WARNING: IF YOU DISLIKE MY PREJUDICED, ELITIST, WHATEVER-YOU-PREFER-TO-CALL-IT RANTINGS, JUST IGNORE THIS. DON'T LIKE, DON'T READ, YEAH? YOU KEEP TELLING ME THAT BUT I DON'T SEE YOU DOING IT.

I get the feeling my life was screwed before it even begun. Time is my enemy. Everything except my brain is my enemy. Okay, other than the computer, and certain books, and maybe music. There are a lot of exceptions but most of the things I can't change don't benefit me. Why do I say so? Firstly, the only organ in my body that actually functions properly is my brain. I have weak lungs (chronic bronchitis for unknown reasons), a weak heart (hereditary), myopia, bad coordination, probable low blood pressure, sinus, multiple allergies to the weirdest things... But there's nothing wrong with my brain - other than the fact that I'm possibly psychotic (the only thing assuring me I'm not is the fact that I'm actually worried about it, so the day I stop being worried, pack me off to Woodbridge [I have all the other characteristics]). Thus I am determined to utilise it to its fullest capacity, and one of the things stopping me is time. Really. Given enough time (and, of course, the opportunity), there's about nothing I can't study. As long as the thing in question can be written down on paper. That's because my mind is stacks and stacks of foolscap. I actually visualise words in Arial 10.5 and notes on manuscript paper.

Time is something I don't have. How the hell am I supposed to find time to do anything besides study when one-third of the time I spend in school is wasted on superfluous subjects we're never going to use? (Redundancy is evident.) And, FYI, we spend a lot of time in school. I spend three-fifths of my life in school or doing schoolwork, one-third of which, I repeat, is utterly useless. Holistic education isn't all that great. (Am mincing words here so as not to offend government. You don't want to see the draft.) Seriously. I have problems breathing properly and you want me to do PE? If that's not crazy, I don't know what is. Okay, maybe bombing Iraq without good reason.

Did I tell you about music class? Yes, music class when I'm taking a Grade 8 in piano and don't have time to practise because of things like the school's music class. We're doing composing. Of contemporary music. Fine. Then we have keyboard lessons, when we're doing song arrangements for contemporary music. The teacher suggested we could take classic pieces and "turn them upside down". No thank you. It's like committing sacrilege. Why would I want to ruin a perfectly good piece of music anyway? And did I mention my class is deaf? Seriously deaf. Okay, I know I'm a crazy person who can hear things at , what, two percent of the full volume of any music-playing device, but those people make more noise than a herd of stampeding elephants. And I already get a headache if you so much as talk loudly. So you can imagine the pain bouncing off the inner walls of my cranium. SHUT UP, people.

I really don't understand why the ministry makes it compulsory for us to spend, what, ten hours a week on something most of us won't ever use in future? In some other countries, CCAs are a privilege. You join what you're interested in. If you're not, you have the time to take up something else outside of school. Here there are people who take up something they hate because they need the points. Is there any point in that?

Independent learning also isn't all that great. Some people just can't do it. You don't build a solid foundation via independent learning. In fact, you're lucky if you manage to learn anything useful at all. And it wastes time. Something I don't have much of. It's easier and faster to memorise twenty pages of notes than to ferret out the same amount of information. Oh, and if learning is supposed to be independent, why do we need teachers again?

I'm never going to have children if I don't have the means to take them out of this. If it means sending them overseas, so be it. I know it takes way above 30K in most cases to do that, but if I can't do it for the poor things, I won't have children at all. I'm only just realising how much I missed because my parents aren't all that well-educated or well-off and never placed much emphasis on actual grooming anyway. They only cared about what they could see. I want my children to have every opportunity available. I want to be able to say to them, "Your duty is to hope, and work towards what you hope for. Don't worry about the rest. Whatever you want to be, Mommy can clear the road for you if you're willing to work." It doesn't matter if they're only good at sports, or only good at studying. I want them to do what they want to do and be good at it. I wish I were good at everything like some people, but most people don't have the potential, interest or time. It's not fair to children if you expect them to be perfect.

