Emptiness

I'm dreamless right now.

It wasn't like this in the past, of course. I've had sweet dreams, bad dreams, crazy dreams, crushed dreams, faded dreams, fulfilled dreams, broken dreams, and torn dreams. Maybe more than I could've handled back then, but I dealt with what I had without going completely insane.

...........................and it's gone. I'm dreamless now.

I suppose I can't blame anyone but myself for it - I closed the door on it myself. 5 years of yearning (maybe more). Poof, just out the window like that. Never even knew it existed.

Except that only now I realize that nothing else existed as a replacement. Well, sure, you'd say; that's obvious, isn't it? No one comes up with replacement dreams. Hell, what's a replacement dream anyway? The next best alternative forgone in selecting the optimal choice? Was there ever an opportunity cost to dreams and dreaming? A cost to a pretty much non-monetary thing that we try, ever so hard, to monetize?

But it's empty. An empty freedom. Expected emptiness, of course - work and believe that long with the belief that you'll make it through to the light at the end of the tunnel for so long and you'd find the darkness looming all around when you finally realize that the light came from the roof; that you tricked yourself into thinking that you could just walk your way out of the damn tunnel, staring into the mirror directed upwards. The goddamn light ten stories up that you could always stare at but never reach.

I've had a supportive parent that prides himself with telling everyone that I've gotten into a respectable course at a prestigious university and immediately tells me the moment their backs are turned that he had nothing to support me with on this journey. Played around with me for two years every fucking week mindfucking me while fetching me to camp. Screaming at me for half an hour and sending an sms saying he loves me and wants me to get into the best uni I could get myself into. Then blaming me for not praying because "if I placed all this in God's hands everything would settle itself" because obviously praying by himself didn't get him far enough. Then telling me the family's financial situation after coming off for the past ten years as if he actually had money in the bank instead of wrecking his paycheck month after month after month. Then asking me of what value it was to send me to this course overseas and downplaying it one year after you boasted me off to his own fucking bosses about me. Monetizing my dream and trying his best to destroy it once it was no longer of value to him.

The part I hated the most is that I still had the choice of going. I could - I would just wreck the life savings of the saner half of the pair that made me. The one that made sense and reason. The one that made less yet would give more. And that's what the cost came down to - my dream or her future.

And so I'm dreamless. It's the worst feeling there is and I did it to myself. Of course that's not so bad. The whole thing just reeks of first-world fucking immaturity and foolishness, the goddamn elite kid whining about not getting into the stupid school he wants to get into because it's just too fucking expensive and he's complaining because he has no grasp on money. When it won't fucking matter in a few years time when he's out looking for a job, competing with those who made the assumption that going overseas would make you more attractive on the resume, that piece of paper that just sells you as a product to the world (hopefully at the best price, as far away from "competitive" as possible).

Sure they're right. It won't matter then. But fuck if the feeling I have right now is insignificant and childish and immature. That's me. I apologize for having subscribed to the ideal that somewhere out there across the ocean education exists that couldn't be described by the words "大开眼界". I apologize for feeling like a frog in a well compared to my peers in secondary school and believing that surely amongst the best universities I could once again find and learn from such people as my peers. I apologize for being a mediocre man amongst the elite. The elite mediocre. I apologize for believing that exposing myself to the best could allow me to slowly yet surely learn to be like them.

Life obviously never fucking worked that way. It's hilarious, really - the lack of direction I have now.

I remember a story a friend of mine wrote. Its title - Any Dream Will Do. You can't get "any dream" unless you abandon "your dream" - but what dream remains amongst the broken pieces that can make up the "any dream"s that you hold on to; the paper mache of broken dreams glued and sewn up like a monstrosity of its former self? The shine broken apart, the shards dulled, the mediocrity at its purest.

It's crying over spilt milk. Because there's nothing else in the wasteland once the milk seeps in.