Family.

Do you know how it is sometimes, that you wish someone was never born? Well, unfortunately for me, I have always been too nice and never wished that upon anyone. Only, today was of those days I wish I was never born.

Family. What are families for? People talk about the perfect happy family, one which started out with the white picket fence, 2.5 kids, doting parents, obedient children, happy childhood and selfless familial love.

The perfect family life is somewhat a myth for me. Going 'home' everyday after work is a torture, and I dread the days that I'm off from work but simply too tired to drag myself out of the house. So instead, I try to 'compensate' by staying out a little while longer after work, and locking myself in the room during the weekends. There is only one solution for this before I go bat shit insane - I need to move out, pronto. I just hope I would be independent enough to survive on my own.

The laughable thing is, whenever I get into a serious relationship(not that there were many, as I can only honestly count the 5 years r/s), I still fantasized about doing right by my man, then one day create a family, and be a mother my kids will be proud of. To give my own children a whole, complete family that I never had.

But you know what they say about you taking after your parents... So I guess that ideal needs a re-evaluation.

Oh by the way, to the sperm donor who helped in my creation, Happy belated fuckin Father's Day. Hope you had a good one with your happy little family in Malaysia, and thanks for creating this dysfunctional family and then leaving me in it shortly after I was born.

Mum told me you did actually fought to keep me during the divorce. Me. When I first heard about this years ago, I was relieved that you didn't manage to, because the only vivid memory I have of you as a kid, was the time you teasingly asked me to share my Gardenia bread - I said no, and you gave me a slap across the face. I can still remember how I stared off to your right side in shock, too fearful to look into your eyes, while I tried to understand why my father hit me. I can still recall how my ears rang. I was, what, barely two?

Anyway, for the first time in my life, I'd actually thought it might have been better if you did manage to get custody of me; That since you've already made a mess out of this family, the current one you've built should not be that worse off.

Hah! I can't believe I even let that thought manifest in my mind.

My life might have been shit, but I have somewhat survived it - I wouldn't give it up for a second try with a father who barely gives two hoots about me, especially when he is the one who created my living Hell.

Happy Father's Day. FUCK YOU.

I hate being helpless.

Friends who know me, or even just read the status messages on my Facebook account, would now get an answer to their question - "Why so emo?!" *Wry grin*

Not wanting to go into details, but let's just say I never had a good childhood growing up, I wished I had a father to love me, and I wished I did not remember vividly how wounds could scar you both mentally and physically.

But I pulled through it. At first, I cheated by putting up a front, which was strong as an iron cast, and somehow along the way I did managed to be strong. If not for myself, then for my family and handful of friends who cares but somehow not that enough for me to dare to offload my burdens and insecurities onto them.

I still have my little outbursts that I could not help. You know those little wooden, hollow birdies that catches water dripping from a source above, and when they are full, they would tip to one side to deposit the collected water? I feel like one of those, needing to have an outlet to deposit all that burden, except that everytime I come back up, I'm still half-filled with water.

I've never been a very good friend. When I was younger, I remembered giving up my last dollar just to make my friends happy, as I did not know what it took to let them know I cared, thus I did it with money and being there as much as I could. Nobody taught me how to be a caring, good friend, because I have never had one, not for a very, very long time.

Alas, time lapsed, and I inevitably grew jaded and cynical, and I thought, "Jen, other people do this more competently than you do. You're nobody's best friend. You're just a good friend, you're just there. You're just not made for this shit. So why bother so hard and make yourself miserable?" The damage was done.

Besides, flattering words were, no, ARE something that always have been a problem getting past my lips. If they weren't deserved, I couldn't force myself to dole it out. Human beings would always prefer verbal assurance of friendship and loyalty, and I guess I do too, but I just couldn't do that. I mean, I would try to express with a hug and physical touch, but since when was that ever enough? I suppose that's the consequences you would have to face, when you are too fucking chicken to choke the words out, for fear that they would get thrown back in your face.

For if that happens, that would be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. And I'm too much of a coward to be able to stand that, even when I see my friends preferring others over me. I'm still in the group, sorta, but not really.

I'm standing on the sidelines, occasionally trying to step into the spotlight, with a well-placed self-derogatory poke at my own expense, or, hah, trying to be the all-knowing One, just so that, my friends might look upon me with a little more respect, a little more awe, earning a little more placement in their hearts. Nonetheless though, the slightest self-doubt would have me scurrying back into the shadows. Even so, I'm not even ready to let go of that slight comfort that I still have a line to toe about.

