I am speaking to you now from the future, from the time I get into my dream course and the time all my wildest hopes are fulfilled. This is the time of independence, maturity and adulthood, a time when I truly get to dictate my own life and what I want from it.

Last year was when I slaved away at work and denied myself everything I wanted in order to achieve my dreams. High school was a period of asceticism and self-control in order to enjoy life later.

I am from the future. And from the future I tell you, Maria of high school, that your dream course is not really a dream; that your hopes were false; that your independence is selfishness and a false sense of security. You are where you want to be, but what you wanted was never realised and what you achieved in order to be here today had no significance at all. All that you denied yourself from; all that you sacrificed was worthless.

Maybe I should have told you earlier so that you wouldn’t work so hard. Maybe it would have been better for you to aim lower. I see you tearing yourself through essays and practice exams. I see you in hysterics the night before your English exam. How could I bear to tell you that all the tears shed and all the late nights are completely pointless? No, that would have crushed you. So I sit in silence and watch you cry; I dry your tears and tell you it’ll be all right in the end. And it was all right in the end, but not in the way you expected. You got what you wanted. You are where you want to be. But this is not what you really want, and deep down you know that. It was always in the back of your mind while you studied late into the night and denied yourself the chance of having a good time with friends. It gnawed your conscience, but you never heeded it.

The Maria of the past, the Maria of the present and the Maria of the future are not so alienated from each other that they cannot reconcile, but neither are they similar enough to be intertwined seamlessly as one. They all yearn for identity but they cannot find it. The more places they seek it from, the more confused they become.
That is why today, the mirror stares at me and tells me what my face looks like, but it doesn’t tell me the shape of my soul. It asks me who I am, and I tell it I don’t know. If finding my place in the world is to give up my individuality, what is the point of obtaining such identity?

So dear Maria, it is 3am now but you cannot sleep because you have your literature exam tomorrow and have not written enough practice essays for it. You are worried about so many trivial things, about not finishing on time, not having enough ideas to write upon, and not knowing how to interpret the question given to you. I ask you to sleep peacefully now because everything will be all right. You will finish your essays and you will get a good score. You will achieve what you want and bathe in the glory for a few months.

Then you will enter into your dream course and live out your nightmare.

So sleep in peace and don’t worry. You only have one more exam to go. One more. Then you shall be free in ecstasy and carelessness until your wildest hopes are realised.

Sleep in peace.

I had always noticed that there was something ‘wrong’ with my mother’s side of the family; the way my uncle never talked to my grandfather and the way my uncles and aunts treat each other – not openly hostile, but just a covert something that seemed to shout ‘everything is not right’.
And it was only until a few nights ago that I heard from my mother, in full detail, one pivotal event of the family history fraught with tragedy and condemnation. Now the not very nice behaviour between members of the family finally makes some sense.

It also had me wondering how little I actually knew of my family history and more importantly, how shallow my knowledge is of the sentiments and characters of my nearest relations. I have known for a long time that it is impossible to know and understand fully even those nearest us, but still, it nags me sometimes. And it is especially manifest in my brother.

We used to be quite close. But gradually as the teenage years came on we drifted further and further into our own worlds until we couldn’t reach each other’s worlds anymore; it is as if we had forgotten how to talk. His move to university furthered this trend. Not long ago when we were in a car together, him driving, me in the passenger seat, I had a sudden image of two bronze statues – one from China, the other from Medieval Europe – placed next to each other in a museum exhibit. They share neither origin nor commonalities and stand, rigid and mute; juxtaposed beside each other and unable to sympathize or communicate through their differences. The statues, apart from the accidental arrangement in occupying the same display case, are not much more than complete strangers.

It no longer pains me that me and my brother are but strangers to one another who occasionally share the same roof. But sometimes, if possible, I do want to know more about him. I do want to know how he finds the course at university; what his friends are like; what his personal struggles are. And I do want to hear more than a monosyllable or a grunt to my questions.

But perhaps I ask too much. Perhaps it is not his or my fault that we are where we are now; perhaps there are forces greater than ourselves that dictate the boundaries wherein one soul may connect to the next. Communication is one, as is the convoluted depth of the human spirit.  

There are things, certain epiphanies, that one discovers within oneself, and they ring with such profound resonance for the individual. But when these are expressed in words they become trite or corny.

Maybe it is this communication barrier that prevents us from knowing those nearest us better. Maybe it is inherent for humans to be secretive; to hold harmless knowledge to ourselves, to bury them deep when there is really no need to do so. Or maybe I am oversimplifying things and there are really histories so terrible within everyone that we hide them even from ourselves. Maybe skeletons prancing in an unseen cupboard. Maybe guilt. Maybe denial.

We all like to be secretive sometimes; or else where is the thrill? Our hunger for knowledge collides with our love of enigma. When one tries to push past the leaden casing around the human heart there is only maybe; the murky darkness that keeps us forever intrigued: “wow, I never knew her.”

Our lovers, our husbands, our wives, our fathers – they are all beyond us. –Tim O’Brien

And maybe that is why, a few weeks ago, I had a hard time convincing a lady at church that I really did not need to go to Sunday school.
“Have you ever been to children's church?”
“No…”
“You should go sometime, you might find friends your age to play with.”
“No, really, I’m fine here.”
“Don’t you ever feel lonely?”
“It’s ok; I can manage.”
She looked thoughtful for a while. “Well, maybe you like it better here among the adults.”