Shared misery is halved
It was Hari Raya day in Singapore today (or yesterday), and that meant no classes! To the Muslims in Singapore and elsewhere, it meant celebrations of joy (and food)! It was Deepavali also last Saturday, and that was a cause for celebration for all Hindus everywhere. Ah.. holidays are good things. They make people happy, and in a meaningful way at that.
My day was OK. I was productive to some extent: made some notes (though incomplete still) for my EN3249: The Body presentation on Friday, met up with Josef, a Swedish exchange student, and had a fruitful discussion regarding our Financial Maths project (Joseph and Josef haha) and he even invited me to his floor where he gave me yummy Swedish meatballs and rye crisp with roe for snacks, and later, back in my room, I was able to do a good chunk of the project and did some research on my Cultural Studies project on Reality TV.
So yep, it was a good day after all.
Samantha, my Cultural Studies groupmate and tutorialmate too in my EN2113 Intro to Film and Cultural Texts last sem, messaged me and shared she had lately been bawling her eyes out. When I asked why, she said it's because of the incredible stress she's experiencing right now. She took it out on her family members, she shared. I was like, haha! Same here Sam! I'm so incredibly stressed I take it out on the people around me. Thus I would like to apologize to Aaron, Joanne, and Iris for my recent bouts of.. weirdness, for lack of better words. And to Irene, too, my study buddy for 2 subjects this sem! Thanks for tolerating my rantings on the world at large.:)
Where is this post leading again? Hmm.. beats me. My head's too fried right now, apparently.
I can tell you though, that I'm still not well. That there's this cloud of depression that's threatening to engulf me (Charles, multi-tasker extraordinaire, Medicine Year 3 and my Bass Section Leader in the Choir, tells me this isn't quite clinical depression yet haha! Depression has been taken so loosely by the rest of the world [me included] apparently).
While shared misery is indeed halved, the loaded term in this phrase that needs to be qualified is "shared". What is does it really mean to "share"? It's not a request, it's not a demand; but I feel it's something that friends do. Now the loaded term in the previous sentence is "friends".
My "status" (or message or whatnot) on Windows Live Messenger is "alone with everybody". Owing to my incoherence and sleepiness, I shall not attempt to explain the link between the points I'm just spurting out here. But what I simply want to highlight is that given the notion that shared misery is halved, feeling alone with everybody is just plain sad, and depressing, and wrong.
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Thanks Kristia, Kirth, Kerwin (all K's!) for the nice (although short) chats we had online. I've talked to Jasper too (been a while old buddy!), how are you Jacques btw? I hope you're well and safe and sound back in Davao. My other old friends and Yahoo! contacts who I haven't chatted with in a long while, please go online!:)
High school was so much fun.
