i don't know what's wrong... how many times have i said that lately? it seems everything stems from that fundamental statement... none of the decisions i make seem to be the correct ones... why? what am i doing wrong? i don't understand... all i know is that i am feeling a deep pain within and it's something not physical... i wish it would go away, but it won't and i don't know how to make it go away...

...a lot of problems have arisen from me being social, so i guess the only solution is to withdraw and hide, lock myself away and throw away the key... i've been progressively becoming more and more miserable and while i plummet into the dark recesses of self-pity, i sigh.

"what have i done?"

there's only one way out of this darkness but yet, she is the one i have upset...

i don't know how to fix this, but i really wish it to be fixed.... : (

*edit: i guess it was a matter of me being me... so for this to be fixed, i just have to not be me for a while... see how that works out... 

As I continue walking this path before me, I know that I must keep going. There is a light up ahead which seems to offer a glimmer of hope in this darkness that has engulfed me. I feel a shadowy hand stroking my heart, tugging it downwards, coercing me to a comforting despair. As I walk towards the light, it feels as though the light is forever fading, and even though I move closer, the light moves ever further...
... ... ... ... my walk falters, winding down to a stumble... if i stop, the darkness will claim me and I will be lost forever, so there is nothing else for me to do, but to keep on shuffling toward that tiny glimmer and hope it becomes more than that...

i just don't get it... how can the person you love turn so visciously cold in the blink of an eye? what have i done to deserve this? what have i done to have my love ripped away from me?

 i wish i could turn back time and freeze it at the moment where we were happiest... i just think back to that time and it makes me hurt inside... because it's far from that now... i'm left here, writhing to a pain that i cannot stop... not on my own anyways.

...why has it turned to this? : (

Once upon a time, there was an ice cube that lived his life as well as he could. He wasn’t a particularly smart ice cube, and he would do some rather silly things at times but that was his nature. One day, he met a bright burning flame and found that he was hit with a wave of devotion. From the moment he met the flame, he knew he had to be with her.

After a time, the flame finally let down her guard and let him get close to her and all was good. The ice cube was content; he was happy; he was elated; he was in heaven.

Then, as time grew by, the ice cube found that the flame’s heat was slowly melting him. Drop by drop he was losing more and more of himself. He knew this was a problem, but he kept his resolve; even as he was losing himself, he was gaining the greatest thing of all... love.

For a while, the ice cube found that he could maintain himself, as long as he knew it was happening, but the flame began to grow hotter, more explosive. The ice cube never knew when it was coming, and the intervals of intensity were becoming more frequent taking more of him with it. The ice cube recoiled each time it happened, tried to put up his defenses, but to no avail... he began melting at a greater rate. If he couldn't stop this, he would be nothing more than mist...
The flame didn’t mean to intensify, but she was a flame after all, and a single flame can spread into an inferno without warning. The ice cube knew this, but he could not shirk away. He knew what his heart was telling him, and he knew that he had to fight to keep his love. But as time passed, the ice cube became demoralised; nothing he did could prevent the flame from burning brighter. As he lost more and more of himself to the flame, he started to believe that the matter was hopeless.

Until…

It came to him. Despite the flame’s nature, there was a way to contain a flame! As long as the flame remained small, the heat emanating from her would be insubstantial and the ice cube wouldn’t melt! All they needed to do was to take away anything that could burn from around her; all they needed was the ice cube to douse the spreading fires.

And so they initiated their plan. Each time the flame began to burn harder, the ice cube would melt a little and the flame would allow him to douse her to stop her from becoming too volatile. The ice cube smiled inwardly, happiness had returned to him. Nothing he had done on his own could stop himself from melting away, but working together, as a whole, the flame and the ice cube did it; they had stopped the deadly heat from spreading too rapidly. Through a combination of teamwork and compromise, the two could become one, saving them and allowing their love to be the only thing that burned for each other.

And so it was, they lived, happily ever after.

The End.

Well... the ordeal is mostly over, the trauma forgotten and the scars mostly gone. The only thing left really is the capsule scan in march... so far away that i don't even think they'll find anything wrong with me... waste of time really...

Recently though, i've discovered that the PSP can run PSOne games... how cool is that? So I delved into my archives and pulled out one of my favourite games that I never completed... Parasite Eve...

It was a truly magnificent game and, at the time, it was nigh on impossible for me to beat (I got as far as this freaky ultimate being baby thing.... for anyone who remembers the game).

This was also one of the games that had the most beautiful design for the main female lead and, sad as it may be, I remember I was totally in love with Aya Brea :P

How could you not be? She was lovely (more images here)

I think my interest was re-sparked by finding the book which started it all, written by Hideaki Sena... but I've not had a chance to read it yet (I hear it's awesome though)


The game is timeless and even playing it now, it is superb and brings back all the feelings i had for this game when it first came out... and it's a billion times better than Parasite Eve 2 which played more like Resident Evil...

Seriously... If any game deserves a modern remake, it's Parasite Eve (or even a third game Square? Please? m(_ _)m ). Just imagining this game remade like Resident Evil Zero for the GameCube is making me shudder with anticipation... If it ever is released on a new gen console, it's reason enough for me to get it I can live in hope...

Next on my classic game hunt is Xenogears :P

Well, for the past four days, i've been in hospital for Gastro Intestinal Bleeding ... Of obscure origin... In all my adult life I've never been admitted into hospital. Not only was this my first time in hospital, I was also in a country that I do not see as my home...

