rantings in starbucks

Have you ever wondered who will be the ones crying when you die? Whose lives have you significantly impacted such that they will come to see you for the last time?

I think I’m a very morbid person. I will think of these things in my idle time, or times when I just feel so fucked up that I just want to bury myself in a hole and never have to come out of it. Or lock myself in a room and never talk to anyone ever again. I wonder why I’m studying in Starbucks since I’m feeling this way now. Perhaps being in a crowded place yet not have anyone to talk to, nobody that I know, heightens the magnitude of the awful feeling of an impersonal world. Sometimes you just crave to be heard, yet do not want to burden another person with your ill-feelings. So you hide away and hope that, maybe, maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

“I’ve been down and I’m wondering why, these little black clouds keep on walking around with me….”
– Maybe Tomorrow, Stereophonics

So this is how I visualize my own funeral. I’m dead, maybe at the age of fifty? I died alone, perhaps out of circumstances that are beyond my control, or perhaps from a self-imposed exile from the world that I know of. I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life traveling the world, seeing all the beauty that exists in the world yet do not seem to find its way into my life. It is a sort of a desperate, yet fruitless attempt, to inject a hope in me that, maybe, just maybe, the miracles that made the great wonders of the world possible will somehow remake my life.

I died in peace, at peace with the world. I’d like to think that I’ve no regrets whatsoever over all the decisions that I’ve made in life. All the people I’ve hurt, and the people I’ve been hurt by, all the crossroads of my life at which I’ve made the worst possible decisions. I’d like to think that I’d learnt lessons from them all, that they’ve made me the person that I am. Regret is such a hard thing to comprehend; it occurs at the moment of realization that you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, yet that feeling did not seem to exist during the moments before the decision, when you thought that the thing you will be doing is the right-est thing you will possibly do. Regret is the thing that pushes us to constantly make the best of the worst possible things we have done. Regret makes us pay the price of wrongdoings we’ve done for eternity. I did not have any regrets when I died. I have made the most of my life, seen all that I wanted to see, and learnt all that I wanted to learn.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
- Thoreau

I’d like to think that I lived my life according to what Thoreau had preached.

It’s so cold here. I went to the washroom to run my hands under scalding water. Yet I felt no pain. Perhaps a tinge of pleasure? Experiencing pain is probably the one indication of a connection with reality. When you cease to feel pain, you cease to be alive, and endure life as though it is a muted black and white opera, full of angst and fury, yet not knowing anything about it because all the sounds and colors of life have been drained away.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
--Macbeth (V, v, 19), William Shakespeare

The enthusiasm for living slips out of the self like sand slipping out of the hand; at the first grasp, the handful of sand is so incomprehensible, so fascinating. Yet it immediately breaks free from your grasp, slowly but steadily, and in time nothing’s left, and one is left only with a disconnect for what had been the pleasure of holding on to the sand.

Maybe I’d have regrets, despite my intentions against that happening. Maybe I’d regret being such an unfilial son when I was younger. In the days of my mum’s illness, I was rebellious and disobedient. I can never forgive myself for fighting with my dad, for thinking that because I’m physically stronger (due to his flailing strength) that I could finally break free of his strict hold over me. The invincibility I felt then came at the expense of my parents’ overwhelming love for me, so much so that they accept me for who I was. I’d always regret having been a social butterfly, for not investing much in any of the relationships that I had with people, yet sought to derive the most pleasure from it. That made me the untrustworthy person I am. I look in the mirror when I’m fifty, and I see a flawed person. Like a cracked mirror, the beauty of perfection is never again found in existence. I’d be like the rotten apple that craved to have someone take a bite from me again, and indulge me despite the worms that have made me hollow and shallow.

I died because I chose to die. No, I did not die from any illness, or from any accident. The decision of ending my life at the age of fifty is perhaps the one thing that I still had autonomy over, the one thing that I knew I would not regret. Yes, it is a sin to take one’s life, but it is a sin I’d gladly commit to end my own suffering.

I see my own funeral being held in a church. Yes, I’d not been a person that subscribed to a formal religion. Part of that stems from my promise to a desperate plea from my dear mum that I would not accept another religion before she passes away, so that she will be able to receive the “offerings” I’d offer her at her funeral. Maybe that’s just superstition, yet this is the one duty of being her son that I will never forsake.

