Trauma of a Marriage

I woke up troubled and scared.

I had a long dream of myself remarrying my first ex in a haste. In the dream,  I was already remarried to him. It was a nightmare as everything was a replay of my life with William. There was shouting in the dream, endless doing of chores and the empathetic expression on his face. The Hong Kong show from three decades ago '大时代' ('The Greed of Man') was playing on the television in the background. It was so real, so real.

In the dream, I was scared and angry that I was entrapped in the same snare. It could not have been possible! How could I have got myself into the same trap again, and so soon too? What's going on? I was filled with the fear of having to divorce yet again, with the same person too. I literally saw the divorce cert in my mind in the dream.

I woke up with my eyes widened. I checked the time. 5.55am.

I sat up. I was part-relieved, part-scared. I tried to get it out of my head. It's not true. It's not real. I will not let it happen to me again.

But I was still scared.

I went to bathe.

I closed my eyes and buried my face in a towel to calm myself down.

I opened my Facebook and saw a cousin titled an album 'happy family'.

I looked at her pictures with her husband and two sons and wondered in resignation why a marriage comes 'easy' for others yet never for me.

She hashtagged 'everythingwaspreparedbymyman'.

It's a luxury that I would never know. Not even in my dreams would I understand what that means.

I thought of the friend who told me he would not marry to risk giving half his fortune to his ex-wife. 

He's probably right. He would never have to go through the trauma of a marriage.

About Going Back to Work

I received a missed call from my last school last Friday.

I stared at the number for two seconds but did not have the courage to call back.

The fear that I would be requested or informed about something work instilled some stress in me.

I shared with my friend that the school called when she came over to catch Pokemons. She asked if it could be possible that the school was trying to ask if I was available to be a relief staff. Then she asked if I had received any information about my posting for the following year.

A sudden brief fear seized me. I wondered aloud if the call was to inform me that I have been posted back to the same school. 

And I had a bad dream the very night:

Coco informed me that the school had called. She tried telling them that I could not come to the phone but the school didn't back down. Instead, the caller told her to let me know that if I didn't return to be a relief staff for the next school term, I would be posted back to the same school next year!

It sounded horrifying to me and I woke up startled.

I felt unbearably thirsty and went to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water to calm myself down.

404 Mei Ling Street Dream

I dreamt about something that was totally out of the blue.

I dreamt that after visiting my father at the hospital, I was about to walk out of the lift lobby when I was at a place called Mei Ling Road. It had three blocks of yellow and white flats. The old type of flats built many years ago with spacious area in front.

It was a busy walking area.

The moment passers-by walked through, the people living in the flats would throw food down to attract hordes and hordes of pigeons that rained down from the sky, and these pigeons would attack the passers-by by pecking at them, causing a lot of fear in the people.

I took note of one of the block numbers: 404.

When I woke up, I thought it really unusual.

Why would I dream about Mei Ling Road? And where is this place?

So I googled for 404 Mei Ling Road. It turned out that there was a 404 Mei Ling Street somewhere in Queenstown, but apparently a very inaccessible area for public transport.

Now that I think about it, having colours in dreams are unusual as well. I dream a lot, and my dreams don't have colours. But this dream has.

Horror Nightmare

I woke up to a nightmare a couple of days ago.

Not sure if it has anything to do with me watching a series of horror DVDs.

I dreamed that I stepped into a lift which I thought was empty.

As the door was closing, I realised that a little girl was lying on the floor. I thought to myself: I must have missed her. Either that, or she was not a human being.

Just as I pressed the button '2', I noticed that the button '12' had been pressed before mine.

The lift just shot up to the top floor. I was frightened.

Then the girl spoke,"My mother is waiting outside." The image of a typical female ghost - long haired, white blanket garment, came to my mind.

At the same time, the lift moved horizontally. I freaked out and started flailing my plastic bags of groceries at the door and screamed hysterically. I quickly realised I was in a dream and all the more I screamed loudly, hoping that I could wake up quickly.

And I woke up.

It was just 1.30am.

Phew! It was better than some nightmares in which I could not wake up from. But still scary.

Can't sleep, really

You know, I am up again because of insomnia.

Yes. Over PSLE.

These days, I can't sleep for the life of me. When I do sleep, I dream dreams. Loads of dreams.

I dreamt about her humble T-score and her friend's, which was like 2612 - something that ridiculous?

I dreamt about a tug-of-war while taking a ten-minute nap and woke up finding myself tugging and pulling at the pillow I was sleeping on.

