Dabbling with a new frontier font and beginning a new entry to handle my morose extremes, the writer hither comes despondent, as usual, having endured three consecutive days of these last four prone to routine leads toward unequivocal anxiety attacks.
Anxiety attacks have a foregone frequency to them these days, unlike but comparative to the common thread of neurotic pandemonium through periods of responsibility, like work. The inconsistency of my illogical nerve has been tackled since those unstable days of the dark ages, where each day more or less upon discovering my anxieties was to some degree by them controlled. Even so, in this age bereft in loss and nothingness, with few cushions and with fewer tolerant distractions around, those elemental nerves still stomach in me. This is why today was so tumultuously hard.
To place the intensity of stress related to today in perspective compared to my relationship with anxiety before, it would have to be said that like the age of innocence before terrorism and subsequently afterwards, when all our thoughts first go out to foul play, my anxieties were similarly treated unto me.
Since the innocence of the lost years and inexperience that followed afterwards, my life has been opening up with discoveries, where my character traits blossomed, women seeded by my side and anxiety was yet undiscovered, only known as that shady claw called claustrophobic confrontations. Having the world at my fingertips, you could say, meant my condition never knew anxieties back then. What’s more, being swept up in my development faze attributed to the late discovery of this hereditarily displayed condition.
A long list of insecurities since the lost years tumbled me into an epoch of lowering self-esteem whose psychological awakening eventually delivered me to this timeline of anxiety today.
Lacking Identity At Primary School
A trace of elements in this timeline from oblivious bliss to raw sobriety would have my journey begin when life for me began, at the conclusion of school.
Leaving school happened to be my first independent decision. Before this, school was a blur lacking critical identity. School was a time where no real purpose was etched because the purpose of school was never really properly explained.
Layers of my recollections distance me deeper and deeper away from my original point. Regardless, my parents collectively only saw around ten grades of school between them, so the principles of school were never really enforced.
Moreover, in my parents’ detached state of moral support when sending me to school, the point of it was lost on me, leaving me confused with little reward through primary school and beyond.
School happened to be so impersonal for me. Both bad and good memories intertwine, but the negative memories adhered all the more.
My First Day At Kindergarten
I remember the mixed emotions of my first day at preschool. Dad walked me to the gates of the school on the day. He probably came in as well, but it was an anxious time for me. I remember asking what any five-year-old would have.
“Do I have to go?”
The unpreparedness my parents showed stained my canvas mind a dab with uncertainty.
I scarcely remember primary school. But there was a moment in fifth grade where a point of certainty opened up my eyes. Primary school was a haze of activity where teachers seemed too beset to be as nurturing as they would have. But once in class, in fifth grade, we were all asked to write a book, which we stapled the covers for and presented ourselves. Before this day it was just glue and cutouts to paste, but this was where my real imagination begun.
Having a simple linear mind, my story at the time was highly plagiarized, starring an egg that page by page, more and more people tried in cooperation to crack, until eventually the egg began to crack. Out came an alien called Mork.
I remember this day as an awakening, like something had clicked inside of my head. While my story may not have been as fluid or in laud by the teacher as the girl with the flowing pen, it was a masterpiece in my mind, deserved of the dozen or so ticks of approval competed for on the cardboard back of the book. I was so convinced with my book that it had to outshine the others. So this would have been my first glimpse of passion, unbeknownst to me at the time.
Having A Crush In Primary School
Primary school had some bad memories as well. Since being dropped like in a chute to the tending of my grades, school heralded many experiences. One of them was a tale of mindless, foolish stupidity, when young love had destroyed me.
During a time in the fifth or so grade when learning about crushes, there was this girl, and then there was me with my blunt persistence. I remember standing near the bubblers one day wondering whether to ask her out or not, and the bashful incursion, and then the outright refusal she displayed. Hearing her so sure sounded a bell in my head, which was an obscure lesson at such an early age.
Nonetheless, she had me so spellbound that each day afterwards, she was pounded with the same pitiful question, again and again. Having been refused made me so distraught because it was a passion of mine to go out with her, sort of like my being taken over to write that outstanding story.