“You gave me life, gave me your heart,
Your shoulder when I needed to cry
You gave me hope, when all my hope is gone
Wings so my dreams can fly

And I, haven’t told you enough, haven’t been good enough, making you see

My love for you, will live in my heart;
Until eternal is through
I see your smile, in the eyes of my child,
I am who I am, mama thanks to you”
– Thanks to You, Richard Marx

When I think of my mum, I think back to the days when I was really young. Days when our family was not well to do. I remember our humble home in Ang Mo Kio, how she always brought me to the playground after kindergarten school so that I can have my fun before dinner. I remember the times I hated her when i got beaten, and hearing her sobbing in the middle of the night after sending me to my room, me breaking her heart with the professions of my hatred. I remember her being so proud of me each time I came home with good results. I remember the day she was wheeled out of the operation room, when we found out about her cancer. I remember seeing my dad slump to the floor, never having seen such a brave and strong man cry before. I remember her making a video of her last words to me so that I can have something to remember her by when she’s gone.

“I think I’ve already lost you, I think you’re already gone
I think I’m finally scared now, you think I’m weak, I think you’re wrong
I think you’re already leaving, feels like your hand is on the door
I thought this place was an empire, now I’m relaxed, I can’t be sure

If you’re gone, maybe its time to come home
There’s an awful lot of breathing room and I can hardly move
If you’re gone, baby you need to come home
There’s a little bit of something in me, and everything in you.”
- If You’re Gone, Matchbox Twenty

I remember the nights she couldn’t fall asleep because the pain was so unbearable, her throwing up in the living room all night as I struggled to fall asleep. I remember accompanying her to the doctor’s, and seeing the joy that it brought her simply because I was “having a date” with her. I remember her bout of depression due to my dad’s duel with bankruptcy, and my departure for Ann Arbor.

I am finding it so hard not to tear in the middle of Starbucks as I type this. Perhaps I should stop for a while.

Fuck. I just hid in the toilet cubicle and cried my eyes out. I hope no one notices.

For all those misgivings that I have done to my mum, I will not go back on my word on the one thing that I have promised her. She will be able to receive my offerings when she goes on to a better life. Heaven is filled with angels like her.

However, I’d always maintained that I do believe in the existence of a God. I have not explored the depths of Christianity, yet I do want to believe, to be part of this faith. Just not right now, not when I have a promise to keep.

Hence my wish to have my funeral held in a church. It would reconcile me with my faith.

There’d people there, I hope. I do not know who they will be. Perhaps friends that I’ve enjoyed the companionship of, friends that I’ve shared precious moments of my life with. People that I’ve wanted to be close with, to share eternity with, but pushed away because of my stubbornness and my insincerity. No, my parents would not be there. I hope they will not see the sorry state that their son ended his life in. In their minds I hope to always leave the impression of as a strong, free spirited being that they have educated well, a bright young man whom they had invested their lives in. My sister would be there. The one person in my family that I do not know at all. And its all my fault. I do not deserve her tears.

There’d probably only be around twenty people at my funeral. The twenty people who still cared about me even after the unforgivable treatment I gave them. The rest of the world had already given up hope on me. And that’s ok Looking down (or in my case looking up) at them I’d feel extreme joy at their presence. I feel heartened that I have had some sort of influence on their lives. Maybe no one would show up; that’s perfectly acceptable too. I do not deserve such kindness. I hope no one cries. That would break my heart even more, knowing the possibility of having had a deeper relationship with them.

So I lie in my coffin, waiting to be buried (or cremated, my preference actually, since I do not want posterity to have to deal with the remnants of my existence.) The songs “Maybe Tomorrow” and “Back to Good” keep playing on repeat, just as they are right now as I write this. How ironical. They exemplify my wish for a better tomorrow, a return to a better past, yet condemns the present for what its worth.

“Everyone here, knows everyone here is thinking about somebody else
And its best if we all keep things quiet instead
I couldn’t tell, if anyone here was feeling the way I do
But it’s over now, and I don’t know how, to get it back to good.”
– Back to Good, Matchbox Twenty

The father presiding over my funeral reads the quote by Thoreau, and says that yes, this man has lived his life by his maxim, lived his life to the fullest. Everyone in the crowd (all twenty of them) nod their heads in apparent agreement, yet each of them know for certain the futility of these words, words which do not mend the imperfections of the life I had. My epithet reads “here lies a man, whose only wish was to be loved”. At the age of fifty, perhaps that is the one thing that will be the biggest regret of all.