Escape

I'm so much less stressed now because I've given up on the HSC.

Well, shit. No way am I going to succeed in uni then.

I don't think there is anyone else that understands the extent of my procrastination. I've done a bit of research (I am a researchaholic) and it is exceptionally sad that I have diagnosed myself with a combination of ADHD inattentive/OCPD/perfectionism (if that is a disease). The issue is I fit all of the criteria for all of these things except for some things. I don't lose things often at all, which makes me question whether I have ADHD. People with OCPD tend to not like to spend money on themselves and hoard it for future use, and I'm the opposite. Perfectionism I think may be a musician thing, but I'm not exactly full on 'everything HAS to be neat'. So now I'm just confused.

The thing is, no one believes me when I explain how I procrastinate, so I've stopped trying to explain because it makes me look like an idiot looking for attention. No one believes me when I'm waiting for an exam to start, freaking out and going, 'I haven't memorised my quotes properly yet'. The problem is, 30% of the time I marginally get away with it, 20% of the time I totally get away with it and the rest of the time it backfires on me. I can study two days before an essay, and still get ranked first. I can memorise my quotes 10 minutes before an english exam and it makes me hate myself when I get 18/20 for doing nothing. I almost had a heart attack when I got ranked 2nd in english extension having memorised my quotes the period before during music. My English trials were the perfect example. I remember exactly that I got 9/15, 10/15, 13/15, 13.5/20, 14/20, 18/20. The 13/15 and 18/20 were probably top 5 in the year of 70 girls, and the rest put me in the bottom 15 of the year. That is what I mean. It's hard to explain, but I am the only inconsistent person I know. Most people are totally consistent. They either get crap or good. But my ranking can fluctuate 50 places just in the trial exam.

The problem is I don't study. Today for paper 2, I was still memorising quotes in the car. I have problems, big ones I know. I am being 100% honest. No one believes me when I say I don't study. No one understands, or else they think I am bragging if I end up doing well without studying. I always get the 'yeah right' look from people when I stress before exams. Here is how I 'study'. I tell myself I have to research every single thing about the topic. Say for English the belonging essay, I tell myself I have to:

1. Re read my prescribed
2. Re read my additional
3. Analyse the hell out of both texts
4. Put notes from class on word document
5. Google everything about belonging that I can, download all essays available
6. Go through all the handouts I have (even if this is like 300 pages of paper).

It is a problem with me because just googling belonging and downloading and making notes on all the essays I have takes me about 10 hours. I don't know what's wrong with me. I have to study in a structured way. And that list above was only half of the stuff I write down that I need to do before I can start memorising quotes or working on practise essays. This morning I still had 50 documents up, trying to go through all of them to get the best quotes and make the best notes. This doesn't even make sense when I'm writing this. But I have issues, okay? I don't know what's wrong with me and I can't seem to stop. Everything with me has to be structured and in order. Say that above list, if I had to go through all the handouts I had before downloading essays, I would freak. Just because it is number 6 on the list and not number 5, even if it doesn't matter. I guess you could say I am trying to do the absolute best notes I possibly can, but this isn't possible because I procrastinate and then I hate myself for skipping things on the list. I need to do every single thing until I end up with the perfect, best set of notes I absolutely can have. And that's where I start going downhill. When the night before an exam I am still going through word documents. Ever since I can remember, since beginning of year 12, I have always memorised my quotes either the period before an exam or during the car ride or on the train. Because I have a good memory and with the concerta and baroque music, I can memorise a 100 word paragraph in 15 minutes. I have never done a single practise essay unless it's for homework. Even when I hand in homework essays, it takes me 3 hours per paragraph. I have to get every word right, I have to research every single little thing there is about the topic before I can even start an essay. Even if it is just homework.

That's why I give up on the HSC. I have problems and they won't go away for uni. I need to take a break next year. I've told my mum, she got angry, I ignored her and I am still taking a gap year. I wrote this story for belonging and memorised it (fit the quote 1 window stimulus totally perfectly, thank God it has relationships and place in it). Creative writing is the only thing I can 'study' for because it doesn't feel like a total chore so I don't procrastinate as much when doing it. Anyway, this story is kind of how I feel at the moment (little bits obviously, not the whole thing). I wrote it 3 days before the exam and memorised it on the morning of the exam.

‘It was a freak accident,’ they told me. ‘Such a tragedy, still seems impossible…mountain was so peaceful, weather was perfect…’

No one understands better than I do, the deceivingly dazzling purity of that landscape, its outline still hauntingly imprinted into my memory.

I can close my eyes at night here and listen to the almost-familiar noises of beeping taxi horns, bustling chatter, and faint laughter drifting from the single tiny apartment window. Somewhere in my mind, where these sounds of Shanghai slowly fade into nothingness, I drift a million miles away. They said it was very early morning when it happened. The ice still partially frozen, yet slowly melting in the rays of golden sunlight emerging from behind the few wispy clouds and cool blue sky. The sudden sharpness of crunching ice puncturing perfectly still air. Spray of dusty ice and snow particles, momentarily blinding. Blunt black rock speckled with flecks of pale grey and blanketed by a thick, white layer of snow. The top of the world, a hazy vision in the cloudy altitude. Less than ten seconds later, my father would slip through a crevasse into the deep, dark heart of Mount Everest.