I dreamt about war time in a dark medieval castle where the soldiers donned metal armour. When the enemies broke into the castle, we were given wooden swords to defend ourselves! Then I was made to fight against a male secondary classmate. And I passed out. When I came to, the castle had become MPH Bookstore in which students werer making purchases for their books!

I dreamt about needing to do a Maths lesson plan at NIE. And I had to meet the one-day deadline fully dressed to the stipulated dress code. I was desperately trying to find the correct dress-suit for it!

I dreamt about my brother insisting on having a divorce from his newly ROMed wife.

I dream till I am scared of dreaming. I wake up feeling exhausted every single day. I feel tired every single day. But come night, my mind is fraught with worries. I hate worrying, for the worry wart that I am, but I almost can't help myself!

I worry that I might let Coco down. I coach her in English and Chinese. She always gets 85 or 86 for her English. If everything goes well, she should, by right, get an A* at PSLE. Yet, I am so afraid that the school might not be right - that 85 or 86 in her school may still not be sufficient to bag an A*. Or I am afraid that something might happen - she might not be able to write brilliantly for her composition at PSLE, or she might not get full marks for her Open-ended Comprehension, or for some reason or another, she might bungle up and not get the A* that she should get.

I worry about her Chinese. Although she gets 80 for her Chinese in school, I have the same worry about her Chinese composition. All the more so since she is not excellent in writing Chinese compositions. Whatever training she has, she can just abandon it at the eleventh hour and treat it as if she was never trained for it. She has done it a few times - during exams - and despaired me greatly.

I also worry about her Open-ended Comprehension's last two questions. She often gets 1 or 2 out of 4 marks. She often writes unorthodox or unconventional answers which don't fit the answer key's.

I worry about her Science. She hates anything that requires memory work and so she does not make much effort to retain what she has read from the guidebook. So basically, she has little content knowledge! To answer Science questions, she needs the key words or phrases, but because she hates memorising them, she answers them like open-ended comprehension questions, which won't do!

I worry about her Science MCQs which take up 60% of the grade. She can be good and make just 2 or 3 mistakes or she can be bad and make 7 or 8 mistakes! We really can't tell!

I worry about her Maths. We hope she gets an A* at PSLE but whatever we hope for depends on whether she is careful or careless!

Unlike other blogger-mothers who have children taking their PSLE, I can't even blog about her progress or lack of it for fear of confessing negatively.

These days, I look at her while she closes her eyes to sleep. I touch her head, and feel her hair. I don't know what to say. I want to tell her that I love her, truly. Even if she can't go to a good girls' school, I still love her. Even if she does not do as well as we have hoped, I still love her. I look at her. She is so tired. Other kids are furiously completing 4 papers a day, one for each subject. She just completes about 1 to 1.5 papers a day and she can't go on anymore. I know she is trying her best. This is not her. And she is not other kids. She does not have the stamina and discipline of other kids. But that's okay. I love her. For what she is. For who she is.

Pay Review Dream

I dreamt that the ministerial pay review was completed.

But it was an unsatisfactory one. Many were cursing and swearing at the result.

The review committee decided that most ministers deserve their huge pay bracket. Only a few ministers' pay ought to be brought down by an insignificant amount.

It was especially shocking when the verdict was that the review ought to be on a ministry-by-ministry basis: some ministries are more important than others, and the 'others' obviously do not deserve the same kind of pay.

Of these ministries, Education was one of them - the least important. So the civil servants in that ministry had to take a pay-cut across the board. I could remember how distinct my sense of shock was!

Fortunately, it was a dream.

But back to the actual pay review, I thought it peculiar that it's taking such a long time. In fact, as the news goes, the review will only be completed by the end of this year. Are the people in this committee being paid extra for the review they have to conduct? Or are they like teachers who are involved in many committees but receiving the original pay? It was set up since May. It certainly takes a long time to review a group of people's pay.

More than half a year allocated to a job to be done, I wonder what the public would say if teachers were to take the same amount of time to complete a job.

A nice long sleep

I just woke up from a 12-hour sleep, with the intervention of lots of nonsense dreams no less.

The only ones I managed to recall are:

1) Zhang Hui Mei unveiled her non-existent MTV male lead to the crowd. He even had a name - 春林.

2) The MTV male lead was actually Jaclyn Tay's kept lover.

