
Devoid of character.
I am not "cool" or "individual"
I am not unique.
I do not stand out.
In complete honesty, I hate myself.
A cliche.
I wish I was born with a personality.
Who am I?

What the eye can't see.

The thing about sickness is that it is internal.
Whether it is in the body or in the mind
The pain
The discomfort
The mutation
Is all within, hidden away from the naked eye.
People battle disease and illness every day
And many of them go by without us knowing it.
The bodies of some people try to overcome infection
Of the blood, heart, stomach, liver, lungs..
An infection of the mind hardly seems significant to compare.

Just because you don't see the pain,
Witness the discomfort
Or understand this mutation
Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
It only doesn't exist to you.
But it is real.
Real and hidden.
And the only way these things ever seem to become
Externalised is when it is all simply
Too late.

Paranoia

You want me to fail,
And I can see it.
Feel it.
You point out my flaws and insecurities,
And you make me feel
Small.
Why do I feel like those closest to me are against me?
Exploiting, manipulating and obstructing me?
I feel sabotage from every direction.
But is it really you? Or me?
My worries are amplified by you.
By me.
Is it real?
I point out my flaws and insecurities.
And I make myself feel
Small.
Why do I feel like those closest to me are against me?
Exploiting me? Manipulating me?
Am I seeing this clearly?
Is my mind playing tricks on me?

Selfless vs. Selfish

I guess when you look at yourself and try to evaluate the good in your actions, it is necessary to first ask yourself what you define as a good person. As with most things in life, to me there seem to be two conflicting values: our devotion to others, and our devotion to ourselves. In its simplest form, life is not much more complex than a balance between selfless and self-concerned motives.

The reason I ask this is because in a stupid pursuit for perfection, my goal was always to do things to please other people. To reach and achieve other people's expectations of me, to continually do what people demanded of me and to put everyone else's needs before my own. And admirably, this made other people happy; but for me, there was a large price to pay. Enormous strain under mountains of stress, sacrifice of my own relaxation time and an incredible feeling of unmet personal needs. People cannot live a superficial life that only appeases other people without addressing their own basic necessities.

So in search of a balance between the concepts of the other and the self, I began to assert my personal needs and I guess only now am I really beginning to say "no" - an important lesson when you're about to enter the real world. But it's not that easy, simply because I think after a while, people simply become accustomed to taking advantage of you. And I already feel that a number of my personal relationships have involved people placing unrealistic demands on my time, where the time physically exists, but in a spiritually balanced lifestyle, it doesn't. Because despite there being 24 hours in a day, I believe a number of those need to be spent in some sort of personal reflection, relaxation or, more simply, "alone time". I have spent 18 years feeling like I am constantly "on" every minute of the day with things crammed in left, right and centre - why is it so hard to understand that sometimes I want to take a time-out and breathe? I just think some people don't get it... They demand and demand and demand to the point where you feel guilty that you are not spending time with them or not fulfilling their needs, and because it has always been the norm, your needs are suddenly blown away with a small gust of wind, floating away into nothingness just as before...

So I question you, where lies the perfect balance between selfishness and selflessness? Self-sacrifice is admirable, but not even marginally healthy if perpetually performed. But at what point does thinking about your own needs become selfishness? When should you feel rightly guilty for putting yourself first? I am incredibly admirable of compassion and selfless love and value these traits highly, but where is the balance between caring for others and caring for yourself? Perhaps one must also consider for whom one sacrifices themself, and asking whether that person would do the same for you? I don't know...

Duodeviginti

I decided I would not write if I had nothing worth writing about. This, I believe, is worthy of note.

In the past week a number of things have not turned out as I would have planned or hoped, and I've had to find a way to accept them. Today, a piece of news that made me feel rage in every living cell in my body and simply rubbed salt in an already throbbing wound, led not only to a number of tears, but also a number of revelations. For I have learnt that it is most often from our pains, letdowns and disappointments that wisdom is born. I have learnt two very important lessons which I believe are valuable to note. Maybe I took a while to learn them, but now that I know them, it would be nothing less than insanity to make the same make twice.

