Revelation

(This chronologically sits after the toothache entry and the mother entry)

As much as my relationship with my parents are strained when I live with them, one silver lining that I had always cherished when I was home was when my younger brother was around at home too. Most of my siblings would get to a certain age when they would want to fly the nest to go to a boarding school, and he was no exception. He did well in his PMR and he duly left for a boarding school in Penang, so I didn’t get to see him as much as I would have liked. After his SPM he went for his foundation, thankfully that time he only had to do it in Puncak Alam, but he was still not home much. I left for Jeli around the time he finished his foundation and was about to come home. Yep, FML. He is eight years younger than I am, but we are really close, a lot better than how my parents are with me. We share the same physical characteristics, slim, dark skinned and we are spectacled, and we also share the same morbid sense of humour (all thanks to me of course), although we are slightly different in our temperament. He is more religious, chatty (boy can’t stop yakking in the car) and my parents are closer to him than they are to me because he is more obedient. Far from being jealous at him, I am relieved that he is who he is as we the children undeniably need someone who is traditionally considered a bearer of the family name after my parents and take over my father’s business and he fits the bill better than I do. Whereas I prefer to start my own clan, complete with my own coat of arms, motto, and all that jazz.

That’s why when he volunteered to come with me when he heard that I was moving to Kelantan at the end of 2011, I accepted his offer right away. He was at the tail end of his foundation studies, and had a few days to spare. Plus my mother was insisting that she came with me. It was not that I was ashamed to be seen with my parents, but come on, I am in my mid 20’s and if I couldn’t move without my parents’ help, I might as well cut off my own penis and start wearing dresses to work. When he came with me, he only stayed for two days in Kota Bharu because I spent my first two months in Kota Bharu, and he never got to see Jeli when I was eventually assigned to this place.

Fast forward five months later, I asked him to come visit me because he was sitting at home doing nothing (the gap between his finals and university intake is really, really long). He said yes, lured by the prospect of playing my Playstation non-stop. So when I returned to Jeli from my monthly balik kampung session (I find it queer that for me; my ‘kampung’ is more urbanised than my place of permanent residence, whereas for many Malaysians it is quite the opposite), I brought him with me, along with my mother’s extra cooking utensils, pots and pans and the likes. I included the cooking utensils in my last sentence because 1) my brother is quite handy in the kitchen and he was planning to cook for the both of us in Jeli and 2) to show that my mother can be a real sweetheart when she is not constantly breathing down my neck.

I was glad to have company. I would do the bare minimum required from me at the office so I could go home, hang out with him and watch that CBS show ‘The Big Bang Theory’. And getting home to a hot meal is so awesome, it was like having your mom around, minus the nagging. Apart from that, I took him to KB again when I had to attend a meeting there, and also to Pantai Irama in Bachok. He wanted to swim at the beach, so I swam with him although Pantai Irama is not exactly the nicest beach to swim at. But guess how I felt upon getting back in the car and hearing on the radio that an earthquake had just occurred off the coast of Indonesia, the same earthquake that also shook the island of Pulau Pinang a few months ago and triggered a tsunami warning. We laughed nervously to ourselves before quickly leaving the beach.

But nothing bad ever comes without the good and vice versa. One day while at work, I went out for lunch with a friend. It’s the same friend who informed me of the job opportunity here and I have a feeling that I’ll be mentioning her quite a few more times in my writing since she’s about the only person here I talk to relatively often so let’s upgrade her with a designation; let’s call her F. But hold the confetti. While having lunch, she told me “You know what? Since your brother was around, you’ve been looking a lot happier”. I duly thanked her for her compliment. But my mind did a double take on that remark, for you see, I’ve learnt that most compliments that we receive carry in them a subtle disparaging insinuation regarding our previous condition. What does your boyfriend mean with “you look great today”? Did you look like shit yesterday? “Great presentation just now”? So your previous presentations were bad? Ah, the bane of my existence; over-thinking. But the mind cannot unthink what it had already thought of.

“What do you mean I look happier now?”

“You know, you really looked miserable being in Jeli before he got here”

“How could you tell?”

“It was plain as day on your face”

It dawned on me. I wasn’t doing okay in Jeli; being away from my family and the things that I used to be able to do was starting to take its toll on me; and I was affected after all. And to learn about it from someone else. She had unintentionally incepted an apprehension in my mind. I started worrying. Was I really miserable? And am I going to be more despondent when I am alone again after my brother returns home? 

Towards the end of my brother’s stay, I became more anxious. I was listless. If I couldn’t take being alone in Jeli for almost half a year, what is going to happen when it is time for me to go do what I came here to do; to further my studies? And even after that, I will have to come back here for seven more years as I’ll be bound to a contract with my employee who is going to foot my study bills. Eventually, my brother returned home. To his credit, my brother didn’t leave because he was bored or restless in Jeli, but because my father wanted him to help around the office. To my credit, I tried not making it obvious that I was upset at having to be by my own again by joking with him on the way to the bus station. But since I had just learned that I am not as good at hiding my feelings, who knows whether he bought my ruse or not?

The thing is, what F told me might not be true at all. Maybe she was just making a coincidental connection between two unrelated things; my countenance and my brother’s visit. Maybe if she had not told me about it, I might now be able to go on with my life blissfully unaware of my own state of mind, no worse than before my brother came to visit me in Jeli. But it had enough sense behind it for me to consider it, be aware of it and eventually be affected by it. Whether she was at fault or not, I have to admit that I’ve come to the realisation that my current life in Jeli, this self-imposed isolation, is not as peachy as I had expected it to be.

Or maybe I’m just exaggerating, that in the act of writing about an experience, I have unnecessarily influenced and altered my own feelings regarding said experience, instead of just describing it.