It's not a solution. But is it an escape?
11/09/20. a catastrophic date. the date that was supposed to be my last day on earth. ignore the ugly ass blurry filter but i took this pic when i was at some of the lowest point of my life. two days before my 17th birthday. i looked down at the edge of the building and i remember just wanting to end it all. my life was so miserable, i thought to my life, what can get more miserable than this? i was struggling academically, spm trial's was around the corner, i failed my addmath diagnostic test again, my parents were sending me to tuition centres but i wasn't picking up anything or learning anything new. had some fight with my closest friends and stopped talking to them from the beginning of MCO. was having some conflicts with my parents because of my friends. my parents ghosted me for a week straight. was having issues with my physics teacher and my name was spread around in teacher's whatsapp group like a gossip material (according to my guru kelas, my english teacher). my name was everybody's punching bag, the topic of gossips, a complete joke.
what could get worse than that? i genuinely don't think life will get better, ada la i talked to one friend and he said "it's just a phase" but how would he know? dia pun bukannya tau what the future holds so macam mana dia tau it will just be a phase? it's nothing more than empty promises led solely by blind faith to keep on living for me. i dont even feel reassured, not even one bit, but i appreciate him for talking to me. i remember wanting to jump so badly at that exact moment, wanting to just end it all. i remember thinking to myself, "kalau aku mati, will they feel some regret at least? they ignored the most obvious sign i gave". but is that really what i want? i never wanted to die, i never wanted to end it all, i just wanted to end the pain but i see no way of going out. i just want things to go back to normal again. i just want life to feel like its worth living for again. i want to feel the excitement of living, rasa macam there will be good things replenishing through my path again when i look forward the future. so i remember asking myself, "betul ke aku nak mati?". i don't have the courage to do it. i really don't. aku tak sanggup pun sebenarnya. i always thought i wanted to die but nah. i only put that as my last option because i don't see that the situation will ever be the same again. i just want the pain to end, not my life. but i don't think it'll ever end, so i thought the quickest way to end it is to end my life. tapi aku takleh terjun time tu walaupun i wanted to. aku fikir "what can hurt more than what i am going through right now? one jump, and in 10 seconds everything will be over. apalah sangat rasa sakit 10 saat tu compared to living a life with a future that could never be normal again". tapi aku takleh terjun sebab aku tau aku nak lagi hidup. it's just that aku tak nampak cara untuk perbetulkan keadaan. i thought to myself, kalau aku mati do i really think they'll care? do i really think i am that relevant and important in their life. they won't even feel anything, not a bit of regret nor sadness, they'll just swipe on the news and sedekahkan alfatihah if they're that kind. my problem isn't theirs." takde siapa weh kesah kalau aku mati. within 5 years nobody's going to say my name or remember my name anymore other than my immediate family members. my existence was nothing more than a peripheral life in everybody's life that ive been in before. so am i going to die for a waste? i am already a lost cause. but at least they could see that i was serious about my intention.
i jumped into the swimming pool instead. sakit bila my face hit the surface of the water, but the pain subsides within mere seconds. if i freefall to my own death, I'll fracture some bones and the physical pain won't last that long. at least until my nerve stops sending impulses to my brain to feel that pain. azan maghrib, i was fully submerged at the bottom of the pool, i asked myself, ive reached the rock bottom so there's no other way instead of going up. aku sendiri bagitau kat diri aku kan yang nothing can get worse than this. maksudnya i was already at the lowest. nak turun ke bawah lagi tak boleh dah. so there's only one way, which is going up. which means that I'll get better. i promise myself that i won't take my own life before the time comes. isn't that like cheating the game and giving up halfway anyway. life is a game, a story filled with different chapters, so why do i want my ending to be a tragic one? so i promised myself that i will never kill myself. i'll live through all the pain and endure what life wants me to. fate may be cruel to me but i won't lose to it. i am a rebel after all, albeit a passive-aggressive one because i never showed my parents and my teachers that i am actually a little rebellious. if fate wanted to see me go down, i wont give it what it want. i remember blaming everyone, even god. literally everyone but myself. i never looked at how i could've reacted differently to every situation and how it doesn't really have to lead to this. yeah aku pun taktau what's gonna happen in the future, and no one could really say "this is just a phase. it won't last forever" sebab dorang semua pun bukannya tau apa yang tersurat dalam qada and