Therapy?

Songs… for when words are not enough. For when words get in the way. For when other poets say it better. The past week I have been troubled by news of friends in peril. Wonderful friends who I depend on in my time of need. They could have happened to me, you, anyone… and my friends do not deserve this… but for now they have to endure just a little longer. Some are amazing tales of surpassing seemingly insurmountable odds. The only song that I can offer comes from the Manic Street Preachers, "There By The Grace Of God". It tells us of the power of belief. I hope you find strength in these words, my friends.

The opening bars of a simple looped drum machine, slowly descends into a deeply haunting guitar intro. You hairs begin to stand on end… and they stay that way for most of the song. And then the lead singer begins…

"And all the drugs in the world
Can’t save us from ourselves
Victims with the saddest hearts
Passing by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

This song is for an old friend back home, whose family tragedy struck him hard, cut him deep… and he, as the family’s eldest son, was unwillingly thrust into the limelight, suddenly assuming new roles, fearlessly protecting his family name… all this while harbouring a secret for many months. He knew… and it was just a matter of when. Inner strength I never knew existed.

"With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For a friend returning home, every weekend enduring a 4-hour journey to and back… for the sake of someone she could never replace… who raised her to become the strong woman she is now. Underneath her facade of smiles and good cheer, lies an old soul full of concern, and love unconditional. She continues to inspire the people around her, and has never broken down despite the unbearable truth.

"Lay down all your guns
Give them up and then move on
It doesn’t mean that you are dead
Passing by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For an old friend back home, to have to endure such a sudden… loss in the family. To hear the news being reported in the media over and over again. No one else could feel nor understand your pain right now, and I have but a word of comfort. God has His reasons, and His ways are beyond our understanding. Please harbour no hatred in your heart, and place your trust in Him. Your darkest hour will soon be over.

"With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For someone nearby, who thought her world fell to pieces after an unexpected phone call… and a severed relationship… but had many people around who helped put the pieces back together. She felt betrayed… but never knew she was so loved by the family and friends around her. She has found her guardian angels in return.

"With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For a friend nearby, who thought his closest friends were finding companionship elsewhere, and leaving him slowly… who has had attacks of feeling lost and lonely, who retreated to his sanctuary but yearned for the company of friends old and new. But his friends are always behind him… and he has no reason to fear. He only had to take a look around.

"There by the grace of God…"

For an old friend abroad, who believed his whole life that hard work pays dividends… who was proven right time and again in a lifetime of written, oral and practical examinations, only to have that belief shattered when his chances of employment seemed scarce. He feels cold, bitter injustice… and needs more than a miracle to thaw his stone-cold heart. He needs hope.

"With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For an old friend in a hospital, a reluctant scholar all her life, wanting only to care for the needy in her single-minded pursuit of medicine… Once an angel of pure heart, now facing a time of trial. Made to learn the lesson of devotion and dedication at the cost of her time, and nearly her own sanity… weekend on-calls and day-long ward work. She knows she has to overcome this… but she is barely holding onto a thread…

"With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

For someone I know, who sleeps with the lights on… who had to endure a terrible childhood with tremendous reprecussions… on your livelihood, your shying away, your happiness, your tears. Let the monsters of your past haunt you no more. I hope you will one day smile again, and be brave enough to stand on your own.

"And all the drugs in the world
Can’t save us from ourselves
Victims with the saddest hearts
Passing by the grace of God
There by the grace of God…"

And finally, for someone I know… who lives and survives each day, with no regrets. She leads a blessed life… come what may.

By the grace of God, we survive.

This is a story everyone has read before, and will we told again for generations after. Especially in the context of our country… with a lesson to learn, and an image to upkeep. Does anybody remember this? Four childhood friends with four generic names, Ali, Ah Meng, Muthu and John, stick together like, in the words of Forrest Gump, "bees to honey". They live in the same neighbourhood, attend the same school, look out for each other. Inseperable. When the time came for university, they finally went their separate ways but with a promise… to meet each other at least 4 times in a year, during Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Christmas.

4 times in a year… at that time I thought it was ridiculous. How does anyone sustain friendship like this? I certainly could do better. But then what did I know when I was 8?

More than 10 years on I’m eating my own words.

Granted, I have seen my old friends nearly everyday in school for God knows how long.

Granted, I have all their contact numbers, e-mail addresses, MSN IDs, and even home addresses so I will never lose contact with them.

