Is it too early for New Years Resolutions

My year is pretty much ending soon anyway. Exams tomorrow (OH MY FUCKING GOD THEY'RE TOMORROW), nothing much else after. I'm no closer to pulling myself together, but at least I'm THIS close to passing my examinations. Let's make a list of what I need to achieve then, to be a half-decent person, yeah?

• Be less aggressive
• Be less passive-aggressive
• Be kind 
• Be kind to yourself
• Stop judging yourself
• Stop thinking bitter thoughts and writing bitter rants after midnight
• No more fantasies about killing yourself
• Drop that petty argument with your parents
• Call your "Dad" for once. Or more than once.
• Stop writing "Dad" with inverted commas just because you hate his guts and don't want to admit that he's your real father.
• Let your parents know that they're assholes, without using the word "asshole" or any other offensive language. 
• Try and go a whole 5 sentences talking with parents without crying like a little bitch or leaving the room.
• Try a bit harder in school. Fake it  a little better. Smile a little brighter.
• Maybe go to therapy like your doctor suggested
• Lose some weight. Gain some motivation. Run for a bit longer.
• See the sun rise WITHOUT the context of pulling an all-nighter for an assignment.
• Go meet that high-school maths teacher you so cherished, before you regret it.
• Go drink a little without thinking about pancreatic cancer.
• It's okay to get intimate with someone without first inquiring about their HIV and Hepatitis status. 
• At least if you HAVE to ask about it ask it in a non-offensive way.
• Finish reading your prescribed textbook, for ONCE in your goddamn life.
• Draw a little more. Write a LOT more. 
• Walk with your back straight.
• Stop being ashamed of who you are or what you do.
• At least pretend to not be ashamed of who you are or what you do.
• Don't be afraid to love, or admit to getting hurt now and again. Helps you stay alive.
• Do stay alive. Not just in body, stay alive in spirit.
• If life doesn't pick itself up, you pick yourself up and keep going.

Keep going.

Me; Selfish

It's one of those rare attacks on your character that can really do a number, being called "selfish". Whether I agree or not, it seems more offensive than being called "ungrateful" or "lazy". I don't know why I feel so insulted. I mean, I almost choked on the hypocrisy of being called that by my parents, but if I had to examine myself internally... yeah, I'm selfish.

I can't help but feel defensive about it. Like, fuck off of course I have the right to be selfish, all you know how to do is trample my fragile feelings, and because I have instincts of self-preservation now and again, I LEARN TO BE SELFISH. It's necessary, not because I want to (See now it just sounds like an excuse.)

Also I didn't want to get down to the core and open another can of worms, but what am I selfish about exactly, huh? Am I selfish for getting into medicine like you wanted me to? Am I selfish to complain that you forced me to do something I didn't want to, forced me to change my university course preferences back in the day??? Yeah alright that is selfish, I should really get the fuck over that some day. I'm going  to graduate one way or another, after all. I guess if I didn't agree to it, they couldn't have physically forced me--- but it's not like you need physical force for coercion, you know. When your mother starts crying and your "father" threatens to throw a temper tantrum every dinner, is that even a choice???

Getting over that- am I selfish because I can't stay heterosexual enough for your liking? Because my identity is a "choice" and I obviously "chose to be a freak". Fuck that. I guess I never did come out properly to my parents, but I thought they knew. See it was I that should have known better, because my parents never give a shit about ME, they only give a shit about this projection that they think is me. Beautiful A grade child getting into med school, bit prone to his "depression" but we all know that's just a joke- he'll surely thank us for this when he grows out of it. So no, they didn't know, and when they saw that I was different, they decided to call my hand unexpectedly last year. Fine, so I told them.

Boy that was a mistake.

Or was it? It's not like I could "hide" any longer. I also felt EXTREMELY indignant that I had to hide at all. Oh, so you're ashamed of me now? And you're mad that I can be comfortable with myself, at all. Well see here Sally, I didn't actually wake up one morning, realize I was different from most people, and get the fuck on with life. I toyed with the idea of self-destruction for the longest while, went into denial, went out of denial, then went back into denial AGAIN. And I wasn't proud of myself, no. I didn't think it possible to hate me more than I hated me. So I smile and tell everyone around me how much I love myself, because they better not find out I'm not half as confident as I seem. If I can't keep up appearances at school, then it would REALLY be game over.

Nobody really understands when I try to say my parents don't give a fuck about me though. After all, they paid for so many things, and they keep on trying to call me. On a superficial level, I have no right to say they don't care about me. Do you, reader, know what I mean though? They've made up this image, this expectation of what their child should be in their head, and any time I deviate the slightest from it, it becomes a drama festival. I've spent so much of my life pleasing them, so when I stop all of a sudden, it must feel like the biggest betrayal. I can imagine how they must feel.

