As Matt characterised the state of our beings, I am like an elastic band that has had all the stretch taken out of me.

The sheer repetitiveness and unending nature of this PhD exercise are killing me. There are very few intermediate goals with tangible results. Even the chapters that I write are but mere drafts. Nothing is complete, nothing is final, until the thesis is submitted - a point in time that would probably mark four years since I first began on this trajectory. That’s four years of this repetitive, somewhat monotonous, seemingly endless mental torture.

It’s partially the length of the requisite document that makes it oh so very hard… It’s one thing churning out 30,000 words for my masters thesis but 100,000 words for the PhD is so very much more… not only is there just more quantity involved but the depth and quality of the argument that is expected is also so much more. The bar is just so much higher at this level…

I wasn’t naive. I knew it was going to be hard… I just didn’t know it was going to be *this* hard.

Meanwhile, the boyfriend has gone away on a long, almost nine week holiday. He has been away for five weeks now. I miss him terribly, and it isn’t getting any easier with the passing of time. There’s a constant dull ache at the pit of my heart that pines for him, a yearning is most acute at the end of the day, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to take over me, with nothing left to distract my mind. I miss him ever so much and wished that he was closer…

It is all doing my head in right now.

There have been many a moment and days where I literally can’t work because I am paralysed by fear. I sit at my desk with my hands under my thighs. My body is catatonic with absolute fear of never ever being able to complete this humongous task ahead of me in the time that I am allotted… The work that is required for this thesis is immense and on more than one occasion I have seriously questioned how realistic it is to expect the work to be completed in the time that is available… Confronted by the mountain of work ahead of me, I literally stop in my steps, filled with dread of the effort and energy required…

And then there are moments where I am so scared shitless that I actually put myself to work… so much so that I don’t actually stop working. I become too afraid of the consequences to stop work… So I end up pulling cycles of all-nighters followed by whole days where I sleep off the exhaustion. The thing is, at the end of these long sleeps, the fear that paralyses returns and catches hold of me. I crawl under the doona, refusing to wake up to face the harsh reality that is the nightmare of my life. Productivity is replaced by paralysis and denial…

My hours awake have become one big nightmare. My mind runneth over with thoughts that bring nothing but fear and apprehension. My hours asleep, conversely, are the only things that keep me sane and alive - it is only in sleep that I think of nothing and find solace… provided I fall asleep that is… the transition from alertness to slumber has become an issue.

In the past three or four nights, I found myself crying spontaneously. There is nothing specific that prompts these combustive bawling sessions. Just everything in general. I go through my days with eyes swollen with tears threatening to flow. This is not good. This is not “normal”.

I am in such darkness that I don’t know if I am in a tunnel heading in one direction (hopefully the right one) or in a box going around in circles…

My life at the moment is one big cycle driven by fear.

Stop and stare
I think I’m moving but I go nowhere
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared
But I’ve become what I can’t be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you’re ‘here’ not there
And you’d give anything to get what’s fair
But fair ain’t what you really need
Oh, can you see what I see
- “Stop and Stare”, One Republic

While it’s entirely possible that two people can care and even “love” each other, how do we know that these emotions are the result of “romantic attraction” and not the result of habituation and “socialisation”?

While what the other party says might tell us something, they are not definitive as it is not unheard of that people say things they don’t necessarily mean.

This leaves with us having to observe actions/behaviour. However, does this mean all behaviour or only some? Is there perhaps a distinction to be made between critical behaviour and more mundane less important acts? So for instance, it says something when someone is willing to change their jobs and relocate just to be with you but it really doesn’t say much that he doesn’t call you everyday?

In observing behaviour, are one-off actions important, or do they have to be repeated before they acquire any meaning? Thus, does the fact that he remembered an important occassion and took you out for a fancy dinner say more than the fact that he constantly expects you to let him do what he wants even if it’s not what you want?

How do we discern, from the diverse range of human behaviour that “love” is “true”?

Or do we, as a friend intimated, rely on “intuition” and “gut feel” instead of on “facts”? And if so, how certain can we be of the reliability of our “intuition”?

That’s how bad things are becoming.

I used to have time to watch an hour of “tv” in bed before going to sleep but in the past week that little luxury has disappeared.

For the first four months of this year, I went to the gym four times a week. In the past month, I’d be lucky if I managed to squeeze two trips out of the week.

