Assalamualaikum wr wb

I deleted all my old post because it sounded too childish it makes me cringe. I think it was from 2 years ago. Guys, I have a question? Remember your childhood, like what your personality was like 10 or so years ago? Like your understanding of the world back then and so on and so forth? At the age that you are today, do you still feel like you can relate to the person you were back then? Like do you still feel like you are the same person? Me personally, when I reminiscence of my old past, I weirdly feel distant to it. I don't feel like the me today and me from the past were the same person at all. Don't mistake me for having a sad depressing past, because I don't. I had sweet memories of back then. But I feel like I've grown with the experience that I've gained, and my personality changes a slight bit as well. I am now not as outspoken, cheerful, social or as daring as I was back then.

Anyways, for 16 years of my school life, from the age of 4 to 20, it all revolved around a madrasah. Now, I'm 21. I am taking a year break since I've completed my A-levels. But thankfully, I am working. For the first 6 months of my "holiday" away from school, I laze around at home a lot. I felt super guilty because I was wasting my precious time, neither schooling nor working. But Mid-June, I got myself a job at Uniqlo, a retail shop as a full timer. I was super excited to start my job there as I was finally going to be productive with my time.

The first month working there, I suffered a lot. I was super fatigued, super busy, and got a lot of critics from my supervisors and this was despite working my ass off. I was broken as my best wasn't enough. But luckily my strong determination to never go back to my "unproductive dark past" made me persevere and never give up despite a close work friend of mine who started the same time as me quit from the overload stress. I had a clear mind of where I wanted to head with this, which was to save at least $500/month, with a total of $7,000 by March 2016. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that amount of money, but I was determined to get it. My guess was to use it to reduce my father's financial strain on my education ahead of time. As a full timer, my pay was $1,600, but it was $1,280 after cutting down on CPF.

It worked well in the beginning. I was realistic enough to set aside some money to shop so I could at least feel and enjoy the fruit of my hard work. All that pain, the tears, the backache and restful days were worth it when I see the money rolling inside my bank account. I gave my dad $50, my mum $50, my elder brother $10, my younger brother $10, charity $10. It wasn't much, but it for the sake of getting the "barakah". I took my Ustazah's teaching back in my school days to heart. She said when we receive a blessing, we should share it with the ones we love so that we can all share the happiness together and everyone can have a small bite of the blessing so I can in turn get the barakah,  Not only that, I also started to live independently. I paid my own transport fees, my handphone bills, and my  own food fees when I was working which shockingly took the hugest portion of my pay. I stopped  depending on my dad for money and plan my finances carefully by jotting down every little spendage I make every day to review them time to time.

I get better at work. My shopoholic urges was burning inside, especially when I have hard days. I successfully kept my shopping within the limits that I have set. I had mood swings with work. My work has 2 shifts; morning (8am-6:30pm) & Afternoon shift (12:30pm-11+pm) I tend to have to extend each time, which I learn was normal in a work setting. My energy was drained. I work 5 days a week on long hours. On my days off, I slept like a person who has never tasted the beauty of sleep for ages. Before I know it I had to work again. I realized my life revolved around work and my days off were meaningless as by then I was too drained to do anything else. My working schedule was random and I had no say. Because of this, I had a hard time arranging a reunion meeting with my ex-schoolmates as they have to conform to my schedule which was unpredictable. I started to contemplate working as part-time instead. The beauty of part time is shorter working hours and the freedom to choose your working days and hours. But the pay was a joke, it's far less than a full timer.

Life never flows smoothly for anyone. Before you get too comfortable, life strikes and gives you a life quiz to solve. (It's as if life is trying to remind you that you are not completely in control of the storybook which stars you as the main character. The Writer is in control, God. Your control is your reaction, your adaptability to learn and grow) That is something I knew too well over the years. But I could never predicted what was about to come.  My younger brother started acted weird. He faced depression and severe anxiety/paranoia. Needless to explain much, my world came crashing as I see the pain in his eyes. I felt guilty for being to busy and caught up with work that I couldn't be there for him. His depression made me redefine what depression means. Because I thought I had tasted the darkness of "depression", but seeing how he suffereda lot worse made me realize it was a lot darker.

Fast forward, you don't really need to know the details. But I changed to part time. I still can't figure how to be there for him. I try, sometimes. It was almost he was far-fetched. But I realized even he wants to heal, so he is trying hard. He started to get close to Allah as his means of cure. I admired him for that.

Rewind to the weeks before school graduation. I've had already foreseen this struggle for me and my classmates. I know the real world that was waiting for us. I knew the major 2 tests that will come for us as we leave and depart:

1. As teenagers in general breaking through our shells, finding our identity and forte. We will be introduced to a taste of "adulthood" with all its beauty and pain. Alone, independent. Meet new people, step out of our comfort box, and hardest of all, finding our talent, passion and identity.

