Confronting an old enemy with new allies

25 October - As I hauled my rear end out of my nice, warm bed - or should I say, rack (In the United States Marine Corps, rack is a term describing bed), I was feeling horribly down and miserable as I was dreading yet another stressful day of the first semester week (I will not go into the details; chances are you've probably run into this all-too-familiar crap of  a subject registration process, if you're an MMU student. The long-ass hours of agonizing waiting in the MRT-length queues, all over a piece of document/form/verbal enquiries which probably takes a few minutes of processing, and then having to do them all AGAIN if you do something wrong), and having to awkwardly face my former lecturer all over again (Don't get me wrong, he's one of the nicest, most genuinely helpful guys out there, it's just that my presence might make him feel as if he didn't do a good job tutoring me) as a result of having lost in a long-forgotten battle (aka my Principles of Finance subject). I REALLY hate it whenever a vile, repulsive reminder of my demoralizing past comes back haunting me; a foul remnant of my past mistake or failure which comes back to bite me in my rear end, to torment me, to shame me.

BUT SADLY, to add salt - no, salt simply doesn't cut it - acid, to my semi-healed war wounds that morning, some crap popped up and the whole faculty had to put us on hold, in regards to retrieving our subject registration slips. Just great. Now I have to go through that ordeal ALL over again - and the best part? I literally have to WAIT for Monday to have to go through all that stress (you don't say). Bummer. After confirming my worst fears with the faculty administration, I dragged myself off to the library, hoping to pick up a couple of good books to shake off my doubts - and hopefully, as a temporary fix from all my accumulated stress and exhaustion which had been compounding over the course of the past few days. I picked up a couple good books and plopped myself down onto a sofa and transported myself to the-land-of-no-sorrows, no worries and no crap, and started the process of healing. Truly, it felt like I had subject myself to treatment in a bacta tank (What's bacta, you ask? Go to wookiepedia and look that one up, I won't deviate from my post here) ... all the way up to 3.45pm. (Oh, and in case you're wondering, I did manage to chow down some lunch too.)

With some of my war wounds beginning to open up again, I sighed dejectedly and dragged myself out of the library - out of la-la land - and into the real world, where pain and strife ruled supreme. With each step I made to XR1005, I felt it like a knife wound to my chest. Not only would I have to fight a past battle I lost to all over again, I would be all alone this time, with no friends by my side. That feeling of isolation and loneliness WILL get to anyone occasionally, even to long-time loners such as myself.  However, I comforted myself, saying that regardless of how much shit would be thrown in my face, I would neither run from my destiny, nor would I cower in the face of adversity, no matter how heavily the odds stacked against me were. After (temporarily) re-igniting that resolve, I entered the designated battleground that would contain me for the next 14 weeks, I picked a seat while playing a mental recap all of my past events ....

And there I saw it. A friend I knew from last semester's Microeconomics class. Thank God! He looked as if he was someone whom I could relate to! We saw each other, I waved to him and sat next to him. Before we knew it, we were chatting away like long-lost friends. At least I would no longer be alone in this nightmare! My good luck didn't end there, however. I even met Angee, too, who wanted to retake this subject. Now that I know I'm no longer alone, I feel so much better. Truly, confronting an old enemy with new allies isn't so bad after all. This is all of course assuming that our registering for this subject goes off without a hitch ...

Author's comment: Thank you for taking the time to read this, and sorry if I sounded rude at times. It's just that I've been through so much these past few days.