In Continuum.

Paper Doll

Only daughter, you got your ticket too soon
Holy Water, 'cause everybody's getting ruined
They are waiting to see what you do
Too long waiting, everybody's cleared the room

It must have been difficult for her to open up her doors to the lot of us, but then again it is not her nature to reject the rest of the world because of her fear to trust. She trusts, and still does, despite all the brutal deceptions and the hurtful betrayals. You start to wonder where this seventeen year old girl gets her courage from, from which corner of her character does she draw such a courage that is bigger than her body gives her credit for. I remember that day in the lecture theater, when the flow of her tears shocked the social circle that I am a part of. Even I was pulled back by her tears, which fell for reasons that eluded me back then, and even now. My friends have told me about her vulnerabilities, and there are times when you can see that in her eyes. The way they flicker in the lights, or the way they would look away in confusion, doubt or frustration. They linger on the verge of breakdown, but always finding the courage to stray back from the edge, always coming back home in one piece. You start to wonder where she finds that courage to face life as it is, and you start to wonder if it is possible to find that courage in your own life as well. Because if she can do it, why can't I?

It must have been the fear of being judged all over again, that must have held on to that pause button in her speech. We were looking for a place to rehearse our music presentation last semester, and I noticed the hesitation in her words. I do not recall who it was that came up with the idea of using her place to hold the rehearsals, but it was definitely not her that initiated it. From somebody else, I found out about her plight, the way she was fearful of being judged like the way everybody in her life has been doing the same. But she has come through all of those so-called betrayals, with her chin still held high and proud. You start to wonder if it is possible to bring this person completely down, if the tears were merely a mirage that masks the true self. I guess, she is not the only person with such issues with trust, especially when you are coming from a supposedly 'rich' family. It just seems commonplace for people like us, the ones who are grouped into the category of the wealthy and the rich.

And they'll dress you up
Stand you in all the right places
Words like 'honey', smile as they change your faces
With no regard to you at all
And you find they treat you like a paper doll

Fitting into Singapore wasn't easy for me, but standing out wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought. Grade-wise, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, though not the most blunt. With the mixture of both English and Chinese in their speech, Singaporeans puzzled me limitlessly when I came to Singapore for the first time. They were speaking a language that I sort of understood, but the way they ended every sentence with a 'la' and a 'leh' confused me immensely. My mother was my teacher for English for a period of time, bringing me through the alphabets and the basics, through a wall of English newspaper articles and cuttings. In school, I was forced to communicate in the so-called Singlish, and that propelled me to fit into the society much easier than all the other efforts combined. Aside from the fact that I was the foreign kid in class, I was also known as the rich kid, the mother's boy of the batch, though I couldn't see why. Perhaps it was because of the Mercedes that would be parked outside the school everyday to fetch me home, or the thermos flask I carried to school that became my constant source of cold water, instead of the water dispenser. Everybody had an idea of who I should have been and how I should have acted, and the way I was pained them in the eyes tremendously.

Fights broke out on the fields and at the basketball courts, boys sitting on top of me and banging my head into the ground, while I would tear at their collars and tuck at their hair. I guess on their part, they just wanted to see this rich kid being covered in dirt and grass, to see how I would look like if my uniforms were to be stained by my own blood. Winning of losing in such a fight mattered little to them, because the ultimate winner would always be them, as long as I crawl back onto my feet with dirt all over my body. They'd run their ball-point pens down my back, and I'd be forced to use correction ink to cover up the stains. But that is the kind of life a 'rich kid' has in a neighborhood primary school, everybody hated your guts for no apparent reasons. You are expected to be good at everything, to share your wealth, to act in a certain way and talk in a certain way. Everybody had their ideals for me, and those ideals were anything but the ideals I had for myself. After all, I wasn't born into a family like they were, brought up by parents like their own. I wasn't able to understand why I was being kicked in the back, to pushed into a puddle of rainwater. Perhaps I looked too clean, perhaps my uniform looked too ironed out. Something about me pissed them off, and they were reluctant to tell me what it was. Because to them, kicking the living daylight out of me was the only way they could feel better about their own miserable lives.

And they'll dress you up for the flight
Like Ophelia, you wave goodnight
With the earth and sky you cheer and sigh
Writhe as all your days go by
And laugh as you die

The subtle hatred didn't grow weaker from all the rest, even when I got to high school. I was older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more observant. It was much easier for me to tell who were close to me for me, and who were close to me for the money. The rest were close to me because they wanted to land a punch in my guts, or score a kick in my butt. Everybody wanted a piece of me, and the breaking point was reached that fateful day before the art room when I went for the throat of my classmate. It didn't help that my high school had a large population of 'gangsters', or those wannabes that pretended to be one. They have their own preconceived ideas on who should be who, and how they should be like. To them, anybody that ranked lower than them in the social food chain, shouldn't behave in ways that would potentially piss them off. A brand new pencil case would be seen as a threat to their position, and the only way to defend their own position was to make the life of the rich kid, miserable. My high school days were rigged with beatings and fights, breaking out because somebody grew tired of my ways, sick of seeing the life I was leading so comfortably in. On my part, there wasn't an ounce of effort put in, no attempts were made to show off my life to the rest of the world. Everybody saw what they wanted to see, even if their truths were lies in their fabricated reality.

