Well, Merry X'Mas everyone!
Tony just left for Dubai this afternoon and I miss him already.
Anyway, I spent Christmas's Eve having a superb dinner at Tracy's house with her family. We had quails that cost $10 per bird (sounds wrong) and this huge-ass big piece of REAL ham that is nicely tasteful enough to be eaten cold and everything was totally lovely. It was like a real Christmas dinner.
I didn't have dinner at my sister's place. Partly I could have rejected Tracy, but I didn't want to. And no one told me properly about my sister's dinner. So ya, what the heck. She'll most likely tend to her friends more too.
I really love Tracy and her family. I mean, seriously, I feel a lot more welcomed and understood in their family than I do in my own. The conversations we had and the laughs we shared were unforgettable. They really understand me and from what Tracy said, I really really feel that I kind of don't belong in my own family.
Tracy was asking her sisters what exactly should she get for me on Christmas as a present and her sister said like why don't she get me something like Nightmare before Christmas or like those digging up of Dinosaurs in a block of clay thing. I mean, I was really shocked to hear it from her. I haven't really interacted with them before this and they know so much just from Tracy? I don't know. What I found out from talking with Tracy the other day was that I think I have intimacy issues.
We don't talk love in my family. Somehow growing up stuck with this family is like, we don't give hugs and well wishes, I mean genuine ones.
I remember how worried I was when my sister gave birth and I kind of had difficulty just expressing this worry. I've always had this feeling I'm sort of the odd one out here, of not fitting in and sometimes I know that they think I'm wierd.
So I was quite sad about something on Sunday. It makes me think of Tracy's family that don't say intentional hurtful things like, "So ugly right?!" and this and that. I guess I'm just not understood, and my intimacy issues make things worse.
I was feeling really angry and most of all, hurt. I don't know. So what if you find the portrait of Hele fucking ugly and maybe not worthy of her? I'm sorry for using the F word but I really cam't be bothered. And what makes you appropriate enough to critique my own artwork when you haven't taken art at all in the first place and what I may depict as shadows or rendering of unrepresentational colours as my own view on Art itself? Or even the form of Art that I was painting Hele in? Any Artist have the right to have their own definition of art in their paintings.
I'm pissed. Yes I am. You think I'm being defensive. No I'm not. I'm just pissing angry. I didn't want them to know, but so what? I put in so much effort into it and it goes to nothing. Just give it back to me to chuck it somewhere. If you didn't like it just tell me. I know that as an artist that critiques can come in handy and it should be accepted but what the heck. It just made me feel so unappreciated and made me feel like a lowdown piece of shit like they always do. IT'S CHRISTMAS, HELLO!? I'm not a person that grew up with whatever Christmas beliefs and whatnots but even I know it's the spirit of giving right.
I know painting is not my forte in Art. I've always known this. Pen and Ink drawing is, but at least I made the effort to do it, make it almost everlasting.
At least Tony comforted me by telling me that the painting was probably so much more sincere that just buying presents. I don't know. I mean, if you didn't like it, at least just take it. Don't ask me to pass to my Da jie to take home when you're living under the same house and you can't bother with it. It makes me think about those few nights I stayed up til like 4+am just to get the right kind of euphoria I get from late nights to do the painting. It's my first experience of ever doing a portrait, so cut me some slack.
Sometimes I feel very left out in my family because I know sometimes I make them feel uneasy, like they don't know me. And of course with their looks of, where's the Wener I grew up with long ago? I think it's really different. The way I grew up and the way they grew up, what I've experienced they will never ever understand. My dajie talked to me once about her nearly retaining. But actually retaining and not retaining is a whole different story. I can tell you, I'm not self-pitying. Really. It's far past that stage of my life already.
This kind of thing lives with me forever. Like how my mother can always say she doesn't want her boss's son to see her fetching me to school in fear of the disgrace right at my bloody face. Or how at places where they ask my age and I tell them and they say about oh, so you're in the same school as so and so and you say no. Come on. I know it. People can just look down on retainees and whatnots. I know it, because I once thought, "How could anybody retain?".
