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March 21, 2005
I Like This Picture...
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Three interviews in a month. Three rejection notices within a week. I would not have put this large number of eggs in this basket if they (the HR officer and manager) told me last week that they were choosing between putting me through a second interview and hiring me. I was possibly an inch or two close to the finishing line and suddenly, I got a kick and the baton fell out from my hand. Now, it is the task of putting my shattered confidence back in place and getting over this shock before I can move on.
I have no idea how long more I can delay my impending move to the hellhole. All I know is that my career will surely nosedive if I go there and short of throwing in the towel without having the security of acquiring a “passport” to somewhere first, that will be my destiny. Right now, the feeling I have is very much akin to the night when I received a phone call from the girl whom I was involved in a long-distance but short-lived relationship, telling me that she wanted out for some reason (which sounded more like an excuse than anything else then). I was simply calm and somewhat collected when I received the news, but when the fact slowly sank in, the world came crashing down on me.
These are moments when it would be convenient for me to lift my face and shake my fist upwards in despair. These are moments when everything else must take a backseat as I try to recover and make sense of this piece of nonsense called “my life”. The symptoms of how I am slowly slipping down the abyss are apparent when I joked with colleagues that they should keep a look-out for shops advertising for sales assistant and am thinking about drowning everything else with heaps of alcohol.
You know something? I am sick of this life. I don’t want it anymore. I will gladly trade this for nothing at all. I just want peace, even if this means that I will have to cease to exist.
***
I don’t know what to do with myself. I really don’t. You don’t start raising people’s hopes by throwing the choice of either being hired or being interviewed the second time and then do a U-turn four days later when that fella called to ask why there had been no news or updates. Am I being overly naïve by believing that people will have at least some heart and observe some ethics? Or is the world so dark, cold, heartless and foreboding that this is perhaps a call for me to ditch all those principles of mine and be a heartless bastard?
I don’t believe I am a nice guy and when people pass comments about how nice I am, I will possibly smile outwardly while inwardly the person’s value in being sincere drops faster than you can say “Bullshit”. Yet, sometimes, I feel as though trying to be civil with people gets me no where. It is like either you join in or you lose out.
I don’t know what to do with myself. One year ago, I would have been checking out the film listings for the local film festival (traditionally, it is held in April). Now that the listing is not, the sales of the tickets are on and that seats are selling fast, I have absolutely no iota of interest in me to go on a film-watching spree. No. Not when I have yet to secure for myself a future that will not guarantee a career nosedive and more depressive spells.
***
So, the shopping spree, conducted a few days before that interview which did not materialize, is nothing more than an exercise in throwing money down the drain as well as optimism in vain. The two shirts remained in the very same state as when I picked them off the rack. The ties remained untouched in my cramped wardrobe. When I opened it this morning, the beige-coloured tie was the first thing I saw and I wondered when I would be able to wear it for the first time.
Money spent in vain. Hopes raised only for them to come crashing down.
I feel like cutting up the shirts, which I never got to wear. Maybe it would be therapeutic to see pieces of my foolish exercise in optimism getting snipped into shreds. Maybe it would make me feel a lot better by throwing them around in my cramped room like confetti raining down on a newly-wed couple. Ditto for the ties.
Sounds illogical. Sounds like what a mad man will do (hey, I am certified mad anyway). Yet, this is still the better alternative than for me to really get back at the source and origin of this foolish optimism.
Simply because my hatred for this source gets deeper and deeper by the day.
***
Maybe I have yet to grow out of this terrible phase which seems to only afflict teenagers. I have lived almost all thirty years of my life existing on this blue marble and there has never been one day, one hour and, dare I say, one minute when I can truly say I do not hate myself.
Bitter irony, isn’t it? Living out a life which I do not wish to live.
Posted by D W at March 21, 2005 07:03 PM