qadar. but the choice to succumb to our fate or to fight against it tu is our choice. and memang lah semuanya has been written, tapi the power to corakkan how the path goes tu is in our hands, controlled by how we react to every situation in the very moment. so i decided to stay. i will make sure this is just a phase. i will recover. macam phoenix, dia hidup balik through its own ashes and rise from death. so aku hidup je through it. tak sampai beberapa bulan lagi dah spm, and then I'll start my journey somewhere, somewhere far perhaps. the farther the better. ingat lagi waktu tu ada terfikir nak mintak asasi kat unimas or ums (konon 💀). tapi tak jadi pun sebab lepas dapat result spm i had a change of mind after realizing how badly i will do if i decide to continue with science stream. and slowly, life gets better. and i didnt even do anything. aku just continue living cam biasa but i blocked out the negative thoughts. makan, bangun, gi sekolah, balik sekolah, mandi, tidur. and i choose to be silent and not react at all to every situation because i might get things worse if i react mindlessly. i always let my emotions guide my conduct after all. i only talk to afiq and hanita je from september till habis spm in march 2021 tu. i ghosted everyone else but they were never really bothered to check up on me at first place. tau tau spm habis. tau tau dah march 2021. paper biologi kertas tiga habis petang tu, loceng bunyi, i walked out of dewan while all my classmates gathered dekat dataran to take pictures with our guru kelas, madam gurdip. i was the only one who wasn't present and they never bothered to look for me either. they just let me be. dah besar dah pun kan, dah 17 nak masuk 18 that year. pandai pandai la takkan nak anyone pujuk. orang lain main conteng baju. i ran to halmi one last time and said "will we see each other again?" and dia cakap "get better first. fix yourself dulu. you have so many issues, unfixed, izi". and high school ended. everybody was working somewhere. afrina worked at local telephone and gadget store, mikhail worked at koffie lane prima saujana, and so was everyone else. we mend our friendship again. things slowly get better. i got offered my first choice in upu. enrolled in foundation, met so many amazing people and made friends from all over malaysia, from johor, pahang, perak, melaka, kedah, sabah, from kajang pun ada. for the first time in months, i felt hopeful about my life. i feel like it's getting better. i focused on myself. i have new vision, new ambition, new hope, a target to be reached, something to be achieved, and life was nothing more than living your day waking up everyday at dawn waiting for night to come and time to heal you. life is getting better, after all. nasib baik i do not decide to take my own life on 11 Sept of 2020.
and then life continuously get better. and tau tau dah masuk degree. first semester of degree was a ride. macam macam perasaan. it was a mixture of everything. sedih. happy. marah. geram. tapi mostly happiness la yang banyak waktu first sem. rasa macam this life was everything i ever wanted. this was the life that ive missed out on, the life that i have wanted since i was 14, to be surrounded by friends who made me feel safe, seen and heard when i don't have to struggle to make myself seen or my voice heard. i dont struggle to get people to listen to me anymore. i dont beg for anyone to stay in my life like i used to do in high school anymore. i cut off high school friends without regret, even laughed when people told me that the people who treated me like shit is now experiencing hell in life dorang. the first two weeks was a sad one, bukan sebab aku sedih first time keluar rumah. that was the moment ive been waiting for my entire life, nak duduk jauh from family. but it was sad sebab degree life wasn't like what i imagined at first. first week, dekat tealive, was so tense, i remember. i remember sitting there filling awkward, not wanting to be there at that exact moment, padahal i was waiting for that moment sejak dari mula asasi, to be there, physically, mata bertentang mata, with my foundation classmate. but it was really just a sad day for me because nothing was like what i imagined. i remember telling my old friends (u know who) that i found people and friends who will treat me better than how they used to treat me. guess i jinxed it haha. so they asked me, how was uni? do you really like it that much. ofc aku sakit hati. but i worked things out and sorted it out in a week, everything slowly gets better again. my twitter is my journal and my most loyal confidant who listened to all my rants. in a few weeks i slowly repaired my relationship with everyone, though some friends around me were fighting, i never really took anyone's side even when i heard both parties stories, i wanted to be happy and friends with everyone, and let my friends fix their own problems the way they told me to. but truth to be told, i was a bit upset la because in degree i imagined that me and my group of friends would do everything together kan, literally everything, tapi it didnt happen to be that way bcs of some unpreventable circumstances. but everything was getting better, or perhaps i was living a life of delusion, too high on cloud nine without realizing that life wasn't all that i was thinking off.
