Thursday, February 24, 2011 @1:33 AM
I just had the idea that about five years down the road, I might like to remember what it was like when I had to leave my home for a long period for the first time ever.
I never ever ever expected to go overseas for uni. EVER. Perhaps when I was young and worshipped the West (embarassing as that sounds) I dreamed of going to either the UK or the US to study. When I got into RGS after primary school, I felt like a smart person. Because everyone whom I told my school too had the same reaction - OMG YOU MUST BE VERY SMART. Ok I probably have above average intelligence at best but in RGS and RJC I really was mediocre. That's besides the point. I began to think that I had to keep going to such elite institutions for the rest of my life because I was getting used to the 'WOW' reaction. So I wanted to go to Cambridge, or Oxford, or Harvard. Mind, that was when I was about thirteen or fourteen. As I grew older I realized that I would never be able to get into such institutions and my expectations grew more realistic. I knew how attached I was to my home and Singapore (not because it's Singapore, but because it's where I grew up in - I'd be just as attached to it had it been any other country). So I told myself that I would never go overseas. I planned to go to NUS and study medicine. That was something which never changed. I always wanted to be a doctor, save that period of time when I was really young and wanted to be a princess or the President. So that's what I told everyone who asked me what I wanted to do for uni. NUS medicine. Why didn't I want to leave the country and go overseas? people asked. Because I could never survive on my own, I said.
Little did I know that while I dearly wanted NUS med, NUS med might not necessarily want me. I began to suspect that somewhere around J2. Perhaps I would not be able to get in. I knew that I needed my As for A levels, plus...what? I wasn't even sure. Internships at clinics and hospitals? Yeah that sounded correct. And I assumed that was it. If I had known earlier maybe I'd have taken on some community service projects or went on one of those overseas service learning trips. One word on those. How the hell do they expect to spot the truly kind and caring people who really want to help people by selecting those who go on overseas trips?? Does that really say a lot about a person's character? I won't make generalizations - no doubt there are people who go on those trips truly intending to help others. Most of the time though? I know people who have gone on those trips. Their reasons - because a cute guy is going too, because it'll be great fun with friends, because it'll look good on their resumes. And believe me, I know of some - if not nasty - pretty unpleasant people who have been super enthusiastic about those trips. They're not mean people, but they certainly aren't those full of moral fibre or whatever traits the interview panel looks for. Take a look at how they treat some of their classmates. They simply think it glamorous to say that they have gone overseas to help the poor. I don't believe it's help at all. They paint murals. They take about a thousand pictures of themselves with the kids. Murals - well, they're nice and all, but do they fill the starving children with food? Money?
I will say no more about this because this is not supposed to be a rant about NUS med and the people who got in.
Anyway, NUS med sent me into a super depression. I realized that I had to leave my home if I still wanted to be a doctor. This sounds like nothing to some (for instance, those who have gone on aforesaid overseas trips and who most ironically are IN NUS MED SO THEY DON'T NEED TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES WHEN THEY ARE THE ONES WHO COULD ACTUALLY SURVIVE DOING THAT). But it means a lot to me. Shut up about all the "great experiences" I will have, the "independence" I will gain, the "meeting people from all over the world". I don't want all that. I want to have my great experiences with my friends and family in Singapore, to be able to visit my cousins whenever I want, to go to school and go home at the end of the day to my warm bedroom and my mother's fantastic cooking. I want to sit on the couch after school and watch TV with my dad and listen to my mum nagging me to study. I want to gain my independence the slow way. I don't want to meet people from all over the world. I want to stay with Singaporeans for the rest of my life.
I cried over having to leave and at times when I lie in bed at night I just started thinking about how it'd be like all alone in a foregin land and a strange room with everyone I love back home in Singapore without me. When I saw the pictures of the halls I cried because they looked like prison cells. I may be a bit spoilt, yes, but those rooms were so tiny that they gave me a claustrophobic feeling. Why did I have to be condemned to this? I hated NUS with all my heart.