3) I lived together in a house with this kept lover, and he tried to get fresh with me. I felt so disgusted with the whole idea of Tay having a lover when she was married, and this lover was also unfaithful to her.

4) I was at a studio photography session (must be the session I just had last Sunday and the photography sharing session I just went to last Friday night). My camera had an external exposure adjustment gadget. And a guy who thought I had problems with it took it for repair when I did not ask for it. I had a hard time finding it back.

Phew! I woke up with a slight backache - a feeling you get for arching it back too much!

Dreamt of her again

I dreamt of my English Boss sending me an sms.

I can't recall the exact message, but it was something about her not being able to be in school that day and getting me to do something, as usual.

In the dream, I was half-relieved and half-suspicious about the sms. I wondered if the sms was really sent by her. If it was, it would be great because it would mean she was well. If it wasn't, her husband was probably the one who sent the sms, but he did not have to do that.

It was a short dream nonetheless.

Today is the day she will be discharged from the rehabilitation centre and returned to her mother's place to be taken care of as no further treatment will be provided from the hospital. I heard from colleagues that her baby will be taken care of by her mother-in-law so that it will not overload her mother. I hope she gets to see her baby very frequently. Mothers have this belief that our own babies can spur us to do well, in whatever situation we may be in. I hope that a miracle can happen as she sees her baby by and by, because it will take a miracle for her to be recovered quickly.

Dreamt about her Recovery

I woke up from a dream about my English Boss.

In my dream, I visited her with two other colleagues. When we reached the rehabilitation centre, her bed was empty. We were referred to the physiotherapy room where she was lying on a bed after doing some exercises. Even in the dream, I was full of hope that we could see her supporting herself on the walking bars and trying very hard to walk, while approaching the physiotherapy room.

When I saw her, I had my daughters with me. I showed her my baby and told her how delightful the baby was, and touched her hand with Baby's.

Then she spoke!

And it was exactly how she had spoken before she was down with stroke.

I was very surprised and thrilled that she was speaking, but apparently, she did not want to let everybody know she could speak already.

Then I woke up to find that it was just a dream.

And I was sad.

Although she is remembered in my prayer and I am sure she will recover for the strength of character and determination she possessed, it's difficult not to wonder how long it will take for her to make a significant recovery. Every step that she takes is so tiny and tedious.

A Mainlander colleague was telling me that her aged father had a stroke similar to my English Boss - a blood vessel burst in the brain. Like her, he could not recognise anyone or speak at all when it first happened.

But after 2 to 3 months of treatment at a hospital in China, her father was able to speak, albeit not fluent anymore, and walk by himself before he was discharged. The recovery only became very slow after he was taken home as there was no further treatment.

She felt that the medical knowledge and skills of Singapore doctors were not as advanced as China's and that made a difference to her father's and my English Boss' situations. She said that she had never heard of stroke patients in similar state after an operation in China. To give me a better picture of the medical scene in China, she went on to tell me that trainee doctors are strictly not allowed to perform an operation. Even certified doctors cannot operate on patients unless they have been understudying old and experienced doctors for at least 8 years. She was shocked to know that trainee doctors in Singapore were allowed to operate on patients. Furthermore, doctors in China have more experience operating on patients because of the sheer size of population.

If what she said is true, then it's either the government has been doing a great job at propaganding or we have all been had and are paying premium for a figment of our imagination.

Desire turned Dream

Like I said in one of my latest posts, I have put up my blinds for sale online.

This morning, I dreamed of a couple coming down to my place to check out the blinds. They were very thorough and were especially particular about the transparency of the blinds. They used various devices to poke at my blinds to see if they would let in too much light.

After checking repeatedly, they were happy with the blinds and paid the original price of the blinds to me. I remembered we agreed on half the price instead, but since the guy wanted to pay me the full sum, I gave him back a hundred and he was happy that he got a bargain.

When I woke up, I looked at my blinds. They were, and are, still standing outside my bomb shelter.

They are custom-made. I doubt I will sell them off that easily. But nevermind, I'll keep them anyway.

'Bad service' dream

I just woke up from a 'bad service' dream.

I dreamt that I met up with a friend at IMM in Jurong, and we went to a Chinese family restaurant similar to 三盅两件.

Our first order was a glass of barley. The waitress served us the drink (yes, just one - it's a dream) and wanted to collect the money for just the drink. It was $3.20. Yes, my dream is that vivid, and the vividness is not isolated to just this dream.

