Roads
Monday, January 7, 20193:30 PM
It was when I was hunched behind Ili’s seat, perusing her phone screen as she took the Pottermore quiz to place herself in one of the Hogwarts houses that I realised something about myself. Ili’s phone screen showed three choices; Love, Trust or Hope. She chose hope.
I don’t like hoping. The feeling of yearning earnestly and longing for something to happen - I found myself realising that I rarely do it.
First case in point - I'm fresh from sitting for my Law & Economics paper. Was it hard? Yes. Do I hope that I pass? Not really. I'll just wait and see. Ahaaa. You see?
As the verdict showed Gryffindor, I started asking around in the room for the rest of my mates’ choice if they had to opt for one of the three. Most chose hope too. It all is a matter of personal preference, each person’s disposition, mentality and so on. But I’ve had someone important to me confront me with such agitation that I’m one to play too safe and scared to be disappointed. Therefore I take things as they come and lose so much sense of competition because I do not truly fight for anything. I simply don't hope for anything in general.
This, I reckon, has a lot to do with my mechanism of dealing with uncertainties. Hoping is like a bridge connecting to uncertainties to make them disappear.
I’ve found, as I trudge through adolescence and young adulthood that the uncertainties in life just grow and grow and amplify that I feel like they are becoming too much to bear. I hated uncertainties so much. I hated being in the dark and not knowing which paths to take.
For starters, I remember way earlier on when I had just passed my driving test, my father riding shotgun to supervise my driving and tell me to take this turn and that. In efforts to sharpen my sense of direction, he forbade the usage of Waze (apparently to him Waze was not trustworthy AHAHAHA). I couldn’t handle it well. Coupled with my relative ineptitude in being confident to change lanes (I’m that driver you’d honk at and mutter “Bodo masuk je la”), I hated not knowing where I was supposed to go. If I was told where I had to go, which turns I had to take in a spur of the moment, I would panic and crumble.
And that was how it was for years and how I lost the interest to even hope. There were so many new uncertainties that I'd stopped hoping and simply let myself be consumed in whatever that life has got in store for me. I didn't bother to swim, I just let myself get dragged by the current.
I recall hoping to achieve great results for SPM but ended up falling short. It hurt me so much...................for real. Okay, let's not delve too deep into it. I'm having war flashbacks.
I also recall how much I was hoping to pursue English or journalism (or anything of the like) but received an offer to read Law instead. I was half disappointed, half expectant of an arduous academic journey; anyhow it taught me not to hope too much. So I dove headfirst into this field, without knowing how to go about the roads ahead. After all, I made it into the second year, so it wasn't all too bad. And that was me succeeding in dealing with one uncertainty.
I guess the reason why it was hard for me to come to terms with uncertainties is that coming from a conventional family of being the only daughter (up until 2014), I was very much protected by my family members and mostly had my necessities laid out in front of me. I never had to figure anything out, just ask for clarifications and pointers. It's not my intention to come off as coddled or spoiled, but what I mean is I was within my comfort zone for so long that if I were to be coaxed out of it (into uncertainties), I'd feel lost. Clearly now in the present life do I take the brunt of it.
To this day I still don't know if I'm doing what is right for me, if I'm really destined to be with the person I’m currently with, if people are friends with me for who I truly am, when my mental state is going to alleviate, and so many other questions about family and inner turmoil. Surely it’s draining and it leaves me clueless like a fly finding its way out through a window. And surely it makes me weep in bed in the dead of night. There are so many more uncertainties that will eventually plague my mind in the future, with the stakes being higher.
Sooner or later I would have to make peace with these uncertainties and let them settle. And when they reappear in my mind, I just need to push them all to the very back of my head. Or put them all in a mental box, seal it and never have it opened. Will it be like watching a masterpiece of a story of your own life, or being in a driverless train waiting to crash?
Uncertainties are uncertainties. I wish life had a guidebook. Or does it? Maybe I am the author of my own guidebook. Anyhow, if things in life are meant to be, then they will be.
