Today marks one year since I have been back home in Malaysia
from London. This isn’t the first time that I have been required to settle back
home. The first time was more difficult. I had just returned from New York
after more than 2 years where my entire (young) adult life was built. I had
many supportive friends and an entire community to attach myself to, and all of
a sudden, all of that was gone. I still talk to some of my New York friends
sometimes. But who am I kidding, most have moved on from the memory of me and only
a handful still reach out to me. For that I am grateful and truly blessed.
London wasn’t New York. It wasn’t great. The weather was
cold and the food was bland. I was miserable there. I had big dreams and crazy
ambitions but I never felt like I could achieve any of that in London. Not only
that, I was in a long distance relationship. (Cue the eye rolling) Anyways, it
was a little bit of everything that made me want to rush back home and start
anew. Life in nice warm weather, great tasting food, and the beach. Oh, the
beach how that would wash away all my sorrow and burn away the chill in my
bones.
When I came home, however, I was miserable too. My friends
were too busy for me and even the boyfriend didn’t really have time for me. The
thing that I think most people forget when they leave is that everyone has
moved on with their lives after you have embarked on your great journey of self
discovery and intellectual affirmation. People are not sitting around waiting
to hear stories of that time you saw a homeless man coddling a rat or how a
really eccentric and mean professor changed your life forever. They want to
talk about themselves and what great achievements they have made since you were
gone. Honestly, that last bit is the most depressing of them all.
You hear stories of a friend who recently got married or had
a baby. Stories about promotions and pay raises. You get pressured by your
parents because your fifth cousin twice removed, just became a lawyer in a huge
law firm and is earning “like a bajillion dollars a year”. Your overly
concerned relatives start asking you, “What are you going to do next?” with a
veiled smirk that says “I told you not to take a creative arts degree”. Your
sister, with good intentions, suggests that you should be a waitress “since you
did it in New York AND London”.
After a month, when the weather gets too hot and you start
getting heat rashes, when you put on 5kgs because you have been eating too much
of that damn “great tasting food”, and when you never even got to see open
water or feel the softness of sand on your feet, all this ends up putting you
in a downward spiral of self destruction where you question life, sleep till late
in the afternoon and eat ice cream for breakfast. And every day at approximately
7.43pm like an annoying ringing in your head, your mother asks you, “Aren’t you
going to get a job?” Then, another month goes by.
So, finally, you get resolute! Determined to make someone
out of yourself and to do something with your life, you clean up your CV, you
send out job applications, call that one guy who offered you a job when you
were still in university, and you no longer have to or want to say, “uhh, I
just wanna take it easy for now and settle back into life here..” while anyone
listening rolls their eyes and wonders when you are going to grow up. Things
feel good. You feel productive. You are going to get a job!
Then, the guy who offered you that job passed away. (I wish
I was exaggerating. RIP, sir.) You don’t hear back from most places you applied
to and the few who did reply say that they don’t have any immediate openings.
And you feel your heart sink lower and lower to pits within your soul you never
even knew existed. So you get back to questioning life, sleeping till late in the
afternoon and eating ice cream for breakfast when one day, around 1pm while you
are still in deep sleep, you get a call for a freelance job. You pretend to be
awake but the person on the other line could hear the sleepiness in your voice.
She jokes about it and calls you in anyway.
You got the job. You are excited. You want to perform well
to get another job with them. But then, there’s not much to do. You are bored. Your
brain is idle most of the time. You thought you wanted this but you didn’t. You
get jaded and start wondering if every decision you made in your life is as
sucky as this moment right here right now. The people you work with are
unfriendly. They don’t talk to you unless you talk to them and even then, they
reply you with fake courtesy and no compassion. What is going on? Is this it?
Is this the life you so wanted when you were back in London? You cry yourself
to sleep. Every. Night. You try to make the best out of your situation but feel
like you are just beating a dead animal. You are stuck. You don’t know who to
turn to anymore. Your friends nod in sympathy, suggest absurd ways in which you
could make things better, then they go back to their own lives and concerns.
After you completed the freelance job, you feel even more
lost. Then your mother suggests an interview in a corporate company. You hate
corporations because you are an artsy fartsy fool and a free spirit but you go
anyway because you are an adult now and you have to be independent. Also, your
funds are running way too low. You ace the interview, get the job, hate your
life, but do it anyway.
So here I am. One year later, at said corporate job. I’m not
happy. But I can’t say that I’m as depressed as I was. There is still much to
be desired. However, for once in my life, I’m starting to go with the flow. I’ve
stopped making elaborate and minutely detailed plans about my future. I’m
starting to loosen my grip on my big dreams and crazy ambitions. They’re still there,
to be sure, but I’ve learned to take it easy and lay low on the pressure. It
took me a total year to get to this place I am at. And yes, there are still
days when I allow myself to be cried to sleep. But then there are other days
when I count my blessings too :)