Feels shit, yeah, when the expectation you've raised for over 20 years turn around and betray you. When your expectations want to walk away and start his own private health insurance, when your expectations want to live a state away from you, get a job not-exactly-the-way-you-wanted, and when your expectations refuse to pick up your calls now and again.

The thing is, just because I can imagine how they feel, doesn't mean I feel any more sympathy for their situation. Probably because I'm that expectation, and I don't feel so good either. Since I'm so selfish after all, I direct all my attention on what I want. It's the same as what they do, after all. We all chase after our own selfish desires, so why is it such a sin that I want to love and be loved in a certain way? I get it, I'm a manipulative twat even on a good day, but I'm a real consequentialist too, so if I get what I want in the end, it's fine.

Except I haven't gotten what I wanted, at all, so everything right now is in fact, not-fine.

Let me go revise for my exams for now, I'll finish this dank rant later.

Go this way

Every morning I wake up and I think "this is THE day I change myself for the better" but I always end in a fucking mess, and before I know it, it's night time and I haven't done enough work, and at this point I'm still confused about some basic concepts I need to know for exams next week.

I think I've reached a critical break point, though. I spent a brief period at my parents' place, and I can feel the tension building and building and building. My "Dad" yelled at me for getting off this health insurance, like, whatever the fuck for? I think he just hates it when I'm no longer under his control, but he seriously needs to get the fuck over it, if that's the case. Unless he thinks I'm using his money to pay for my own health insurance, which I'M NOT, but yeah it's a fucking mess what the fuck do I know.

The revision is coming along smoothly, surprisingly. I knew more about things than I ever gave myself credit for, and for that, I'm thankful. It's just that sometimes life attacks me from all sides, and I want to yell and scream but the best I can manage is a fake smile and a pleasant nod. I didn't want to live life this way. I'd prefer to deal with the pain, get hurt real good, have a nice cry then get the fuck over it. Doesn't really work that way, cos the pain's chronic and constant but barely tolerable, so it just gnaws and gnaws and gnaws at you until you DO start crying, but then you gotta get the fuck back to work because you don't have time to cry over petty shit. But you never get over it. You just stash it away somewhere- "I'll deal with it later", but then that pile builds up and up until you have "unresolved issues" in every aspect of life, from family to work to relationships. Then you're feeling very fragile and vulnerable because goddamn there's no one to turn to any more.

When people get on my nerves, intentional or not, I just want to yell out "I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU, SO GET OFF MY BACK". Except sometimes I'm terrified, so I don't actually yell it out. I am utterly convinced, however, that there's nothing anyone can do to me, that I can't do to myself. It's like, "you wanna hurt me? Well fuck you because I can hurt myself more". That's not the best mentality to live by, no. It just occasionally makes me feel invincible, in a twisted kind of way.

I should get some rest, soon.

Walk

It's surprising that we'd do what it takes, to feel a little bit human each day. Not that the attributes of being "human" is necessarily "good", but it keeps going back to what I refer to as being "alive". Sometimes you walk by someone and even though they're breathing and their heart is beating, you can tell they're dead on the inside, because they've lost the light in their eyes. You meet someone and you think, "wow, I'm talking to a corpse. I wonder how long they've been deceased for".

You think that being a doctor, you'd try and save people. Very soon you become confronted with the reality that you can't save anyone if they don't want to save themselves. You try your best over and over and your best just isn't good enough. You accept it for what it is, because your best is all that you can give, but it still hurts every time.

I always thought that I could be good enough to bring the light back into someone's eyes. That when I talk to a walking corpse, I could reignite that fire and work some magic. I'm not as much of a wizard as I thought I was, and with all my textbooks I feel I can only learn to keep the walking corpse walking; not much more. God wakes people from their graves; that's why I've always admired the power of religion. Everyone likes a good miracle now and again.

The rest of us, we just walk on, I guess.

Trump Grabs America by the Pussy

The title makes it sound like a bad thing, but it's not like the US got raped or anything, I assure you. Which, if they did (btw), they asked for it. The people have voted (or in some cases, failed to vote), and in the end they got what they deserve. You can't really blame Trump for taking advantage of the situation; it was probably in his biological make up as a politician to grab any chance at presidency, and we just have to accept nature for what it is. If anything unfortunate befalls on Americans over the next four years, they should suffer and repent for their sins, for nothing but their moral depravity led them to where they stand.

