I do believe I am a perfectly horrible human being. I am making every effort to prevent anyone from realising.

I constantly feel like my friends don't like me and are actively ignoring me and everything I say online.

Again, I feel I was made to be lonely. I was made to lose friends. I'm not even going to try to have friends any more. I just can't do it.

I am saying now that I am a non-believer.

I've come to dread our nightly prayers everyday. I begin to feel a pressing annoyance and fear as 9:30 looms close. Half an hour a day taken up by meaningless recitations. It is infuriating not because it takes so long or because it's boring (which it is), but because it fills that time with something absolutely meaningless and inconsequential, and because it forces upon me the guilt of being the sole non-believer, and because I must listen to my family members offer all their fears and discontents up, in full sincerity, to a God that I believe does not exist.

I want to believe in God, if only so I can please my father. But I feel nothing I know can be, or needs to be, explained by the existence of a higher power. In fact I much prefer the world without a higher power because it's so much more elegant.

Really, has it never struck anyone that all these rituals are extremely arbitrary? I don't see which benign, benevolent God would demand this of His creation. I don't see why God should value love when "love" (as described in the Bible) never existed till Homo sapiens grew wise enough to understand it as a concept and name it.

And if we're only being sent to earth to be trialed, why even send us here, why not test our souls where they were made, or leave our spirits here after death? Why even create us, if all God can think to do with us is send us to earth where we are to prove our faith to Him, only to--what--reward us for doing as told? There are so many specific, arbitrary laws governing a universe that includes God. 

I have heard more than once that God will only work His power on me if I "believe" and "have an open heart". Isn't having an open heart a requirement for effective psychotherapy? Nothing can dissuade me from my belief that religion is a form of psychotherapy. It works on people because they convince themselves they are working towards an end, and they excuse the lack of a tangible proof by telling themselves that is an inherent quality of a higher power. Why does He choose not to be detectable to humanity at all? Because "He doesn't have to be tangible for us to know He is there"? It's kind of an easy to claim that a nonexistent entity sustained by belief alone "doesn't have to be tangible to be felt", isn't it?

I think God is a fiction. It's only that religion has endowed this character with such an affecting concept/philosophy that people have come to want Him to exist. Religion was designed to propagate belief in this character. 

Sure, you'll tell me reasoning is counterproductive to religious enlightenment--but am I being stubornly unreceptive, or am I merely embracing a truth you reject so you can feel slightly more secure?

I am envious of my friends who will be studying overseas. In recent months I have found myself wanting so badly to leave Singapore and study abroad. It isn't even that I wasn't offered a place after going through selection. It's that I wasn't allowed to apply. I did not mind so I did not protest. But I have begun to mind, and begun to realise that maybe I didn't protest my parents' decision because I didn't give myself reasons to want to go. I didn't read up, I didn't actually think about how it would be. But now I'm being forced to imagine.

Of course, I was born without the mental capacity--or raised without the diligence--that would have made my results good enough that overseas education a favourable option for me. I was born to a family more interested in long term investments than considerations for catering to a single child's needs in full, who chose to have five children just so paying for overseas education became huge enough a deterrent that I wouldn't have been allowed to go even if I had placed in a top university. (more time for this rant later) And yes, maybe misplacing hundreds of dollars and making suicide threats has made my parents unable to trust me with my own life.

Maybe I should have stood up and fought and proven myself and made promises. But I didn't see what I was being cheated of in laying back and accepting their decision for me. I live with the regret now and I travel via the internet.

I can't keep doing this; I don't believe in God and I have many reasons. But I'm being made to pray everyday. Not a single day in the past two months have I gone without praying the rosary with my family. I do it because I know it gives my father hope, and hope isn't just an analgesic; hope could very well improve his chances of recovery. I'm doing this for him. But I'm so exhausted with it, being asked to construct prayers and speak them with sincerity as if I actually thought they would help. Listening to my entire family offer the outcome of the situation entirely to an entity I'm convinced doesn't exist. Praying every night for half an hour. Half an hour of fatuous recitation. I can't keep doing this for the next two years, but I just cannot stop. I cannot disappoint my father at this point.

Stupid brain. Why do I feel like 1. All my classmates can't stand me 2. My friend is ignoring me on purpose? Too much to feel paranoid about...

Group work at ADM...

Just did a 3D group project with a total bitch (excuse me but it's the only accurate word I can think of). She kept shutting me down. I didn't get to contribute a single idea to the project. She kept insisting on something completely unfeasible and when it (predictably) failed to materialise as planned, she complained as if it was OUR fault. And then she went and discarded our work of two hours even though it was workable. So easy to throw things away when you didn't help with all the cutting, isn't it? I rubbed my fingers raw on the pen knife handle only for her to decide it wasn't to be used.

I have been hearing about people like her for as long as I've heard group experiences recounted, and I have to say I handled it worse than I could have. For fear of being challenged on my judgments, I avoided suggesting anything. My fault alone.

blog update~

Redid the blogskin! Now it's got separate frames for different things.

In other news, I'm working on an "about me" page.

another conversation

chen: yo tess

me: yeah?

chen: nice to mee you
:)

me: oh so you're backtracking after a solid week of trolling?

chen: yeh get it, i was pretending to be a jerkass

sort of get a kick out of shit like that

me: so spake millions of trolls before you

well I'm not one to hold grudges against people whom I barely know

so

chen: awesome :)

me: heh you're actually kind of nice

chen: ooh hint eh

me: not really

chen: oh

me: I'm in a relationship hello

chen: LOL

anyway who the fuck are you

me: someone who knows more about you than I should, I guess

particularly given I've never met you before

in real life

chen: sorry to be rude

but rlly how do upeople find someone all the way in us

US i mean

not us

me: *clears throat*

not telling

I don't think that'd be wise

hee

chen: ok

pleeeeeeeeees

me: no

I have realised I have to be harsh with people like you

and that you probably wouldn't hold it against me

chen: uh you sux

wahhh

tess buly me

mama i dun like tess

me: if you don't mind me saying, I don't like that nickname

chen: TESS TESS TESS

me: also you can stop pretending because we both know you're only pretending to be stupid

oops lol I used "pretending" twice

oh god

ok go ahead and call me Tess

chen: awsome

youre nicer than aofei

me: no I think she's nicer than me

chen: i mean like youre floppier

like you kno cooked fish

vs raw fish

youre cooked

i could totally skewere you no prob

me: ...ok

chen: naw was that creepy i suck at this not-being-a-creep thing

I'm beginning to think, belatedly, that no one outside of my parents and one person? really cares for my wellbeing. And I wouldn't be able to blame them because it's exhausting. I wish it weren't, I wish it were easier to care for me. Because right now no one seems to care at all and I feel so lost without it.

I want to talk about the things that trouble me. But I know how tiresome it must be for my Facebook friends to have to see my rants over and over and try over and over to help only for my unhappiness to resurface within a week. I want to scream about it but I don't want to burden people with my disclosures.

All I feel now is stuck. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about my unhappiness. Am I supposed to go in search of real help that could eradicate the underlying cause of my emotional imbalance? Am I supposed to shut up? I've been keeping quiet about things that have haunted me for years, they're still hurting here, and hurting more as months pass.

I can't avoid, because it would mean closing myself off to all people. I can't do anything about it but sit it out and either stew in a corner for a few years more, pretending I'm fine, or I can keep ranting online and risk being hated for my whining.