Saturday, March 21, 2009
I was fortunate enough to have experienced three months of Preliminary Admissions Exercise, a probationary form of enrolment into pre-university institutions, when I was 16. January of 2007 started as anyone would, at the beginning of a new phase of life - hardworking and trying to impress. Then came the inevitable slump along with February, when laziness and truancy crept in, leading to daily badminton sessions with others smart enough to have done the same, but not smart enough to have picked the choice of going somewhere else instead. March stormed in, and this was the month of great expectations and even greater disappointments. Finalised postings were released during this ill-fated period and along with it, the disbandment of the merry gang I belonged to. That particular month left only a few traces of happiness - tennis had been picked up by the few of us and our badminton sessions had continued, even though we were caught by a teacher. We had no chance to bid our final farewells due to unfortunate circumstances and each of us continued our lives without any contact.
Education, or the institutionalised form of it, is a virus of the mind. It drains you of your true soul and character and eventually there is nothing left but a hardened, stoic kernel of a person, the flesh having been stripped. Everything is painted in the same few drab shades of failure and melancholy that it makes me wonder who in the world would willingly throw themselves into this rotten quagmire of a system. And then I realise my own presence, and then I laugh. "Fools, all of us have been,", I think to myself, but then I know that there is no other form of viable escape open to weak-willed minds.
Of course, the negative effects of such an education can be negated by distancing yourself from the system. However few people ever realise that, and the majority of those who actually did that had done so not for saving their minds. Most were simply rebels, punks and gangsters. I knew a senior who actually did manage to do so, with the right idea, but unfortunately he graduated before I managed the impossible task of teaming up with him. I like being alone, but not being lonely.
Depression struck numerous times during the course of my education in that desolate campus. The triggers were always petty, minor, trivial matters, such as a failing grade or the loneliness I had imposed upon myself. The excuses I would use to keep myself from slitting my wrists were varied: It's a cycle of emotions, without depression I would never understand joy and the most stupid, yet true, of them all - it would be a painful, meaningless, death. These excuses kept me running, but I wonder when they will run out.
I always wrote to chronicle these periods of time, as the sudden waves of creativity brought about by the introspection which always came with depression. Those painful times served as periods of healing, as I became isolated from the world. Hidden in my cocoon of thoughts, I calmed and refreshed myself. Even though they hurt, I had developed a liking to the bouts of depression - somehow my intuition about them were correct.
My boring, dull, unintelligent classmates left me wanting. They were all the usual kinds of people, the kinds who had usual interests and usual goals. I had never been an extrovert, but I struggled to keep up with a façade of being a pleasant enough person to deflect any queries into my personal life onto a classmate, who, was obviously acting as a misunderstood, introverted and interesting person. I did not want to deal with any of my classmates, possibly as a quirk, leftover from my teenage days, and I both gave and received Hell for it.
In my second year I lost what little will I had left to stay sane. I got absorbed into the mundane, everyday routine of attending lectures, working on assignments and starting on the massive task of getting into a university. There were two reasons why I had let go, and both seemed prudent at the time. One was the assumption that two years spent serving National Service as a conscript would heal my wounds after the ravages of junior college life. The other was simply because I had grown weary of the dreary task of staying sane. I am not sure what to think of them, however, for the former I must admit I was half-correct.
It was only due to luck that I managed to get transferred from infantry to a technician vocation, going to Hell and back. The special circumstances which provided me with ample free time to reflect got me out of the sanatorium that is mainstream Singapore. It is a terrible fate for introverts to live in such a densely-populated shithole, but in this particular anal city I managed to find peace, quite... and boredom, thanks to the system designed to mould citizens into machines.
Needless to say, I stayed insane throughout my second year in junior college, and got a respectable 'A' Level result. Good Bs and As marked the end of my two years in suffering, but I did not feel relived or joyed. Even though I had claimed National Service healed my insanity, it is also probably the cause for my continued lack of emotion...
(To be continued)