Many a times, small disagreements are best swallowed for the sake of a more lasting coexistence.

The exceptions are that which I'm not adept at recognising, that which drastically threatens peace.

Such loud music blaring.
The lyrics sound as though they're being spoken into my heart.
The pounding driven right into my head.
A most curious sensation as a lean against surfaces which need necessarily take my weight. Weight I don't want to take now.

As if I were drunk.
As if I were drunk.

Incompetent.
The level of my incompetence makes me amazed at myself.

If it's not a joke to everyone that I obtained a scholarship, it must be a mistake.
Someone as grossly incompetent as myself! So useless and so incapable of helping anyone including herself.

Who am I kidding. There are millions of more deserving candidates out there.
We are but the stars' tennis balls indeed, and I must be the one element meant to start of a cacophony of jeers.

What the heck is the point of someone who dreams big and does nothing?
What the heck is the point of someone who dreams big and fails at everything?

It's a joke.

Sleep eludes me.

Sometimes the means in which you choose to defend and justify yourself is so disgusting that you just about doom yourself to the fate of being hated.

When it all dissolves in flames, you won't even think it's your fault.

When you lose everything, your finger will continue to point at all but yourself, even as you destroy all we have in your malevolence.

But no one would ever think themselves evil, would they?

All living things are built to try to survive. Mankind, blessed with brains, are just plagued with a greater ethical obligation.

At it's weakest, humankind would sink to looking the other way to survive. Looking away, even from their own sins.

None of us will pass through the void untainted. Don't dream that you're the exception.

It makes me wonder how people can think that the human race has progressed, how people are living happily.

Superficial.

How is it possible that mankind has progressed, when the modern world creates sins never before met in the innocent eras of the past?
How can mankind progress when the light of greater merits, greater beauty and greater sacrifice are outweighed by the darkness of want, selfishness, oppression, hate, anger?

This system cannot sustain itself on as large a scale as planet Earth. It may work for individuals, groups, countries. But not for everyone.

There will always be people crushed.
There will always be people silenced.
There will always be people left behind.

And there will be people who we are at a loss to help. Not only when we ourselves, imperfect, fail to find the best solutions... But when as a whole, mankind in general has no solution for the problems they inadvertently created.

Let me apologise in advance, if through this post I sound obnoxious. And apologise again, for this is not going to be exactly a pleasant read. It's about my birthday.

Many of my friends have found that, particularly in the last two years or so, I was quite stubborn about not getting my birthday celebrated. That said, year after year I continually get surprised by how much thought I receive from them- the love and the remembrance that evokes a different kind of warmth in me... Even when the vehicle was finding loopholes in the way I voiced my request.

Please don't get me wrong. I really appreciate it- everyone who remembered, and wished me a happy birthday; friends who went out of their way to do me a note, choose me a gift, all who went out of my way to remind me that I was loved.

But this year... Please let it be different. Please let me have my way, and do me the favour of taking my seemingly nonsensical request seriously.

Don't celebrate my birthday.
Don't shower me with presents.
If possible, don't remember it at all.

Too many negative connotations from long ago, that ceased my fascination with the day I was born almost alongside my fascination for having cake for the sake of blowing out the candles.
Too many negative connotations, that inevitably weave themselves into my perspectives.
Too many negative connotations. After 2011 I'm finally putting my foot down.

A few responses might arise at this juncture- but it really isn't about changing those negative connotations; those negative connotations merely pushed me towards seeing how my birthday is merely another day, in 365 days a year, in an infinite number of years our world will live to see. And in spite of my opinion towards my own I would love to celebrate my friends' birthdays. It's a time for showing remembrance of the fact that I'm blessed to have met them, to have them so long by me... And to build more memories particularly on this day they value. It's something they've done for me, too- taking time off their schedule where possible, putting thought into purchases and planning. It's something I want to do for them too.

Ironic. All this can be reversed to rebut my decision. And despite thinking this myself I unfairly decide that my friends should yield to my feelings instead of logic that is as clear as day.

But I really don't value that day for myself, and wish that my friends don't value it for my sake. This is really not about seeing if anyone remembered my birthday. It's not about seeing if anyone is bothered enough to find ways around my request to celebrate for me regardless.

Time will continue in an endless stream, birthday or not. I'm just another human in this wide wide planet- let me be that, on this day as with all other 364 days a year.

Just let me be selfish about this, and let me have my way. It's the ultimate sign of acknowledgement- allowing for my perspective, reluctantly or not, and choosing to yield to that, despite what courtesy and custom usually enforce.

I just want to be as ordinary on that day as I always am.

I won't be making a wish over a cake dotted with candles anymore. I won't close my eyes to mutely wish.

But if I were to wish this year, it'd be that I get to stay in contact with my friends. More so this year than in previous years, precisely because the thread that had led us to meet each other had been cut. We're all at a new and different phase of life. We're going to grow, learn, and experience things that will change us as people in our journey of growing up.

Meeting my friends have filled pages and pages of my life with colourful ink strokes, guiding me out of oblivion, staying with me through the darkness, and lit the orbs that gifts me sight.

While my lack of initiative in creating meet ups may show otherwise... It's really something that cannot be written off.

... July 2014. Let me be done the favour of being obliged by those who know me best.