Waiting

Been rather morose these few days...there's a pervasive feeling of tiredness and listlessness, and I really can't bring myself to bother about so many things. I think partly it's because of all the little niggly details that we have to take care of now, trivialities like CIP hours and the stupid, stupid PEARLS points. Ominously, somethingood has come back to haunt us. Inevitable, really. I just wish that people wouldn't plumb for hours so desperately. Seriously, some people just don't deserve the full package. I believe in fairness. It's the game, I suppose...at this late juncture, tidying yourself up so you'll look good and shiny, squeezing out every last advantage you can get. It's all so depressingly petty. I really cannot bring myself to care about this kind of thing. So there's this pang if incisive annoyance whenever anyone starts talking about things like this. I'm beginning to realise that perhaps I'm not so good at the game of living in the ratrace after all.

Also probably some of the sadness is because everything's grinding to an end. And it's ending on such a shallow note too, with checking of exam papers, no new things to think about, just pottering around the same old thought paths. I always thought it should end with something more wrenching, but this glide to a standstill instead of a spectacular crash is also deeply sobering in its way. There's a feeling that we're allowing everything to quietly die; it's only Purvis's lectures and lessons that are still memorable now. The weight of words and years. But maybe in this case I'm being unnecessarily sentimental. Maybe everyone else knows, just as most of 4N knew, that the end of the formal school period is not the end to all companionship.

But I think mainly the moroseness is due to the waiting. There's a sense of anticipation that pervades these days, a sense of incompletion, of something else that we should be doing, somewhere else that we should be. I think this is my way of gearing up for the next couple of months, the waiting, the plodding, the waiting to do something else, to be free again, to have my time given back to me. So, school is quickly becoming a surreal experience, something in which to go through the motions, a waystation to something more important afterwards. It is with a sense of unending tenseness and anticipation that I watch these last few days dribble away. There is something else that I must do.

There is a real danger, now, of becoming separated from the real world. I find myself clinging to anything familiar, anything normal, now. Sometimes I just walk straight out of class because the conversation had taken a turn that makes absolutely no sense to me. Outside, one can breathe real air for a while, have real worries. Even real worries have become a luxury, worries that matter to people, to other people. In a strange way, it's only when I'm alone, thinking about other people's troubles, that I can begin to be at peace. This idle rumination, this worrying, is something that I'm good at, and it has the comforting sensation of a familiar and well-beaten path, hardened by years of weather and wandering.

But there are moments of reality, I think, that still keep me in control. Mornings in 13A where I expensively spend my energy before allowing myself to be sucked into the groove of normal lessons, moments of conversation about immediate problems outside the sphere of the academic, a look that does not size me up as a potential threat. And today, the ultimate feel-good moment, watching Corpse Bride with Thong, Shoojee, Wiggy, Ben Woon and Ian. Hehheh...that show is worth it just so you can get a good laugh. An hour and twenty minutes of unthinking, unstrategising, unplanning laughter.

I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't like this. I want it to end as soon as possible, and yet a part of me warns that if this passes then nothing like it will come back again. If only this week didn't have to end in competition, then I'd think that it has been really worth the trouble.

But then again, I've done it before, and I can do it again. Step out of the game whether they like it or not. I'm not going to play something that I have no desire for. I'm going to make this week worthwhile no matter what.

pondered by phoenican @ 5.10.05