Yee Ling,

Tell me it's a joke. Tell me you're making fun of all of us. Tell me I'm stupid to believe this.

Laugh at me. Laugh at me for being a fool to believe all these crap.

Okay, now all of us are fools because we believe the news. Now will you just come out of your hiding place? I don't care being laughed at you. I wish fervently that it's a joke, a very bad and unfunny joke.

But I know it's not.
__________________________________________________________________________________

I suppose most of you wouldn't know what I was talking about. I'll just write what I know so far.

After school, I was at the restaurant to tapao my lunch. Since the mixed rice - Yee Ling's mother's - stall was closed, I went to the chicken rice stall.

Halfway chopping a chicken, the uncle ask me this:

"The daughter of the mixed rice stall aunty goes tuition with you, isn't it?"

I said no, because she had stopped her tuition in the middle of last year...

"She's dead."

I was like, what the hell? I gaped at the uncle. 'Kui sei jor' these 3 words still lingered in my brain.

"Ya, that's why her mother didn't open stall..."

I was still doubting whether what he said was true or not, but at the same time my heart dropped. It was an unusual feeling.

"How did that happened?"

"She died in the hospital."

That's not what I wanted to know, but I took that answer as a 'dunno' because he would have told me straightaway if he had known why. I felt like wanting to cry, but I remembered I was in a restaurant filled with people and I switched on my 'poker face' mode. (This contradicts my last blog post, but sometimes I do had to pretend and control my emotions.)

I paid him for my chicken rice, and then I went back home. Along the journey I was still thinking 'How could it be? How could this happen?' When I finally reached home, I went to her FB profile to check whether it was true. And like what I had half-expected, many of her friends posted RIP messages on her wall. That means she is really gone.

A sense of sadness hit me. After my grandmother, she is the second person I know who had passed away. This is different from my grandma, though. She was old, sick and had stroke, which meant it was only a matter of time that she would pass away. But Yee Ling was not that sick. And she is only 16. She was only 16. She hadn't repay her parents, she had many things left to be done, she had an ambition which she hadn't fulfill. She had wanted to be a psychiatrist, and she wanted to help others out of misery when she grows up. She was an optimist and had lived life to the fullest. And she had scored straight A's in her PMR. A girl so young but full of good intentions and had a bright future, why she had to die? Why life must be so unfair?

Oh yes, I forgot something. Life is unfair. Like how there are people who are suffering like hell right now, and people like us, sitting in front of the computer. But what can we do? We can only watch as our loved ones leave this world. There's nothing we can do to reverse back anything.

And now that she's gone, I suppose she wouldn't mind if I link her blog. Even you had left us, but I want to tell you that you still exist in my memory. And I promise I will live life to the fullest, like how you had done. Rest in peace, Yee Ling.

Pretense

I have entered the world of pretense.

In a world where so many people are pretending had made me to pretend. But now I'm sick of pretending. I'm sick of acting differently from what I really feel. Pretending is not one of my talents, obviously.

I had thought I was good at lying. I had lied to my mum, whom I told that I had consumed my vitamins, but actually I hadn't. I had lied to my teachers, when I told them I had forgotten to do my homework, but actually I didn't do it on purpose. These are just trivial lies, but they had encouraged me to lie more convincingly. And I had thought I was a damn good liar. Little did I know that there are people that can pretend for 24 hours a day without letting it show on their faces. I wouldn't know about it if my friends hadn't told me about these people.

I should actually admire them, for they have the perseverance to pretend in front of everybody (or are they born pretending?). People around me are pretending. Pretend to like me, pretend that we are still friends, pretend that they are innocent - all these are minor pretense. But their pretense will be more terrifying as we grow up.

Steps must be taken to prevent this from happening. Firstly, we must not befriend someone that looks like he/she is pretending. Next, we should be careful of our friends. Last but not least, try not to share your secrets with your friends because they might be just pretending to listen to your deepest secrets and later they might spread it out to everybody in the world There's no use preventing it, because too many people are pretending. Even your best friend could be pretending. The people sitting next to you, in front of you, diagonally to the right of you could be pretending. And there's no use identifying who are pretending, because you might be heartbroken to know that 4 of the 5 friends you are closest to are pretenders.

My friend told me just now that if you see somebody always smiles and never feels sad, then he's the dangerous one. If you see somebody gets angry, he's safe to be with. That's good advice.