My heart

I was in a chatroom recently and told a stranger about my stuff. He commented that he didn't know that an educator can have so many personal problems and that he's surprised that I can still work under such mental and emotional conditions.

I told him it's because my heart is dead.

And it has to, after so much battering and abuses - emotionally.

3.5 years of inhuman living (where emotions are concerned) have made me stoic and so-called able to separate personal life from work.

There is a Chinese phrase that goes 'Tragic is the heart that is dead'. But I once came across a book titled 'Tragic is the heart that is NOT dead', and I concur with that.

When you still harbour hope against all hopes, that's more tragic than anything else. It's only when you reach the pit bottom of hopelessness that you'll let go and move on.

There was a local TV show about real scenarios of people suffering in silence. One of them featured a 30-year-old woman who put up with her husband's abuse for years. After 12 years, she finally decided to leave him with her three kids. It wasn't easy for her as the husband is a nut case and threatened to kill the children if she ever divorced him.

The bottomline of the show is 'Continuing to live in a trapped situation is not being courageous. The walking out is.'

I've changed myself to a large extent because of this marriage. I'm beginning to lose my true self. I don't behave like myself anymore.