and fast forward to my second semester, it is slowly starting to feel suffocating again. i'm starting to feel like this is going to be high school 2.0 again, and in no way i will ever let that happen. i think ive seen this film before, and I didn't like the ending. so i decided to cut off some people because i don't want it to be like high school again. i put too much hope and sought too much validation from friends, and it crushed me when i disappoint myself from my expectations through the action of other people. that's what will happen if u could not be content with yourself or be happy with yourself, you sought for happiness from others. you will never learn how to be satisfied with yourself. so yup i never really learned how to manage my anger properly after all these years. i never really learned how to address and channel it properly. my anger repression was going weaker. i told myself that i wont ever tolerate the same disrespect that my friends put me through in high school again. they find me when they need me and we were in good terms but everybody knows we held so much unspoken grudge against each other deep down, you could tell from the atmosphere of our meetings, everything was tense though nobody really dared to talk about the topic that shall not be named. so i cut people off. but it felt as if i chopped off a limb. parts of me were missing. i could never truly be fine by myself. i have survived these before and i told myself, apalah sangat semua benda ni banding kan dengan what i went through in high school. ive survived this before and i could get through it again if it were to happen. but do i really want it to repeat itself again? do i really want to go through all of this again when im starting to have everything i wanted and have been waiting for in my life since forever? i know i can get through this but do i really want to experience it all over again? the trauma, the fear, the isolation. yeah i burned bridges but if given the choice, i never really want to burn them down. i only burn them down because i know that the bridge will only destroy me as i saw a hurricane coming that'll strip my sanity bare when it pass through the very same bridge. im too afraid of losing people, so i cut people off first. but i never really wanted to lose them. and this morning, i felt the same thing i felt on 11th of September 2020 again. i had a syntax test on 9AM and i remember not wanting to go at all. i went to the highest level of my college building, tingkat 9, and just looked down at 6AM. i felt like jumping. to freefall to my own demise knowing that the damage is irreversible, just like the pain ive caused in my own heart. and this time i felt a stronger urge to do it. tak sama macam 2020 dulu. dulu waktu 2020 i still feel scared when aku pandang bawah. rasa gayat. and that's how i know i never really wanted to commit suicide. i don't have the courage to. but pagi tadi i felt different. i just wanted it to end there, all at once. i cant afford going through the same thing again, not when ive spent the last 2 years rebuilding my life. i was so weak, i cried all night long, i didnt even bother studying, i went to the test this morning feeling totally defeated and defenceless. tengok bawah pun dah takde rasa gayat because all i know is i want it to be over and it takes less than 10 seconds for it to be over. kalau dulu i can convince myself that it'll just be a phase, but this time around, can i gaslight myself again? is it really a phase at this point? ive been feeding myself with lies for the past 2 years, i lived my life on a blind faith, i never really liked a single thing about my life, i lived trying to please myself and others around me, struggling to like myself and struggling to make myself likeable. i havent felt this hopeless in a while. some damage is irreversible, you couldn't fix anything once a few words have been uttered. you may try to forget them or reconsider that they never really meant what they've said, but the thought that they've said that and it went through their mind once kinda sticked and lingered with you. im trying not to regret the choices that ive made thus far and im still trying to, but if i cant find any good reason left to stay, then why should i live? dulu i used to see suicide as a mere ideation for people to run away from their problem but i know i'll never have the courage to do it, it's just a mere ideation of escapism that i would not do bcs i still have faith in everything, but now the faith is slowly fading, im starting to see it as a solution to some mistakes that i cant undo. the only way out, you'd think
will this be the cycle of my life now? will i ever get out of it? will i continue to repeat this cycle every time it ends? am i living this life on a loop? will it truly get better with time? is this truly a phase? will this phase last forever or will it continue to repeat itself once i thought its over? i dont know.