1. Don't ever do something for praise, recognition or external reward. You must appreciate the intrinsic value you get from things, not the extrinsic reward. Don't do something with two eyes fixated on whatever it is that lies at the end of the tunnel. Live in the moment and do things that you enjoy. In everything you do, enjoy the friends you make, the cakes that you bake, enjoy the sport and music you play or the words that you say. Don't enjoy something when it is finished, but when you are doing it. And for goodness sakes, don't forego enjoyment for external reward, because some of the time, it just doesn't happen. I have spent so long breaking my back, almost killing myself to please other people and to create an image of perfection around myself. It only so happened that when the cherry on top didn't arrive, I learnt one of my most valuable life lessons. Only do things because you enjoy them, because life is too precious to be wasted on living the life of what everyone else wants you to be, not who you want to be. I do not regret for a minute the friends I have made along the way because of my tendency to overwhelm myself with cocurricular activities - Rach, Eliza, Kat, Nick, Matt, Sean, Steve, Julia, Lori, Rhia, James, Alexius, Nick, Alex, James, Adele, Sarah, Emma, Chloe, Bronte, Steph, Miranda, Molly, Airley, Amy, Jess, Fi, Ruby, Ally, Terri, Amy, Kate, Tutai, Dan R, Loz... I guess the list goes on. I do not regret the help, the joy or the laughter that I gave other people and that they gave me. And the reward I have felt in these aspects makes it okay, because for these reasons, I can know that this time was not even close to being completely wasted. Just do not be foolish enough to let your anticipation of extrinsic rewards outweigh the gain of intrinsic ones.

2. There are two types of people in life: those that screw everyone else over to get everything they want, and those who get screwed over by doing the right thing. I recount countless examples of this. People who blame other people only so that they can further their own position in life. People who shift responsibility to make themselves feel better. People who bully others into getting their own way. I think these people are exactly the reason someone invented the saying "Life isn't always fair." Because despite what we want to believe, karma doesn't always work out. These people will become successful and will climb above others in jobs, school and recognition and, in the meantime, the little guy gets left behind. But maybe we then have to consider how we choose to define success. Maybe not success that is limited to a job or career, but perhaps success in life. Because these people lose things. People see who they are and see what they do, and people don't like them. They may be manipulative bastards, so for goodness sakes, do not let them manipulate you. They may win in the workplace, but they lose out in relationships, in friendships and in love - and in the end, the only relationships that they have left are with people who are just as superficial and selfish as they are.

Be happy knowing that people see you just as you are. If you're going to fuck everyone over to get to the top, people won't be stupid enough to fall for your deceptive looks, at least not forever. And if you just pass by, trying to do good by others and potentially missing out on a world of recognition at the same time, people are watching you too. The right people. The people that admire you for everything you do - for every attempt, for every effort, for every responsibility, for every selfless act and for every kind word. Friends. Don't get sucked into the trap of screwing everyone else over just because it works, because in the end, you will lose out in what is really important.

Fini - A personal reminder.

Blogging draws me further into myself, not life.
Work ethic is about activity, not intentions.
Emotion should be expressed to people, not a computer.
And the world exists in three dimensions, not two.

Admirable as a blog can be, this one is not.
I am absorbed in myself and in my mind rather than engaging in my surroundings or bringing up useful food for thought.
My mind is plagued by infection and dwelling in my thoughts only lets this disease mutate further.
This is life.
I want to work hard, I want to do things - for school, that I enjoy, with family, with friends.

Just do it.
Life is too short to be wasted on things like Facebook and a blog that makes you feel crap.
Get things done. Do things.
Be engaged in life.
Where the thought or mood cannot motivate the action, let the action govern the mood.
Just do it, damnit.
For goodness sakes, let there be hope.
Create it.

25th Hour

YEAH, FUCK YOU, TOO. Fuck me? Fuck YOU, FUCK YOU and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car - get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats, trying to audition for "The Sopranos." Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermès scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck J.C.! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin' Otisville, J.! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place... ~ Monty Brogan, 25th Hour

The Swallow

Unencumbered swallow, flying swiftly high above
The trees and the oceans - riding the wind.
Forever free, you have escaped the clutches of man
And struggle to survive the entrapment of our world.
Flying from place to place, always searching for your perfect home,
Chasing an ideal.
Travelling high, low, far and wide,
You fly,
You search,
And you find the spring that you are looking for.
You spread your wings and as you soar, through heavens light, the wind sings
Deror in your passing.
You are uplifted. Liberated.
Free.
But what would you do, dear swallow,
If you never learnt to fly?

18.

i have never had a close friend or relative die. i have never been abused or assaulted. i have never watched anything traumatising unfold. i have never been bullied. i do not come from a broken home. i have practically been wrapped in bubble wrap my entire fucking life. so what is my problem? why does it hurt so much? why can't i cope with any of this?

what's my fucking excuse?

i cannot help despising myself for my weakness. you who know the worst of life must resent me. i thought growing older was supposed to yield some sort of self-understanding and -acceptance, yet i am almost 18 and i cannot help but feel that there is just no hope left. the world becomes bigger, you become smaller and your soul becomes weaker, until it is finally crushed into oblivion by the perpetually unbearable weight of simply being alive.

Lost hope.

