I can feel everything pressing on me. I feel like there's no escape this time. It's coming from everywhere. The only cure would be to start my life over far away from my family. I'm not sure when everything grew so tangled but everything's adding up. And this time is different from other times...I haven't felt happy for such a long time...and I feel angry almost everyday...

A list of things that are bothering me

1. I'm squandering a lot of money on the production of things that are just not worth what I'm charging. It was a bad idea, but I've bought the materials already and I will have to proceed. I just wish ink didn't cost so much.

2. School is killing me. I have absolutely no ideas for my 4D midterm assignment. I'm just dry. The story prompt is so uninspiring because it involves crafting plot before characters. And I'm exhausted. Tomorrow we have a full day from 8:30 am to 7 pm. I don't think I can handle that.

3. I feel like at least one of my friends has been ignoring me on purpose. Or maybe it's my fault for not starting conversation. Maybe that's because there's nothing to discuss. Maybe this friendship was meant to die.

4. Grandmother hates me. She's constantly telling me how I'm ungrateful and horrible and asking heaven to kill me. Just because I COMPLIED with her order for me to hit her. Yeah, so she said it in a fit of anger. But I did that in a fit of anger as well. She is beyond reason. I just wish I didn't have to listen to her nagging all day.

5. Still being forced to pray...I just can't keep doing this. It's boring, it's frustrating, it's futile, and I have to try to sound sincere. I wish I could just tell my father that I am absolutely and utterly convinced God doesn't exist. But it takes little to predict that he will continue to think I am "not beyond redemption" and that instead of letting up he will double his efforts to "reconvert" me. I really want to be nice to my father particularly given current circumstances. But I am so tired of this.

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.

I wonder if I'm just making threats, or if I'd ever actually kill myself. Something always stops me, like the thought of the stories I haven't written.

sort of a plea for help for my situation?

OK er. Please read this? If you'd like to, and if you think you can help. It's really important to me. Because it concerns one of the biggest problems I have in my life right now. It's a serious problem. In that it's the sort of thing that has made me contemplate killing myself and that has caused me to self injure before. (I'm sorry if that freaks you out. ) And hearing some input from people--or having someone actually offer to help--would be the absolute best thing right now. And solving this will probably require a lot of dedication and attention, unfortunately. But these past few years, I think I've been asking for help in all the wrong ways. So now I'm just going to sum it all up as concisely and objectively as I can.

I've got this huge insecurity, and I'll be honest about it: I'm terrified whenever I realise that someone's better than me at something I'm told I'm good at. Like, you know, art, or music composition, or writing--usually. I feel angry at myself, maybe jealous, and I feel an intense urge to work really hard at whatever's causing my insecurity until I can prove that I'm better than him/her. I also feel afraid when someone improves a lot, particularly someone who used to look up to me. I feel like I've been "overtaken" by someone who was "more amateur".

I use inverted commas because it's not true. No one can prove that I'm better or worse than anyone. But the hierarchy forms itself automatically in my mind whenever I meet a new artist, and I'll explain later. Every artist is either "someone to look up to and learn from" OR "someone who might want help from me because they're less experienced/skillful". But one thing my mind refuses to do is move people from the latter category to the former. My stupid brain wants to always think of a "junior", an "advisee", as that. You know.

I'm sorry, it makes me sound like a douche. But now, I've been thinking about it a lot, and the fact is that I really need to work out how not to feel this way. And you know, the most important step in solving a problem is to finding out what caused it.

Lots of thinking in the past few months--ever since my realisation that my behaviour lies squarely in the "mentally ill" region--has made me realise that I might know the reason.

Probably a combination of things: constant and repeated discouragement. Harsh criticism on works I was proud of. Too much praise. Too much pride for my work at too early an age. Parental disinterest.

