Surreal -- I use this word a lot. Many things that are real -- as they are happening -- often seem unreal to me. I do not know why this is so, but I suspect that perhaps I am caught in arrested development and cannot fully comprehend life and living and reality. Or maybe I simply refuse to do so, and insist on being wilfully self-centred. Immaturity is not something that is often associated with me, but there are times I question my sense of maturity and decided that what I really have is acquired rationality, which is more common sense than it is maturity. It certainly makes one wonder if true maturity is ever attainable because humans are just naturally flawed and are susceptible to all kinds of irrational behavior. I even wonder if complete sensibility is desirable because the implication is that we start to suppress our inner feelings completely and thoroughly, and succumb to an acceptable mode of social behavior that is no longer true to the self, and is only, at best, a self-constructed image of what one want oneself to be, whether in their own eyes, or in others'. It seems like a pretty sad situation to me because we only have one life to live, and living it in the shadow of constructing an illusion, instead of truly living it, it's like a lifetime of deception with layers and layers of lies. Like kueh lapis.

Hahahaha, okay, I don't know where that came from. :P

***

I've been thinking a lot about myself lately (yes, as always, me, me, me!), and how much I've changed. I had been a happy child. Naive even. The concept of death and war and human cruelty never sank in until late in life. My first turning point was at JC, where I was headed to the extreme end of cynicism, and I was sceptical about everything, and having doubts about everyone. I guess it's also right to say that, at that time, I was never very capable of forming true human relationships with new people. I never wanted to open myself up to them, for fear of being hurt or disappointed maybe, although that is not to say that I wasn't sincere about the people I've met during that time. There are people whom I wished I had known better, who despite that, are dear to me in little special unexplanable ways. There are also people who I may not be close with, who may not have felt particularly close to me, but who nonetheless had touched my life in ways that they would never imagine they had, and my time with them created fond memories that I vividly remember and recall from time to time. It's so hard to explain why, but there's a contradiction in how these special people are also often almost strangers who came and went, but whom I would probably never forget simply because their existence at a time had changed a little bit of me and made me different from how I used to be. Like a construction of a piece of artwork that is always ongoing, people come and add a bit of paint here, a little dent there, repair the flaws, and take away what didn't go with the rest of it.

I guess I was a pretty cool person in JC. I wasn't the most approachable person, although I wasn't unfriendly either. There was just a barrier somewhere that I never allowed anyone to cross, for fear that they would distract me from the goals I'd set for myself. I remembered Tara once told me that she had a lot of respect for me, for the ways I handled my work, my life, my ambitions. I was happy with who I was too, to tell you the truth. I was competitive and I was academically successful, and I was given recognition for all that, from friends, from teachers, from my family, and I was gleefully full of myself. What I didn't realise at the time is that everything came with a price. I will quote Nicholas here, who once told me that I was too focused on being capable and being formidable, I became intimidating and lost touch with the human connection. I guess he was trying to tell me that I was too cold for my own good, and though I disagreed with him at the time, I'm beginning to see his point now. I was really quite the cold-blooded animal.

***

Age does change a person. Bing was just saying the other day that she is becoming more sentimental with age. I have to say I am too. And I was disturbed by how easily I was feeling emotions, and feeling vulnerable. That's when I'm starting university, which by the way, is another turning point.

I am never very good at accepting the fact that I can be weak, that I can fail, that I may not be as strong as I have led myself to believe. It is a terrifying thought that I may one day crumble. So I try not to.

But the irony in that is, if I should one day crumble bad, I may have a hard time recovering, simply because I have never had to pick myself up before.

***

If it's truly aging that is changing us, then I may not be far off when I said that I had been caught in arrested growth. Sometimes I've wondered if I have Peter Pan Symptom. That I never want to grow up and face those complicated situations and feelings that come with adulthood. I think I've always been afraid of growing into a woman, and the feminine traits that come with it. No idea why I thought a feminine woman can never be strong, but I've since try to tell myself that a feminine woman can be strong in her own ways, that I don't have to pretend to be unnaturally strong, that I don't have to constantly put myself against my male counterparts. That I can open myself up to people, that I can allow people to make me happy, or make me sad, and count on people to help me pick up the pieces, to take care of me, to make me happy again.

I hope this is not a sign that I am becoming lazy and tired of taking care of myself. I don't think so. I was a little too hard on myself. If anything, I'm becoming more human, more feeling, and more accepting of life's darker moments and how it can and may touch me one day. I was too much of a perfectionist in the past, and I lost appreciation of how the bad things give meaning to the good things because they are all binary, and you cannot understand one without understanding the other. Karen of the past was too bent on success and recognition, and refuse anything unpredictable that may potentially damage her, even though the very same things may also potentially give her happiness. Karen now is more holistic, in want of happiness, peace, and knowledge, on top of success and recognition, and having everything in moderation, with an understanding that she cannot hope to escape potential hurt completely as that wouldn't be living anymore.

Oh my, if I were to get into yoga now, I suspect I will attain nirvana way faster than Bing can. :P

And if this means that I am finally accepting my naturally feminine ways, let's just hope that it will be a manifestation into a 可爱女人, and not 可爱笨女人.