I have it on good authority that this isn’t the worst yet. It is to come.

Frankly, I’m over it.

I’m tired of feeling constantly stressed.

I’m tired of constantly thinking about the thesis, even if it’s a nagging, annoying voice at the back of my head.

I’m tired of being in constant fear that the thesis will not be good enough or that I will never complete it.

I’m tired of being constantly on the verge of tears.

I’m tired of constantly juggling so many different priorities and activities that can never truly be reconciled.

I’m tired of feeling constantly paralysed from all this fear, anxiety and stress to the point of feeling catatonic half the time and completely unworthy the other half.

They really should have a health warning on PhDs, but they don’t. Meanwhile, I feel ready to be institutionalised into an asylum. I’m ready to crack.

While I can manage pleasant innocuous conversations, such as:

you: How are you?
me: I’m fine. How are you going?
you: well thanks. isn’t the weather lovely?
me: yeah… it’s nice out in the sun.

that’s about all I can manage.

I can’t quite bring myself to be interested in anyone, or anyone else’s life. My mind is either too preoccupied with the all-imposing, all-embracing, never-ending nature of my own work, i.e. the PhD, or I’m actively trying to blank out my mind, albeit temporarily, to the extent that I can’t activate my cerebral capacities to engage in anything more than the most mundane of conversations.

Conversely, I also don’t want to talk about myself right now. My life at the moment rotates around the PhD and that is far too depressing and stressful a subject to even broach. There are few things that might stand independently apart from the PhD, not even my relationship since any discussion of that will inevitably lead to discussions about the future and the future, unfortunately, is inherently bound up with the PhD. You might suggest “shopping”, an activity that I have previously very much enjoyed and revelled in but sadly, given the priority that needs to be accorded to the PhD right now, I can’t say that I’ve actually gone on a “proper” shopping trip in ages. I can barely squeeze out time to go buy groceries let alone indulge in a luxurious shopping expedition. If and when I do manage to find time to wander around the shops, the experience has been less than satisfactory for quite a while now given how distracted, nay colonised my mind is by the PhD.

So I find myself a social zombie, unable to converse, uninterested in asking about “you”, preferring instead to just sit and stare in silence.

I’ve started writing the long anticipated document. I have about a fifth of the 100,000 words required. It’s been a slow slog getting here but at least, I think I am moving in the right direction. Writing is harder than I thought it would be. A lot of effort and reading goes into every word that is produced and just when you think you might finally have a grasp on things, you discover that there is yet more to do. There is always more and more you could, and need, to do… It’s exasperating. It’s sometimes demoralising. It’s always tiring.

In between all this, I got a job teaching in the Department’s masters programme. The experience has been invaluable. Not only will it come in handy as something to cite when I start applying for academic jobs - if and when I finish this God-damn PhD - but I’ve also learned a lot, in a more conscious manner, about what makes for good academic writing, which comes in handy in writing my own thesis. This comes at a price of course. Time spent teaching is time that could have been used for my own PhD-related work. But that, of course, assumes that I would have used that time wisely rather than fritter it away on non-PhD-related activities…

Which brings me, trying to have a balanced life when you’re in the last leg of a PhD is a near impossible feat. Nevermind keeping up with my gym routine, or finding time to have coffee and catch up with mates, it’s been a chore trying to squeeze time of out my days just to do grocery shopping. It’s an effort and one that I forcibly make for fear of starving to death. Thus, the fact that I even manage to keep a mid-distance relationship going is an achievement in itself. Or perhaps, it’s a reflection of priorities that I hold dear.

But this is the glossy summary of the state of my life.

In truth, it’s hard to really talk about my life right now. All kinds of thoughts are swimming in my head that it’s impossible to get any clarity on anything other than what’s most urgent. I worry constantly about whether I would ever finish the thesis. I worry whether it would be any good, if I did complete it. There’s an ever growing list of things that need to be done in that regard and another list of things I wish I could get around to but I know I never will. At the same time, I’ve started to think about life after the PhD: what opportunities would be open to me, jobs I would get, where I would live. The fear and uncertainties sometimes paralyse me, and explains the silence on my blog. That I manage to focus on the thesis and the teaching is an achievement in itself and even then, I know I’m not always doing very well…

Matt wrote a blog post a week back that conveyed the sense of this paralysis best:

