no? well perhaps i'm being sensitive here. but i happen to be caught in such a situation and i can't, for the life of me, understand why it's affecting me this much. i just feel like i'm being replaced in this world. i know that sounds impossible. but yea...unexplainable. don't know. don't ask. don't try to explain. just...nod your head and go "there there". it will be duly appreciated.
***
another week has come and gone. the shadow of the MedSci examination lurks around the corner. lectures have yet to finish. i'm drained just sitting there listening to it. and knowing that there's still a couple of weeks worth of syllabus to cover, it's crazy. they pack the syllabus all the way to the very last week. and we don't even get 1 week study leave before the exams. i know i asked to come here. i know i wanted this so badly. i know that i knew it was going to be hard. but boy am i feeling it. it is just sooo different from a business degree done locally in your own home. i wish i did this before doing business. i wish i never took that 6 month break. i wish there was a twinning course that allowed me to do a year back home and the remaining 2 here. just so i have a bunch of people to come here with. just so i'd have more friends in the same boat. i know i said i wanted to go to a place with less Malaysians, less friends, so i can stand up and face the world. learn new things. meet new people. make new friends.but doing ALL that by itself is hard enough without having to deal with exams and the possibility of failing. and being hungry all the time because food is so expensive and i just want to get back to the apartment to make my own food, but by the time i do i just lose the mood altogether because i'm tired, and it's late, and i've gone hungry for way too long to feel any hunger left. and plus, by that time i value sleep more than anything because in a couple of hours time, i'd have to work. and so i choose to pop a cookie into my mouth and decide whether to sleep or to run. and when im done with either one, it's time to work. and when work's done i sit down once again in the emptiness counting down the days to home.
i feel miserable tonight. and i feel guilty for feeling miserable because i shouldn't be. i should be enjoying every moment of this dream come true for me. i should still be ecstatic about my being here at all, something i could only dream about not too long ago. why am i not feeling it? i dont understand.
if so many others have gone abroad and ended up not wanting to leave that place...how is it that I have developed a love and need for my home back in Malaysia now more than ever as i stay here longer?
just this morning i was happy that it was friday. happy that ive only 60 days till the day i fly home. happy to be having dinner with ben tonight. and happy that i can stay up later to talk to some people from home. where did my happiness go?
4 comments:
I stumbled upon your site while surfing the Net and I can't help but feeling all too familiar about how you feel about NZ as I was in almost exactly the same boat 20 years ago, in Christchurch. Only then there was no such thing as the Internet, so you can imagine it could only be worse. Home sickness is very normal and reading through your recent blogs, I think you're doing great. I remember the time when I did my first OD triathlon some years ago (yes, triathlon is how I found your blog). Sure I survived to complete it but barely. The moment I crossed the finish line, I cursed and swore I would never go through such torture again. But a few weeks later, when I recalled, somehow I started to savor the gruelling experience. Since then I had done many more tri and road races in the many years that followed. In a similar experience, my 4 years in NZ was the same. When I was there, I kept missing home and couldn't wait to go home. But after I left NZ eventually, I missed it a lot, everything about it, strange. If I were to rewind the clock by 20 years, I would want to spend my time in NZ with a different mindset. So, if my guess is right, some years later, you'll look back missing those NZ moments badly, feeling adventurous about how you counter those feelings of emptiness you are now having and wondering how you couldn't have felt better ;-)
i know what you mean when you talk about being replaced. i'm beginning to feel the same thing with every single day. group dynamics and the core group of friends i thought i had have shifted and melded together..some have broken apart..and through all this i feel like i'm just a bystander. maybe i've been away for too long in a year because sometimes i feel like i don't know them anymore - it's as though they're not the same people i used to know. and it feels terrible. i'm like that tourist who visits 3months out of every year and in a way, i don't have that much importance anymore. i don't know what's going on in their lives and neither do they of mine. sure we meet up and all but at the end of the day, someone who isn't there isn't worth much to a group.
i hate being transient.
emo..ok i talk to you later!
i had that "replaced" feeling before. There was this girl whom my ex liked a lot after we broke up. Apparently, we are both very similar in character and even physic-wise - to the point that people have mistaken me for her on TWO occasions. haha, i was pretty jealous for a while because i honestly thought that she's way smarter, capable and nicer than i am. It didn't help that, not only my ex liked her but coincidentally she started integrating in my group of friends and hanging out with them on a daily basis. Sigh, so dramatic right. Anyway, i had to force myself to get over it, strip myself of my pride and get over my jealously. It took about a year plus. We are friends now =)
Joanne Khoo
Goy: hey...thanks so much for ur 2 cents worth. really made me feel heaps better. ure right, i would probably look back on this time and wish i had done more. i am meeting more people now so it can only get better from now...=) and great that ure a regular triathlete. ive sort of given up tris because my swimming is hopeless. but im venturing into other kinds of running races now...=)
melly: yea i guess it'll happen to me too 3 yrs from now. i'll go back and feel all...weird...when i hang out with my friends back at home...
joanne: haha really? omg..yea, well, im friends with this person. um...i think...ahaha...but i guess ur right...just get over it and accept that there will always be people who are better in the world. =)
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