Geburtstag

I should really go to sleep, but I just remembered that I turned sixteen around five days ago and thought I’d post this here because, well, it’s something of a milestone and besides there are some things that you simply can’t go to sleep without doing first. So. Yeah. Sixteen! Sweet sixteen and all that, y’know?

Except I don’t think it’s going to be all that sweet, so whatever.

I don’t remember much about my birthday, except that for some reason I decided to simply not bring it up and all in some kind of test to see how many people remembered. A small handful, which was fine by me, and I even got a few presents (A.S. thank you), although ironically half of them were from people I didn’t even associate myself with. Maybe this has all got to do with my whole cynicism regarding friendships since I would probably prefer to call most of my ‘friends’ here in my school ‘acquaintances’–really, ‘friend’ is such a broad term nowadays–and maybe I just wanted to find a reason to wallow in self-pity or whatever. No, I don’t think the latter was the case. I genuinely didn’t care myself. I spent my previous birthday in depression and besides, birthdays had never really been my thing.

And I recall stories of extravagant parties and all that when others had their birthdays. It’s always sort of…looked like show to me.  Parties are thrown and gifts are showered–for what? For a chance to meet more people? For others to know of your birthday? For them to give you presents? For the most part, huge parties are simply chances to show off wealth and social status. Just for clarification, I don’t oppose the idea of big parties, and I don’t  I would prefer a small gathering of friends any day, but then again, it’s probably just another of them personality issues. Right?

I went home that day and did whatever I did because I can’t remember much at all now. What I do remember was denying it was my birthday, and then watching as people started to post Happy Birthdays on Facebook and Renren and whatever after school as they started to log on to social websites. Because that’s what social sites do–help people generate empty well-wishes in the pretense of caring. Why am I so cynical anyway? Maybe it’s because I draw a clean line between who are my real friends and who are my acquaintances, and I would basically do anything for said former. I would prefer two genuine well-wishes over two thousand empty ones any day. Perhaps I take birthday wishes too seriously, but did I look at their posts and think to myself: these people don’t and needn’t give two fucks about how I spend my birthday or if I just aged another year; why are they posting this?

Either way, no matter how I care (or don’t) about it, it was just a a date and a change in number to go on my official documents. 

You guys tell me, now: am I the only one who feels this way or am I not alone?

(And also, I apologize for any lack of coherence or bad syntax or pompous tone or ill logic or whatever I really can’t be bothered to edit it too sleepy yeah bye)

“I’m going home.” …But where?

The definition of “home”: The place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household.

But that’s not it, is it? The definition no longer applies, I don’t think, to people who move a lot (e.g. to other countries, or to other houses, etc). “Permanent” would then be relative. And I’m not sure what I’m getting at, so this may turn out to be a jumble of stream-of-con. words typed out to simply help myself think. 

And it can’t be that easy. If it were, a problem solved by a mere definition, what would that make the saying “home is where the heart is”? That would be the connotation of “home” to most. Then again, you can’t know for sure where your heart is. How would you then be able to distinguish the places you like and the places you would want to call home? And does liking a place mean that you could call it home? Must it be a specific area or building or can it be a country?

I have a feeling that I’m just messing my own head up, but I can’t put my finger on where and how.

Sorting through the huge convoluted mess that makes up my head right now, I suppose I’m just trying to find a place that I myself would call my “home”. I want to know what kind of criteria I have and which places satisfy them.

Y’know, I don’t really understand the urge to “go home” that people often speak of and I doubt that I ever did. There have seldom been times when I genuinely wanted to go back home–out of boredom, out of the lack of something to do, out of tiredness, out of…whatever. I can’t even remember any. I’ve always been one to want to get OUT of the house, not necessarily to have fun, but mostly just to bring my work/stuff somewhere else where I can concentrate. Even the wi-fi isn’t enough to anchor me at home now, not with all those cafes nearby. (And maybe that’s the problem–I can’t concentrate at home. I’m productive only when I’m outside.) So I guess that my current reside isn’t really the place I should be thinking of.

But if it was just somewhere I liked to be, it would be Dunkin Donuts. But would I call it home? Fuck no.

Now, suddenly leaping back to the saying “home is where the heart is”–assuming that it’s a country that it’s referring to, I pleasantly find myself face-to-face with yet another clusterfuck. After all this moving and whatnot, I somehow can’t find myself being inclined to any country at all. In fact, the only country that I might feel inclined to go and live in is one that I have never previously lived at. Or visited above the age of six. 

The answer eludes me. Perhaps there isn’t an answer. Maybe it’s another of those “if your given name is only something to identify you with and is completely irrelevant to you as an individual, what is your real name and how would you be able to discover it” things. If that’s the case, I’ll just go and perform a Headdesk x2 combo. Calmly and serenely.

I think I just wrote a jumble of random words that, somehow, happens to quite nicely convey how confused I am about this at the moment. 

If I had to narrow my choices down and give them rankings, No.1 would probably be my childhood home in Singapore, because that’s where I grew up and where most of my (happy) childhood memories lie. Second to that would be another reside in Shanghai, one that I moved out of two years ago. But I disagree with these, sort of, because I wouldn’t want to go back to that home in Singapore to live permanently–I think of it as…as where the memories lie? They’re more home to those memories than to me. And although there had been awesome moments in the other, they’re a bit clipped and really, it’s only those bits that I hold on to. Mixed feelings on this one here.

For now, I’ll be content to think that home is where one feels…”at home”. Comfortable. Relaxed. A place that both satisfies the definition of the word and also one’s own criteria. That place would, as of now, and for me, be my room. It’s a huge mess, but I like the mess because it shows life. Most of the time I can’t concentrate on my studies here either, partly because of the mess, but I’m comfortable to say in the least and quite happy with the fact that 1) my stereo, 2) my tablet, 3) my bed are all in here.

This is quite a lame anticlimactic conclusion, I know, especially after all that pointless going in circles and whatnot. But as I had previously warned, this is something of a stream-of-con. post, and I’m just trying to put my thoughts to…paper blog (?) in the hope that they come out as coherently as I’d hoped they would.

I guess they failed me.

If there’s anything you people would like to say, though, please be my guest. I’m going to try and make more sense out of this string of thought later, when I’m not so tired, so any suggestions will be very welcome.

(Also, I might have been paying too much attention to the awesome Homestuck music…)

Longest post so far, I think.