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I'm a little disappointed with myself, not because dinner yesterday was at Starbucks and I said "This deep dish beef pie is the reason why I'm never becoming vegan" or that I couldn't navigate Sentosa on my own even in the daytime. 

It was stupid, and unexpectedly so. It happened in Changi Airport — my sister and I were sitting on armchairs sipping a depressing caramel macchiato and trying to read our novels when these two guys wearing disgusting army-related t-shirts sat nearby and started having a conversation about their A level results day experiences, mainly describing vividly how their fears became unfounded when their names appeared on screen etc. etc. And my initial reaction was purely What is it with you science students and the pleasure you derive from doing well for subjects you never liked in the first place, the typical cynicism one would expect from literate and erudite arts students. But subsequently I became starkly and uncomfortably conscious of my own jaundiced memory of that day, how I walked around in a horrible daze and into my lit tutors much like Colin Firth breaking down on Julianne Moore in A Single Man and the hall spinning like an unstable dream collapsing, how I forgot most of what happened after that but I ended up eating chocolate with fries and calamari. (I know, right?) 

Tawdry reminiscing aside, I realised how I haven't quite let go of my own disappointment re: the results I was given. It still hangs on me like cancer. Honestly I'm not sure why. It's not terrible by most people's standards, but then again there's no real objective way to respond to it. Maybe it's the awful feeling of failing to get distinctions for the components that I slogged day and night for. Maybe it's looking at other people and being partly amazed and happy for them, and partly confused with the disparity between us that our result slips professed, and mostly plagued day and night by the dissonance of it all. Maybe all the sorrow and grief accumulated in 2010 made me feel as if I was owed a debt of eventual success, like narratives that celebrate the "overcoming" of "hardship" and "yay" they are now holding their dream jobs and have just paid off the bank loan for their dream house, and if that was the reason I feel this way, it's disgusting and I feel utterly wretched about it. I miss being younger me and his ability to be more faithful, more excited about a bigger picture. 

Anyway I'm thankful for my sister and her blood-and-flesh sensitivity. It's real nice to have a sibling you can depend on to cheer you up. 

Also, a friend's mother has been diagnosed with the same cancer as my mum and aunt, and this is making me angsty. I'm like, I am fuckin' surrounded by people who smoke, and not a single one seems remotely concerned about their health. It doesn't seem fair that loving mothers who never handled cigarettes before have to go through ridiculous amounts of chemotherapy and radiation, put their careers on hold, waste away on bed with the pain of cancer treatment grating away in their veins, poisoning their tastebuds with the perpetual taste of metal and death, shave their heads only to have their children breaking down with the awful awful physical realization that this thing they call family isn't really the constant they used to believe in. All this, while teenage boys relish "smoke breaks" behind buildings in a grey choking haze. It's fucking unbelievable.