Truth is, I have been taking my old friends for granted.

It wasn’t always like this. Right after Form 6 we had our own Yahoo group, to update each other, check where we were at. And even when I was in UPM I woud be calling people left and right on weekends if I returned Ipoh, to see if anyone was too. And best yet, half of any of my holidays would be spent looking up friends in their respective unis… Penang and Cyberjaya used to be my favourite haunts.

Like the Celine Dion song… "those days are gone".

As time bore on, the only time I looked forward to seeing my old friends was in Chinese New Year. The rest of the year would be blamed on overwork, lack of holidays, increasing comfort with new friends and conflicting schedules… most were not necessarily true. Time slipped silently past, and then the Paradox of the Great Divide happened, or more likely the fear of it: The longer apart you are with someone the less you have to talk about when you eventually meet up. The fear of bring able to sustain more than a 15-minute conversation was stifling… after you ask how they were doing and where they were, what next?

A year has past. My Penang and Cyberjaya friends have quite literally switched places. Those that have graduated in Penang have started working in KL and vice versa. My favourite haunts diminished, I was losing touch even further still.

But then, as always, fate has a funny way of giving you a boost.

Besides festivals, there were certain events that would always bring people together without fail. Reunions, convocations, sending offs… weddings. In other words, fate handed me a Get Out Of Jail Free card. A very fortunate ex-classmate of mine has found his life partner recently. By sheer chance alone he still had my number and casually invited me to his reception. So casual in fact I thought he was asking me to a regular weekend yumcha session.

"Hello Ah Lau, remember me onot?"
"(Stark realisation that I deleted his number) Er…"
"It’s Ah Teoh."
"OH! (establishing familiarity by calling old nickname) Luen mou ***!!!"
"Aiya, don’t say liddat la. So long never talk already…"
"Orite la, wassup?"
"I’m getting… married to Yee Ching this weekend. Will you be in Ipoh?"
"Sure."
"Come over my place Saturday night alright?"
"I’ll be there."
(Stark realisation that I’ve forgotten where he stayed)
*click*

What a friend I was. But once again, I was homeward bound. Where my thought’s escaping, where the music’s playing.

The best part of the weekend was discovering who else was back too. I called up my best friend in secondary school and found out he was also back in town.

"Hey Ah Pok."
"Hey Ah Lau." (our names were quite monosyllabic)
"Going Ah Teoh’s right?"
"Yeah."
"You know where that place is?"
"Think so. Somewhere in town."
"Goodgoodgood. I pick you up tomorrow OK?"
"Sure."
"(Stark realisation that I’ve forgotten his house number) Your house is No.52 right?"
"It’s No.44."
"Dang."
*click*

After picking Ah Pok up… somewhere in the middle of town, we got lost anyway. More time in the car catching up with old times, I guess. A quick phone call remedied that, and moments later we were at Ah Teoh’s pad, early even. One by one the familiar faces popped up, my old classmates… it’s like high-school all over again. Some things never change. No matter what type of person you’ve become over the years in university, back here you’ll still stick with the people you’re close to, remain unfamiliar with those you aren’t, and if you weren’t a ladies’ man back then… well you still aren’t. Dang.

Nonetheless the evening went on fantastic, and continued till deep into the night. There was no pause of conversation. Old times, new times, good times, bad times… if not for the wedding photos it seemed like it was 1999 again. We all left on very good terms… the Paradox of the Great Divide seemed not to exist anymore, and I was proven wrong.

A hearty congratulations to Ah Teoh and Yee Ching. May your lives be filled with joy and laughter. To all those at the reception, it’s been great seeing you guys again, and sorry I couldn’t make it to the wedding dinner. But we will see each other again soon.

So… lesson learnt? Seek out your old friends. Fate will take care of the rest. Remember the old autograph books we keep near the end of Form 5 or 6? Find them and read each entry one by one. Take every friend you’ve ever made, every word that was written exclusively for you, every corny thing that was ever written about friendship and you will realise all of them ring true… your friends never wander too far away. The only ship that never sinks is friendship. FRANCE = Friendship Remains And Never Can End. That old Michael and Victor song "Wo Zhao Ni Zhao Le Hao Jiu" (I’ve searched for you for so long). With time, all the corny words become nostalgia, and there is no substitute for that.