When I took out $3, the waitress said in a demeaning tone that $3 was not enough to pay for the drink, what with the service charge that was not added in yet, but she refused to tell me what the service charge was.

After that, she continued to be rude - she half-threw, half-slided a dish onto my table.

I got angry and treated her the same way, but sliding my glass of barley across the table. She saw that and did not want to come back to my table to take my order.

A manager came by instead.

He heard me out and appeared to be empathetic.

Then suddenly, he took out a back-scratching device and started to chop up our dishes which were some buns cooked in different styles. I protested, saying that it was unhygienic, but the manager insisted it was not.

I screamed that I did not order those dishes and I would do something drastic if he dared to give me those dishes.

After that, he went to the kitchen to bring us more dishes.

While he was in the kitchen, we stopped a young waitress in her track to give us the bill.

She gave us a figure: $9.90 for a plate of fried rice and barley water.

I requested for a receipt and she panicked, like I was being a customer from hell.

Just then, a blind customer came in through the door.

The young waitress immediately treated her like a VIP ie. helped her change into another pair of shoes, supposedly to aid her in walking, and guiding her to a seat.

As I watched how they treated the visually impaired customer, I wondered if I had been a difficult customer myself ...

Then I woke up. It felt so real.

Insecure about photography?

I dreamt that I had a rude shock when I opened my photo album. The pictures were all gone!

I have quite a few 5-pieces-of-4R-per-page photo albums just for the past one year alone. Among them was an album specially for Coco's photographs. When I opened that one up in my dream, I was horrified to find that the photos have gone missing.

In the dream, I was too shocked for words. My babysitter was equally dumbfounded when she saw me panic.

I haven't been taking photos actually. I have been reading up on strobes and studio photography. I wonder if that could have contributed to the insecurity portrayed in my dream.

Fall from great height

Some time ago, I dreamt of myself falling from great height.

The fall was petrifying. As I fell, I kept asking myself if it was a dream or reality. And I was going down, down, down ...

As I hit the ground, I woke.

A nightmare no less.

In Limbo

I'm in limbo - between staying and leaving.

I'm actually trying not to make any decision ... until perhaps the lawyer calls to make the next appointment.

I've approximately another 1 or 2 weeks to be in this state of uncertainty.

I look at Baby and I'm not sure.

I just woke up from a dream, or some dreams.

I dreamt of being old and living in a small flat, probably a three-room flat, and being neighbours with equally poor folks, but we're all helpful to one another.

I dreamt that my knee joints were painful when I got up from squating down to wash a milk-stained cloth that was used to clean up an orphan. And I walked with a limp towards a cabinet because of the pain in the knees. ... Scary.

I dreamt of myself arranging tables and chairs for a debate in school. There were 3 teams - Proposition, Opposition and Proposition! Is this a hint at how crappy schools are getting? Doing the unnecessary to create more work?

I'm kinda desperate. I actually posted my problem in a forum to see what responses I would get. I thought people would ask me to stay and give him another chance. Surprisingly, most people asked me to leave.

To qualify my post at the forum, I always try to be as objective as I can by posting up his flaws and merits, although his flaws are evidently, invariably more numerous than his merits. This is so that I can give people a better picture of what he's been doing to make up to ask me to stay.

Reasons listed by those who are for me to leave:

1) It's a loveless marriage.

2) I've already taken the first step, don't look back.

3) If he meant to change, he will change regardless of whether I stay or leave. If he changes despite my departure, then it's for the permanent and I can get back with him 5 years down the road (!!!). But the forummer didn't think that he will change.

4) I should give myself a new lease of life.

5) I should stop living in denial and think that he will ever change.

6) Life with him is miserable. Life alone will be better.

Reasons listed by those who are for me to stay:

1) He may change if I stay.

2) Gambling addicts can quit their addiction if they go through counselling.

After reading the thread I started, I told William once about point (3) above - that if he meant to change, he will change whether I stay or leave and we can be together again a few years down the road if he really does change. To which he replied,"I know you're not that sort of person who will get back with me if you ever break away from me."

And he's right. When you've given up, you've given up. I don't believe in reunite-with-your-love-after-thousands-of-years kind of story. If I ever leave, it'll be a new chapter of a book.

... ...

I don't know how to end this post, after leaving it on for 45 minutes.

I guess it's also in limbo.

Nightmare

Last night, I dreamt that I had a baby at Thomson Medical Centre again!

It was a nightmare. I was so glad it was a dream when I woke up.