I think it's mostly the first thing. From an early age, from when I started really being serious about my music composition/writing/art shit, they started doing these things to me:

• Every time I showed Sister A my work, she answered simply with "my friend X can draw better than that"/"my friend Y can do better than that, she even has [credentials/accolades/qualifications that I don't have]"
• And she actively approached me--she actually CAME TO ME--to show me her friends' work and tell me all about how much better it was than mine. I guess that's pretty natural to be proud of talented friends, but she made it pretty blatant that the central reason for her approaching me with it was to show me work that was better than mine. 
• Sister B has told me to stop recording my songs/singing at home because "it's noise pollution". SHE THINKS MY SINGING VOICE IS NOISE POLLUTION.
• I once entered the same songwriting competition as one of Sister A's friends. Not only did she ignore my entry entirely, she kept telling my parents to vote for her friend's and actually advertised her friend's to me and kept telling me how her friend is doing better than me and other shit that would obviously discouraged me. She spent all that time telling me all about how her friend deserved to win more because she was trying to earn money for her family (and I'm just thinking...why doesn't she teach then, if it's about the money? Isn't that obviously a more stable source of income?)
• Alongside this, she only had bad things to say about my song. As if she's ever had anything good to say about any of my work before.
• Every time my parents played my competition piece out loud, both sisters visibly winced/looked disgusted
• Sister B frequently sings out loud in our room/turns on the radio in our room/etc. but apparently when I sing out loud, it's noisy and horrible to listen to and I have to shut up. Now I try not to sing at home at all.
• The first time I showed my sister an art piece after two years of avoiding showing her anything, all she could say was "why did you draw this?" and no, she wasn't asking for me to make a commentary on my piece. Her tone was one of abhorrence.
• Sister A once read a MapleStory fanfic by someone else in the fandom (note: she's read some of mine before, back when I wasn't so terrified of sharing it). Her only comment, other than "this story is nice",  was something along the lines of "the difference between this guy's writing and yours is that his isn't lame". She just called my work "lame". I mean yeah, it does seem lame to me now, but at that time I was really proud of it and she just shot it down like that. I wonder if she's aware of how hurtful it can be to hear that.
• Both sisters have openly called my art "ugly" before. In full sincerity. Not as a playful insult. And conversely, I can't even remember the last time either of them complimented my work. I mean, imagine having family members who refuse to do anything but criticise your work...
• They gaslight me. Now when I tell them that "you're the main reason I'm discouraged about my art/writing/music now", they respond with things like "when did I ever do that?". They also use technicalities of language like "that wasn't an insult, I just meant [literal meaning]", and I know answering with "it was the tone that made it an insult" is something I cannot back up with evidence. They know it. Or maybe I am overreacting. Am I? I'm not sure anymore.

Imagine having to put up with this half your life. And all while you've got an interest in your work that's too great to sacrifice for a few critics. I mean...I'd probably have given up my art if I hadn't had lots of interest in it AND friends who told me my work was actually worth something...

But yeah, I think the root of the problem is the fact that I've received lots and lots of criticism and little praise from the people I thought I could most trust in the world.

Excuse me if this has made me cynical about praise and compliments, and if I find it really hard to be proud of my work now. And if I overreact to criticism. And if I insist on being "the best", which is obviously just an abstraction but which has become an overbearing desire--need in my life.

(Yeah you can make Pokemon Master jokes if you want.)

But I don't know, I really need help. First maybe if you could phrase your criticism nicely...and maybe warn me before you give it. It's triggering. It's triggering. And if you could...maybe address the fact that I have a low self esteem when I seem to reject your compliments. Instead of making me feel as if I'm committing a crime by being unable to accept it. I mean...I know, it makes me look like a douche when I refute your compliments, but I mean...I don't do it because I hate you or because I hate compliments. It's mostly because I feel guilty for accepting compliments.

And also if I act up out of jealousy or insecurity, well...I guess this is the reason I wrote this blogpost too. I'm not trying to be cruel or mean. I'm just really, mortally afraid of being second best, possibly because I spent my entire life having my work compared to people I'd never met before. And I'm trying to ease myself out of this state. And it's taking so long and I don't think it's the sort of thing that's solved with an epiphany.

Yeah.