Impasse Part II

Continued from Impasse Part 1:

The next morning, we went back to the school and I was officially free. You see, this scholarship has a rule. Once you take it, you must carry on with it, or pay for the entire course fee whether you sat for the entire thing or not. I would have to pay hundreds of thousands. It was a risk I could never take.

So I went back to Form 6, had a great time there – it was one of my best schooling years – and I got out with straight As again. Before that all I had in mind was, get your As, think about the rest later. I got the As I wanted but I still haven’t found my way. I was again, back to where I started. The same thing happened, after some serious talks with my dad, my first choice was again pharmacy. But this time I wasn’t applying for a scholarship. It was just an application to the public uni. I didn’t want to feel like I’m bonded to something. I had engineering as my second choice, although I didn’t feel anything for it as well. My love, that time, was archaeology. But it was something I couldn’t and was not able to take up, for reasons I shall not say here. I had also applied for engineering in NUS (I was a physics student, therefore don’t qualify to apply for pharmacy in Singapore). I got my first choice in NUS and was just waiting for the result of my application to the public uni. That night came, and you guessed right, I got pharmacy. Again. People were congratulating me and everyone was happy, except myself. Of course, this time being 19, I was mature enough to think of others and to take responsibility in assuring I have a good future ahead of me, a good future as defined by the norm. So I took it. A friend said I was meant to do it. It was my fate. Maybe.

Right now I’m two years into the course, and no I don’t have happy stories to tell you. I don’t exactly have sad ones either. I’m just drifting around in my so-called ‘life’. I go by semester after semester, attending classes and day dreaming in it, studying for exams and taking it, and plan great things to do for my holidays only to end up wasting it. And right now I feel like shit. This is what holidays do to you. It’s the time when you sit down and start to reflect on your life. So how far have I gone? Hardly anywhere. I was supposed to do great things this holiday. I was supposed to gain a few skills, learn new things, and surprise somebody about how good I am at doing that something. But I’m still the same old drifter. I’ve gone nowhere.

Now don’t you guys come telling me to be optimistic or stuff like, “go out and do whatever you wanted to do right now!” You and I both know that it’s easier said than done. I would not be sitting here typing this if I had ‘gone out and do whatever I wanted to do’. So I really don’t need to hear that.

The thing going around in my head now is, “How will I be years from now? Will I still drift about? Will I have found my inner self, the Me that I wasn’t sure if I had lost or never knew before? Will I finally be happy, be in peace?” I shudder when I think of it.