I had an epiphany on Christmas Day at precisely 12:06 a.m. this morning.

"The individual is an illusion... he is tolerated only so long as his complete identification with the generality is unquestioned"

---Adorno & Horkheimer

I was thinking about a friend who is currently in the States on a scholarship. She wasn't much more intelligent than I was, but she has an undeniably larger presence than I have right now. Which is strange because we have been friends and rivals for as long as I remember. We are more alike than I realised.

I remembered the disillusionment when I realised that somewhere along the way I had fallen by the wayside. Something had changed in me and affected me so much so that I lost my direction in life, spending it away on chasing little gilded baubles instead of the bright shining star we both had aimed for.

I realised that I wasted time on trying to analyse what went wrong instead of just ignoring it and just soldiering on. Instead I blinded myself in self-pity and doubt.

I should concentrate on important things. But what are the important things? I falter when I try to put a definite term to these important things.

And my friend? She envies me and my creative bent. An observation I often forget when I mope. Some of us are blessed with some talents and others with other gifts. My friend is very quick and has a very sharp and cutting wit.

Yet she confesses it was hard work for her to do some subjects which are intuitive for me. It was the same with me. Economics, math, I would have done well in those; I loved the sciences but I got tired of them because they required effort, more effort than those subjects which I grasped easily.

Sometimes, I forget. I dwell too much on what could have been. Yet... I know what is unimportant. The backstabbers and the scars left by one ex-BF. I can take them apart and decide what the lesson in life for each incident is, but I am still not satisfied. I cannot learn to be satisfied, not with such loose ends. So what is important?

The lesson about my friend is "carpe diem" and "hard work and perserverance pays off".

The one with the ex-BF was "Why let a guy affect your friendships?" and "You are only a victim if you allow him to abuse you" and "Some men cannot be trusted" and "You cannot save everyone" or even "Listen to your mom".

I know where my anger stems from. I am frustrated because at times my old confident articulation and intelligence pops up. And yet, and yet, I dither between this and that.

All these scars have healed into keloids which cover the tender flesh beneath. Ugly to look at and a very sore reminder of what I have been through. We never truly escape but we are victims if we make ourselves to be victims. It has taken me so long to realise this.

My strength is still there. I know. But each time I steel myself to go on, I jump back into the chasm I was in because that's where I have been for years and years and it's safe there.

The Chinese idiom of the "frog in the well" rings true for me.

The frog can see the blue sky through the well opening but refuses to leave the well for the wide world he sees and wants, because he is afraid.

Maybe that is what my BF sees beneath the ditzy, teary, emotional girl. He tells me that I am intelligent and articulate. I know, on rare occassions I can see it too, like the time I was debating Singaporean politics with C and L; little gems I hug close to me and as quickly forget about, in the looming self-doubt I am used to.

What brought this up?

A phone call.

My cousin called to invite the family to a Christmas gathering. She responded to my "Hello" without thinking, hearing something in the tone of my voice that prompted her to switch from the "family voice" to respond in a business-like manner, as if I was a potential client or a superior, before realising her mistake.

I could be inflating my own ego, but my first impression was to wonder at her abrupt switch in tone.

An unconscious manifestation of my old self.

Little gems. And maybe Christmas magic.