Alright I should probably cut out the facetious jokes. It was done in poor taste. I'm sorry. Well, I'm only apologizing because it's not really a joke, because it's true, because Trump has won the US presidential election and life is going to be a bit sad if you're anything but an affluent cis white heterosexual male. The good news is, if you are all of those things, you should be just fine, and I wouldn't worry too much until global warming catches up with us all and we're all "pranked" by the Chinese hoax as our cities are drowned by rising sea levels. At least then there will be no worries over immigrants taking up all the local jobs, because major disasters take a lot of effort to recover from, and the rebuilding process should create a lot of jobs. Not to mention that major disasters also kill off a shit-tonne of people: maybe they die directly to injuries or they die secondarily to loss of shelter/food/medical services. So what I'm saying is, if you wipe out a good portion of the population there certainly wouldn't be much competition for whatever job you're so worried about losing. Like, your job might not exist any more due to the degree of societal disruption, but it's not like someone else will take it from you, so that's a win, yeah????

Hahah fuck, I should be more empathetic. Someone very dear to me lives in America, and she's terrified because she is in fact, not an affluent-cis-white-heterosexual-male. I mean, I don't meet all those criteria either, despite my desperate denial over the years and decent attempts to conceal the fact that I'm less straight than I'd like to be. Whoops. If I was an American I'd be pretty scared right now, too, but I'm just a SJW beta-cucklord so what the fuck do I know, right?

Okay, let's be serious. Just for a short while. In all honesty, a Trump presidency isn't the end of the world. We've known for a long time that he was likely to win, and though we lived in denial, Mr Trump is now president and we should respect that. The American population have spoken with their votes, and they have chosen Mr Trump, so he is now the face of America, and he represents what America wants. Though he said some less-than-appealing things (some of which I have flippantly made a meme of), this man has memed his way to presidency, and if nothing else, that is worthy of admiration. He didn't let his dank memes become just dreams, so I'm sure we can do the same. People get so angry at the outcome- they're angry at non-voters, they're angry at 3rd party voters, and they're angry at Trump supporters. I don't think there's a role for anger in this scenario, because the point of a democracy is to vote for what represents your best interests, correct? Certainly, when I go to vote, I don't really think about "hrmmm, which party would best benefit society as a whole", I care more about my personal issues, trite as they may be.

In terms of Trump... well, the majority of America believed that he would best represent their personal interests, and that's all there is to it. Things like "Hilary was too despicable" or "lesser of two evils" doesn't mean much- I mean, you could just vote for someone else, or not vote at all. Then people get mad at you for throwing your vote away, because you could have made a difference. Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with 3rd party voters- what's flawed is their strange voting system, but I won't go into that. Throwing your vote away is legitimate too- it just means you don't care. You don't care what happens to your country, you don't care what happens to your family, you don't care what happens to you or your friends. And that's fine, too. I say that because at one point in my life, I felt that way. I may have been more than a little apathetic and passively suicidal at the time, but that's when I could honestly say "I don't give a shit about politics". I was young and stupid and I literally didn't care.

Then came a point where it wasn't all about me. On a day-to-day basis, who runs this country does not much affect me, because I live a sheltered life, I'm studying at school, but I already have some form of education, I will find one job or another in the future. I don't need to worry about my family (who I do not like very much, but that's another story). But I see my friends, and they're suffering. They don't have someone to pay for their course- they got kicked out of home at 17, they're studying full time but working full time trying to pay the bills, the government won't give them any support and then they fail a course, drop out of uni, and they look to alcohol for comfort. Or the other guy who used to be in my class, who I regarded as a bit of an asshole- but in reality he's probably just socially awkward and struggling with crippling mental health problems. I couldn't be his friend and fix him (and I didn't want to be his friend), but if we had a better mental health framework in this country, maybe he wouldn't need to wait 6 months to see a psychiatrist who bills him hundreds, and because that psychiatrist is the only one in a 100km radius, there isn't even room for a second opinion. And so I cast a vote, for the people I care about. Because I'm selfish after all.

I hope I have made it clear to you that I am shocked, that America's most selfish desire happens to be Donald Trump, but I can understand why Hilary Clinton wasn't anyone's future-fantasy. I'm not sure what kind of world Trump will create; if his campaign is anything to go by, I have to say that I'm not very optimistic. Regardless, the people have spoken, and if Trump is what they want, then Trump is what they will get. For those crying that they did not vote Trump, and that they did not want him; today is one harsh lesson in the futility of individual struggle- it serves as a grim reminder that when you are stuck down in the mud, you will not be able to get up if people do not lift the sole of their shoe off your face. For too long, too many Americans have felt that they were the victims, they have felt that they were the ones with their face pressed against the mud in that dirty pit with the pigs, living their fruitless, undignified lives. And they've said, "no more". So they will get something else.

