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New Year's Epiphany 2008
For the past week, I've been in a funk, feeling depressed and lost. All my old school friends had grown up, moved on and lost touch. I have just finished my stint at campus and am now due to transfer to foreign shores. The time I did spend at campus, I did not exactly actively do any social networking and my friends there were few and far apart. I had pretty much divorced myself from the sickening shenanigans of my extended family and my relationships with those of my immediate family were deteriorating fast. Dreams tasted dull, life felt empty and I felt like I was living in a grey haze where a corrosive despair dug an ever deepening pit of loneliness and despair in my stomach. Everyday I would look at the girl in the mirror and feel like she was a total stranger to me.
Today I zeroed in on the cause. All my life I have built my self identity on the perceptions of other people. This is a perfectly human impulse. Psychologists call this the "Looking Glass Self". The perception of certain groups of people - friends, close friends, family, co-workers - help you see yourself as others see you. These people are called "reference groups". Not all groups' perception hold the same weight with how you perceive yourself. For example, if you family called you pretty but your friends did not, you would be more inclined to believe your friends as you think they are the more objective ones on this issue. However, if your family thinks you are honest and your co-workers do not, you would be readier to believe your family, because they have the longer and closer association with you. Bottomline, different people matter differently.
Tied in with this theory is the "Self-fulfilling prophecy", i.e, if certain people reinforce the idea upon you that you have a certain quality, you start believing you have a certain quality, and in believing it you acheive that quality. Self identity is built upon these two bases.
My problem? Lack of reference groups. Since I left school, I have not been part of any established social circle who knew me beyond a passing acquaintance. I had grown out of touch with the people who did know me. I had actively alienated my family. Nobody gave a shit about me and I didn't gve a shit about anybody else. Compounded with the fact that my depression had changed aspects of my personality completely within the space of one year, I had absolutely no idea where I had ended up and where I wanted to go from here. The only people whose opinion mattered to me at this point was Boy,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lostprincess87 and Suddie. Since I didn't get to see the girls half as much as I wanted, the only saving grace for me was Boy. I still wanted him to be proud of me. Some days, I think it was only that thought that got me to bloody shower regularly. Whatever else, Boy still saw me as something worthwhile. For him, I needed to function a little more like a human, whine a little less, and mope only on alternate days. But that was about all I could manage.
I Scrooged my way through Christmas and was fully prepped to Bah-Humbug the New Year. Stupid parties and fireworks and family gatherings. Like any of it meant anything. It was just another date on the calendar some Roman guy thought up thousands of years ago. Just another jaunt around the sun for good old Earth, who had been doing the same thing millions of times before and would continue doing millions of times after the whole human race was dead and forgotten. We were all just a bunch of glorified primates trying to pretend it meant something, to break up the monotony in the progression of meaningless days in humdrum lives that'd be lost to obscurity soon. Champagne, indeed! Fireworks, forsooth! Phone beeping incessantly with standard "Happy New Year" messages - well at least the cell phone companies had something to celebrate.
Drowning my misanthropy in two glasses of Martini and a good-sized chunk of Toblerone, I decided the sporting thing to do would be to send a few New Year messages of my own. If people partying their way into a hangover could take a minute to say "hi", little ole me, who was being kept from her bed by a cacophony of firecrackers going off at her window every ten seconds could return the favour. So I started flipping through my contacts list.
I hardly ever flip through my contacts list. My entire contacts list, that is. Some of those people I hadn't spoken to in months, if not years. Two-ex-boyfriends, good friends from A/Level class, teachers I had promised to keep in touch with but never had, friends I had met on the street and exchanged phone numbers with, never to call, my oldest friend in the world who I bit in a fight when I was six years old and single-handedly tutored me into a passing grade in Advanced Level Accountancy 12 years later, the first guy I ever asked out who I now consider my big brother, my sweet study partner in my first semester of ANC who had a baby last year, my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend whose friendship with me lasted longer than my relationship with her ex, and who was now in the U.S....
And those were only the people in my mobile phone contacts list. What about the people in my Facebook contacts list? I usually scoff at FB, as a naturally reculsive, literary mindedand snobbish person is wont to do at social networking websites, but I now realize that I never realized what a valuable purpose it served. I can find any of my erstwhile old school buddies and aquaintances on it, and I have most of them on my friends list. I've just never bothered to keep in touch.
There it was. I meet perfectly nice, interesting and decent people everyday - and I never bother cultivating their friendships and acquaintances. Relationships don't spring out of the blue. You initiate, pursue, cultivate and maintain them. Few of them turn out to be lasting or close friendships, but it doesn't mean that they are without worth and value. And even close friendships need to be maintained. When was the last time I called up my oldest friend Sachi to see what she was upto? Did I know what job Manilka was doing now? How old was Marina's baby?
