174 visitors viewed my blog yesterday- a record high since I started blogging. None left a comment. In fact, I have an average of 40 readers per day. My guess is that this has something to do with the 'A' level exam results. People whom I don't even know, people whom I'm not even close to, have been messaging me, asking me how I fared and what my plans are. If I do better than them, they congratulate me and tell me how lucky they have been to get whatever they got. If I do worse than them, they tell me that they didn't fare that well either and how lucky they have been to get whatever they got.

Do I care?

NO.

I don't even know you.

I'm sick to death of this charade, this senseless and selfish competition where you have to do better than others in order to feel damn good about yourself. When will it end? When is enough, enough? If you did well, good for you. If you did badly, move on. Why is everybody making such a big deal out of this as if it is an exam that determines the fates of our whole entire lives, of whether we make it to heaven or to hell?

THIS IS NOT THE END.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

I have people whom I don't even know, people whom I'm not even close to, asking me how my close friends fared instead of asking whether they are feeling okay or not. You know what? If you really gave a shit, why don't you ask them yourself? In fact, where were you when she stood there crying all by herself? Where was I?

I don't know how to explain to you the helplessness, the hopelessness, the futility of my words as I begged so hard for something suitably clever and comforting to say to her, something that would make everything better. Talk is cheap. I know. I know. But that's the only thing we have left. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay, I kept saying. Will everything be okay? I don't know. No one knows. I kept hugging her but it didn't feel enough. The ground gave way beneath us and nobody could feel or understand this.

So what if I did well? How well is well? Doesn't it depend on one's expectations? There will always be someone who does better and someone who does worse. There is nothing to boast about or to gloat about. Yes it is significant but it certainly doesn't mean everything in the world to me. Perhaps they meant well, perhaps they were simply concerned about me, but it is not something I want to waste my time talking about over and over and over again as if I survived some rare incurable disease.

I wanted us to do well together. I wanted everybody to be happy together. If I could change one thing, I would go back and not only push myself harder, but push those around me to work harder as well.

But what is there to be sad about really? She isn't DEAD for god's sake. She doesn't need your pity. She is a strong and brave soul. She has merely lost some leverage which WILL be recuperated. She could even make little jokes whereas I was stupidly on the brink of tears. Anyone who saw us that day would have thought that it was she who was the one comforting me.

It doesn't matter how well or how badly you did. It doesn't change anything much really. We do what we can, and life, after all that chaotic trauma and confusingly mixed emotions, still goes on as per normal and takes us in different directions.