Mr Trump promises to make America great again. I'd like the slogan better if he didn't use the word "again", because at no point in time was America perfect, from its history of slavery to the current repression of women's rights. I'm not too sure which timeline Mr Trump would like to revert to, but Americans can pray (as they like to do, being the non-secular nation they are) that Trump loves his country, and makes the best decisions he can during his presidential term. The majority have made a choice I'm not sure I quite agree with, but whatever their rationale may be, we now face the consequence. Whatever that consequence may be, we live it out, for our love of our one and only life, and we struggle on in our personal quests for happiness, regardless of the political turmoil our world may be shaken by.

Feminism Revisited

I think I blogged about- a year ago? about the topic of "feminism". I remember I was very bitter about the subject, and I was very adamant in stating, "I don't believe in feminism- humanitarianism is the better phrase". I now realize that I was being a COMPLETE AND UTTER DIPSHIT and I'm glad I now know better than to say things like that ever again.

I didn't realize I had such a terrible way of thinking, until I saw the "all lives matter" movement. It's weird, but I felt the "all lives matter" movement was annoying as fuck. When I heard about it on the news, I thought to myself, "these people are trying to make a point about violence against black people, and the social injustices they face. Why do you have to go in there and shit on their parade? Sure, all lives matter- but that's a different conversation, isn't it? That's a point to be raised when discussing whether the death penalty is the same as state-sanctioned murder- but in the context of preventing racial violence, bringing something like this up is in poor taste."

Then the irony of my stance dawned on me, and I was like, "holy shit, that's exactly what I said about feminism". I admitted that women had it bad, but then I tried to make it about men, under the pretense of inclusion. I thought I was being practical, but I was just being an unmitigated ass. Saying something like "well what about the gender inequality men face" is just trying to undermine the feminism movement, after all. The women are working towards a fairer world for themselves, and instead of being helpful, I essentially stole their conversation. And that's not a nice thing to do, when I claim that I "believe in equity".

I think apart from ignorance and stupidity, there were other reasons I thought the way I did. Part of it is the slew of misandry thrown around casually in the name of "feminism". That made me equate the two, that if you were a feminist, it meant you wanted to drag men to the ground. Obviously it's not TRUE, it just felt that way after I kept on hearing it. I mean, it's a statistical fact that men are over-represented as the perpetrators of violence against women, and there's no denying that if you want to get anywhere meaningful in life, you're better off being a man than a woman. That still didn't justify abhorrent behavior towards men, or ridiculing them for saying "not all men are like that". I know it sounds childish and overly-defensive, but it's hard not to be defensive when your gender is being attacked. You can't just say something like, "men are all sleazebags" and expect me to sit comfortably. Even if you look at me and say, "oh, I don't mean YOU"--- but I'm a guy, so if you say all men are sleazebags, you're either calling me a sleazebag or insinuating that I'm not a man. I don't like either of those options.

Men's rights activists are a different story. I wouldn't mind it so much if their sole existence wasn't to mock women's rights activists. I believe there are social issues which require male representation- like how men are less likely to get custody of their children, or how nobody believes than men could be victims of domestic violence. Those are important issues, but that's not really what men's rights activists fight for. Most of what I've seen is a cesspool of misogyny, and circular arguments about how women hate men because they're women. The hardest thing to do is for them to acknowledge that equal rights for women does not equate misandry, and that was difficult for me to realize, as well.

I blame the radicalization of the feminist movement. Change is well, change. Change is different and change is scary, and when change threatens to even the power balance and take away privileges held for as long as history goes, people get a little uncomfortable. It only takes one overzealous person to take things too far, before we start to feel threatened.

There's also contentious things like workplace quotas and whatnot. I always felt really weird about it, that you HAD to give x amount of jobs to women because they were women. I thought it defeated the purpose of a meritocracy, and it seemed unreasonable that a potentially more competitive male candidate would lose to his female counterpart, because they were female. Well, that's my only theoretical objection. Truth being, it's not difficult to find competent female employees, even if you had to fulfill some arbitrary quota. We like to think of our society as a place that rewards hard work, but it doesn't really. For centuries men were preferred over women, because they were men. I'm not suggesting we reverse the trend by swinging the other way, and the quota still makes me feel uncomfortable, but saying "men are just more capable than women" is a poor excuse, after all, especially in this day and age.

In the end, the whole men vs women debate is arbitrary, isn't it? I know we conjure certain images in our head when we think about what a man should be and what a woman should be, but no one fits those images perfectly. Surely, if I can get defensive and say "not all men are alike", then "not all women are alike" by the same logic. People are just people, after all. We are not bound by these things, and when people realize that, we'll be headed to a better place after all.