I just sick and tired of the facade that some people put up with. I'm sick and tired of being with people that think they understand me, or try to blame me about why I'm so different now than before when they were the ones who gave me this treatment to let me "blossom" into the Tan Wen Er today. My parents think I'm rebellious. Lazy and short of slow in mind.
Somehow, I really don't feel appreciated. Just saying this now is useless, because they will never ever understand. I'm not saying that they really treat me that bad. I feel secretly happy when my sister ask me to stayover or watch a movie with them but somehow or other, they unintentionally or sometimes cruelly stab me in the back with hurtful words they can say.
I tried to remind myself. I like pain, really I do. It's the sort of thing like when you were young you like you twist your milk teeth around that's about to fall out just for the feeling of the dull ache in your gums, or maybe that's just me but I cut myself. It's not so deep that I bleed to death from it.
I don't want the attention either. I don't need any. I hate it when people think I'm suicidal or crazy when see the little lines of scars on my wrist. It's just a fucking reminder. Like "eee...why you like that one.." or "you're so damn wierd I bet you're just like one of those girls we see on tv nowadays that cut for attention."
Hah. I can't help but laugh. I don't need self-pity. I don't need any attention. If I do I can just run around naked just for the attention and the humiliation.
I remember one of those days I came back from school and my parents started going on about how lousy my 86/100 grades are in secondary school, or that the test must have been freaking easy and started going on about why am I in Greenridge and not in a fucking girl's school like my sisters.
Blame yourself, my dear mother. If you wanted me in a girl's school, you could have put down STC as one of the 6 choices that time like I told you to. But no, just because you said it's a lesbian school. Funny how when you think back on their highly questionable anwers and questions posed on us from parents as a child. Or isn't it even more ironic that Crescent is and known to be school that have many questionable *ahems to specific preferences in gender too?
I don't care about lesbians. It's how they want to live their life. It's everone's right.
I just had to take away the horrible, literally breath-taking emotional pain that they inflicted on me. I remember this state of mind I go into when I slowly drag back forth the sharp end of the staplet or the fish's teeth. I don't feel any pain. Not at all. My mind goes numb and don't say I'm abusing my body! Abuse is when some actually happens that causes harm to one's body. I'm not. You go bloody think about it. Have I altered my body functions? That's what drugs do. You say it's a different thing, but what I say is just plain simple. It's what some people in their own mind can't accept because they freaking live in that ignorant state of mind that is so sheltered and protected. Yet I still know when to stop. I have the control. I'm not some out of control idiot.
I hate it when my parents don't trust me. I don't smoke, do drugs and I haven't even clubbed once. Isn't that good enough. They say I don't give them any good reason for trust. But I'm 19 already and I know I deserve freedom.
My mother can say what horrible friends I have and how bad an influence they can be. But she will never ever understand how they ever helped me, when my own so-called blood and kin have terrorised, traumatised my life since young. You think I exaggerate. Maybe I am. But just saying things from your own narrow-minded point of view because your own life might be a piece of shit but maybe my life isn't and you don't know what I do outside so you take it out on me.
I'M JUST SO SICK OF THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, let's be rid of such inane things. I really don't want to move. I'll hate Clementi. I know I will. I don't want to share a room with my sister. Ok, this is not getting any better. But I guess it helps when now and then I receive an email from Fatty, the nice comfort I get from Tony and the insightful advices from Tracy.
Anyway, Tony bought me m]phosis slippers for Christmas, Fatty's is the Wheel of Darkness, my eldest sister bought me a Border's voucher, my second sister gave me a $40 Topshop voucher, Tracy gave me an ultra shagedelic cool mini white swiss army knife with a slashed 'X' on one side and her family, well, gave me love and warmth. It's not that I think my parents don't give me love. I know somehow they do, it's just they don't express it well and not in the right way at all. So maybe I'm the misfit in the family of Misfits.
It was a truly nightmare before Christmas. It's crazy but I miss her family already. I hope Tony will msg me soon. Got to end here now.