To be honest, I've always only been interested in crossing over the next border into something more advanced. That's all that prompts my interest in anything. I find myself thinking, "If I stay up really late and work on this bar, then I'll have officially finished this song, and then I can take my exam and move on to the next grade". Rarely does it ever occur to me to do things purely for fun. "Fun" is not a logical purpose. Even when I read, I have an ulterior motive, which is to improve my vocabulary and, hopefully, writing skills. That's part of the reason why I never have to be amused by what I read. As long as it's in good English, I don't care what it's about; I'll read it anyway.

I suppose that's part of the reason why I don't understand society or the need of others for society. Society, "normal", does nothing but get on my nerves. If you want to talk about "interesting", people in books are far more interesting, especially since you can call them up any time you like. I've spent enough nights talking to Lessa of Ruatha to know that. People are far happier when they have no-one but themselves to please - or they should be. Love is something that has to be learnt, and I haven't learnt it well. To be honest, there are times when I wish I hadn't learnt it at all. It doesn't make sense; it's not logical. In any sense. I'm disturbed by anything that isn't logical to an extent. Still, I can't un-learn it.

Family? Is there such a thing as a happy family? I doubt it. At least, I don't feel that my family is a happy one. I don't feel that my parents are happy with me - small wonder, they have a child who gets annoyed every time someone opens their mouth - and I'm not happy with them. They say I don't listen to what they tell me, but I doubt they take in a third of what I say. Not enough opportunity, not enough support, not enough love - that's what my family gave me until very recently when they realised I had possible psychological issues. And thanks to who?

No point pushing the blame onto anyone, really. It's me. I can't stand society, I can't stand anything that doesn't make sense, I also can't stand anything that defies the concept of traditional. Yes, I admit it, I dislike superstition and all the other components of tradition that are illogical, but beyond that I still feel that society should be modelled on tradition, because now it's modernisation that doesn't make sense. It makes me feel that we're going backwards. Then again, we probably are. The Wheel of Time is round, after all. So all the time as we're going forward, we're also going back, and vice-versa.

There isn't a place for people like me in this society - any society, in fact - and this system. This particular system. (People from international schools are more versatile than those in our mainstream, you realise? International schools aren't slack. At all. I read up on the syllabus.) It's too late to get out of it - major exams for international schools can be taken at my current age, and Father says we don't have enough money anyway - although I don't think I'll survive. I really don't want to face my life right now. I don't even want to remember that I have a life. Pretending to be blind to everything isn't going to help me, because that's exactly what made the problem worse. The reason why I can walk around crying all day, any day, is that I usually don't cry. The reason why I'm berserk right now is because I usually don't even get angry. Right now everything either gets on my nerves or makes me feel like crying. A lifetime's worth of tears and a lifetime's worth of rage. I don't know how to stop the flow and, to be honest, I don't think I want to. So maybe I want to kill anything that has a pulse (for the fact that they are living and I have no real existence?). All of a sudden I don't think that murder is wrong. Wouldn't it be better for Planet Earth if something just exterminated us? What right does anyone have to life, anyway?

I think I know why people commit mass murder. Those people are the ones who never show any emotion on their faces, sometimes not even through their actions. But everything they touch becomes warped. Everything I touch becomes warped. Every story I write has something in it of a future where the surface of the earth is clear of us. Every story I write tells something of my thoughts on human nature. Every story I write says this: I don't think life is a right. Do you?

Tien Li thinks she has issues. Really? Stress, not issues. She doesn't need to kill someone or kill herself. She doesn't need to get out of her life by fair means or foul. She isn't determined to get off the shores of this island even if it means drowning herself at sea.

Right now my hands are tensing as if to strangle someone. It makes me wonder: Is the nature of humans only to kill?

Labels: Major Angst