The UNKNOWN feeling.

I don't like to blog when I don't feel happy. And I've been experiencing this feeling for the past week or so.

It is one of those times when I feel bothered by a lot of things and I don't feel like doing certain things. This feeling comes once in a while. I don't really know how to resolve it because it's weird to talk about it. I'm just getting sick of everything. In the past I thought I needed change. Change to my routine lifestyle. To get to know more people, widen my social dot (because as I said a long time ago, it's so small it's not even a circle). Now that I (think I) have a few more friends, it's not removing that feeling which has been bugging me for a long long time. Since I don't know what it's called and it's hard to have to explain it each time I feel it, it shall be called...the UNKNOWN feeling. HAHAHAHAHA.

Since we are in the mood, let's talk about more sad things.

I had wanted to learn piano since I was in kindergarten. But I knew that my parents could not afford to get me a piano. I brought up the possibility of learning piano to my mum and I saw the guilt in her face. She kept asking me, "Do you really really want to learn the piano?" In my heart, I was like, "Yes, I really really REALLY want to learn it." But I couldn't possibly say that to her because I knew we could not afford it. Years later, when I was in primary school, I told her that it was a good thing that she didn't send me for classes cuz I'll probably give up halfway. Later, I heard people say things like "If you don't learn piano when you are young, your fingers get stiff and it'll be a lot harder for you to play well." So whenever I remembered, I tried to move my fingers in the hope that they don't become stiff. Come to think of it, it was really silly. HAHA. In secondary school, I had this principal who played a song on the piano for the secondary 4s who were graduating. She shared that she recently took up piano, something that she had wanted to do for a long long time. I remember the song she played. It was Xiao Bai Chuan, a very simple song. Yet there was something very beautiful about it. At that time, I told myself that one day, I'm going to learn piano. When I become rich. Or maybe when I retire from work and am old and bored.

The feeling I'm feeling now is similar to when I was in sec school. During that time, there were periods of time when I hated my family for not being afford many things. I was angry at my parents for bearing children when they cannot even afford to give them the best. I swore that in future, I'll make sure I can give my kids the best before I even think about having children. I hated them for not being able to send me for piano classes when I was young.

When I grew older, the anger was suppressed. I feel this hatred less frequently. Occasionally I still feel it, like when I see how people around me can change iPhones like clothes, or have expensive hobbies like photography/baking (ingredients are expensive!)/diving (I know people who dive like once a month or something) etc. And sometimes on Saturdays, I ask myself why I have to wake up early and work when other people can sleep in and enjoy their weekend.

There are a lot of girly things which I cannot do. I cannot bake, because we never had an oven. In fact, my mum cannot really cook--she only learnt it in recent years after my dad had a heart attack and had to eat more healthily. She never had the time to cook cuz she had to work. I cannot do cross-stitching/knitting/whatever girly sewing stuff because my mother never had the time to teach me. I cannot cook because my mum never taught me. In fact, besides earning money, there's nothing I know how to do. When I think of such things, the hatred resurfaces.

Sometimes, I try to think on the bright side. Like hey, at least I don't become a spoilt brat! At least I know that money doesn't come by easily and I cherish what I have. Though we are not rich, we still have food on our tables, a shelter over our heads, electricity in our flat. Then when the hatred sets in, I think "But I would trade all of this just to be a spoilt brat for a day." People don't get it. It's not just about me hating the fact that we are poor and rambling on and on about how I am disadvantaged in many ways just because my family is not as well-off. It is more than that. It is growing up with this negativity in the house, when your parents fret over money but they try to hide it from you but you find out anyway. It's about feeling helpless because you constantly need to depend on others in some way, like when my mum's siblings pass her money before Chinese New Year because we don't have money to get new clothes/give out red packets to other money-sucking kids. It's about the immense number of favours you owe, accumulated over the years, and even when they say "It's okay", in your mind you make a mental note that you owed them something and you have to work hard in future to repay all these favours.

I don't know why I ended up going into this. Well, this wasn't even the reason why I feel the UNKNOWN feeling. Perhaps I was trying to seek attention (again, what's new HA!), perhaps I just had to get this out of my body so that I can make space for the reasons behind UNKNOWN feeling.

Ah, I can't wait for exams to be over.