Weddings and Endings

A Day of reckoning

This weekend was a weekend of sorts for me. I attending two weddings, on Friday I attended Wenyan’s wedding. She was indeed a beautiful bride, and her groom was a foot Specialist at NUH, who was my age, 25. The dinner was substandard I felt, the air conditioning was bad, the video for the day’s activities was poorly edited, the Emcees were inexperienced and to top it up, the food was bad. I Took this opportunity to catch up with my secondary school friends, we talked about the reasons behind this marriage, how they have they been together etc. What will always been at the back of my mind is the fact that she broke the engagement once before. But a year after that the groom still came back to her. She broke it off because she “had not tried enough things in life yet”, that is to say they she had not finished being single. If she felt that way why did she accept it in the first place? Anyways, they are married now. Half the table I was sitting at had people I did not know, a mother and her two 20ish daughters. Quite pretty I might say, but their facial expression changed abit when I told them that I was a student. I am getting increasing sick of such a look. I feel like an impotent man. After dinner we stayed behind to make the groom and bride drink till about 1am.

The next day, Saturday, I attended the wedding of 28year old Alex my Platoon Sergeant upper study. It was there were I had the chance to meet up with a significant number of my army “friends”, the men who were under my command back in the day.

I felt that I utterly cannot relate to them at all anymore. Their words, their concerns, their jokes, even their consistent smoke breaks all felt like a lifetime ago. I felt that I was operating on a different plane from them. I was structurally aware, and they were not. I no doubt seemed strange to them, I had nothing to say to my men, whose topics involved girls, clubbing and drinking experiences which they have shared together. A few of them looked great, with their $100 haircut, Rolexes. They talked to each other about why so and so left what company and why, asked about each other’s jobs and pay. Naturally no one had anything to say to me about such things to me.

Was I envious of them? Not really, but the pain of being left behind the rest of my male counterparts was more acute that evening. I could not help but comparing my selves with those who were more successful. I did not have much to say, I felt so unproven, so mocked even though no one was mocking me, I felt that no one was taking me seriously. How could they? Whatever I had or upheld, they did not consider as valuable. They are the teeming masses.

When i am in NTU, I was a senior, I was good at what I did, I was looked up to my many for who I was, my principles and values were taken seriously. That evening, I was placed in a field where my habitus was worth nothing. The only capital that prevailed was economic capital and good looks, and I had none, I felt quite small indeed that evening.

I knew that given my education and capabilities I could easily outperform them in time. But I have always suffered from a problem. I had little patience for progress. I always want things to happen here and now. I guess it stems from my constant feeling of being supressed, by my commitments.

One day it will all be worth it, my patience will be rewarded. Hang tight Vernon