Whenever I read a good blog, I feel a certain yearning inside that makes me want to write one. If I wasn’t prescribed to so many great bloggers, I don’t think I will be persuaded to make more than 1 blog per week. I felt the yearning thrice this morning : One blog was from Deborah about Max, Second from Scarlett about the rules of being a woman, and the third from Queen of Coins about a blog being a party.
So my blog for today is in many ways an inspiration from these 3 blogs… Grazie ladies!!!
If I try to describe who I am to you, my definitions will differ from day to day. I am... complicated, to say the least. If my friends describe me to you, you will hear a lot of versions that will leave you confused if they were talking about the same person. I can honestly say that I have the non-psychotic version of Multiple Personality (MP – which is my real name initials n real life btw).
I am full of contradictions. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I can be hot and then cold. I can be the sweetest person or the vilest bitch. I
have experienced so many different extreme emotions that sometimes just recalling them is traumatizing. No one could honestly say they knew me through and through. No ONE.
I lived a very interesting life, and one I am sure not an average girl would ever go through. Rich to poor. Ugly to pretty. It seemed that I am what I am today because I was on both sides of the coin. The proverbial wheel of my life seems to be turning and churning all the time. My saving grace was being able to adapt and excel as things go wrong and worse.
I was born rich, spoiled rotten as a princess. 
Chaufferred cars,exclusive schools, Rolex watches. My dad owned a successful construction company, and a few banks. I was also an ugly child. Stick-sick thin, round
angular face, dark skinned, screwed-up teeth, limp bland hair. I wasn’t popular in school during my elementary days. My childhood friends were all pretty as can be and as rich – even richer. Boys picked on me, girls bullied me. 
This is also the time I found out that I was an illegitimate child. I grew up feeling ugly, unworthy and had tremendous bouts of insecurities. I always felt .. inferior somehow.
When I turned 14, in sophomore year of highschool, I became attractive. Still not the Barbie-perfect looking popular girls, but somehow, more beautiful. I liked to think that because I had more character, and that because I was once an outcast, I was also nicer. Soon I became a part of the most popular
clique in highschool. I started winning beauty contests and joined modeling shows. During this time though, my family went bankrupt. My parents separated, and my mother was left to figure out how to feed us all with no job in her name. All she knew was how to travel and shop extensively. And she did it so well. Steadily, all assets – vacation homes, cars, stocks, jewelries, were sold off one by one as the years went by to maintain the façade of still being rich. I refused to let anyone know outside the family. I still went out, smiled a lot. In fact I smiled more. And though by now I was beautiful and popular, I was poor.. And I felt insecure.
This went on for a couple of years. Me being beautiful. And me being poor. I was very good by this time in leading a double life. None of my friends realized the fucked-up situation I was going through. I was scared that I would be an outcast again. Looking back, I should have told them. They would have understood and supported me. But I felt at that time, that my pride was the only thing keeping me from going insane. It was as if my beauty will be lessened if they found out that if I didn't hitch a ride with then, I would have had to take public transportation. Que horror!
After highschool,I went off to college, far away from the city. I was relieved to not have to keep pretending anymore. I was to take up a pre-med course and money was tight and getting tighter still. But socially, I was blooming. I was voted the freshman queen, eventually a college hearthrob. Boys were falling all over themselves to bed me. And I bed a few. By this time, I have come to learn the power of being beautiful. I learned to use to my advantage every chance I got. And I got away with a lot. And though I did not have to pretend to be rich with all the down-to-earth adoring people surrounding me, I still felt I needed to
maintain a certain air of affluence and indifference. I would never let anybody in my real life. They will never accept me if they found out I wasn't perfect. I had to be BOTH beautiful and rich, I just had to be.
I was dismissed from college because I was partying too hard. 
I took a job to support my party-animal lifestyle which did not give me any time to study thus the dismissal. So by 18, I was a college drop-out. If that was not bad enough, I found myself pregnant a few months after dropping out. My boyfriend at that time (who I just recently married) supported me all throughout the pregnancy and the subsequent year after giving birth. Issues with our relationship were rampant but I was in love
with him. Really in love with him. But I did not how to love anyone else. I was yet to love me.
About 6 months after giving birth, I started my career. I started from the bottom and boy did I
scrape that bottom. But in a few years, I was earning enough. After a few more years, I was comfortable. And then I was rich again. 
I was ruled by the hunger for more money, more power, more beauty. That even when I got it, it still did not feel good. So I started gambling, throwing away the money I worked so hard
for. I started obsessing over stupid things. I was looking for something, someone, anyone to validate my importance. Never knowing I was looking for me. When my mother and father died, something in me snapped. I lost all the reason on maintaining a stable life. I began to sabotage all the jobs I have one after another. But I kept getting new ones, higher paying ones. I did not deserve it! I kept thinking, why the hell are they willing to pay me this much money!? They must be insane. So I ruined every single one of them.
Until the day came, finally when things wre familiar. I had no job and no money AGAIN. THIS I knew how to handle. It felt like home.
This was 2 years ago.
When you hit rock bottom, and you take an innocent kid with you (my son), it is not something to be proud of. somehow, no matter how screwed up you are, as a mother - you will see that this not right. When I lost that 6th
job in 1 year, I realized that there is nothing wrong with the economy – there was something terribly wrong with ME. I was no longer that rich ugly toddler nor that pretty poor teenager. Something has GOT to give on how I looked at myself. How unworthy I perceived myself to be for all the good things that was happening. I realized that I have always believed that I did not deserve to be happy. That somehow I was not allowed to be. Something very very bad will happen if I become happy.
That is the reason I moved to another country. To where I was born. where it all started. Singapore. To start anew. To take a good look at my life and fix it. Away from the things that destroyed my innocence. Away from the pretensions. I have found myself here. And I realized. that I was not too bad.
So now here I am. I married the man I was supposed to marry a long long time ago. I have a job that I have stayed in for 11 months now. I still do find a few things to obsess about (as you guys know), but it's all manageable and I am still here.
I am not saying I am not insecure anymore. Or that I have no issues about being happy. But at least I know now what my problem is.
I have never loved myself. I should have loved myself when nobody else found me pretty, when I was poor, when I was weak. I should have loved myself NO MATTER WHAT.
So now, I am beginning the most important love affair of my life. With myself.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment