``MT, You've Got... Issues''

This week... was a different kind of hell. Thank God it wasn't work related, or I think I'd flip. I'll leave out the stuff involving other people, and just talk about myself.

I was in a sort of existential dread for much of the week. Couldn't tell what was wrong---just this weird sense of foreboding.

``But MT, you're always feeling like that. What's the difference this time?''

Prescient observation---at first, I had no idea. But as I took the long-ass way home today (i.e. by using the buses alone), I slowly realised what it was. So let me reconstruct it all.

It began with me thinking (on a Wednesday?) about how are we certain about who we are, considering that we don't really remember anything prior to three years old. And while we, in theory, have lived through the time from the past till now, there really isn't any other indicator that it was ``real'' and not some simulated [false] memory (a.k.a. last Thursdayism). Everything that we think we know is based on some interpretation from the electro-chemical patterns of the neurotransmitters---the classic mindfuck is the realisation that the fovea of the eye actually has the image upside-down, yet our brain manages to ``see'' it right-side up, and have all our actions coordinated somewhat correctly.

``But MT, you lived through it! Couldn't you trust the time that passed?''

See, normally I would say yes, but then I realised that the two times I underwent general anesthesia, I literally ``lost'' time, and yet there was still some sense of continuity of my brain state from before the GA, and after it. A more mundane version is sleeping and then waking up---did I truly exist when I was not really consciously aware of it?

I had wanted to write something about that here that day, but was just bloody tired due to... other reasons, and therefore didn't. Then I was reading Kimagure Orange Road, and suddenly found myself reacting very strongly to the manga. I didn't hate it, but I found myself having to put it down each time Kyōsuke mistook Madoka as being involved with someone else---it triggered a whole lot of really uncomfortable dread within me. Once that feeling passed, I could continue to read, but then at some point later, I just had to stop for a quite a bit more, because this time, I realise that I never really had the kind of childhood that allowed me the chance to explore such relationships (characters are in middle school, so about secondary school or between fifteen to seventeen years old).

That had a few reasons:

1. I had/have bad skin, and at my worst, look like a monster;
2. SIN city's culture is fucked up in that they actively discourage all school-going children (this includes university!) from dating, and then once they graduate, start demanding where the fuck is their grandchildren(?!); and
3. The secondary school I went to was repressive as fuck, while I was a meganerd while in junior college.

Looking back, the only non-trivial relationships that were deep enough to hurt me when they ended were those that I could have once my skin was less shitty.

As I sat in the bus and mulled over all these nonsense (and getting irritated by a BO-laden fat fuck who decided it was fun to try and squash me in---I exited the bus at the earliest opportunity that allowed me to switch over to another bus that could get me nearer my home than the bus interchange), I was getting restless. I wanted to cry badly for some damn reason, and did tear up here and there.

I won't say that I was distraught, but when I got home, I just dumped my work bag, closed the room door, and pulled out my dizi, and started playing solo pieces for a solid hour. These were not etudes---they were actual solo pieces that I love playing, and they had their own technical difficulties, and their associated voice. I played them as though it was part of a set---one run per piece, at the actual pace and expression needed.

That hour later, I felt so much better, and I remembered who I am.

I'm a musician whose first love is the dizi. I started on dizi before I even started on writing, and definitely before I started on computer programming/system design, or even cycling. After so many years, after so many divergences, I still come back to the dizi as my comfort zone.

The dizi is my voice, my anchor back into reality. And each time when I was feeling frustrated, annoyed, or restless, out came the dizi, and after it all, everything would be right again.

Yes, writing can be cathartic, but it doesn't have the kind of physicality the way playing hard pieces on dizi has. No, not even if I were to be writing things out in cursive---it's still different. When playing the dizi, I have to control my breathing, I have to control the movement of my fingers, and I have to pay attention to the score to see what notes and ornamentation I'm playing. I play the concert flute too, but it's a bit like speaking in a second language---the dizi is still my voice.

``MT, what about God?''

God's no slouch. Prayer's important and all, but I still need to take care of the meat bag that is run by the soul. I'm not that saintly enough that prayer alone is sufficient to lift my soul, my mind, and my body all at once.

I think I still have some remnant... issues (I don't dare to use the technical term of ``trauma'' because I don't know how to use it). Not sure if I'd be ready by August for a possible chance of another relationship.

Maybe I'll never be ready. But it's okay---I do what I can, live the best life I can through refinement towards Christ-likeness, and let God do what He wills.

If it's meant to be, it will be. If it isn't, it won't. And in either case, it'll be God's plan, not mine.

Amen.