Bystander

The wonder of Facebook allows me to find a lot of my schoolmates. It’s amazing that after all this years, my schoolmates, some of which I have not heard of since the last day of SPM, suddenly appeared on my page. The sad thing is I don’t even remember half of them. I’ve tried all I can but still can’t recall anything about them. Very sad, looks like I really did block that part of my memories.

It is interesting seeing how they are right now. This guy who was in the same tennis team with me now works in Japan, speaking fluent Japanese. He’s married with 2 kids. This girl who was also my primary schoolmate is now the Director of Operations of some company and is also married with 2 kids. This one guy has his own company, that other guy works abroad; the list is too long really, and too depressing.

I’m so far behind it was embarrassing when they asked me ‘Hey, what do u do now?’.

It shouldn’t be a surprise actually, I just have to look around me to see where I’m standing, where I’m at. I just have to look at my friends and my colleague, and it will be quite obvious.

And I just need to look at my siblings. It just dawned to me that I’m the only one in the family who is not ‘set’ yet. A very frustrating fact but the most frustrating part of that was I only, for whatever stupid reason, realise this fact last weekend! All this while I thought while I’m not ‘Mr Established’, I’ve been doing ok but when I thought about it, I mean really thought about it, I have nothing.

Let’s look at my siblings. My Along, she is the one who takes care of everyone so I think that is already saying enough. My Angah is married with 2 kids and has a stable and promising career with a filthy rich bank while his wife was already featured in an annual report of a big healthcare company. My Alang, the one I’m staying with right now is also married with 2 kids. Her husband, insyaalah, is going to be a petrol station owner soon.

And then there is me. What do I have going for me?

I work at GUP. Right now 2 of my colleagues are using laptops. They have to share the charger as there is only 1 working charger available. This one guy, he uses PC but his monitor keeps switching off every 5 minutes. He now uses a monitor that personally belongs to another colleague of mine. That colleague of mine who owns the monitor, she had to be in hiding for weeks because our partners kept calling her asking when will they get their money, which we don’t have. Oh and we might go bust by February.

So why don’t you leave, idiot? Stop complaining and do something about it.

Well I am, I’m working on it. It’s for real this time. And I will also take things more seriously. I’ve been hiding behind my ‘I don’t want much in life’ attitude for too long, when the truth is I’m just a coward, too scared to even try. Time is running out for me. And I believe I’m also running out of luck.

I’m a bystander. I stood still all this while, watching everyone and everything moves around me. While I stood still, they were doing stuff. They experienced things, good or bad, success or failure, it didn’t matter. They took actions.

I don’t want to be a bystander anymore. I need to start ‘experiencing’ things as well.

So wish me luck, I’m going to need a lot of it.