I want to rage. To hit someone, to hurt someone. I want to cry. To fall apart into a million pieces never to be put back together. I want to punch myself in the brain, to beat myself repeatedly. I want to break anything I hold. I want to release, to exhale after each breath and to relax every tensing muscle. I want to be free. I want to be able to sustain any given emotion for more than a few minutes. I don't want to think anymore, to analyse anymore. I cannot handle consciousness. I want internal to be external. Incessant thought, incessant processing and incessant rationalisation every second of the day is killing me. I am lost. My identity is in ruins. I don't know who I am, and anything I do know I detest. I don't want to be who I am, yet I do not even know what that is. I want to look in the mirror and be able to tell myself that I am okay. I want to open my mouth and believe that the words coming out are worth hearing. To say things to people not only so they listen, but so they care. To inspire. I want to stop caring what other people think, yet this seems to contradict the image I have built of myself. Have I ever done something not to please someone else? I simultaneously desire and detest perfection. Why do I have to care about everything. To analyse everything. To solve everything and feel responsible every damn second of my life. Could I not have been made blind to the issues the world faces? Why must I feel that every problem - big or small - was and is somehow my responsibility to resolve? And why did I ever try to believe I could change anything? The world is a shithole, but what are we going to do about it. I am small, and while I want to believe in myself and in change, I feel powerless. Powerless over myself and over others. I do not believe in myself because I do not like, admire or know who I am. All I know is that I am not who I want to be. In truth and sincerity, I cannot help but think, there is no hope.

Septendecim

Although part of me likes to believe that humanistic psychology is the load of bullshit that everyone says it is, the past week has seen me experience first-hand Maslow's theoretical concept of the Heirarchy of Needs. A sudden contraction of some ghastly virus combined with a depleted immune system saw my health take a turn for the worse. Overcome by a sore throat, running nose and hacking cough, my priority was not schoolwork, relationships or asking big questions, but rather, getting better again. With my most basic surival needs not being met, everything else was omitted from the picture. Although being run-down and feeling terrible, things were, in a way, good. When we are stripped down to our very core necessities, there need be no other preoccupations. After all, who would worry about the meaning of life when they are busy trying to keep themselves well?

Still on a trail of recovery, it's not like I'm particularly happy or sad, but at the moment, this isn't the biggest priority. Happiness, sadness, meaning, solving global problems - that isn't the focus. The focus is the basics. And how much more content are we all when we strip things back down to simplicity. Although it is important not to perpetually see it as a burden, as we grow up things not only become more interesting, but also more complicated and difficult. Lying on the couch watching movies for two days reminded me of being sick in primary school, staying home and doing exactly the same thing. Nostalgia. But wasn't it nice to just visit those days where no one had a care in the world?

So it made me think. Maybe sometimes we just need to strip things back. Perhaps an overindulgence in the meaning of life and one's place in the world isn't can be not only a virtue, but an impairment. Who would have thought that consciousness could in fact be the danger; that perhaps sickness is the cure and that the disease is really in being fully conscious. Of the world, of yourself, and the insignificance of the role you play. We strive for self-actualisation and for understanding, but who said that being so trapped in consciousness was a good thing?

Me.

I should have stopped comparing myself to others years ago.

I cannot write. Think.

Plain. Uninteresting. The epitome of boring.

But that's me.

I cannot be what I am not.

Compassion: n. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering.

To varying degrees, every day of my life is a struggle. In line with Buddhist belief, life is suffering. Whether it is sitting at the forefront of my brain, or is buried beneath a mountain of other preoccupations, the question "What am I doing here?" never ceases to challenge me. Over many years of trying to answer this question, I have expanded my knowledge on life, on people, and also on Buddhist beliefs. A recurring theme in my quest for meaning in my life is that of compassion; surely our lives have significance that stretches beyond ourselves. To genuinely care about others, to do well by others, but most importantly, to have a true desire to relieve others of pain and suffering; to me, this is the essence of our lives. Sometimes it takes a bit of reminding to look past ourselves, but in my opinion, the more we can do this, the more meaning our own lives hold.

The superfluous use of this word in our day to day life has meant that its power and true meaning has gradually been diluted, so here I present to you, some of the Dalai Lama's views on compassion:

"Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is non-violent, non-harming and non-aggressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility and respect towards the other"

"Genuine compassion is based on the rationale that all human beings have an innate desire to be happy and overcome suffering"

"In one sense one could define compassion as the feeling of unbearableness at the sight of other people's suffering, other sentient beings' suffering.

"In generating compassion, when you are taking on another's suffering, you may also initially experience a certain degree of discomfort, a sense of uncomfortableness or unbearableness. But in the case of compassion, the feeling is much different; underlying the uncomfortable feeling is a very high level of alertness and determination because you are voluntarily and deliberately accepting another's suffering for a higher purpose. There is a feeling of connectedness and commitment, a willingness to reach out to others, a feeling of freshness rather than dullness"