a space to be

I have been thinking whether people can smell poverty on my person. I wonder whether the inferiority complex I have is oozing out of my pores and reach the nose of people around me. I studied the concept of learned helplessness in school over twenty years ago, and back then it was just a mere theory. As I was young and all the disaster of the world seemed to be only in my head and not yet experienced through the body. But now I understand it.

One of the key elements of learned helplessness is this idea that when you stop trying to get better or improve yourself because you believe that there is no use anyway. That the future will be the same as the past. The experiments on this topic were usually done in rats. I am sure if I google it I would have a swarming amount of studies about this, but I can’t be bothered. The point is, I feel I am there. I am one of those rats that believe that the future will be the same as the past. Wretched, dull, torturous.

When I was young, I met a lot of people like this version of me now. And I used to sneer at them (in my own head of course), saying to myself that, maybe if you try harder you can change your life. Just because the past was bad doesn’t mean it will always be so. I don’t know where that optimistic person go. But she is definitely not in this body anymore.

As the year approaches the end and my last year of being in my 30s approaches, my mind has no longer own an ounce of optimism. I reek poverty, sickness, and rotten mindset. I would not mind to be disposed in my sleep. Kindly and painlessly. Poverty used to scare me a lot. I used to adhere to the hustle culture. But it seems like hustling did not really get me anywhere. Just cost me my health.

I am currently still in an addictive phase of reading Boys Love (BL) stories online. Mainly East Asian graphic novels (manhwa, manga). And it has been going on for the past few months now. It all started when I started watching the Untamed on Netflix. It is an adaptation of a Chinese novel. But because it is for the main Chinese audience, the main BL plot was heavily edited, and unless you are already aware of the nuances, you won’t be able to tell that the main characters were meant to be in a sexual and romantic relationship. Anyway, from there it went all downhill. I started to read the translated novels online, and also the the manhwa adaptation. Which led me down the rabbit hole of other BL stories. And here I am three months later, still breathing in and out these stories. It reminded me of my childhood, when I used to read mangas (Japanese graphic novels), but back then, it was just normal straight romance. But the essence is the same. I wanted to feel what the main characters feel.

As I grew into adulthood, I feel the only emotions I have that truly my own are negative emotions. One of depression, sadness, despair, helplessness, self criticism, constant nagging, taunting. And the only places I could feel romance and that comforting feelings of being loved is through stories. In whatever forms. Movies, novels, dramas. Mainly visual media. Either in writing or in graphic form.

In real life it is quite hard to feel positive emotions. Because when another person is around me, the feeling is one of anxiety. I always have to assess, what is it that they want of me. What is required next of me. What can I do to make this conversation to a point. When will it end. What is next? Always constant efforts to pay attention so that we can arrive to the end of the interaction somewhat smoothly.

As an autistic person, I am jealous of other people’s abilities to have small talk. That ability to stalk about nothing. To have a nice social interaction, that the purpose of is simply to social. Small frequencies of nothings to build familiarities and establish, albeit, friendly bond.

My brain always constantly asks the purpose of any interaction. It needs to have a purpose. Because it needs to land on something. Because this constant hyper awareness, it is quite hard to be present and enjoy emotions. The only time I could do that is when I am absolutely alone, disconnected from the whole world.

I have been craving to write since the last entry, but now I am faced with a blank page, my mind went blank. I got nothing to write. It is funny how things can build up in your system and when it is time to dump it, you find it has gone out without you noticing.

I wish I could stop writing, because it means, I would have control over my emotions and not needing to organize or dump it out in a written form.

Right now I am at a Starbucks. Next to me, a Korean lady who has been talking to someone (I think her mom) on the phone for the past half an hour (ok, maybe less). Unfortunately for me, this is annoying. I could understand only bits and pieces of what she is talking about, mainly because I have watched too much Korean Dramas. The bits and pieces is the annoying part. Because if I had not understood it at all, or had the conversation been in english, I could just ignore it. But understanding bits and pieces are like playing a game and when you understand something your brain gives you a hit of dopamine, so you keep playing and in this instance I keep listening. Definitely, annoying.

For a brief second today, I felt like an adult. No, not the I have figured out what life is all about and how to do it properly, nor the I know what I am doing kind. But more like, if I were a plant, I feel as if I have completely detached from my parent's root system. As if I have had established my own roots system that is not touching from the original plants (i.e. original family). The feeling only lasted a split second though. Mainly because I am fully aware that this is not true in reality. I still lived in a familial home (somewhat), since I paid boarding expense to my relative who owns the place. So the ties is still there. The root is still intertwined.

But I neve had that feeling before. I tried to fabricate it in the past, trying to convince myself that I am truly an independent being, but never really felt it. Until today. A few months away from being 39.

What does that feeling mean? Well for right now, as I am reporting live as the feeling just emerged and my brain trying to unpack and trying verbalize it all, it means, space.

The mental image is if a person is a pie chart, and all the relationships in your life can be divided into sections, in the past my life would be just 90% familial ties (despite not having been around them for almost 3 decades), it is more like an energetical bonds, and maybe the rest is relationships with myself, work colleagues, friends. Barely that.

