I live here now.

Life is kinda good now, because:

I like my job, it pays alrightly-well, I seem to be surrounded by nice people. Even though bits of it are a pain in the arse, fundamentally I like what I’m doing. I’m not dragging my feet all day long to go in to work.

In the last few months, I’ve kind of developed a greater confidence in my own tastes and preferences, and am kinda happy now not feeling the frantic jealousy that comes with comparison. I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want, I’m going to be  whoever the fuck I want to be. For the last eight-ten years, I vacillated between liking a certain kind of thing to disdaining the predictability of that entire lifestyle/aesthetic/etc. I now no longer think you necessarily have to be a goddamn poseur to subscribe to such things, though it must certainly help, and there are certainly loads of people out there who qualify as both. But it’s stupid to let that stop me doing exactly what I want, certainly I can’t see why that is any less stupid than conforming to sensibilities that you don’t agree with. In the last few months I’ve kind of realized that I don’t give a fuck about that anymore. I’m happy where I am, I’m tired of being too self-conscious to pursue the things I like, while simultaneously being jealous of people who do, in addition to endlessly judging them for their predictability. They’ve fallen off my radar, and after quite a long time of not being able to choose your friends, I think I’m in a good position to be more discerning about what I do with my time. It’s kinda nice, really. I’ve been able to stop giving a damn about things that don’t really matter to me.

I have a couple of good friends, who seem really nice, and who I’m glad to have around. I don’t need loads of people, I don’t think, but fundamentally also in the last two or three years I’ve developed social skills that good god I never used to have. And I’ve stopped feeling awkward about not having said skills, because it kinda feels like, well at least I have them now, at least I’m not trapped in my thirteen year old self, at least I’m not permanently socially maimed, but mundane circumstances of upbringing.

Also I know for a fact that my mind has grown up a little bit, because reading the stuff I used to write before, it’s all so bloody inane. Maybe all this stuff now will seem inane later on, surely it will, to my 28 year old self, but it feels good to have move forward anyway, if only because I was stuck in that state for ever so long. In short, it’s nice to think that I’m getting more and more at peace with myself. I don’t actually think I’m a terrible cliche, anymore.

I think in the past two or three years I’ve shrugged off a good deal of the learned helplessness that I developed when I was younger. I’m slightly more aware of my ability to change my life, and I’m slightly less discouraged when change doesn’t come straightaway. I’ve learned ever so slightly how to ignore my bloody emotions with these things, because I’m neurotic as fuck and my mind goes crazy I know, my internal and immediate radar is a bit of a melodramatic.

And also, I have a partner who loves me, who is also at a fairly exciting time of his life, whose company I enjoy immensely, who I suppose I’m starting to find more common ground with, and with whom things are simple. That’s pretty awesome, and really even before all the other things were certain, it kept me pretty happy anyway. It’s going to be four years, soon, in a month and a day, and I’m pretty glad I lucked out on that one.

And it’s a holiday in my hometown, which I’ve been away from for two years running, so of course it is/was dislocating, especially at first. The first two days, I walked around and thought, it’s weird, it’s weird, I expected it to be weird and goddamit it’s weird. But it’s mellowed, that sensation, I’ve gotten used to it, and it’s been awesome, seeing people who I haven’t in so long, expecting great swathes of distance and finding little or none. More than one person has said to me, oh ella you haven’t changed, you’re exactly the same. It’s a little strange hearing that, because I live such a different life in London, because I pursue different values now (or perhaps never fully subscribed to the old ones), I do different things, and the general feel and philosophy of my life in London has been very much about self-determination. I’ve been fucking so happy over there, because the culture has allowed me the space to be whoever the fuck I want to be, and fuck, fuck do I love that, fuck am I grateful, for self-determination. For the cultural diversity, which invites my participation, and in which context I’ve become a lot more politically and philosophically aware, and a lot less impressed with consumerist/capitalist values. It’s difficult to hold on to stuff like that, when you live in a country as affluent as Singapore. Less than a week and already I can feel myself slipping back into an old and unquestioned mindset.

It’s surprising that I’m enjoying being back, because I didn’t expect it; because I haven’t kept in touch with anyone at all, and didn’t know how easy it would be to slip back into friendships; because the last time I came, I was insufficiently at ease with my emerging full adult self, to be able to socially handle the incongruency.

