My life - Part 31

After my exams, it was a confusing time for me because my serene everyday life as I knew it, was fast coming to an end and I wasn't ready to face the next stage in life. Not just yet. My richer friends went off to do A-levels in private colleges. My father made it clear to me that he did not have enough money to send me to a private college. I found out later that this was a lie, because when my younger brother the Pest wanted to go to a private university, my father paid for his entrance fees and what nots, before he eventually applied for and obtained a student loan. My father could have done the same for me, but he must have thought I was not worth it. 

My poorer friends, who were in the same boat as me, applied for public universities, there were a few public universities that offered courses after Form 5, although at that time most public universities would only take in non-Malay students after Form 6. I didn't like any of the subjects offered by these universities, as they were all science based subjects such as engineering, computer science, robotics, gadgets, R2D2, C3PO, and other nonsense like that. I had to choose something, so I chose computer science. And then, a lot of my friends got accepted into university, including friends whose results were worse than mine, but I didn't get accepted. So a majority of my friends were all going away either to college or to university, leaving me behind with no plan and no clue as to what to do next. I had 3 choices - do Form 6, find a job, or get married. None of these options appealed to me. 

So at 17, I truly and sincerely believed that I was a failure. My parents certainly treated me like a failure after my Form 5 results, they tried to avoid me as much as they could, as if I had brought great shame to the family or as if they were housing a contagious leper. I had a feeling that after my results, my parents had written me off as a failure who will not amount to anything in life.

I used to joke with my friends that if I died, my mother would probably grieve for 3 days, and then she will remember her sons and be happy again, quite forgetting that she ever had a daughter. This is probably not true now, because my mother has changed over the years and so have I. But even now, I still think that this was true then. 

I failed my parents. No college for me. I failed to enter a public university. Most of my friends had left. I was all alone. I was the ugliest girl in the world. No one could ever love me. Even my own parents were ashamed of me. I had let everyone down. I felt trapped, like I had no where to go, no one to turn to, no happy ending for me. 

And so, one clear night towards the end of 1995, I tried to end it all. It didn't work.