I didn't know. I had put off calling them up for so long for one reason or another - prioritizing in order of urgency rather than importance - that the days had turned into weeks and months and years and it had all led to this New Year's Eve which saw me drinking and binge-eating and wallowing about how I didn't have any friends.
The irony, I tell you.
What about the friends who had stuck by me for so long? I hadn't made time for a heart-to-heart with Pavi in a long time, I had nearly blown off Suds' last invite for a spend-the-day because I was feeling too mopey to go out and I had yakked Boy's ear off about ego-driven pyromaniac primates and the euro-centricsm of the Julian Calendar when he called me up to spend the last hour of the old year talking with me. And you know, nobody can deny that my parents are batshit crazy, but they'd driven themselves round the bend in the first place trying to keep the school fees paid up and a roof over our heads, so was it really that hard to go downstairs and watch the late night movie with them instead of hiding out in my room?
The evidence cannot be denied: You Take People For Granted, Hasini.
I'd like to fix this situation. I had a sudden urge to call up Mithila (8 months after we'd exchanged phone numbers) and message Kookie on FB (5 months after she had gone abroad). I wanted to tell Dad that yes, he was infuriating and ridiculous and I had been mad at him for the greater part of the year and all day today but I still love him, goddamnit. I wanted to drop a kiss on my Mum's head ( we are really not a touchy-feely household). I wanted to ask my sister about the guy she's crushing on (we've been communicating in grunts and snarls for weeks).
Only, it would be quite out of the blue and really rather weird. Eyebrows would be raised and...it would be awkward.
Or maybe it wouldn't. Because of all that stuff about New Year's and New Beginnings. I mean, there's a reason why people clean out their houses this time of year, whitewash their walls, bring out their crystal wine glasses and prepare to get their carpets ruined hob-nobbing with long-lost drinking buddies and bosses and somebody's frightful Great Aunty Maud. It's their way of revaluating relationships and calling do-overs. Because everybody deserves a second chance, even when you ruin the carpet, smash the wine glasses and have the misfortune to be somebody's frightful Aunty Maud.
I guess that's what New Year's is all about - revaluating. Yourself, your relationships, your priorities and goals. Starting with a clean slate, or a semblance of one at any rate. Sure, the Julian Calendar was an imperialist imposition upon colonial states that undermined the dating systems of indigenous cultures. Sure, the Earth doesn't spin any faster in proportion to the number of champagne corks popped (although it may seem that way to the people who have popped one too many). But New Year's isn't about any of that, so it's all irrelevant. New Year's is about people and how they perceive themselves and how they redeem themselves.
Self-identity and second chances. Without them, we would be nothing but ego-driven puffed-up pyromaniac primates. But we won't be, as long as we don't take the blessings in our lives for granted.
Happy New Year, my darling flist. I love you all.
Today I zeroed in on the cause. All my life I have built my self identity on the perceptions of other people. This is a perfectly human impulse. Psychologists call this the "Looking Glass Self". The perception of certain groups of people - friends, close friends, family, co-workers - help you see yourself as others see you. These people are called "reference groups". Not all groups' perception hold the same weight with how you perceive yourself. For example, if you family called you pretty but your friends did not, you would be more inclined to believe your friends as you think they are the more objective ones on this issue. However, if your family thinks you are honest and your co-workers do not, you would be readier to believe your family, because they have the longer and closer association with you. Bottomline, different people matter differently.
Tied in with this theory is the "Self-fulfilling prophecy", i.e, if certain people reinforce the idea upon you that you have a certain quality, you start believing you have a certain quality, and in believing it you acheive that quality. Self identity is built upon these two bases.
My problem? Lack of reference groups. Since I left school, I have not been part of any established social circle who knew me beyond a passing acquaintance. I had grown out of touch with the people who did know me. I had actively alienated my family. Nobody gave a shit about me and I didn't gve a shit about anybody else. Compounded with the fact that my depression had changed aspects of my personality completely within the space of one year, I had absolutely no idea where I had ended up and where I wanted to go from here. The only people whose opinion mattered to me at this point was Boy,
lostprincess87 and Suddie. Since I didn't get to see the girls half as much as I wanted, the only saving grace for me was Boy. I still wanted him to be proud of me. Some days, I think it was only that thought that got me to bloody shower regularly. Whatever else, Boy still saw me as something worthwhile. For him, I needed to function a little more like a human, whine a little less, and mope only on alternate days. But that was about all I could manage. I Scrooged my way through Christmas and was fully prepped to Bah-Humbug the New Year. Stupid parties and fireworks and family gatherings. Like any of it meant anything. It was just another date on the calendar some Roman guy thought up thousands of years ago. Just another jaunt around the sun for good old Earth, who had been doing the same thing millions of times before and would continue doing millions of times after the whole human race was dead and forgotten. We were all just a bunch of glorified primates trying to pretend it meant something, to break up the monotony in the progression of meaningless days in humdrum lives that'd be lost to obscurity soon. Champagne, indeed! Fireworks, forsooth! Phone beeping incessantly with standard "Happy New Year" messages - well at least the cell phone companies had something to celebrate.
