Just so we're clear. This is not completely a mess. This is what is known as an organized mess. Read: ORGANIZED. I know exactly where everything is, unless someone rearranged it for me. Don't you just hate when people mess with your mess? Below is a picture of things nearing the halfway point.
It amuses me, that as you clean and rearrange things, everything becomes exceedingly messier. There was a point where I had to make great big lunges to cross from one end of the room to the other. Everything on my table was left there since A levels. That wasn't so hard to store and arrange. It was everything on another shelf and everything under my desk that made keeping and tossing things so difficult. I uncovered things that dated all the way back to 2002 when I first moved into this little apartment, when we moved into the house. And as I was packing my collection of shoeboxes, I found things all the way back to primary school.
It is really difficult to go back a decade and dig through one's life. For me at least. I don't keep a diary, I keep things. I did try once, but it didn't really work out. I'm not one to mark done daily events, I write reflections and if I can drag my lazy arse to do it. Hence, you can see, I have already failed to put in a daily entry into this thing, and when I did, they were mostly one liners. Twitter is more effective for one-liners, and it's transient.
I found all sorts of really weird things as I was sorting things. A collection of chinese essays by ACJC students. I figure most of the contributors are the girls. I found my first O level cert, and my entry proof for the second time that I did Os. Looking back at my, I am quite the academy failure. I don't particularly enjoy that period of time. Mountains to perpetually climb and hurdle to constantly overcome. I'm still out there in blistering winter attempting to scale this peak and I wonder if I'll ever get there. Cold and numb.
The hardest part about cleaning my room is finding all my correspondence across the years. I keep all the letters I've ever received in a shoebox. I also keep all the invitations to weddings, wedding programmes and all the shows I've ever watched, but the letters are by far, the most important to me. Most of them are from the many camps I've facilitated across the years. Some of them from the camps that I attended. All of them are encouraging affirmations or thank you letters. And then I find a few of the real letters I've received and I see the people I drifted away from and I wonder what happened.
Letter writing is a gem, a beautiful art that is dying. I intend to keep writing letters and in flowery language the way they should be written. It's a pity that people only write letters nowadays as formal correspondence or requests, and it's amazing if they actually write. The advent of e-mail and computers and destroyed the art of penmanship and of letter writing. An e-mail can never have the same personal touch that a handwritten letter has. There is a part of the writer's soul in each and every stroke. From the scrawl of a doctor, to the careful neat font of a girl's, it's there. The text you read before you, however, is hard and cold.
I also found all the birthday cards my paternal grandparents have given me across the years. Without fail, I have one every year and I kept as many of them as I could. It was difficult looking at them and seeing the signature 'Love, Yeh Yeh and Mah Mah' become 'Love, Mah Mah'. I felt a deep knot in my throat as I thumbed through them. I really do miss my yeh yeh, and I pray that the lord has mercy on his soul. On a lighter note, I have most of the cards my parents gave me across the years too. It's amusing how they sign off, 'Love, mum and dad' in the most legible print possible, but whatever other writing they have is completely illegible. Sigh...doctors.
Looking back on all this, I've seen the way God has certainly given me many many chances and actually guided me to this point so far. If I didn't re-do Os, I'd have never gotten a science course of my choice in poly, and if I hadn't retained, I'd have never qualified for Medicine anyway...not that I do now. Having the opportunity, or rather being forced to take a more scenic route has allowed me to build up an excellent support system of friends and family and allowed me to deepen my faith and my knowledge of it. I'm still sore that I can't graduate along side my peers or that I'm pretty sure I'll always feel inferior for taking so long, but I don't regret taking this path. I just hope and pray that it really is in his plan for me to do medicine. It is a dream that has been dreamt for more than a decade.
At least, my life is slightly more organized now. See (10 hours later):
PS: that's my collection of textbooks and literature(worthwhile literature. all other rubbish is on another shelf) My biology textbooks are missing though. One is with a friend, and the other one on genetics I seem to have misplaced with someone ):
Yes, that's a VIAGRA pillow under my desk.
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