But today when I got that 'hit', the pie chart feels empty, like in a good way, like it feels now it is the reverse, like the familial space is only taking 1%-5% of my pie. Now that sense of Independence is the sudden awareness of that empty 95%. All of the sudden now, I actually have space to fill it with whatever I want or whomever I want. Now the energetical space is, available. Does this mean new relationships (non necessarily romantical) would come to me now? i

I used to turn my nose up towards old men, whom seemed to never get their lives together and always at the edge of destitution. Now I have become them instead. You know the type, their in their 40s, 50s but still behave as if they were in their 20s. No sense of responsibilities whatsoever. Don’t really have a proper job, always looking at those young girls funny and feel a bit sleazy when you are around them. Yeah, I feel I have turned into one of those men. The only difference is I live in a woman’s body.

I have gone down the Yaoi’s universe rabbit hole in the past month and a half. It is all started by watching this BL’s Chinese drama The Untamed on Netflix. The only difference, was it was so heavily censored that I had to hunt down the English translation of the Chinese novel online. That led to tracking down the other adaptations as well, including the manhwa. From there after rereading, rewatching the drama, I started to start to explore the other BL’s dramas and novels and manhwa. Which led me down the Yaoi / Omegaverse manhwa/manga route. And now I have read so many yaoi mangas that I am starting to think that a relationship between a man and a woman is unnatural.

Yeah. It has come to that. But the 2Ds world is just to mesmerising, addictive and hypnotic. My time blindness has become worsen. I could be immersed in reading that I do not notice that the sun has risen. I thought I have only been reading for two hours, instead of six. Months are starting to roll by without much effort as well. Which is concerning. I felt it was only last week that it was September. But November is here.

When I was younger I tried very hard to be normal, so I tried to convince myself that the outside world is real. The things that people want from themselves like a normal job, a house, validation from other people, large networks of people, are real. So I used to try to snap myself out of this addictive world of fiction and the imaginary. But now I am only three months shy from being 39 years old, I am doing the opposite.

I am burying my head in the sand. I am trying to stay in this imaginary world of beautiful young men lusting for each other for as long as I could. The outside world has nothing to offer for me. The outside world is empty.

So here I am almost 39 y.o., just spending her days in the imaginary world, not having any ambitions to try to make her life become better. To be honest, I am tired. I am tired of hustling and trying, and never really succeeding.

I went to an art gallery last month or the month before (time has no meaning now), and in there was a video presentation about a life of a transgender artist in China, and he was basically saying things that stuck by me. I am paraphrasing, he said that no matter how hard he tried, he never reaps what he sow. His harvest always seems to go to other people and never himself.

Ooof. I relate to that. I feel like whenever I could feel started to stabilised or even slightly improving, one thing or another seemed to disrupt it and pull me back lower to than where I was before. Now I am older and chronically ill, any ambitions or even dreams don’t seem to rear itself up.

It was a Saturday. I had to wake up really early to spend a whole day at this seminar. I sat there listening to the same information I have consumed on youtube. Here it is, they were marketing it for tens and thousands of dollars. What is the difference? Structure I guess. I didn't feel the same burning desire to prove myself as I had been a few years ago. I guess growing up had taken that giddy and fluttering part of you away. 

It was a conference to make you the most successful coach that you can possible be. I had dreamt of being a life coach. Back in 2004, they didn't have a name for it, I only finished my Bachelor in Science, majoring in Psychology, when I got this job in a start up company where they had decided to promote this American's Speaker to Australia. Being only twenty, I was infatuated with the whole industry. Naive and innocent. The managing director, the person who started it was only five years older than me. He was chubby and middle eastern. He had offered to pay me  but being an Asian female that was conditioned to be humble and showed submission, I declined, and instead I would get free seat at the event. My education junkie me was over the moon. But of course, people who paid with cash somehow got better treatment. 

That's a lesson that now, I understand, paying with actual money carry a different value than when you are paying with your services. Which is why as women, you should not do anything for free. At the event I remembered the chubby guy asked to give up my seat for a client and asked me to sit at the back. Yes, you get to see people's real characters in those little moments. 

The teaching of the speaker was really good, something I still revise every now and then, but the promoter company itself was playing the image game. Much like the social media now. Glossy on screen, trash on the in real life. For the next four years, I flotaed in and out of the company. Always being put on the side line. This is Australia afterall, you can be living here your whole life but if you are not white, you are somehow are not a player. Or, that is how I felt anyway.

I left to continue my mainstream education, in business, pursuing MBA, and then came back when there was a leadership change in the company. The operational guy has decided to buy the company off the middle eastern guy. This time I was in Administration, and doing general office duties. Back then, CRM, Accounting and Inventory were not integrated as they do now. So everything was basically needed to be done manually.

I was still infatuated and believing, naive. But that started to crack of course. When as part of administration I started receiving calls from BMW chasing default payments of the previous chubby middle eastern managing director. He would still come back, having decided that he would like to be a speaker himself now. He would boast about being one the front page of one of the most popular community paper amongst commuter at that time. Of course, the PR people knew what's up and asked directly "How much did you pay for that?" . The chubby managing director who was trying not to be chubby anymore because now he was trying to change his image, just evaded the question , confirming the fact that they had indeed paid for the marketing piece. He did not get front page because of his merit, but because he paid it, because the paper needed the advertising money.

