Overwhelmed
so I got real instead

I am now sitting in front of the screen, thinking about what to write. There is just so much to write about, until I don’t know how anymore. I want to write about what is it like to understand privilege, about being born into a dominant race in Singapore and becoming a minority in the United States; the disassociation I feel because I don’t really identify as a human being, much less a woman, and the horror and disappointment I have felt this past week trying to process what happened to @seriouspony and to other women in tech (let’s not even go into the suffering other women have to go through in other parts of the world). I want to write about the differences between sexism in Singapore and the United States, and the obvious and subtle ways we try to cope with racism in both countries. I want to write about all those times I have mistakenly believed systematic issues do not exist because of my survivorship bias or the tiny world that surrounds me. Or maybe it is easier to pretend that they don’t exist. I want to write about what it feels like to be biologically female and yet identifying as non-gendered, hence all the confused feelings I feel when people automatically assume my identity and belonging for me. I wish to write about how I really don’t feel like I belong to any community, and it is difficult for me to shake off my persistent existential crisis because I don’t even feel like I belong to this world, but yet the hurt inflicted to the world I don’t identify with, pains me deeply everyday.

I think about how sometimes I just want to shut myself down and watch tv for like twelve hours. But I can never really do that, because while I’m looking as if I am shutting myself down and watching tv, I am really trying to process my guilt of knowing people in other places struggle to have clean water, afford to buy pencils or have a basic shot at being alive. I can’t always think about other people struggling either, because that overwhelms my nervous system and I feel like eating a chocolate cake so that the sugar coma would calm me down at least for a few seconds. I am allergic to alcohol, so sugar helps, even though it really doesn’t help that intellectually I know what it is doing to me, so I can’t seek comfort in anything really.

I think about how I can’t help but love the world, in spite of her darkness, there have been some extraordinary bright lights unselfishly lighting up the way for the rest of us. I feel like a hypocrite for loving the world, because I can’t even love myself adequately, love anybody or be loved by anybody. I don’t have the capacity to devote my life to caring for a single human being, or be there for a small group of people close to me, so sometimes I think it is really a cop-out by choosing to focus myself on a much larger group instead. I think it scares me to have anyone think that I am the person you should call if you ever have an emergency, so I rather not ever make you believe that. I am not the person you should call, and neither do I want to establish relationships to have people there for me if I have any emergencies.

I am trying to understand and be real about my hypocrisy, my conscious choices to know and understand what I am willing to shoulder and not.

I recognize I am terrible but I am working hard to be less terrible, and the process is not to pretend that these thoughts and feelings do not exist. Maybe by putting myself out here for you to see, I am in some ways trying to design a form of salvation for me.

Some days I just give up. I watch mindless tv and eat chocolate cakes, because if I don’t, I am really uncertain whether I’ll still be alive to attempt to make this better. I need the chocolate cakes as a buffer, to be able to stare at these issues in the face uncompromisingly — to regenerate my capacity day after day, to believe I can do better, we can do better, things will get better.

That I may be broken, terrible and a hypocrite, but I still want to try to do better anyway. Perhaps that is how I can believe, that despite how dark the world feels sometimes, most of us are really trying to do better anyway.

Post-writing thoughts

I wanted to post this on my personal blog, because of how vulnerable this post makes me feel and it really streamed out of me unfiltered and unedited. It has been a while since I had felt this vulnerable about anything I have written about — that includes chronic depression, and wishing death upon myself. It is one thing to admit to the world that I am terribly broken, and another thing to admit that I am a hypocrite and doubt my own internal motivations all the time.

But this is my way of trying to make things better, or rather, make myself better, albeit in a convoluted way. It is important to me that I consistent challenge my own boundaries in order to challenge the world’s, to consistently re-examine what it means to be radically honest and to prove my own belief that being truly authentic is one of the most efficient ways to be the change that we want in this world. In order for change, we must first acknowledge what is broken, and that includes ourselves.