I’m going to go off the beaten track for this post and write about something fairly recent. This post felt like a natural progression from the previous one anyway, so here we go.

Being in the medical line you have to be mentally prepared for a few things, most involving sacrifice. And although everyone who’s been there before can tell you time and again what to expect, only you and you alone will are capable of calming yourself down, giving yourself the pep talk, and eventually face up to the unrelenting blow of reality once it comes.

What I mean is, some of the things are a given. Yes, we will watch all our other friends graduate, work and start families before our very eyes, while we still slog away in 4th year. They will tell us, what a wonderful life it is to be working, making money, free from assignments and leery lecturers who hasten to fail you at the slightest human error. And how they can finally afford the holiday they’ve always dreamed of. Enviously I watch all my friends’ announcements over MSN… "Redang trip… who’s in?" "Last call for Genting trip today."

Not for us.

The whole of last year I’ve had only 3 weeks of holiday. One week intersemester break, one week Raya break and one week Christmas break. Otherwise it’s "work, work", like the typical grunt in Warcraft. A typical day for us involves ward work and clinic work from 8am to 5pm normally. Within that time there would also be classes, seminars to prepare, learning issues to discuss, and always looming over our heads, the next exam. Exams are the bane of our profession capable of stifling even the foolhardiest medical student. It sends us to our basements, our inner sanctums, our tortured psyche, as a means to complete our studies, we all have to go through them without question, and like it.

Not that we’re complaining. We knew what we had coming when first we signed up for med school. We knew that there would be no turning back from the pantheon of geekdom. And, I can safely tell you, deep into the 4th year of med school, the reason we came here is becoming more and more vague. Gone are the ideals of saving the world and helping the needy, it is more of a tale of survival on our part and not being able to fit into any other profession. Nonetheless, we knew how to take our blows, and take blows we did. "Suck it up", we tell ourselves.

But sometimes the university throws you a curveball, a sideswipe, a low blow, and a backstab all at once. For ours it was depriving us of a Chinese New Year celebration, for the simple fact that our academic calendar is arranged so that our yearly finals will always fall around the time of Chinese New Year. It has happened in nearly all my years in medical school.

2004 was the year I nearly went crazy. Faced with the choice of taking a packed bus through a 4-hour traffic-jammed journey home for just a simple meal and to see some relatives and exchange pleasantries; or to stay in KL and get a few extra days’ preparation for the exam that has the highest failure rate in my university. The latter seemed obvious, and easy. And so I stayed in KL, my first Chinese New Year away from home. No more worrying about racing for time to complete my revision. No more anxiety.

How wrong I was.

On the first day of Chinese New Year, in an empty apartment (since my housemates went home), I studied and crammed, surviving on delivered pizza. As the day wore on, I felt more and more lonely, spiritually empty, desperate, and in total lack of human contact. Up to that point in that day I had not talked to a single soul. The crazy started kicking in, and I took out my phone and proceeded to call nearly everyone on my list unil my credit ran out.

Spiritually empty. What a way to feel on Chinese New Year.

So earlier this year I was faced with the same dilemma. To go or not to go home. Weighing out the difference between a few extra hours of study and being able to see your old friends and relatives again. Once again I debated and once again I thought I was going to stay back, this time in Seremban. "When the crazy kicks in, just suck it in," I thought.

But all it took was one afternoon in the library to find out what I was really missing. It was the day before our Chinese New Year/study break. Literally everyone was saying their goodbyes in the library before going back home. Everyone was in the New Year mood and dammit they were going to enjoy it, exam or not. Deep inside I wanted to join them, be like them, and silence the inner kiasu, but it was hard. Then a friend came to me and said.

"Do what’s right for the heart."

And I did. And although it was no Robert Frost-like departure from the oft-travelled road, the trip back home… made all the difference. Where my thought’s escaping, where the music’s playing. Home. It’s hard to point out exactly what seeing old friends and relatives does to you, but it really did the trick. Like Freddy Mercury says, it’s a kinda magic. The 3 days I spent in Ipoh I would not trade for anything else… and when I came back to Seremban my batteries were charged and ready again to immerse myself in work.

So to the people who were with me in the library, particularly Sarjit, Jill and Prakash, thank you. Your words made all the difference. And so there shall be no story of me going crazy for the second time. Not this time. I did what’s right for the heart, after all. And as for the exam? It was fine.