hrm. how shall i start?
i just popped by a site that was talking about a certain course i took ages ago, before i came uni, way back at the end of 2002. at that time, a friend approached me. infact, just let me start the story from abit before everything started at the course.
i was working as a full time tutor then, to little kids, not very sure what i wanted to do. i was rejected by the university back home, which astounded me because i was called down for some interview which my friend's brother was.... well he was under that program too and according to him, none of those interviewed for that program were ever rejected by uni before, so i guess i am the first.
in the mean time i didnt wana waste time. in singapore, certification meant everything. i was depressed, because i see everyone around me going to uni, preparing for uni and so on, and i have nothing. people would probably go, oh she wana go uni so she can get certification and blah blah. sadly, that's not the main reason lol. i just like studying, not matter how retarded it sounds to you. it's fun to me.
so, after various failures in my life, i was at this junction of it, trying to choose what to do next. i didn't feel good asking for an education overseas because i am not sure if my family can afford it, and i did feel it was my stupidity that resulted in this situation. i didn't feel ready for a working life, but then again i had been working since 11, and i was 20. 9 years is a very long time, and it felt like i had just been using studying as a past time, so now it's just time to get rid of it.
i was also with a fairly steady boyfriend at that time. i wasn't sure if i had marry him, but i felt obligated to because i am just not confident of getting boyfriends, what with my illness making me look bloated, and also it's just too much of a trouble to look for a new one, the RIGHT one. personally, i had always felt, u can have a soul mate out there, but u never know if the one ur holding on to is THE one if ur guna just up and go every now and then.
however, both of us are together, in some kind of misery. it's not about the routine that we kept following, just home, food, movies. he likes it simple, i dont really mind coz it meant i could study at his home or etc while i was still in school when i first met him then. it's just, whenever we talk, it's always about his glorious past, and how shit he is now. it's always "i can't" and i allowed it to stay that way too, coz i was like that too.
so one fine day, i was walking to a student's apartment to teach tuition as per normal, my good friend tim called me. this is one man i really looked up to. retired at about... 60? 55?, he was one of the first few pilots to fly a certain plane in singapore. i must admit, one of the biggest admiration of him that i had, was just the fact that he flies planes. he still does, and he teaches at the youth flying school or something (i think he's a principal or something, don't ask me coz i don't want to really point him out so much, he might want his privacy.).
and the fact that the planes he used to fly were fighter planes, planes of the air force... i am a sucker for it, i even applied for it, willing to give up uni if air force hires me.
sadly though, my eyesight is a failure, and i suck at maths so i guess i failed hehe...
anyways, he called and asked to spend some time talking to me about something. so i was like ok... what's it about? and he was like "just wondering, have u heard of.. motivation courses? like courses to change ur life?" that took my attention.
perhaps you guys think i am a sucker, a loser to go for such courses. but i like them. every time i walk out of them, i walk out happy, refreshed and all bumming to go. yes, i need people to remind me that some stuff are worth living for at times, and that there are more to life than results results and more results. but at times, i fail myself, for the sheer fact that i always like to look at things from the negative side and then let it drag me down rather than going "oh! maybe i can do that!"
up till that point though, all these courses were subsidised by schools that i was in, coz its something they insist everyone must go through. so when tim told me it's a thousand or something like that, i choked. i don't have a good habit of saving money, and i don't know if i want to spend a thousand on just that. then he sat me down at british club, with a nice luncheon he paid for and then proceed to tell me, he could see i need it, i could benefit from it. and he was going to pay for the basic for me.
at this point, i duno why i did what i did, i cried. i went home after signing up, and cried.
i guess it was an accumulation of things, i was depressed, i was about to enter a world of paper chase that i dont like, the endless rat race that i am not ready for, and i don't want to go in emotionally and meritocratically unready. i had alot of "bad past" that i wasnt ready to let go of, though i should have and i don't know why. i fear people, i fear interaction, i fear.. being vulnerable.
perhaps the most physically damning thing about all these feelings would be how i hold my bags when i am at meetings, at gatherings. i often use huge backpacks for reasons as such. i hold them tightly to my chest, like a pillow. and that's when i feel secure.. i feel safe and everything's ok.
when i first went for the basic course, needless to say that was troublesome. tim had to constantly wave me off using it. then we had bag rooms, since we aren't essentially allowed to have our bags and stuff with us. i felt so naked and awkward, lol, i put my hands beneath me, pretending to warm it up.
ever since the course, i have found out so many people labelling the course as a cult, as brainwashers, as various other bad things. to be honest? you choose what you want to feel. something that i learnt way before the course, was that when u hear stuff u know it's the truth, or links to a part of you you refused to acknowledge, to face, u run away and get all mad and upset.
that's what these courses are about, facing the real you, getting you over it and working on your good points for the greater good.
for me that's what happened. i wasn't sure how much of the truth i could bear, how much of the truth i could face. everyone wana be the victim, because it feels great. to have attention, sympathy and people holding u when u look like ur down and u can't handle anything, that's what i was wallowing in. the self pity i carried around with me, that was what it was about.
as the courses flew past me, from one part to the next. i never graduated from the leadership part of the course as i missed the final weekend. i was in australia, and when i got here, i just didn't want to leave, breaking my promises to my team mates. i am sorry that i broke my promise to them, but, to sound bitchy, i wasn't all that sorry because i could start living the life that the courses taught me. i wanted to be a somebody. and i was living it, starting the path towards it.
i never completed the goals i laid out either. there's no real why to it. i laid them out for lp 27, and i never did fully accomplish it. people started feeling like i didn't want to do them in the first place. at that time though, i dropped back into the flow for abit, and didn't feel it was possible. i did start out on them. i never completed it.
my goals?
