Very little hope or ambition, on a deep feel-it-in-your-gut-and-soul way, where the hunger drives you forward, tearing you up as you rip through time and space, hurtling towards your goal. Only what seems to be something that gnaws, gnaws, gnaws at what used to be gut and soul, just tearing you up and I rip through what I thought was me.

Oh, the goals are still there. They’re still being reached for. But that’s.. institutional Me. The Me that has been designed to achieve a goal, that has been in the works for the past half-decade, and that will terminate in another half-and-again.

Two-oh-oh-eight was an amazing year. Finally completing what I might always wonder the sensibility of taking up, and finishing it with a shiny gold medal. Being thrown into the world of International Talking At Lots of People but Not To Very Many People, where I met beautiful inspiring people, and thrown again on an eastern european mountain where I had the pure pleasure of learning and sharing and being Singaporean, being a unofficial envoy of my Home, my Being.

My opinions were morphed, were evolved. Gorgeous long conversations and plans with with a woman I’ve come to love like a sister, and amazing long conversations and plans with people I’ve come to adore like sin. Decided to pursue an unthinkable second major in economics, throwing to the wind all the apprehensions I had of getting into a basic politics programme to begin with (while ironically preparing myself for a full year of rejection, and making plans for another round of applications). Redefined what geographical lines defined me; I am Singaporean, and Asean, and Asian, and Earthian.

This year?

Things look good, things are coming into alignment. Invited back to New York to the CSD as a funded participant; received an unconditional offer from SOAS, and even more shockingly, another unconditional from York. Projects are coming into being, with fruitful work being done with groups and schools and orgs, building capacities and attitudes and general vigor for life and changing lives.

The plan is going good. The plan is going good without me.

Without who I am. Without Me in the driving seat. I’m not even merely existing, I’ve sunk below existing.

Things ground to a halt, with certain epiphanies regarding the hypocrisy of my thought and actions, and the losing of the one thing that was mine and mine alone (running, and running, and running). I hasten to clarify that it has nothing to do with the army, and everything to do with the army. The injury and the processes and the thinking and the thoughts and the everything.

I sank and sank and sank, and I think I might have (hopefully) hit rock bottom. Indeed, I’ve managed to grip myself a little better, and am managing efficient manifestations of a Model Civic Minded Citizen, but I’m as bad now as I was when I gave up free movement to force myself to stop self-destruction.

And I’m too afraid to ask for help. To ask friends, and Friends for help. I probably am doing a great disservice to them by this, but I don’t know if I have any. It’s not because I don’t trust them, because I do. But I also don’t. Simply because I can’t see anything in me that is worth the trouble I am. I don’t need specific anythings, because I don’t know what it is I need, but I think that maybe, just maybe, this choking-gasping-dying might be mitigated by knowing there’s someone I could be a complete wreck with.

Who wouldn’t judge me once they see all the flaws I conceal.

Therapy helps, but only to expedite administrative issues. My therapist thinks I’m a perfectly well-adjusted young man. I’ve played the role too long. I just need to know I can crash, utterly and absolutely, without utter and absolute anomie.

I want the ties that bind us.

I’m too cowardly to speak of this directly. I dread getting the answer I am certain I will receive; goodness begets goodness, and I am as nothing. So indeed, this is here, in this empty space. And away from the Twitter and the Facebook.

I have lived, and I have died, and I will.

What happens when you’re so empty that you’re bone-dry, and no one realises you need a refill and you remain bone dry, and you despair, belaboured, painful, drawn, claws tearing at your throat and heart and soul.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen.

You spin like a top, heady and giddy and centered on thyself, when you realise that you have no one left, pretty much.

But I can’t look myself in the eye and think that, and say that.

I am tired, I am worn, and worst of all, I am gone.

There’s no more fire, no more passion. I’m not driven anymore to do what it is I’ve been doing, not because I don’t see a need for it to be done, but because I don’t know if I’m worthy of doing it anymore.

My selfworth is zilch. I don’t have faith in myself. I don’t trust myself. And that terrifies me.

Me is all I have, all I have had. Me is what let me do so much, and now I don’t have me anymore. While perhaps a month ago, I wanted someone to hold with, to talk with, to be with, now the only person I want in my life is me.

–

There’s this lump in my soul, this weight. I pry my chest open, with tweezers and fingers and fear. There’s this lump, this charred charred lump; a lump that used to be aflame. It’s just a sad charred misshapen lump now.

Still the tweezers and fingers and fear pry on, scraping at the soot and black and rot. Not misshapen. A definite shape.

It was my flame that burnt, and that was extinguished in a systolic thump.

I’d rather it, the lump, my lump, have been burnt out of existence – but that would have been too easy.

I carry this lump in my soul, this weight. To remind me what I’ve lost. And what I fear might never return.

–

I can’t write, not to open my heart to let out the ache, or to open my soul and let myself into university. The former can wait, but the latter. The latter worries me. Because now, my soul no longer feels strong enough, worthy enough, for the path I’ve been on.

Where have my words gone.

–

I don’t know why this is happening. I lie. I do know why this is happening. But I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve regressed. I’ve gone back five years, my soul, to a place I swore I would never return.

I’m scared and scared and scared, and use little white discs of unconsciousness to keep the scared away.

But. I have to cling on to something, anything. Anything that remains of me. And that one thing that I have held on to, with the very tip of my soul-nails, is faith in the system. The system will catch me.

Else, goodbye me.