This success that consistently being rubbed off to the sale people was merely smokes and mirrors, evident by the amount of times I had to say to the BMW's debt collector chasing for the chubby's managing directors debts of around $5000 "He is no longer work here".  An amount that I remember he used to say was little. As tempted as I was to give to his personal details, I did not. Of course the older me judged him less now, trying to launch a business is no easy treat. There is a lot of risk, and sometimes, that mentality of faking it until you make it is still prevalent in society. And there is nothing wrong with that.

I was still young and hopeful, with the new leadership, the next wave of new age movement was taking over Australia. The Secret was about to be released and our sepeaker was in it. However, old habits died hard, cash flows problems would still be the hardest to deal with. Like any other business, now I think about it. I remember having to deal with a lot of screaming, cursing, of declining people's request for refunds. The numbers for these programs usually between $2000-$6000 AUD. The problem was of course the target audience was people like me, who did not have money, but aspire to greatness.

Vulnerable  people, was the accurate words. I am sure we really did help a lot of people. It is like any tool, it will work, if you work it.

So here I was, sitting in this 9 hours free event promising your success again, if you buy their products. This company was an off shoot of that company, since the old company had finally rolled up its carpet after a scandal a few years back. I was not surprised, the goal from the company was to make money, not to change people's lives. I think intention played a big role in how a company is run. The leader or the founder's intention becomes the heart beat and the soul of a company. A higher vision that even if you have a very messy operation day to day routine, would always win.

This time, I did not feel any excitement. Unlike the participants surrounding me. As usual in this kind of event, you were forced to interact with people next to you. In order for you feel like you are involved and being part of a community, which means you would be more likely to commit and join the community that was being created right before your eyes. I saw their infatuated eyes towards the speaker, much like I was. The parroting of every single words that was said by the speaker, like I did. The general manager's housemate of the company I used to work for used to joke that she was working for a cult. I could see it now. That utter devotion and worship could be intoxicating.

This off shoot survived the culling of the personal development industry's witch hunt down. I wanted to think, maybe the best way to do business, is always to do it the honest and straight forward way. I had done my research this time, and I know the pricing was fair, as the local university was offering a similar course for double the price without the support system. Of course, if you do the University's program  you will get the prestige.

One thing I learned, if you want to get a job, you need to go to University or College to get that piece of paper so you can negotiate your salary, but if you want to have a business, none of that will make a difference at all. Business is about the market and your skills. The market will chew you up, regardless how many degrees you have under your belt. The market as Gary Vee described it is the market. It does not care who you are, whose your mother is, where you went to university, what you daddy does, or whose your friend is. What matter is how good you are. You. Just you.

That feeling that you have when everything seems to look grey and sad. Maybe some people like me was born with this predisposition. So many ideas floating in my head, so many feelings fighting for dominance in my heart, so many unresolved tensions in every fibre of my muscles. 

It seems like each part of my body is somewhere else but here. Trying to leave me as if I was never own it to begin with. I can feel fear creeping up from the sole of my feet to my head. Ever so slowly. Making its way slowly, steadily. Like a very confident predator, knowing that their preys never going to win this fight. 

I was watching Bom’s new MV today and suddenly a tear dropped on my cheek. My heart beats a bit faster and I felt this overwhelming feeling of missing a city that I never visited before. Seoul.The dream of young fangirl Val, dreaming of going to the city where her Idol Oppa’s were at, suddenly resurfaced. 

It was funny because the song itself has nothing to do about missing someone. It is about believing the wrong person when they said they love her. Believing the lies. But the melody, Bom’s voice and sound, just hit a nerve. 

I am seething with rage as he said “yeah yeah” dismissing my request as it was merely an annoyance in the air. I am glad I am going to rid of him in a few days. I am serious, if he left anything behind in this apartment, I am going to just throw away everything into the bin. Not even going to blink twice about it. 

I must admit, my affection towards men, diminished at a very rapid rate as I grow older. The self-centred and inconsiderate behaviours that they display just merely by being male is making me literally sick to the stomach. The entitlement and insecurity about their own self image without being backed up with actual skills and actual competency is making my blood boil. 

Maybe men need to be de-sex like dogs, to keep them docile and prevent breeds like these to exist.Maybe hey, it is a cheaper way to prevent any more wars in the future. For women to have control and regulate the circulation of sperm for future use. To strip men of the right to use their own sperm and genitals and body as well. Because, the world is a mess because of them. 

Kill the man, keep the sperm, regulate the off-springs 

---Fin---

Woke up to the sound of a lawn mower. It was bloody eight in the friggin morning, for god sake. Then the train passed by adding to the endless loud noise of the mower. My head was about to explode.

They stare at my back, thinking why is she never look at us? Being an outcast seemed to be my greatest goal. 

My mind always somewhere else, rather than immersing in the banal conversation at hand. I wonder myself, whether  I can actually have a family of my own one day. Whether I am capable of being somewhat normal.