But you know what Kin yip said to me today, that made me a little happy inside, and reconciled a little bit of me to myself? He said, even though I’ve gone off and done something completely random to whatever I was doing before, he could see how the fundamental person I was hadn’t changed, with regard to work. And that was kind of nice, and that was kind of true, and it kind of helps make sense of a) why a humanities scholar might ever apparently decide to attempt to become an academic scientist, and b) how the person I was before I left for England makes perfect sense with my political and social views and values right now.

The one black splotch on all this: It’s a holiday back living with my parents, who are of course bickering and intruding, so of course I already feel a low level of suffocation coupled with the desire to get back. I.. genuinely have no clue as to how to function as an adult, in this setting. So this feeling, it makes me not want to get out of bed in the morning, it also makes me incapable of doing all the things I need to do. Which is kind of alarming, and kind of makes me wonder, how the hell am I going to snap back to it when I get back, and even before, when I have to complete the millions of errands that need seeing to before I leave? There is a competent and independent version of me that has ran an independent adult life for four years running, now. I paid bills, subscribed to magazines, balanced a budget, cooked, rented a flat. I can’t imagine doing those things right now. I can’t even make myself get out of bed in the morning to do the motherfucking laundry. The past few days have felt like the way you do, when you wake up in the morning and haven’t yet had a good kick of caffeine, and are still wandering around in semi-twillight state unable to concentrate properly enough to get anything good and done.

People are morons everywhere. Note to motherfucking self.

or: Things that occur to me while watching Freaks and Geeks

I wish I had known when I was younger that my experience of friendship in general was sound and normal, and that there was really no good reason to be expecting the flounciness of forever friendships and pseudo- intimacy to be the key and constant  characteristic to normal socialization. I wish I had let myself take comfort in the flounciness and girliness of friendships that I did have, rather than bloody spending all my time worrying about my own abnormality relative to all these fictitious norms, all garnered from all the mass media outlets that pander to adolescents. It doesn’t anger me, but, goddamit. How stupid, and how pointless, and how unecessary.

Also, on a not-even-remotely-related note, Yin is currently looking up aquariums on the internet. It’s cute, because he did a functionally similar thing, when we had both thought last summer that I might move up to Northampton for that job- he suddenly started spending an inordinate amount of time looking up potential hobbies, on the internet. You know, as the logical progression that follows the realization that the person you spend literally all your free time with is suddenly not going to be around 24/7, but rather just on weekends. It’s cute, it’s cute and sweet in a silly and indirect way, it amuses me to think about it, it amuses me to think he’s going to be down in Epsom with his nose pressed up against the aquarium glass on weekday nights when I’m stuck in Whitechapel and he’s down south. He best name a fish or two after me.

Usually, such realizations for me have everything to do with chemical states of hedonia, or individual things in my life that have enriched it. This time, it is genuinely not that I was not happy before, although it is not like this year has not been dotted with unhappinesses. Rather, looking back on the past year, I see how my life has taken a small and slow but noticeable sort of upward trajectory, in terms of quality, in terms of contentedness, in terms of calmness, in terms of sureness, in terms of self-awareness. In short it is a longer term sort of Getting Better that I feel like I am looking back on.

1  I know it must have started this year, when I decided I wanted to do more in my life, either at New Years at the making of resolutions, or watching Niall and Becky dispel my prior notion that in order to do research you had to give up some sort of life with which to do a work-life balance. I don’t think it felt like much changed then, partly because what followed was an intense bit of hell with PhD applications (which I can only be grateful for now, cos it has more than paid off), and partly because… I suppose things take a while, even after you commence with the making of effort. Hanging out with my coursemates, hanging out with NL people, doing the Festival Samaritans thing. Now it’s come to summer and that’s pretty much all I want to do, camp, experience the emotional high of good live music, have barbecues, go dancing all night. All this while I have a bloody dissertation to write. Don’t think I’ve ever been this un-focused before in my life. Only because, unlike just prior, I now have quite a solid life to do this whole work-life balance thing, with.