Drowning my misanthropy in two glasses of Martini and a good-sized chunk of Toblerone, I decided the sporting thing to do would be to send a few New Year messages of my own. If people partying their way into a hangover could take a minute to say "hi", little ole me, who was being kept from her bed by a cacophony of firecrackers going off at her window every ten seconds could return the favour. So I started flipping through my contacts list.
I hardly ever flip through my contacts list. My entire contacts list, that is. Some of those people I hadn't spoken to in months, if not years. Two-ex-boyfriends, good friends from A/Level class, teachers I had promised to keep in touch with but never had, friends I had met on the street and exchanged phone numbers with, never to call, my oldest friend in the world who I bit in a fight when I was six years old and single-handedly tutored me into a passing grade in Advanced Level Accountancy 12 years later, the first guy I ever asked out who I now consider my big brother, my sweet study partner in my first semester of ANC who had a baby last year, my ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend whose friendship with me lasted longer than my relationship with her ex, and who was now in the U.S....
And those were only the people in my mobile phone contacts list. What about the people in my Facebook contacts list? I usually scoff at FB, as a naturally reculsive, literary minded
There it was. I meet perfectly nice, interesting and decent people everyday - and I never bother cultivating their friendships and acquaintances. Relationships don't spring out of the blue. You initiate, pursue, cultivate and maintain them. Few of them turn out to be lasting or close friendships, but it doesn't mean that they are without worth and value. And even close friendships need to be maintained. When was the last time I called up my oldest friend Sachi to see what she was upto? Did I know what job Manilka was doing now? How old was Marina's baby?
I didn't know. I had put off calling them up for so long for one reason or another - prioritizing in order of urgency rather than importance - that the days had turned into weeks and months and years and it had all led to this New Year's Eve which saw me drinking and binge-eating and wallowing about how I didn't have any friends.
The irony, I tell you.
What about the friends who had stuck by me for so long? I hadn't made time for a heart-to-heart with Pavi in a long time, I had nearly blown off Suds' last invite for a spend-the-day because I was feeling too mopey to go out and I had yakked Boy's ear off about ego-driven pyromaniac primates and the euro-centricsm of the Julian Calendar when he called me up to spend the last hour of the old year talking with me. And you know, nobody can deny that my parents are batshit crazy, but they'd driven themselves round the bend in the first place trying to keep the school fees paid up and a roof over our heads, so was it really that hard to go downstairs and watch the late night movie with them instead of hiding out in my room?
The evidence cannot be denied: You Take People For Granted, Hasini.
I'd like to fix this situation. I had a sudden urge to call up Mithila (8 months after we'd exchanged phone numbers) and message Kookie on FB (5 months after she had gone abroad). I wanted to tell Dad that yes, he was infuriating and ridiculous and I had been mad at him for the greater part of the year and all day today but I still love him, goddamnit. I wanted to drop a kiss on my Mum's head ( we are really not a touchy-feely household). I wanted to ask my sister about the guy she's crushing on (we've been communicating in grunts and snarls for weeks).
Only, it would be quite out of the blue and really rather weird. Eyebrows would be raised and...it would be awkward.
Or maybe it wouldn't. Because of all that stuff about New Year's and New Beginnings. I mean, there's a reason why people clean out their houses this time of year, whitewash their walls, bring out their crystal wine glasses and prepare to get their carpets ruined hob-nobbing with long-lost drinking buddies and bosses and somebody's frightful Great Aunty Maud. It's their way of revaluating relationships and calling do-overs. Because everybody deserves a second chance, even when you ruin the carpet, smash the wine glasses and have the misfortune to be somebody's frightful Aunty Maud.
I guess that's what New Year's is all about - revaluating. Yourself, your relationships, your priorities and goals. Starting with a clean slate, or a semblance of one at any rate. Sure, the Julian Calendar was an imperialist imposition upon colonial states that undermined the dating systems of indigenous cultures. Sure, the Earth doesn't spin any faster in proportion to the number of champagne corks popped (although it may seem that way to the people who have popped one too many). But New Year's isn't about any of that, so it's all irrelevant. New Year's is about people and how they perceive themselves and how they redeem themselves.
Self-identity and second chances. Without them, we would be nothing but ego-driven puffed-up pyromaniac primates. But we won't be, as long as we don't take the blessings in our lives for granted.
Happy New Year, my darling flist. I love you all.