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you think you're chocolate

when you're chewing gum

2006-03-05

The entry in which she types alot (her whole heart)

Back from volunteering at the home for the elders. So tired, but haven't bathed because I need to blog! To put down my experience in words and to remember that I had these feelings and thoughts.

Detracted from blogging by chancing upon crystal online! It's so awesome to really have a chat, albeit a msn one:) Yays! Also surfing NUS's website has led me nowhere near decision-making.

Anyways, back to volunteering. As I told Simin, its a tiring eye-opener. I don't know why but everything seemed so sad and dreary that I actually cried when I was there. I felt so useless and whatnot, it's horrible to not know how to deal with overwhelming emotions, and trying to stop them but can't. I think one scene I cannot cannot forget was when the old ladies were just sitting there, you know, just sitting there and staring into space. Not talking, not doing anything, maybe not even blinking. It's like a room filled with empty shells. As if they're physically there but also somewhere else at the same time. I think it's not the ones with dementia that I can't deal with, it's this.

The nurse said something like we're all just here to give them temporary satisfaction. So they can get distracted and have fun, even for five minutes. And I guess even that counts. They don't have clocks in there, at least I didn't notice any.

At times I didn't dare look at their faces. Maybe I'm afraid to see too much, to read into what I think are their emotions, or the lack of it. As I'm looking at them and imagining what they're thinking and what their stories are, maybe they're looking at me and thinking, "I was once like her." Maybe they think I'm just someone from the outside world, and I can never truly enter, so we should just all play along. Because most of their faces are so devoid of emotion, I can't tell, really. Maybe everything is something I concocted, because I feel sad for them, because I think the life I lead now is better, because I think I will not end up like this.

The world shouldn't be filled with pity.

At one point then, I thought, maybe I should take pyschology, so I can understand and help and not only give pity and that moment's compassion. But once again, like everything else, I don't have any answers.

And then as I told Crystal, it's so scary to see how as we grow older, we go back to our original state, and become like children again, physically and mentally. Totally dependent, and yearning for attention, and also much simpler. I wonder if I can manage it, to see my parents turn old and stuff, to have a role reversal. I could get used to it, but surely it's uncomfortable. I hate talking down to the seniors when I feed them, as if they're babies, because they're not.

I'm too emotional sometimes I don't think I'm suited for social work and stuff. Because I'll bawl my eyes out most of the time. I guess the nurse was pretty amused, and so I said it's because it's my first time. Like it's an excuse. Deep down in my heart, I know it's not.

On one hand, I felt isolated and trapped in an already trapped place. On the other, I saw beauty in a place like that too.

The workers there are mostly non-singaporeans (says alot doesn't it), coming from different countries and all. But somehow I feel this connection amongst these people. So many backgrounds but they're capable of giving the same- time, heart and patience and smiles. It felt as if the trapped place opened up then, as if all mankind had that same capacity to love, and if this is possible (I'm sure they don't really work for the money) then the world isn't such a sad place and I shouldn't give the world any of my tears.

It's such a raw experience, maybe I've not seen the world in its entirety, not even a molecule of it. I want to do this. I want to. I need to? It makes you look at life differently, even for a few moments. While volunteering shouldn't be about 'I' or how 'I' feel but about GIVING, you have to somehow cross your own hurdles before you can get to the other side and be utterly utterly open to just do it without inhibition. Perhaps then I can give fully and give purely. Because now I still feel very much like a voyeur.

When I walked into the 'outside world', it feels strangely the same, when most would expect me to be so caught up by everything. The scariest thing of all is to be indifferent. I was not. But it was not one of those life changing experiences, where I decide to make-the-world-a-better-place be my life mission. No. I'm glad I could come out and still breathe and blink and feel and think, I wanted to escape like how the dementia patients do in there sometimes. I want to figure out how to Give and to really Love and to see all of them as part of me.

Slowly, slowly.

(A very small and random detail: One old lady scolded me for not peeling the banana properly.)

Yux chewed at 2:47 p.m.

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