2  I know therapy must also have had something to do with it. It’s not even been particularly intense therapy, or even real therapy, but something about the therapeutic context of this sort of workshop, trying to get rid of the mind’s smoke and mirrors, trying to find better ways to react to events around me than the ways that I currently do. It’s that process, rather, of caring for yourself in a very active and deliberate way, in looking at all your natural inclinations that may not be helpful, and learning to get rid of them. Anyway. I shouldn’t overstate its effect on my life, because after all it’s only been a recent thing, and it’s not like I have too much horribly traumatic shit to work through. But I know it’s helped, in a small but quite good way, and I’m glad I gave it a shot.

I should probalby record this, because I am easily swayed and easily swept off my feet.

I think I would like to do a post-doc, somewhere out of England. Definitely a three-year stint in America or likewise, and definitely a three-year stint somewhere more challenging, likely somewhere in Europe where English isn’t spoken. Think I’m feeling less… intrepid about this, just because, just because I know I am socially anhedonic and I know what I am like in foreign countries, I know that the experiences one tends to have with brief dalliances are shallow and the same, like the first five minutes of small talk that you have at the start of conversations, I don’t want to have it over and over again. I don’t want to go through dislocation and isolation for several months of settling in everywhere I go, I don’t want to have only superficial friends who are all people who are not my sort, I don’t want to frequent terrible clubs with terrible music on non-negotiable nights out, just because these are the only friends you have in the country and you have to let your activities be dictated by fitting in and beating down isolation. But at the same time, I want to travel and live in new places, and I think given this chosen career I might be able to fit it in.

The only terminal problem I can forsee here is Yin. Most days this is too large a concern, for me to contemplate tearing myself away from, but in three years time, I’m hoping we might be able to sort something out. Coming with me, for example, since I know he wants to travel at least some, but in my heart of hearts I kind of know, this isn’t really a case of converging desires, rather a case of grumpy concessions. Sneaking suspicions, been having lately, that I don’t really fit into his life and his social headspace, the way I’d like to; in the same way as well, he doesn’t really fit into mine; not because I don’t love him to bits, but just as a natural product and cause of him not being The Sort Of Guy I Usually Go For. It’s nobody’s fault, but I’m starting to think, we don’t really fit together. It doesn’t help, this tense sensation when we’re around other people, that I’m a care-takee rather than a part of your social landscape. Could we grow into all this? God knows, hope so, but meanwhile, even though it’s not foremost in my mind, most of the time, I think I need to start assembling Life As I Want It To Be, which includes thinking in these terms, about where I’d like to be when I’m thirty. Right now, looking towards summer and three more years in London, I can feel myself making tentative steps towards doing more with my life, even if  it still feels like a bit of a gamble, even if current anxiety about work is only held at bay with the knowledge that my doctoral funding isn’t dependent on my MSc grade. Optimistically, 3 years PhD and 2.5 x 3 year Post-doc stints later, I should be blowing out some candles in some foreign land. That’s the plan, Stan.

And also, random: what did I do, Royal Wedding day? Slept through the wedding, skipped a barbecue, hung out in the park, sat in the sun, climbed trees, took photos. Not too shabby at all.

Celebrated getting funding for my PhD with Yin on Sunday, in our usual way (epic food, epic walk, goofy card). A large slab of relief comes from the not having to worry about what I’m going to be doing next year, from anticipating the doubling of my disposable income, from not having to awkwardly visa marry my boyfriend at 23, from the realization that even if Yin doesn’t get a job straightaway he can stay with me for a bit, from the validation of my ability and intelligence, from the seeming affirmation that I am on something like the right path right now.

I’m either past cold feet or in it again, right now. It is not about the PhD per se; I am beyond excited about being based at the FIL, which provides such mind boggling opportunity for (interesting things like) finding out about brain mechanisms of cognition and (more boring but probably someday useful things like) training with all these cutting-edge techniques of brain science and network modelling and pharmacology. I’m excited to have somehow ended up working with such a prominent figure in the field, I’m excited and intimidated in equal measure about being a part of his lab (which is ridiculously well-funded and so post-doc heavy as for me to be the sole baby of the group), I’m excited and pleasantly surprised at somehow having managed to sort myself an ideal position where I can learn from the ground up about all these fancy techniques, with enough money to scan all day every day if I’d like, and with a supervisor who is open-minded enough as to allow me to root myself semi-firmly in psychiatry, where all my interests lie.