2. As Muslims, especially us who had been in a madrasah background all our life. Stepping out of that, and entering into a secular society where religion is generally meaningless to everyone else. Our Iman will be tested more than ever. Your prayers and general practice of your religion is no longer monitored, in fact at times suppressed with super busy schedule. Fashion, especially as muslimahs. We no longer need to use a school uniform. Its now tempting to become slightly more stylish and fashionable. Its now up to us to take the initiative, rediscover our faith, and set our priorities in life. If we don't set our priorities in life, the world will do it for us.  This applies for everything else.

I learn a taste of this as I started my working life. Especially in a hectic retail shop, constantly running trying to fix things, engage with customers etc. Most times, I had to think: food or prayers? I had to rush like crazy to fit in both because I can't not eat when I work for too long hours, I was starved! But I had to cut down unnecessary chit chats to do that. The weird and awkward stares I received in the toilet just to get my ablution done was nerve wrecking each time. I felt uncomfortable. I wanted so bad to take wudu' at the wheelchair toilet to escape the awkwardness but the wheel chair toilet in that floor had a STRONG stench of cigarette smoke. I realized that there was someone who works in the shopping center in that same floor as me would go to the toilet everyday in groups to smoke cigar together! I was pissed. I always swear at them in my brain, they just piss me the hell off with their inconsiderate behavior. I swear, the stench is 100 times worse than the haze in China!

Shaitan sweeps in and made me lazy. "You can't pray, You are busy! You have to eat, you crazy?! You can't be serious, you really want to take wudu' in front of everyone in the public toilet, what are you an attention seeker? You look disgusting opening your socks and wetting your feet like that, what are they going to think? The cleaner probably will hate you the most. You are a joke, you look like you took a short shower. Pfft, even if you prayed, do you think God will accept it? Look at your clothes, you are not wearing telekung it's not appropriate. Look at the PLACE you are praying, the fitting room, seriously? Not only is the space super small to make prayers, there is music blaring, you can't get khushu'."

The worst part of it all? Not having a friend who cares about prayers just as much as I am, not having anyone to motivate me. NO ONE cared about religion or God, it was never a topic in a conversation. I struggled a lot. Sometimes I just give up and I feel empty inside. When I went on the internet, the hatred for muslims were no joke it made me depressed.

Now you know me a little better. You know a bit of my struggles. Yes, everyone has struggles! Me, you, everyone. Just because we wear a smile all the time, just because we don't share our concerns does not mean it was not there so if you do struggle with anything, understand that you are not alone. Now you know my past and my present. What's next for me?

Why did I even take a year break from school? Why did I write this blog all of a sudden?

I took a year break from school for various reasons. Part of it was an act of rebellion against a fast-paced society who constantly throws us new things to accomplish as though demanding us. I don't want to blindly follow the crowd and I needed time for myself to think and breathe. Another reason was I didn't know who I am. I don't know if this is what they refer to as an "identity crisis". I don't have that obsession of understanding my personality and defining it as most stray teenagers struggled with. My  identity is indescribable, my personality is my reactions to things and my likes and dislikes just happens. I don't need to define me or build an attractive charater with persona. I am me. My struggle is more towards understanding my forte and my passion, and how to transform that into a job. My struggle is with the availability of too many options in front of me, I don't know which to take and which is best for me. My struggle is with narrow minded people who thinks you can only be successful through one means and one means only. My struggle is with people who try to make decisions for me about which path I should take; they don't realize if it's not my passion, I will suffer for a lifetime.  I have a lot on my mind. University? Polythecnic? Overseas? Retake A-levels? University is attractive, but the costs is not. I don't want to live a life of debt, sorry to brake it to you, and what's up with people thinking Uni is the only path to success? My father concluded I might need poly. My uncles want me to take NIE and become a teacher ("It's more stable and debt-free with sponsorship and all.") When will people understand that I really don't know what I want, what is best and I need time and space, I. Need. A. Break.

Why this blog? I think it will be interesting to document my experiences to find me. To rediscover God again, to fix/strengthen my relationship with my family, to find my passion and to have a clear vision of my goals for my future. I have 6 months remaining guys, I HAVE to come to conclusion by then and HAVE to take actions.

A memory of a whatsapp chat with an ex-classmate comes into play. I was telling her about work and stuffs how tiring it was etc, and she said I should seriously enjoy my break while it lasts. That was a few months ago and only NOW I come to realize, working my ass off and saving money for the sake of saving and having no time to myself is a bit lonely and dull. I'm not a robot. It goes against everything I believe in, it's again no difference than following the crowd and being a puppet of society. Perhaps, I need to spend some of that money to rediscover my talents and passion. Perhaps I need the time off work to go out of my comfort zone and seek out new things. Perhaps, if I want to be adventurous and enjoy my freedom, now is the only time to do that and maybe explore Singapore in ways which I have yet uncovered. All this, alone. I have given up wanting a companion to accompany me through this, because everyone is busy, not everyone is as eager or is as passionate about this as I am and I am tired of compromising things and giving up on things because of them and my cowardice.

I can't promise you I'll update on things, but I'll try. Now, all that's left is effective planning  and most importantly, action. I need to be comfortable with being alone in a crowd and I need to learn to not be afraid of failure, to speak out my mind, and that the road of success is many.

That is all guys, sorry for the long posts, you have suffered your eyes enough :)
Salam <3