Past Remeberance, Past all things that were Old

There are various parts of my life that I wished to forget. But the more I think about it longer it's really these incidents that shaped my life as a whole. I still bear the slight scars. But then again, in Christ I'm constantly healing. That's the thing about grace, you may fall, you may mess up big time, but it is He who lifts you up...an no matter of travesty could nullify this.

I never really was satisfied with my lot in this pecking order. The desire to surpass them all and prove them all in all things; this is why I took up art and music. To formulate the skills to actually say fuck you in the face. But there is where the rot comes in... it had all been self serving. It had all had the elements of a primal cry for help from the personal hell I felt so long ago.

To think all the waking moments of going to high school and planning my revenge. My 'poetic' end from this mundane world. I'd try causing a stir: streaking across the road from my college, to actually feign retardation for the sake for a few laughs. You'd think I was a revolutionary. But difference between individuals like Che and Malcolm with goof balls like me is at least they had a cause. For my case it was all sound and fury. But to what end? Nothing. Nil. Nada.

But what was relevant was the pain. It still comes back as a ghost. But I'm really happy to say it's relevance to my present day is dying away bit by bit.

Do I slip back and relapse. Oh yes...certainly. My friends are in line to make a crack or two. But this is the symptom of human behavior. Old habits die hard. But they certainly die faster in Christ.

But those days, man... the remembrance of teenage angst stalking the school corridors like a blood thirsty wolf.....

It was always a routine of going to school and looking at the pecking order from the outside. I had a handful of close friends. Most of them were acquaintances that I actually respected or just plain fucking hated. I guess of them some of them respected me for my open act of rebellion. Somewhere just plain annoyed by it. Understandable. But it had already became a point that it was actually my way of getting though the divide. Before this I had total abject fear of my peers. And rightfully so.... some where total jerks. I wonder how they feel now in this real world. The sheer pressure of the system now at their necks. It's their turned now to be the mocked.

The teachers were a mixed bunched though. Some were like the saergant in the movie 'Full Metal Jacket'; reining everyone with their militaristic rules and routines until you got it right. One guy I knew was Mr. Lawrence Lau who taught English. His weapon was the cane and usually quized any random student about the verbs and prepositions. You'd had to be dammed lucky to get if right because if you don't your punishment would come in a swift lash of the rattan cane.

Funny about the rattan can though....

We had so longed been bred to submission by this arsenal so much so that it became a way of life. The pain was stinging and sore but once you'd get past primary 3 you'd already consider yourself a veteran. I had the distinction of having to go to my principals office at Form 3 to join a roundup
of almost a dozen of academic misfits for a session of canning in the glueteus maximus. Still it's not as bad as being whacked at the hand. That, by the way, was agonizing.

It's really amusing now to see the clever and popular kids being bunched up in the top two classes. Even as I'd bumped into them once in a blue moon, I'd still consider the stuck ups of the highest order. They are the ones that sneer at the rest of us as if we're the future employees destined to be enslaved. You'd try get near to them and all you'd get a reception worthy as someone talking to himself at the hospital morgue. They never did seem to treat me, as well as my other fellor miscreants as humans with any feeling or heart. I really felt it when I made the attempt to join the Science and Astronomy club. Of all the feelings to have at a very impressionable age...to actually feel the sense of isolation is the worse feeling than actually being left dead at a ditch.

You'd really think you could escape all this on Sunday at he sanctity of church community. Wrong again! Still the same thing at sunday school and youth. the same damn subdivision in church for the same reason. The hip kids with the other hip kids. The geeks with the other geeks. You in the other hand? Well.... excuse me while I talk to myself!

It didn't help when the church was pouring heaps of guilt and condemnation to all of us kids. Telling us to live right and believe right. Here now the fascists of the peace. You'd better try damn hard not to tell anyone that you'd listen to Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple, for they'd absolutely would haul you to a deliverance and pound you until you are a mindless vegetable.My mom, for her misguided intentions, had sent me for deliverance prayer several times to cast me out of this demons of depression, not knowing that their dead end religiosity was the one that drove me to the edge. I had gotten rid of so many album cassettes in hope all things might change. Still...I always seemed to slip. It was back to square one again.

There wasn't any promise in life when you look at it. To be under the law and to be a social outcast was a lethal mix. To think all the subsequent trouble that could be avoided if I really know the grace of my Christ. But still I do consider myself an outsider. I know damn well there are people who scoffing at me because of my fallacies and of my faith. But what do they got that could nullify all this. You can see now I was nothing then. But now in Him I've already have His favour t even calm all storms. Consider those who were dreamers that became the rulers of this earth. Consider their meager circumstances to their God given glory. You all may say I'm piss but my Father has proclaimed my blessed. For all that I have lost now I have regained tenfold.