Revelations turned reflections.

I probably shouldn’t be writing about this, but as I was looking at my books of ideas (yes I have books of ideas where I write down plotlines for my stories and characters don’t judge me I still don’t like writing digitally). Ok as I was looking through the book, I realized most of the main characters in my stories that isn’t set in some fictional world or apocalypse has something similar to me. If I created the character with the real world in mind, I realized that it is most of the times based on me.

Though is not uncommon for a writer to write a character based on himself or herself, I realized that the characters I write is really like me and to explain how similar I would have to tell everyone a story about myself and how I got to where I am today.

I am pretty sure, everyone that uses the internet knows about the Asian stereotype where parents have high expectations of what they want their children to be when they grow up. You know the stereotype of either be doctor or engineer or be disowned by the family, yeah my life is something like that. Being born the youngest of three siblings, my other two brothers went through the same thing. The eldest one is the favorite child of mom thus she pampers him a lot to the point that he gets away with almost everything. The second child is the prized son for dad cause he is an engineer that is currently based in United States, he is the one my dad talks about when he wants to boost his ego towards his peers.

Then there’s me, the one studying mass communications, which is something till today both my parents don’t really understand what mass communications stood for even though they encounter it every day but that is a story for another day. Though I always wanted to study a course where I get to write creatively since high school, my parents on the other hand had different aspirations for me. My mom wanted me to become a teacher because she thinks that’s easy money, my dad wants me to become a veterinarian cause I like playing with dogs. Both very respectable occupations I should say myself but the problem is I am not interested in either of those occupations that my parents wants me to strive for.

Frankly I don’t even know what I should strive for, I have no goals or dreams, no real bucket lists just fantasies that I daydream and write about. Same goes when it comes to education, I don’t strive to get the highest grade there is, I strive to just pass, I simply don’t care about grades anymore, all I want is a pass, I dont want to strive to get an A cause I find no joy in it, in fact I find more joy in a C than an A. now that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy studying, it depends on the subject that I am studying, if it is something that I am really interested in, I’ll actually attempt to work for it but most of the time I am disinterested which is apparently a problem to a lot of people when I tell them about this part of me.

Now this is a story I can share today, cause it kinda relates to my current personality and perception of everything. In Malaysia, there used to be this test we have to take during high school called PMR which is supposed to determine which course or as we Malaysians call it ‘streams’ you will be entering during your last two years of high school.

There are four courses/streams are Science, Accounts, Economy and Arts. Now in normal schools you are not really allowed to pick which course/streams you want to go to, instead you are assigned to it based on your grades from PMR. Though back then I didn’t really have any clue which stream I wanted to go for, but I knew that science was apparently the best and the hardest, which coincidentally is also the one that my mom wants me to go to thinking it will help me with my future.

Being the clueless dreamless naïve son that I was, I figured why not? Since mom wanted me to science might as well give it a shot, so I studied I went to tuitions after schools. I went to so many tuition centers that my timeline for a week is just repeating between school, tuition, and home. It wasn’t exactly fun, cause my friends were all going out for gatherings, watching movies and having fun while I am stuck in what felt like an endless loop of forced education. But I didn’t really complain, I knew that if I entered science it was going to be way worse due to the extra subjects that I’ll have to take.

So the first day I found out that I was entering science stream, I was overjoyed cause although I didn’t felt like I scored good enough in PMR to enter science stream, apparently it was good enough for the teachers to decide that I was qualified. My happiness ended, when I found out my niece who’s the same age as me is also entering the science and in the same class as I am.

I wont explain why this niece of mine is the same age as me cause that would be me having to explain my family tree which is very complicated. She is the bane of my schooling existence, the one that my mom loves to compare me to, she’s athletic, I’m not, she’s good in mandarin which resulted her to be in a better class than me during primary cause we went to a Chinese primary school that prioritized mandarin over anything. But one thing that I am better than her at, is my command of the English language, though I am not exactly the best at it compared to my current peers, back then I was actually one of the top English speakers and scorers in my school.

One thing confused me, cause I knew her PMR grades were no where close to mine, she didn’t even had any A’s so logically she wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near science she would have been lucky if she even entered accounts yet there she was in the same class as me. My mom wasn’t exactly happy when she found out that my niece was in science as well, the first day after school when she found out that we both are in science she told me this line that changed how I see grades and education as a whole.

“What’s the point of me wasting all that money sending you for extra classes, when she(the niece) can go in as well?”

Though I found that the reason the niece was in was because the teachers wanted to fill in the student quota for science, it didn’t matter to my mom. For her I was a failure cause even after studying so much and so long I lost against someone who got in through pure luck. It was that day, the first day I entered science that I gave up on everything. Grades didn’t matter to me anymore, for me grades is just an alphabet for my parents to show off amongst their peers like “Look at how many A’s my child has”.

It can also be said that it was the day I started seeing things as how it should be or at least it I thought it should be. I started to grew bitter internally while smiling externally, even till today despite so many years had passed I am still bitter over the incident, sometimes I wonder if it can be counted as traumatized cause I felt my own personality changed since.

I started to hate myself, for not seeing things sooner, for following what my parents wanted me to do instead of following or even having my own dreams and goals because now I have none. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, I do things without reasons, I started my fitness journey lost over 20 kgs without even having a goal to begin with. It feels as if the road ahead in my life is nothing but a blurry mess and every day I walk on it not knowing where I’ll end up. I hate it, I hate all of it.

Now back to my characters and how I feel like they are based on me. Most of the main characters especially those in romance stories (my experience with romance is another longer story), goes through something traumatic that changed them, something that caused them to be lost in life not knowing what to do. The characters I write are all lost at some point of their lives and same as me, the path ahead of their lives are all a blurry mess and they are going through it as well.

Maybe that’s why I can’t bring myself to finish the stories because I myself don’t know how it should go. Should I make it a happy end? Which means that I want a happy ending to my own story? Or should I bring it to a sad end which means that I want a sad ending for myself? I just cant bring myself to decide what end should I give the characters that are mostly based on me cause I don’t know whether I deserves a happy end or a sad end with the things I’ve done and decisions I’ve made in my life. I am as the same as my characters, lost in life and hate themselves for it, for being stupid enough to somehow be lost in their own lives, for not being able to control their directions, for still forging ahead on a blurry path wanting to see an ending.