I worry massively that its not good enough. I worry that I am so tired of the topic that I will never reach the end of the process. … I feel resigned that its never going to finish. I feel angry that it has taken me this long to produce something so clearly “mediocre”, and I feel exhausted every time I look at it. I don’t have the words to explain to people who haven’t done this just how all consuming it has become to my life, to my sense of enjoyment and my ability to do anything other than sit here with it. This isn’t to say that it is in some way an experience that is “better” or “more severe” than others experience, I don’t have the baseline of assessment to state that. But it is, to me, the beginning of my day and the end of it. I wake up and think about it, I go to sleep and dream of it. It populates every one of the 24 hours, and it has done so for longer than I remember. I don’t have space for me in this, I may be able to carve out 24 hours outside of the office, or 2 hours to watch Big Brother, but I can’t carve out 1 second where the work isn’t with me as a voice in my head. It’s like having multiple personalities and they all say the same thing. I resent that its eaten my life, even as I realise I can never live the life I want to without it. It is as if I have poured my hopes and fears and ability and weaknesses into 289 pages and that now my soul resides on the page, not in my body. It is apotheosis and nadir in uneasy cohabitation.

I live in a bubble that’s about to implode. Talking is just not high on the list of things I could and should do right now.

ask me not how i am
for i am not well

—

excerpts from emails I had recently sent…

On 14 March:

I went to bed at 4.30am after writing 800 words. That’s not so bad I suppose especially considering that I had 900 but decided to delete a paragraph as I thought it superfluous.

I think it says a lot about my state of mind, the state of my work, and the stage of my relationship that I’m actually delaying a trip to Sydney to squeeze in 3 hours worth of work…

I think I’ve all but pushed the emergency red button…

On 18 March:

I feel so uninspired.

I printed out the latest “version” of my theory paper and I can’t bear to look at it, mostly because I know what’s in it and it’s dire… there are quite a number of “gaps” in the paper that need to be addressed but there’s no way that I will be able to address them before this weekend as I had promised…

It’s depressing.

The work itself it not hard - it just takes time and effort, neither of which I have very much of right now.

I really should work…

On 25 March

I find that when I have my mind focussed on work, I am actually alright and quite “animated”. However, it is precisely trying to get to that stage that’s difficult and that causes me not a little anguish and pain. In fact, I’m despondent and depressed when I think about work and it’s very difficult getting over that threshold. Ironically once I am over it, I am sort of well… at least well enough to function at a steady pace…

The rain doesn’t look like it’s going to let up today. I’ve truly been in sync with the weather lately, or vice versa. I’ve really felt suicidal the last few days. I feel like I’ve been sentenced to a slow but certain death, the journey to which is one of excruciating and laborious pain…

That’s the state of my mind at the moment. And has been since I returned to Australia from fieldwork in mid-December 2007.

There are many things going on in my life right now and yet not very much. I’m busy with my research and the thesis. I spend most weekends with the boyfriend. And I’ve got a job this semester tutoring students in the Department’s Masters level programme. Life is full and yet monotonous. And yet… there is a palpable drama unfolding with each passing day that is not unlike the sentiments expressed here on Matt’s blog.

So… I haven’t been blogging. And I haven’t much felt like it.

BAD MALAYSIAN TRAFFIC
It all started when I thought that leaving my mum’s place at 9am for my temporary office in KL was going to be a good idea. I thought that I would be avoiding the morning rush-hour by leaving later and that it would take me about 20 minutes to drive to the office. I was wrong. I was ever so wrong because yesterday was the day that KL had one of its worst traffic snarls that went on for miles and miles and for hours and hours.

I noticed the unusually bad traffic just as I was coming out of the area where my mum lives and decided to take a detour and see if I might not drive into the city via a different route. Sadly, the alternative I had considered was equally bad. So, I thought I would run an errand instead.

BAD MALAYSIAN ATTITUDE
I needed to buy a box from the post office to send a parcel back to Australia. I went to the nearest post office and asked for the largest box they had (this entire conversation was conducted in Malay). The girl behind the counter looked back at me for a good while before asking in a surprised voice, “just one?”, to which I replied in the affirmative. When she passed the box to me, I asked her if there were forms to complete in order to send a parcel to Australia. She then replied in the most condescending tone, “of course!”, implying, I presume that I was such an imbecile not to know this most obvious of facts. I ignored this and completed the transaction.