The Red Light Disco Dance
A pattern of passion thence was forming, actions, which only were to rouse me from my haze. I persisted and persisted however, all in the face of adversity, as my belle kept shouting, “No!” She shouted that until eventually one of her girlfriends buckled to make her see some reason.
She danced one dance with a pouted-faced me during a red-light disco. Of course, the whole experience was creepy for her, considering she had this obsessed stalker child desperate enough to visit her house with a ten-dollar gold-plated necklace. Ah, yes, she was worth it. But then even whilst her mother objected gravely to the indignity she showed me at the door, like a callous wench, she threw my hopes straight past my ear and beyond me to the grassy floor.
I did however dance with her afterwards, so my hopes through all their gut-wrenching ups and downs ultimately did settle at a pass. But this experience for the first time showed up my human side.
Young love destroyed me, it had incapacitated me but in the end, all it took was one dance, one chance touch of skins to put my mind at ease, and then it was fine, all that tension before, put to rest.
The Development Of Awareness
Between this preoccupied faze of chasing girls on the oval and the courtyard, there was my good memory when first learning to write the alphabet. I remember a sense of accomplishment in identifying my style, which in a way was a creative thing. However, my purpose was still not etched, since neither my parents nor teachers instilled a consciousness of thought in me. So my function at school remained undefined.
Whilst having a host of friends, my identity in those primary years remained abstract and undisclosed. I recall the discipline of roll call and the lackadaisical disconnect in class, and the clockwork walks up my big hill heading home when all my fantasies of activity emerged. But little about my interaction at all on playgrounds is remembered.
In the fourth, fifth and sixth grade my life was robustly social, but my awareness to connect the dots was never there. So more or less, whilst it was a hyper recollection, there was a certain gulf to my days, an isolation, which made my days seem no better than randomly reset.
Everything was continuous but nothing was ever connected. I played with friends at school but played with others when at home. Perhaps all my waking hours were spent connected to those friends, but my awareness kept school life and social life distinct. Regardless, all my senses of awareness grew on me at different stages.
My emotional awareness became apparent in the annals when chasing that girl. A part of my intellect switched on in my craze of flow with that book. My social awareness came slowly from its shroud with a galore of friends to play flicks with or sit with near the sandpit at the back of the school. Then my physical awareness came much later.
The Fight In Primary School
Perhaps a flash of my physical incompetence came to me in first or second grade when a tussle broke out with me and some tall afro freak. Him and myself through no discretion of my own began arguing over some toys. I only knew anger at the time where he knew how to push me down the stairs, which was a lesson of consequence so early in my childhood, and of my physical culpabilities.
Anyway, my experiences in primary school were varied with roads to awareness, divided continuity, disconnect and obtuse paralysis in an eccentric kid. Insecurity or anxieties were never a part of my primary experience, but the forging of my identity was. It was probably this knack to learn for myself independent of what no one else nurtured into me or informed me of that survived me intact until the lost years rolled in.
Missing High School Initiation Day
High school was a different ballgame altogether to which anxiety was more prevalent. Missing my initiation day made me anxious because my whole class paid the fare to be introduced to their new dwelling, whilst my teacher minded a lone me.
I remember the principle used us on that day in menial labor to wash the school yards and clean the school walls. But showing my true rascal colors, some days later, my closest friend was coaxed down with me to steal the spray cans, and hide them somewhere. My awareness for important things wasn’t up to scratch however, whose loafing ways impacted me insecurely.
Being one of the only ones to miss my initiation day and being uncertain about what location to move onto made enrollment an anxious time. Perhaps my older brother helped more in my final decision to enroll in the high school up the road, but it only earmarked the lack of leadership in my household.
Brother Is A Mixed Role Model
Of course, my parents were immigrants trying to grapple with Australian society, but my brother seemed to grow up quicker. He used to sneak out of the house via the bathroom when he was my age, because my parents would ground him from his friends. His experience may have been different to mine either because he was a difficult child or because as mum protected me, she mothered me. In any case, my brother was about the only beacon to look up to.
Shame he kept abusing me however, by beating me up for playing his computer. His sadism made me a little conflicted, along with the morality conflicts of my parents punishing him, which made him an imperfect role model. He was a person that seemed to follow his own set of rules, but his gung-ho actions often denigrated him in my eyes.