No body, no funeral. Instead, a ceremony at the local temple where thin wisps of smoke curled around a statue of Buddha, where my eyes watered and nose burned from the suffocating scent of incense. My mother’s quiet sobs and the dry brittleness of wood percussion sounding amidst a metallic tinkling of bells. A monk, sitting upon a worn red cushion on the brown floor, leading a chant, voice eerie and high-pitched. I gazed past the bowed heads of our entire village kneeling, until my eyes fixated upon the peeling rust paint of the window. I looked out at the mountain range, at the sparse splattering of grey stone that emerged from beneath the white snow. I jerked my head away quickly, before my eyes could seek out the tallest peak. Outside, tattered prayer flags fluttered in the gentle breeze. I knelt, in my village temple, with my people surrounding me. People I could eventually forget. People who would try to convince, and later condemn.

A blurred, continuous stream of crying and wailing and consoling around me, seeping through the thin walls. When this eventually ceased, I could no longer avoid the inevitable. As I faced her, the guilty words had barely begun to spill from my mouth when her eyes flashed and narrowed. I could gauge the precise moment when the yelling would begin. It made me want to grit my teeth and scream, but I did neither. I stood there, reactionless, except for the droplets of helplessness and frustration, pooling in my eyes, threatening to overflow. It was always the same, with her. The exact infuriating illogicality I kept hearing repeatedly, time and time again.

Traditionsdutiesculturetraditionsdutiesculture…

She was my mother, and yet I could not remember the last time that we had understood each other.

How could I have stayed? Two thousand dollars per trek, transporting global tourists up and down our sacred mountain during the climbing season. How could I, when my father was already eternally entrapped in that mountain’s frozen cemetery, after climbing and climbing at my mother’s urging? It was our culture and tradition that became my duty after my father was taken, my people would remind me. It was an unjust façade that covered real tradition. Having to relinquish mountaineering tradition to accommodate strangers. Having to let go of the solitary climbing I had once cherished, in order to feel the thick wads of colourful rupees in hand and be able to afford Converse shoes and Big Macs in Kathmandu.

Shortly afterwards, I ran. Ran until I entered a new world of buses and buildings and business suits. Wanted to keep running until I could flick through the album of memories, carefully extract the images of that landscape and village and tear them up until they merely resembled nothing more than shredded paper prayer flags. And I ran until eventually, as the months passed by in my tiny drab Shanghai studio apartment, I could somewhat convince myself that I had almost escaped.

I returned only once. As soon as I set foot in the village, whispers of ‘deserted family’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘corrupt’ followed me, all the way to my old childhood home. In the tiny house, we drank tea out of cracked white china as I talked and talked, filling the uncomfortable silence with Shanghai and skyscrapers and supermarkets.

After that there were less phone calls and more excuses. Still, the barrier of ice that I had formed against my mother, previously as impenetrable as the one that had killed my father, seemed to thaw with each passing year.

In the morning, I stare up at the dreary dust-coloured Shanghai sky. I find myself yearning once more for a sky blinding in its vivid blue. Deep regret forms when I watch my young children. I have not taught them how to speak the language of my childhood, or shown them my mountains, or brought them to a Buddhist ceremony.  The previously suppressed memories threaten to resurface.

I return to my mountains, wife and children in tow. I face the tallest peak for the first time in years, its outline exactly as I have remembered from long ago. I watch as my wife picks up a torn prayer flag that has fallen near the temple. She examines it and then offers it to one of our curiously watching children. I turn around and knock on the old falling-apart wooden door. It opens, and for a split second I stare into her wonderfully familiar face.

I can run from everything, all of the culture and tradition and duties, but I cannot escape what truly matters the most.

As I walk into her warm, welcoming arms, I glance up at the mountains of my childhood and absorb their breathtaking beauty once again.

I hate myself because I don't know what's wrong with me. It sounds trivial, I know. Everyone I know just goes, 'Oh I procrastinate too...'

But it's gotten to the point for me where I think there is something seriously wrong with me. I don't know what to do anymore. And I absolutely hate it when people don't believe I have a problem, don't take me seriously when I say I am memorising a quote outside the hall before a HSC exam. Because they don't understand that procrastination for me is more like a disease than just a trivial thing that everyone goes through.

Funnily enough I don't really care anymore. I stuffed up everything so far except for the creative. I was doing so well in year 11 and now it's just gone downhill. Thank God International studies/journalism is only a 84.2 ATAR for me. This is because my subjects are good for the course bonus points (Music 2, Music extension, Adv eng, ext eng, modern history). All I need is at least a band 4 in each of those (or a band 2 in ext eng and band 3 in music ext) to get 5 bonus points. These 5 plus my 4 piano points equals a whopping 9 points (and I checked, the elite performers points add on top of the regular points). If I can't even manage that then I may as well work at Mcdonalds for the rest of my life.

I need to get out of here and just forget all this crap. I can't wait for when I'm on the flight to Paris.