1) to write a book
2) to lose weight
3) to send some stuff to aid the poor in burma.
of the 3, i would say the third one was the closest to completion. but as i was in australia, i never actually followed up as to what happened in burma where the stuff went. so as far as the plans go, it's not completed to me.
with regards to the first, i wrote about 20 pages or so, wrote an earlier one, destroyed it coz i didn't like it (writer's block as well u may call it) and then wrote the 20 paged one and stopped. i started losing confidence a little at that stage heh. i wanted to write something everyone would read, but it was growing epic in length and i am not sure anybody would want to read a non-tolkien written epic of that sort of detail and length.
losing weight. well. by the 3rd week of running, trying to lose weight efficiently, i didn't like it one bit. i didn't feel like it's me, like i want to lose weight for health reasons, but a large part of the reasons were more for superficial stuff. and i just thought, superficial isn't me. so i dropped it, admittedly without telling my team.
alot of the course, as you can see, is based on your own motivation. support, as far as i can gather, comes from your team emotionally supporting you most of all. at least that's how i want it to be for myself, because once i am done with the courses, i have mostly myself to count on. i can change my goals, i can lie, i can cheat, i can keep quiet about whatever i do, but motivation, as i learnt, comes from within myself.
for those who might have been on this course or is going through it, i am not spoiling it for u as to what we did, what we could have done, what i could have done. all these so far have been my own opinion on what was happening there. everyone has their own experiences, their own choices that will lead to different paths. this entire course is also based on confidentiality too, so i am keeping to that.
what happened from that course and how was it beneficial to me?
well. i am still scared of people, if u want to know. i am still scared of heights, but both are now for medical and normal reasons. i can't breathe in crowds for fucks sake! i mean why do people have to cling onto stinky sweaty bodies -.-. in the process of the course, i also chose to eliminate my fear of heights, and went sky diving. people might say bungee jumping would have been better coz u dangle up and down. personally, i feel that either one of them would have elicit a loud yelling hell no from me, which was good enough. i didn't even tell my parents, except until the day itself i told my dad, and he was (OMFG) ok with it and told me not to die.
mum was told a few days later and she freaked out. as i acquired a fair bit of a tan from the dive, she insisted i must have fried my brains and wanted to bring me to the hospital. -.- old wives tales. now i would still scream if u tell me to jump off the plane, i would still hesitate before a jump, BUT, i can proudly say i did it, and i would do it again and again and again, because i have LEARNT TO HANDLE MY FEARS. ah HAH! :P
my own experience though? when i jumped, i was covered by clouds. the instructor was radio-ing me to turn left, turn right, and so on. i felt was going in circles. i was scared. i could barely think, but i pushed myself to think, to perform what was in the instruction books (aka pick up ur parachute and hold on before it goes beyond ur reach...) and follow the radio commands. i was still scared. i was VERY scared lol. i was scared the chute will not hold on, that birds will chew my chute away... somehow...
but when i look. the scene took my breath away. granted malaysia isn't the prettiest of places, but the greens, the lakes, the mountains.. beyond ur fear, there's a beauty you don't know about, because you haven't tried.
2 weeks later, when i was given a certification, i was told " u know, in ur first jump (i had 2 jumps) we couldn't see you coz of the clouds, so really, u guided ur way down.. because u were so scared u didn't know ur right from left."
i wonder if i should have laughed or cried at that. -.-
as for my bf and me, he didn't like the "new" me as he calls it, which i recognise as the old me, before boyfriends, before depression. he didn't like the confident me, as he named it, and we argued more and more and more. he got even more insecure and hated the course for what it "did to me" so i couldn't get him to sign up even when i offered to pay for it.
eventually we parted ways, because he read my private emails and declared that i was cheating on him, when i was writing about me helping a friend thru a suicidal stage of his life. i was about to end it anyways, just didn't know how to because of the emotional attachments.
i did realise it was for the best though, because i had changed from the person he knows, or thought he knows, and he can't seem to accept this person.
to this date, i am always thankful of tim, i am still striving to accomplish my goals. i do get distracted every now and then, and i let it happen so i can have fun too along the way. i do make mistakes still, i am not like "uber" since the course, but i am more aware and i change stuff when i know i suck.
who am i?
i am me.
that is something to be proud of, i would say :D
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