It is not that I have the slightest inclination that I will not enjoy the next three years; it is the sudden realization that the next three years signal some sort of start to my career, with all its trappings of seriousness and personal significance. Just thinking of myself on this road makes me feel like I am about a billion middle-aged years-old, and I really really deer-in-the-headlights don’t want to be here. For the same reasons, it stuns me ever so slightly everytime I hear about my peers, people my age, having proper jobs, getting married, doing all these adulty things. If I told Michelle how I feel, I know she’d chide me for immaturity, I know she’d say, with sisterly kindness but perhaps a twinge of family-forgivable condescention, everyone feels like a bit of fear during that transition, getting used to it and being able to function is what being an adult is all about. And I would say, throwing my toys out of the pram like a two year old, but I don’t want to be an adult, I just want to go about acting inconsequentially, relying on Mum to buy me out of trouble, being in denial about the greyness to my family conflicts and my parents’ inability to right all the wrongs in the world. 

In other words, there’s a large possibility that I didn’t have a clue what I was getting myself into, when I got into it. It is not like me, to consider long-term goals, to look beyond today’s sundown, to be unimpulsive or to look beyond the most immediate rewards and the most salient and shallow motivators (wearing jeans to work? not having to move out of London? being able to start work at noon each day? continued student discounts from Topshop and National Rail?). In my heart of hearts, I know that it is not Being An Adult per se that is bothering me, but rather the notion that life should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Where I Want It To Be. If I don’t have years ahead to burn on trivialities, if I am going to be looking back on my Right Now as the zephyr years of my life for goodness’ sake, then all of this isn’t really stacking up all so well. What’s this neighbourhood, I want to be in? I want to have something to do with music, I want to have something to do with dance, I want to have something to do with art, I want to be in some sort of community and I want to have a better relationship with my family. Fast-forward to some middle class dreams I do find myself wanting, I want to own my house, so that no one can ever kick me out of it. But more significantly, more age-appropriately, the previous few. Because those are the things it feels like I should be doing now, that’s the side of me that needs setting up, before career and whatever swallow me whole. Unless the life bit of work-life balance has actual content, this is a meaningless thing to even strive for, and in terms of this life business within the work-life balance, I am so far from where I want to be right now.

Can’t pretend like I am not excited about having a foot on the ladder in terms of career, but from this bottom rung upwards it’s a slog of concentration and personal sacrifice, and I can’t help but feel like if I do the necessary and play the game (which of course a large part of me, that is happy to be in the industry, wants to), I’m going to wake up one day in my mid-thirties in a fit of terror, preceded by a decade or so of feeling like the most boring person at every party I have ever been to -not because I think what I do is boring, but because there’s got to be more in the human experience than workaday drudgery in pursuit of even a noble scientific or humanitarian ideal. Is it misplaced, to be wanting more out of life? Or have I merely bought into the great advertisement of modern society.

Add to that the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be really quite bad at doing all the adulty industry-type things that will be required in this job – from the little things like dressing like a professional and turning up on time, to more game changing ones like networking and selling my ideas and not letting criticism get me down and not being intimidated by the position and intelligence of peers and superiors – and this is altogether filling me with unease. With some training, with some effort, with some focus, feels like I could sort myself out, in both regards. Just wish I had the direction and the balls, to do something substantial, to get me closer to where I want to be right now.

Feels like, I’m cracking up, feels like my brain. Feels like my, why can’t I do this anymore? All this stuff I used to have, with drive and ability and concentration. My brain, it can’t do this anymore, my brain. Feels like, like I am choking, most frustrating feels like if I could escape this haze of some sort of imbalance I could ace this, I could knock one out, I could finish it off, I could play a perfect game. As it is, I still have time to do what I need to do. As it is, however, I am writing about 200 words a day, and haltingly, filled with nausea, blank and stupid and full of white noise. Nothing is emerging, nothing like concentration, nothing like productivity, and I don’t know how to get rid of this feeling.

Here is another night of sleep, every night I close my eyes with the vague hope that tomorrow I will wake refreshed, with a clear head, not overwhelmed. Fuck, fuck. I don’t know how to get my head out of this haze.