Watertight vessel.

Assalamualaikum.

"Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen - these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out." 

- an excerpt from [Paper Towns] by John Green, a book that I read recently, 

When I came across this part, it hits me like, maybe the moment when  Archimedes shouted "Eureka!" when he determined the purity of gold, or when I cursed in Greek for realizing I haven't paid the monthly bill and it is waaay past the allocated time.

I clearly don't know how to describe how I am very much agree with this thought, but then, I remembered about a Japanese proverb which goes like this, "Everyone carries two faces in their whole life, one for showing it to other people, and one is for themselves."
And I was like, the saying about 'two face person' actually applies to everyone.

Being out and about, meeting people in parties or posting pictures in social media, doesn't always shows the true form of you. You dress up well, all those out-of-date attires goes to welfare or end up as trash; poses in front of the camera, the once you like goes public, the ones you hate ends up deleted. If life is Facebook then whatever you show people is for the sake of receiving 'likes' from them. Even better if the amount of people who have 'seen' your status is directly proportional to the amount of 'likes' that you get.

Then being at home all alone, in your worn out t-shirt and weeks of unwashed pants, eating lasagna out of the fridge without bother heating it, hair undone, without caring anything about how indecent you are right now, sits in front of your laptop absorbing yourself in those social sites. Scrolling.. Judging.. Scrolling..  

You appeared to people in how they wanted to see you. Not how you wanted them to know you.

But then again, if you were asked, how well did you know yourself? The correct way to answer this question is by asking your close friends what did they think about yourself. Because you don't realized how do you act most of the time all of the time and you don't always see yourself. Your emotions your behavior your face your body languages... And it is unfair. For the fact that you cannot judge yourself but others can, and for the fact that you yourself doesn't even know who you are. But isn't that what we always do nowadays? Judging people instead of judging ourselves, thinking that yourself is far more exceptional yada yada yada. That is because we don't even know ourselves well and we don't see ourselves well.

Fun fact: One person who will never see you in person is yourself. The mirror is just a reflecting tool and you just see an image of yourself, not the real you.

Somehow, using I is no longer justifiable. i seems more reasonable.

So when one of those time comes, the unwanted moment i.e tragedy or disaster, one will surely breaks down, and that is the time we know about their true colors. Like the watertight vessel metaphor, once it starts to crack the ends become inevitable. And when you also suffers a crack, then everything comes in and out simultaneously, like an exchange of water or air, balancing each other to stay afloat. You me and i you. We started to share stories, information, mostly honesty rather than fibbing. We see each other in our best and worst days and that is when we see face-to-face.

That is when we don't care about the world anymore. It is just us against the world.

5 years of Hallucination.

Assalamualaikum.

Here I am having so much to ramble about, but, being those introvert-ish one makes it hard for me to smoothly voice out all my thoughts because there are so many things piled up in my head and while being a bit of a hoarder myself, tidying and organizing are not my best values. And yes, those applies to the thoughts in your head too. That is why I cannot be a speaker, or debater, or much less a teacher because words that formed in my mind evaporates as soon as it reached my lips.

Phew. That was quite a mumble jumble.

So, my high school friends held a mini-reunion just recently in the spirit of celebrating Ramadhan together and to reminisce the fond memories we had during the 5 years period of us staying there. Yes, it is a boarding school and yes, they stayed overnight there. And yes, I cannot join them.

Funny thing was, when I was a student there I was so occupied with the thought of being held in a prison (quite a comfy prison); sometimes I pretended that all of us are living in an asylum but having to be injected with hallucination, we are trained to imagine that we are having classes and all sorts of activity to pass the day. It become more obvious with all the strict rules and regulations, sometimes-a-little-bit scary wardens, 2 layers of fences with piercing thorny-thing, and numerous rounding from the security guards. (maybe I'm the only sane person there) But most of the times, I pretended that I am a character in Harry Potter, and that place is Hogwarts; scratch that, more to Beaubaxtons (because it's a girl school) because we have this 4 houses and it was like Cold War before the Quidditch [read: Sports Day], and I hated it. The house spirit is so frightening that I pretended to be in high house spirit most of the time, just to save my own neck. Oooh yes. The merit and demerit thing makes it more like HP series. I don't remember which one do I score most. Guys, I grew up with HP stories. In fact, we grew up together but in a different time zone and I guess that what makes my living there a bit bearable.

So the thought of going back and reliving the memoir of the school after I managed to escape, (yep, escape. not graduate) (after excruciatingly planning the break for 5 years) had never occurred to me before. Yes, if you are coming to visit someone you know that that is plausible. You're visiting someone (a sane one, just as I am so I can pass down the prison-break secret), not reminiscing something. To the seniors who came back and spend the Ramadhan there during my staying there, I highly apologized because there is not a single pleasant thoughts that came across my mind at that moment. You girls had had your freedom, why waste it by coming back here? You can munch on all the scrumptious food outside, why did you still want to take a bite from this slightly-ok food? Whyy oh whyy. ( I was such an ungrateful b-word at that time)

The matrons, and the wardens [read: teachers] always told us that we might hate the lifestyle we had in there, but once we got out, we will miss it and will surely wanted to come back to experience it once more.
I was like, no mam, that is a lie you made up just to make us feel good about ourselves. There is no way will I want to go back to this living hell.

Boy I was right. And wrong at the same time.

You see, all the years of pretending, have somehow backfired. Unknowingly I have become somehow accustomed to those routines that I have been told to practiced every single day for those lengthy years. My house colour, which I hated before, had slowly become the shades that surrounded my environment, I used more product now compared to the day where I was in the slimy-kid [read: budak hingusan] phase, and I will solemnly swear that after all this year, I have always been a high house spirit person, always.  {quoted from Professor Snape}

About coming back to school, now that I have figured out that the insane one was probably just me, I have reached to a feeling that yes, fellow matrons and wardens, you are correct by saying that I will want to come back and do it all over again. But, I would love to do it all over again with my dear Orions. For that case, a thousand times yes.

I once asked a senior, what makes her strong enough to live there until she reached her final year? "Friends."

A short, and sweet (and a little bit cheesy) answer but now that I looked back, HP was just a story and it just happened in my mind. What makes it bearable, really,are those people who gather around you when you are down, a simple gesture like holding your hands when you are nearly on the edge of giving up and wanted to drop out of school, offers you a hug when you reeeaaaallyyy needed one, and occasionally a surprise hug when you least expecting it, make the joke of the day when you nearly gulp down pills because the day is so stagnant, gave immature advice when you had a bad day, pulls you up and run along with you when you really wanted to drop a few pounds, scolded you like a mom when you did something hasty, laugh at your impossible attempts at making stupid things, cry together, sleep together, play together, shout at each other, .... the lists are endless. But those are the people. Friends.

And the senior was absolutely right.

And Ramadhan, Ramadhan, Ramadhan is near to its end. And by saying that, imagine finding a perfect drop of rain from a heavy downpour; that is how all of us want to find that glimmer of a night worth a thousand nights. So change your 'Ibadah gear to gear 5, (or gear D if your're the auto person), and may Allah guide us to his grace by letting us meet Laylatul Qadr. Amin.