Yah, I was just a little carefree innocent soul with my ever famous *beam beam* until I chose to interact too closely with thoughts so fearful and destructive. It was hard for me to grasp why one would want to think so negatively, be so insecure and hold on so tightly. There were some other aspects which I could not understand either. I fought those personalities and tried to change them. But I guess you could never change someone. At the end of it, my mind was in turmoil. I was totally tired and confused. I lost my sense of clarity.
I was in Sec 3 then and you could call that traumatic period my dark ages. Things just did not go right. I had allowed fear to seep into my soul. I found that I could not play with that same focus as before and my progress was impeded. I managed to maintain my position in the age group until that fateful match which blew it all. I will describe this in a later post.
My entire world came tumbling down. However at this moment, I cannot quite describe the intensity of those torrential emotions I went through then. Maybe I have really let them go.
I can only recall having nights that I had to cry myself to sleep. I wondered why all those things were happening to me. I only wanted to have that peace of mind and get back to playing joyful squash. But I just could not.
I wrote quite a bit to Ansari over that period. I still remember one analogy he used in one of those emails.
Imagine you are riding a horse and have been thrown off suddenly. The horse continues charging at full speed mindlessly. Your foot is dead caught in the stirrup and you are being rapidly dragged along. What can you do?
Either get killed or get up the horse again.
I struggled. It was painful.
Was that part and parcel of growing up?
(On a side note, I did sure grow then. I shot up 10 cm in a year and at the same time, put on another 20 kg. Gosh. The extra weight only served to bring my squash down further as I moved around in court like a sack of potatoes.)
I wonder if I could go back in time, I would have still made that same choice. Perhaps, as there was something I had to learn.
Yet this would be the wiser me speaking and such is the problem with hindsight.
Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.
Frank: You know Marcel Proust?
Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.
-- Little Miss Sunshine
ps: Yiqing, no copyright issues over the title I hope ... ;-)
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