In self-defense, I closed myself in. Even friends were oblivious to some of the things I thought to myself, some of the things that I felt to myself. Things were being spoken under my breath, and my close friends were strictly those I hung out with, never the ones I confided to. There was a sense of fear all the time, though they have never betrayed me before in any way. It was as if, by telling people about myself, it was possible for the rest of the school to pick up that faint sound wave in the air, and spread it amongst themselves for the next couple of weeks. That was the kind of social structure that I had to endure for four years, and those years were riddled with darkness, with the false pretense of myself enjoying the company of others. I had to join the hunters, but I never went for the kill. I participated in their hunts, but never their eventual feast. I stayed away, because I knew how it felt like to be under the fangs and the claws, because I was there once, I was there at their mercy. Opening up to the world, trusting others with my inner self was something I couldn't come to terms with, and the exposure of my vulnerabilities only spelled disaster on my part. So I closed in, until I found a friend online.

Sweet softer shoulder,
Oh, sweet sugar safe
Sweet softer shoulder,
Oh, sweet sugar safe

Blogger couldn't have come into my lift at a better time. It presented itself to me like a alternative road would to a crumbled one. It was an avenue for me to vent my frustrations, a friend that I could trust, and a person free of all judgments. From high school, I managed to make my way to Junior College, which had a promising beginning but nonetheless, all good things must come to an end. It wasn't so much about how I changed, but how the social groups around me were changed, and accepted different standards of me. Everything was relative, and I changed from this guy whom nobody thought much about, to the guy that nobody really liked. It is safer to be the guy whom nobody thought much about, because nothing can come from nothing. No hatred, no dislikes, no annoyance can come from feeling nothing for a person, and that was the person I was, until I attempted to socialize halfway through the first year. I'm not sure if it was kind of her to tell me that fateful afternoon, or was it a slap in the face. But the bunch of friends whom I have already looked forward to seeing in school, were the same bunch of people that talked behind my back about how irritating I can get in class - sometimes. The reason eluded me, and still does till this day. They say that their impression of me has changed over the years, especially after national service. To me, it just sounded like an excuse to justify what they did in the past. There are girls, and there are girls. And some of them are cold to the bones indeed.

I can't really complain that my social life was an utter failure, but I guess it has been exchanged with a great cost on my part. I have come by the road of being betrayed and lied to as well, the very same road that you must have came from. But I admire your strength in a way, the fact that you do now bow down to the will of anybody else but your own. You rolled with the punches, and you bounced up from where you fell. I still have trust issues on my part, opening myself up wide enough for the world to enter, but only so far. People like us always have this dilemma as to how much we should let the world in, but then again it's not like such things are quantitative in nature. Once you open one door, the other doors begin to open too. Soon enough, you find yourself opening too many doors and letting too many people entering. Like I said, I do admire your willingness to trust, but that is not something I am willing to adopt on my part. Especially after the issue we do not speak of, it has become even harder to throw myself onto a person, believing in that she is going to break my fall. Because the last person I trusted to break my fall, broke my heart instead.

Everybody's got their own life philosophy
And I can't wait to find one coming from me
Oh, the bridge is narrow
You better not look down
'Cause as soon as you jump over
You won't find nobody around

It would be easy to disassociate myself with the life that I have in the short run, to make believe that I am very much the same as the kind of people that I have as friends. That is the only way that people are going to accept you for who you are sometimes, as much as they claim to be all righteous about things. But the truth always surfaces sooner or later, like the dead body of a murdered man thrown into the river. You just have to face the fire when the shit hits the fan, stand there with your chest thrown forward with all the courage you can possibly conjure. Because blind judgments from people can be the sharpest knives to pierce one's heart, and we need all the strength we can get for such a dire situation. We cannot change the way people want to see you, and we can't change the way people think about you. We are all paper dolls to one another, being dressed up in their minds the way they want us to look. You can't light a candle to the paper doll just to burn it all away, or to crumble it with your fist and pretend that it never existed. Because this paper doll is here to stay in the minds of all those who relies on their own blind judgments of people, and I have experienced it myself at first hand, only too much.

So people like me, people like you - you know who you are. I guess this is our curse, the curse that comes in the package of being born in a family like ours. This is the kind of curse that we are supposed to live with for the rest of our lives. It may seem condescending, or rather pretentious to say something like the following. But I do understand, and very much so in your context. Because amidst all the glitter and all the gold, haven't we all felt dirty and guilty, haven't we felt like trash, one way or another?

Oh, the bridge is narrow
And you've got so far to fall
And you know down in dirty water's
No place for a paper doll