I refused to pack. I was in denial. I didn't believe that I was going, because I didn't want to. I imagined that I was going to go on staying in Singapore. Sometimes I even thought - should I really be a doctor after all? My mum did everything. She pulled out all the luggage bags in the house, made lists and packed in everything she could think of. She forced me to do the same. Otherwise I might well have curled up on my bed right to the day of my departure and cried and wasted away. I was that depressed. No words can describe the extent to which I love my home and my room. I DID NOT WANT TO LEAVE.
Two weeks before leaving I went into full-on depression. I would look around my room and think about how much I would miss everything. I went to the clinic where I grew up in and wondered when I would see it again. Every time I went somewhere, I would think, "This is the last time I'll be here before I leave." Every time I met someone - my friends or my cousins, I would think, "This is the last time I'll see them before I leave." At all my farewell gatherings, I would leave reluctantly and look back at my friends. I met up with Yiyin and Shurou at a Japanese restaurant in Ion and when I left, going up the escalator with them at the bottom, I just kept looking at them and thinking about how much I'd miss them. I met up with Zhihua at Vivocity and when I got into my car with her waving goodbye outisde I just felt so sad. On the day before my departure, Szelin called up from UK and I had spoken barely two sentences to her before bursting into tears. I passed the phone to my mum, then sat at the window crying my heart out. Behind me, I heard my mum's voice breaking as she talked to Szelin, then she started crying too. I knew she would miss me a lot because I had never left her side before, and at that moment, hearing my mum cry, I just hated NUS med so much that I think I cursed the entire faculty, the people in it, and the people who decided who could get in and who couldn't. How could anyone be capable of such cruelty? Three times I applied/appealed, and three times they turned me down flat. Did they really think me so incapable of becoming a doctor? Were they really so certain that I could never be a good doctor that they had to turn me away again and again, banish me overseas away from my family?
That night I met up with my other cousins Eiffel and Aigner and I was close to tears many times during the evening. We swam together in the pool and I thought about how they could still come and swim with my family, go on with life like normal, while I couldn't because I would be FREAKING OVERSEAS. When I hugged them goodbye, tears were already in my eyes. The next day, when I had to leave, I was reluctant to take all phone calls. I cried all day, and whenever I heard anyone's voice saying goodbye to me or an sms wishing me luck, I would start crying all over again. Side note: Thanks to NUS, I spent Valentine's Day doing last minute packing and crying my eyes out. I mean, Valentine's Day had never been particularly enjoyable for me, but this one took the cake. It was a day of love but all I felt was lost love. Love for my family, love for my friends, love for my cousins, love for him. People I would be separated from in a matter of hours.
With everything packed, doors locked, windows shut and my luggage standing at the gate, I sat on my bed, hugged my pillow and yes, cried. I cried harder than I ever did before. I REALLY did not want to go. I wanted to stay on this bed and in this room for the rest of my life and I didn't care if I died there. My dad came in and comforted me, telling me I'd see my room again soon, but it didn't help. I just could not stop. I felt like my heart was being ripped from me and that it would stay here in my room while I left.
Eventually I did manage to calm down, and with a last look at everything, I turned the light off and left my home. In the taxi, I tried my best not to cry but when my cousin smsed me, I felt like starting again. She said this - 'When are u flying? Cant bear. U at the airport nw? Can u dun go?' Now any farewell message of any form would already get me sad, but the last line, "Can you don't go?", really hit me. That was the very question I had been asking myself all these past months. Can I not go? I asked myself that, and I asked NUS that. I begged NUS, in my mind, to accept me. Can you please accept me, can you please let me stay in Singapore, can I please not go? And each time, the answer was no.
I told her I didn't want to go. I really did not. But I had to. Because that was the only way I could become a doctor.
It was perhaps a good thing that no one was there to send me off because I suspect I would have simply burst into tears in front of everyone. My mum bought me a thin silver ring as a farewell/Valentine's Day present at the airport's jewellery shop. I'm wearing it now as I type this. Then I was on the plane, and it was taking off, taking me away from the place I was born in, the place which had spurned me when I wanted to pursue my dream, the place which did not want me, the place which felt I was not fit to become a doctor, the place which I was going to miss so damn much. Unrequitted love, anyone? And on Valentine's Day too. It was strangely fitting.
This post is getting far too long and too emotionally exhausting to type so I'll leave it here for now. Stay tuned for the second installment which I hope will be slightly more cheerful.