On/of

I still recall the days of high school, when assignments seemed never ending, when it always appeared so hard to get up to go to school - even though I lived literally 100 metres away and could afford to get up at 8.30am and run.

Then, I recall the days of university, when assignments truly never ended, when I had to rise even before the first rays of the sun because I had no choice - because I wanted to get to my 7.45am lectures despite my exhausted body's protests.

And I remembered going on Beast's Lair then, ranting, moaning, looking forward to graduation when I'm promised with the potential of freer times, of more moments devoted to myself, to the aspects of the world that I love.

However, as I stepped into my pre-reg year I realised that I had been a fool.

That all my childish frustrations are but what they were, facets of the selfisheness and stupidity that I, as a human, had embodied.

Of the illusion of freedom that I dreamt of in maturity.

Of the concept of living that I had looked forward to.

There is no such thing as living. Existing, perhaps - for that is all that I can afford when working 10 hours a day.

Walking home from work in a sunshower, my manager's warning about how a girl was ran down by a speeding car yesterday afternoon and died echoing in my ears, I had decided not to plug my earphones into my iPod and turn up the volume, not to drown out the spite, the weariness, the fatigue, or to forget a day's worth of ranting patients who haggled with me as if it could have made a difference, of the tattooed customers who tried to flirt with me with a crooked and repulsive smile, of the phone calls, of the prescriptions, of the mask of a healthcare professional.

My stomach almost found the scent of the Halal fried chicken shop next to my pharmacy to be irresistable, and yet I did not stop. Such dallying would have certainly resulted in an upset phone call from my Mum, demanding me to come back to have dinner, though she certainly wouldn't have started cooking it when I got home and would then insist on my help. Not to mention all the studies still required of me as a pre-reg, mailing off assignments to the assessment centre, or the stunning millions of houseworks that many children are blessfully unaware of.

Even diamonds are no more precious than time for me now.

I am not complaining. Aware that this the road I myself have chosen, I do not regret. I am simply a little - disappointed.

Where had I gone wrong? Where had I fallen off?

Wait. No. Perhaps this valley of night is indeed the path that I must walk.

There is no Heaven. Even if it exists, it is a far-away, imperceptible Heaven - which I will reach someday, somehow.

Just not today, it seems.