BAD MALAYSIAN PARKING
As I came out of the post office, I noticed that the traffic situation had not improved. I then thought it wise to go for a late-heavy-breakfast (and thus skip lunch later). I went to the nearest shops and started looking for (A) a place to eat and (B) parking, legal parking. I could have easily parked illegally but I didn’t think that it was the right thing to do. Consequently, I ended up driving in circles for a good thirty to forty minutes as not only was parking scarce but the traffic in that area was routed in such a way as to make you go in circles. The situation was probably compounded by other drivers who also thought it a good idea to escape the traffic situation by having a mid-morning cuppa. I ultimately gave up - remember, I had been driving in circles for a good half hour at least - and went to another part of the city where there was a hypermarket with relatively easier parking.

BAD NON-MALAYSIAN SERVICE
I went to a Malaysian Indian restaurant, called “mamaks” here. These restaurants used to be staffed by Malaysian Indians but these days, they are almost unanimously staffed by Indians from India. As I sat down, Indian #1 came and asked me what I wanted. I asked for a “roti tissue” (something that I only discovered on this trip back to KL). Indian #1 repeated “roti” and I quickly corrected him and said “roti tissue” (which is different from just “roti”). He looked at me slightly quizzically but nevertheless repeated “roti tissue“. I then told him what I wanted to drink. Indian #1 then conferred with Indian #2 who was standing nearby. Indian #2 obviously understood what “roti tissue” was because he then came to me and told me that it would cost MYR4 and made sure that I still wanted it. I said yes and proceeded to ignore both of them and read my newspaper. I was sitting there a good while, in fact, I had finished reading the main section of the newspaper, and yet the food or drink still did not arrive. But by then, Indian #3 came round and asked if I had place an order. I will spare you the details of this exchange but suffice to say that it became apparent to me that my earlier order was not going to turn up and that if I wanted to stay in that restaurant I was going to have to place the order again. I decided to pack up and walk out instead. Abruptly, in mid-conversation with Indian #3 I might add.

I quickly walked over to another restaurant located nearby and ordered a typical Malaysian breakfast dish (”nasi lemak“) and an ice-tea from a waiter of indeterminate race or nationality. After reading another section of my newspaper, the drink arrived. They brought me a hot tea. You can imagine my expression when I turned to the waiter and said that I had ordered ice-tea. He promptly took the hot tea away. My “nasi lemak” eventually arrived, though before the ice-tea, so I had to wait before eating as I was really thirsty by this time but I otherwise had a good meal and thought that things might finally look up. I was wrong. Oh so wrong.

UGLY MALAYSIAN
When I had finished my meal, I went up to the cashier to pay the bill. I was asked for the number of my table but I wasn’t sure of it as I hadn’t paid attention. He called up a bill anyway and asked if it was mine. I said no. Before he could do anything, a Chinese lady yelled from behind me, “that’s ours! that’s ours!”, and proceeded to thrust a MYR50 note at the cashier. She said, “sorry” but I’m quite certain she wasn’t. The cashier said, “sorry” but he’s a spineless idiot to accept her behaviour. By this time, I was seething from the morning’s series of unfortunate incidents that I stood motionless and bit my tongue because I knew that if I let it loose, I would not only have been caustic but I would also have demonstrated that words when wielded by those capable can inflict much more pain than sticks and stones.

INSECURE AND FEARFUL MALAYSIANS
The rest of the transaction with the cashier was completed with nary a word exchanged and I got back on the road. I took a tolled bypass to get into the city but sadly, although it had been two hours since I first left my mum’s place, traffic was as bad as ever. By this time, I caught on that the authorities had blockaded the roads around the Parliament fearing that Malaysian activists would gather and demonstrate in front of the building despite the police having earlierdenied their request for a permit to assemble publicly (yes, Malaysians need permits to assemble publicly. read this.). There has been a series of public demonstrations and assemblies (all unauthorised) in the past few months and the authorities are particularly sensitive at present. The entire exercise on the part of the authorities, if you asked me, is driven by fear and insecurity but that’s a subject for another post altogether.

A VERY UNHAPPY MALAYSIAN
Anyway… so the traffic snarled. And it was precisely the area next to the Parliament that was my destination as it is where my office is located! As I was egging along in the very slow traffic… *bump*… someone had sidled up the back of the vehicle I was driving.

And that ladies and gentlemen, really was the last straw.

I am well and truly over KL.