First Blog: My memorable childhood

I'll try my best to recall my most memorable childhood. It's so hard but here goes...

I didn't have much friends when I was young. Weight was a problem for me, and on top of that I was pretty much a very quiet boy. I didn't talked to anyone unless they talked to me. Sometimes I don't even talk to others when they approached me. I was a very shy kid, but my friends considered me as a very friendly person.

So when I was 9, I started to feel like as if the world wasn't quite what is it. It's like my whole life didn't have a purpose. I felt as if I didn't exist, I mean I did exist physically but somehow I'd wish things in this world doesn't make sense. I wish it wasn't complicated and perfect. I mean it's like what if I could blackout so things would become clearer. I'd wish people would just live their lives because they wanted to and not because they have to.

I started to see the fakeness in everyone. I started to question everything. Life, religion, people, jobs, schools, friends, bullies, teachers, girls, why girls don't talk to me, why guys don't talk to me. Why this? Why that? I started to not care about everything. It feels like this isn't me. This isn't everyone. It's just everything but true. It wasn't real.

I started to skip school a lot. I didn't join a gang or anything. That seem pointless. I just stopped caring. I went to Pasir Ris Park on almost every school day, either during or after school, on my own, an overweight 9 year old boy with not many friends, off to a place where almost no one was there to share the air that I breathe. Selfish me, but it's a place where I can just stop and think, and it seems like the world did stop for me to think. A place where I can let myself go yet it feels like I'm closer to my own self than ever. Of course it was also a good replacement for school. Somehow it's the idea of not caring that interest me. And this little devil inside of me started to get a thrill out of it. Not the thrill of skipping school, and not caring about anything or being alone, but the thrill of skipping school, not caring about anything and being alone without anyone knowing it. I just found my new favourite sport and it's called 'lying'. I couldn't help it. It felt like I'm finally taking control of my own life. I started to lie to everyone. About myself, about others and even those I didn't know and knew them only by name. This made me comfortable, in a weird way. I could talk to anyone and they would listen to me. It just became easy.

But with this new found habit, I found an obstacle. Like all those young, helpless and nerdy kids, I had a crush. A huge one actually. As huge as I was at that time. It's not that she's a perfect match or she's the perfect girl for me or any kind of thing like that, it's just a huge crush. I was scared. It's that feeling where you want to impress a girl but you're too scared and you end up embarrassing yourself instead. I was pretty young but if I could recall, she was pretty beautiful, I guess. I mean all my life I've seen many pretty girls but I never actually talked about how pretty they are, even to myself. The weird thing is that I couldn't be myself when I'm around her. I couldn't be the shy me and even the lying-little-devil me. I'm pretty sure it's just anxiety and not something like true love or anything. I was 9, I didn't know what love is. All I know is that I was nervous and anxious and also a bit nauseous when I'm around her.

I tried my best to be a gentleman when I'm around her. Let me tell you, being a young kid, my vision of a gentleman was wearing a tuxedo and having a side-parting hair. My hair was already side-parted so all I needed was a tux. I would have looked so cool in a tuxedo but that was way beyond reality. I acted like she's a goddess and treated her like royalty, or is it the other way around? I opened the door for her, collected forms or homework for her and even waited at the school gate just so I could walk within a few meters of her to class. However, all of this attempts did nothing except made me look like a desperate fool. In a childish way, I gave up.

It just came out. I really didn't expect myself to but it just did. I lied to her. I told her I could play the guitar, which I couldn't back then but I can now. I told her I liked the music she listens to, I told her I had a huge collection of Hello Kitty collectibles, which is her favourite thing on earth but I was too young to realise that guys don't usually have Hello Kitty collectibles and she didn't wondered why I had them. So basically, I lied, I lied and I lied. It really seemed like my luck was beginning to change. She started to wave at me when I waved at her, this is really something I was proud of back then. She said 'Hi!' when I said 'Hi!' to her and she even gave me a box of chocolates for my birthday. Now I'm no expert, even for my younger self, but receiving a box of chocolates does seem obvious that she likes me? I amplified that feeling by not questioning it. I was so into the whole feeling. The feeling of success. Not just success but social success. The one you have to dig up dirt to earn it but I earned it by lying.

So with that whole momentum of feeling in my head, I sort of asked her out. I didn't know what it was called when I was young but I asked her if she wanted to hang out with me, just the two of us after school to talk about stuff. In the most cheesy way, I did it through a note. She got that note and replied, "Yes!" at the back of it.

So I was waiting at the canteen for her after school. But something weird happened. Everyone whom passed me there were either laughing at me or putting up an 'L' sign on their forehead. I didn't get it at that moment. I waited, selflessly for 3 hours for her. I was too engross with this feeling that I didn't realised how fast time went by. She didn't come. I was left there, standing alone with no one to talk to, just like I naturally was a few weeks ago. The next day, she told me that the whole thing was a joke. That I was a joke. I was sucked into this world of hope and happiness and got thrown out of it. She didn't care about me, she didn't care at all. I was too dumb and too stupid to see it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, sometimes the truth, no matter how much it sucks, is still the best thing to put your faith in. And that the truth, and even lying is not the answer. It's never the answer but the question itself. Why do we do the things we do? It's because we DO the things we do. If I had a reason for everything I do, every truth I told and every lie I so boldly withhold, then I guess I'm inhuman. It's stupid of me to look at her and see that she's more than a human, and that she's more than a person. I may lie to her but through lying, I found her true self and my true self. And I don't regret a single moment of it. It's better to regret something I've done than to regret something I haven't done.