First Day At High School
Regardless, high school from its onset was a daunting experience. Lack of preparation basically threw me into the deep end, as seriousness was instilled.
I remember humiliation when pacing around out the front of the school gates for twenty minutes, barely knowing we had to congregate in the courtyard, but not knowing where it was. Walking into the school grounds was intimidating thanks to my lack of an initiation day. Worse still was to then ask some kid directions, which he let me follow him late to a packed courtyard of disciplined kids. I had new pens and new books and a new bag on my back too. Then it was on, carrying with its four-some years, many coming-to-age memories, both good and bad.
Teen Angst In High School
Anxiety was more prevalent in high school because of tests, because of puberty, because of responsibility, and because of girls. But its consequences were still infantile, unable to ferment into anything yet.
School was about adopting a behavior of observational analysis, quite like mine now. I would take things in but never really react to them unless it more or less intrinsically interested me.
Drawing Comic Strips In School
Drawing in the seventh grade was one of my foremost passions, which leant to an imaginative idea of making a comic strip.
“If you devoted so much time to your studies instead of those silly drawings,” you would probably imagine some teachers saying. But most of them were not even amused to care, carrying on persistently with their curriculum.
I in the same way was disinterested with what most people taught, rebelling silently at heart until the lunch bell rang.
Some teachers tried to snap their fingers at my tedious frame at the back of the class, but all that got them was a date with me in detention afterwards. I was shamed in these times with the teacher leaving his classroom door slightly open with his classroom hecklers slightly in view, but it did little to grow me up.
Life at school hardly progressed me, apart from the handball games outside and my few close friends whose pecking order was low on the list. Humiliation came in packets, which were part of my bad memories, but most of my experiences always had a positive slant.
Dealing With Bullies In School
I for example was fodder for the school bully, along with my compatriot, the machine. We were the now and again punching bags until our bully developed a conscience. Our tormentor only dallied in his power, never intentionally trying to harm us. But it blackened our pride somewhat.
I stood up for myself however on one occasion, which was a spontaneous thing when a punk hanger-on of the bully decided to kick into me on a flight of stairs. He winded me in the stomach, to stand there smirking at his friends. Almost instinctively, my foot rounded to strike him back fair. He too hunched down in surprise with the wind out of his sails.
We went on blow for blow with neither of us willing to give in, until eventually the bully threw in a flag and called his boy up the stairs. I knew it was my victorious day. But unsurprisingly, it never resonated much mental emotion in me. Instead, my class was waiting. Almost as if nothing had happened, my day went on without a glitch.
Finding My Passion In Music
I was never quite there at school. I remember treating it like my backyard for some years, jumping off terraces to play tip until it was no longer cool. I remember my bad streak of truanting undetected for months in a year, and still graduating. School made no sense to me to bluntly put it.
But again, in music class, my passions stirred. Imagination and creativity was therefore my threshold. But no one really sought to encounter that in me. I therefore, like most of my life before me, had to discover by myself my identity. I was never really neglected but never really had people to explain things for me either.
There was neither leadership nor role models around me. So life in that essence was lame and unrecognizing. That is why my schooling was cut short, in my own decision to leave, to receive government allowance and to straightaway land my first job at Meco & McCallum.
My only bond to school was my music teacher. He was leaving at the end of year 11, so there was no point in pursuing any other course there. I happened to discover myself once independent in my teens anyhow.
The Final Year At High School
I wonder sometimes what my money was spent on in that yearlong before my memoirs came? But to be sure, most of it was spent in buying clothes, shedding an old cardboard personality and finding new friends. My exploits at the gym must have made me buy a lot of supplement products too, as well as our trips to the movies, the skate rink and many weekends driving with friends old enough to own cars.
I experienced a nonexistent whelm of insecurity or anxiety within this period, during my golden age of girlfriends. Identifying with lots of muscle magazines and ample excessive hours in the gym finally had me come of age, and the girls loved my fledgling sense of security.
Ah, the age of innocence, the variable vein before life stagnated to so predictable. I remember how loved a prime it was and even more when the lost years followed. But sadly, in eventuality, good things must come to an end, and when my apparent awareness clicked, in so it did.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