It was a pretty traumatic experience, especially Considering that it was my fist time i've ever had such a serious problem. At first, the language was tough because they were using terminology and phrases which i've never heard of and not being a native chinese speaker at times, my translation program (my brain :P) couldn't keep up.

Anyways, they poked me a few times with pins and needles which uncovered the fact that my haemoglobin levels were dangerously low, after which they proceeded to transfuse blood to me (and for the first time I found out what my blood type was ). Basically, for an average man, it should be around 13.5 to 17.5 g/dl, but mine was around 6... which according to this site means I was anaemic.

So anyways, eventually, they told me that i was bleeding somewhere inside my digestive system and said that i would need to go for an Oesophagogastroduodenoscopy examination (yeah, read that three times without pausing...). According to the leaflet i was given, this procedure ‘introduces’ (read forcibly shove down your throat..) a tube into your throat, which stretches down to your stomach. After much rummaging around, whilst I was fully conscious, with a gag to prevent my mouth closing and continuously gagging, vomiting and choking, I could hear the doctor telling me, "Sir, if you could please stop gagging, it's really hard to see what's wrong with you constantly gagging.”

Without being able to reply, my mind screamed, “BASTARDbastardBastard!! If you stopped wiggling that fucking tube in my throat, then i WOULD stop gagging!!”

After more rummaging around, the doctor then said, sounding quite perplexed, “I don’t see anything wrong... everything seems ok...”

And so ended my first examination. They removed the tube, whereby i gagged and vomited some more, then they wheeled me out, without so much as an explanation, nor a courtesy towel to wipe my face which had been drenched in my own bile. So yeah... that was not nice.

Back in the ward, the nurse came to me and told me that the doctor recommended going for a second examination to have a look at the intestines as they couldn’t find anything in the stomach area that could have caused me to lose so much blood. Then there was a short pause as the nurse told me what the next exam would consist of.

Moments like this, my brain freezes in translation. I think I know what she said, but I wasn’t sure.

“I beg your pardon?” says I.

“Yes, I said up your rectum,” the nurse calmly states.

Bugger.

I pleaded with my cousin to not let me go through with it, but as she argued (and rightly so of course) it’s better to be anally probed than to continue to bleed and die. So begrudgingly, I had to agree.

At this point I was feeling an all time low. Things were going so badly, it was my first time in hospital, I had no friends here, nobody to come visit me, my own father wasn’t even here for me (off gallivanting in China installing satellite TV for some peon). I felt so completely alone, until my girlfriend turned up. The bright shining light in the dark cavern of gastro intestinal bleeding hell. She didn’t really like being there though, as she is a clean freak and well, my neighbour didn’t look too clean and with him constantly flaunting his gross speckled and flaky skin about, it wasn’t very pleasant. I am just super grateful that she was there for me though.

So anyways, cutting to the next point of my trauma and skipping a lot of self-pitying crying in-between, the day of the second exam loomed. The Colonscopy (so much easier to pronounce than that first one....). I was literally shitting myself (they gave me laxative to clean my system out) before the examination. I was a complete nervous wreck and was almost ready to say “fuck all this shit” and run out the hospital. The wait was the worst thing, they had prepped me and i was ready for the probe, but ended up waiting in line for about 2 hours in the endoscopy waiting room. The exam itself wasn’t as bad as i had imagined. I didn’t shit all over the doctor, which was a good thing, as he did have a big tube and i did have my pants down... so that was ok. The experience was traumatic, but less so than before and I even got to see the inside of my own intestine as they probed my arse.... -_-;; whoopdeedoo.

Then the doc says, “I can’t find anything wrong” and my heart just shatters. “So i’m lying here with a tube up my butt, having come from an examination where i almost drowned in my own bile, just for you fuckers to tell me you STILL can’t find out what’s wrong with me??”

A tear then proceeded to trail down my cheek and somewhere, violin music was playing.

The painkiller they had given me for the examination went into overdrive at that moment and i felt completely dehydrated and drained of all energy. I fervently asked nurses for a sip of water, but they refused, telling me that i wasn’t allowed and so i had to continue to suffer through it all, as well as having fasted for 9 hours that day too.

I was on the verge of a breakdown in my spirit, i was completely drained of my will to live, all the pain, all the poking and all the bleeding had completely smashed my spirit to mush. It was at this point, whilst i was being carted back to the ward, that i saw my little angel. She floated slowly into vision, walking by my side nonchalantly, and in spite of all my pain, I smiled inside. I tried to smile outwardly too, but i don’t know if i managed it. When she saw the pain i was in and my outstretched out, she held it, and in that moment, all my suffering seemed worth it. I was alive and I had found myself an angel (albeit an angry one sometimes, as she had been throwing tantrums all morning on the phone, as she was a bit cranky that morning).

I found it difficult to talk, what with the dehydration and all, but after they allowed me to drink, I jumped right out of it. The doctor came and told me that they couldn’t find the cause of my internal bleeding and would like me to come back for an examination which involved taking a capsule which has a miniature camera inside that will scan my bowels (information here). It all sounds very sci-fi to me (Inner Space anyone? That was an awesome movie....)

So yeah, after four days of being stuck in hospital and constant poking and probing, I left with a complete sense of “what the fuck just happened” and no more answers to what was wrong with me than I had before. The aftermath was that my girl got all upset when we were leaving because I left with my dad and my cousin and she went off on her own, her journey taking about 2 hours to get home, while we were cosy in our car... my poor, poor baby....

Needless to say, she seemed really upset and I feel so bad, because she was the one that kept me sane throughout the whole ordeal. If she ever reads this, I just want her to know, I love you and I would be lost without you.