That's when I decided that I would still try, but nothing's going to make me try as hard anymore. I looked at everything through reinforced glass coating my eyes and my heart, and I tried not to let them get in that easily.

But sometimes, all it took for an impenetrable fort to fall, is the tiniest, unexpected peg taken to it. It would start off with a small chip in the wall that you would ignore, but the cracks would soon spread through out the walls, and before you know it, they fall, and your emotions are not longer safe.

I still try. I still try, because, no matter how cynical I am about life, I'm still a human being, deep down to the core. I don't want to feel lonely. I'm afraid of being lonely. I am lonely. I don't know what to do with this loneliness. I'm scared. And it's this innate fear that had me struggling to float to the surface to take a life-enforcing breath, to not collapse when a weaker version of me would have given up years ago. I'm determined to not sink and drown.

Not yet.

I wish I could be at peace. I wish I can write happy poems, and painless thoughts, for once. I wish, I wish I did not have this capacity to feel so so much for people and everything around me. I wish, that I can truly have someone who loves me because I'm me, not because I'm so-and-so's friend, or because I am willing to do something for them. I wish I was someone's closest and best friend, not in the whole wide world, but at least in the group; I thought I had that for awhile, but I got replaced since last month. I deserved it, though.

I wish I can find someone who loves Jennifer Lim, just because. But then again, who can? It will be so much work, trying to break through my walls and insecurities. Even if or when they do, the results wouldn't be rewarding. Any slightest shit will get my hackles up again, and it just would not be worth the efforts.

I wish I knew for sure who I really am inside. Sometimes I feel I've turned so vile that I'm afraid to psychoanalyze myself. I just feel like I'm slowly stripped of my identity and I'm not sure if I have any idea what I have become.

I hope I would not have to hate myself if I manage to discover that one day. Because if that happens, I would truly have no one.

I hate being helpless, but that's what I am right now. I'm scared, I'm scared shitless.

Awakenings.

Author's sidenotes: Yes, I've finally changed the layout to a much simpler, bugfree one. Hooray!

*Touches keyboard awkwardly* Well ok, it's not as if I don't touch it every single day at work, but to blog? *Shakes head* Can't say I'm used to it anymore. I'm a lil... afraid.

These months past, I've gotten used to bottling my emotions inside me once again, that when they threaten to spill over, I usually direct them to an, more often than not, unhealthy outlet.

So yeah, even though the words now come easily to me as if I've never stopped blogging, I'm afraid. Petrified even, that my emotions might betray me, make me feel exposed, vulnerable.


I'd prefer to do without that particular piece of emotion.


What drove me to writing in particular today, was the foolishness of Man. How is it that God created Man who generally (not all, per se; I meant generally) only cherish what they've lost and can't have?

When it all boils down to a choice between what they've lost and what they can't have, Man, whose curiosity are piqued, will be more desirous of what they can't have; a toy that slipped past their fingers and noticed again when dangled infront of them.

And why is it that the sands of Time tend to lend a fairytale-like touch to a faded, distant memory?

I guess there's definitely two sides of a coin to mull over.

Through a series of events in my momentus life, I'd learnt to never take affairs of the heart for granted anymore.

Yet, albeit having tasted the sweetest drop of ambrosia that only Love can provide, I'd also ridden the dark unrelenting storm of depression and anguish.

I barely lived to tell the tale; My battle armour torn and tattered, damages irreparable.

Those experiences were what made me a coward who plead for Love to favour me with another opportunity at its ambrosia, but also afraid to fight for it.

In the past, I would step into Love's battlefield with my sword drawn from its sheath, the moment wedging a warcry out of me, but now, once the enemies appear, I would thrust my sword into the sand and get knocked down to my knees.

Past wounds and battle scars have affected me too greatly to revive the fervour I used to possess, yet the allure of charging back into the battlefield in search of that... something, is undeniable.

Yes, you could say I've at least ventured a try, but did that make me any different from the unappreciative Man I've described above?


No... We're all just fools for love. I'm still searching for that something to light up my path.


"…The heavens, as troubled with man’s act, Threatens his bloody stage: by the clock ‘t is day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. Is ‘t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame, That darkness does the face of earth entomb, When living light should kiss it?"

P.S: By the way, to the person who requested me to change my MSN tagline if it was on him, to which I had to lie partially through my teeth(it was about him and also another man) to say it wasn't, here's this: I AM a better woman without you! :D