A Strange Wedding

A few days ago, about a day after the Staff Dinner, I dreamt of James, a colleague, and Michelle Chia getting married.

Perhaps it was because James was the overall-in-charge of the Dinner and he was up there making the opening speech before the Dinner commenced. We took a picture together as well. About two days before that, we chatted abit at our colleagues' Malay wedding. An ex-colleague who left one week after I joined the school asked if I was his wife or girlfriend as I was smiling at her and sitting beside him. After that, he said,"You're my wife for tonight." After all, I studied Literature and we were supposed to read alot in between the lines, and tried to squeeze all possible implications and insinuations and sarcasms from the lines. So I thought that line has some sort of sexual implication there as well. Haha ... of course he probably didn't mean so, but given the person who reads and thinks too much into things, I couldn't help but went that way in my thought.

I sidetracked again.

Okay. I dreamt of him and Michelle Chia. They were getting married in a cosy chapel-like place, with alot of dark-wood elements around it. The pews, the long stretch of altar (like the one at Trinity College) etc. Michelle Chia wasn't even in her wedding gown. She had her hair tied in two plaits and she was in this pink frilly blouse, with a pair of nice shorts. And she was preparing some sort of drinks for the reception as she was making her wedding speech! She was saying something to the effect of "It doesn't matter what form the wedding takes, as long as we love each other and mean to marry each other." And James agreed.

The guests, including me, felt so touched we wept. The whole atmosphere was such that it was very touching.

About a day after the wedding, I went to this swanky boutique that Michelle Chia opened. James attended to me. However, the moment I tried to touch a unique dress at the collar, he stopped me from putting my hand to it as he didn't want me to taint or spoil the dress in any way! In the dream, I was an aspiring fashion designer (haha ... look how far-fetched a dream can be) and I was trying to find ideas from that dress. So I was shocked when James loved his wife so much that he wouldn't allow me, a lowly commoner, to touch an apparel that's hung for display.

After the snub, I walked out of the boutique. And that was just about my dream ended.

A short nightmare

I woke up from a relatively short nightmare.

I dreamt that the teacher co-training the child for storytelling wanted me to spend time with the child on a Saturday. She said that she'll spend time with the child first in the morning while I go and take over her shift in the afternoon.

When I asked her for a reason for doing that, she replied that it's to retain children with good results in our school and she was giving a lot of crappy reasons to sustain her weak argument.

In the dream, I wanted to refute her, but didn't given her rank in school.

Towards the end, I did ask her if it's necessary since the competition is already over. And the dream faded out.

I woke up.

The whole training episode has probably taken a toll on me, so much that I view it as a nightmare. The most crappy thing is: the teacher goes around telling others that the girl didn't receive enough training!

The truth is: she got so much of it that she was put off. That explains why she was demotivated to come for training.

And there's only so much training can do. The kids at the competition were far better in all ways, especially their command of English.

The complaint about the father isn't quite justified as well. As a parent, I can understand where he's coming from. No doubt I would like my child to take part in a storytelling competition, but there's a limit to the participation. I can't possibly allow my kid to abandon her academics just to take part in it. And for 2 months, my kid doesn't have enough time or energy to study at home. How would a parent feel?

I told the teacher that I would feel 'heart-pain' to see my kid staying back in school every day to go through a few hours of training every day. The teacher said,"Do you really feel this way? If I were the parent, I would want her to go through it! It's to develop her character and to let her know that she needs to go through hardship to achieve something."

I can only say that it's easy to say this when you are not married and you don't have a kid going through the turmoil, and especially when it's got nothing to do with academic achievement.

A part of me hopes that my boss won't ask me to train another child for the competition with this teacher again. Another part of me wonders if the teacher will do the same thing as staying back till 5pm next year to train a child for the same competition when our school goes single session next year.

Let me make a guess: she won't. Then again, it's difficult to say since she's a single and got no other commitment besides work, and she doesn't have any marking or lesson-preparation to do.

Going back to work dream

I had a dream about going back to work this morning.

I dreamt that I waited for a bus at Tampines where my alma mater is, and in the dream, I lived in one of the flats there.

Many buses came and went.

All of a sudden, I realised I didn't know where my company was located!

Then my bus came. It didn't stop. I ran after it. Just before I boarded the bus, I realised I didn't have my shoes on!

I decided not to go to work barefooted and would call in sick for the day.

Then I woke up and was glad that it wasn't real.

I wonder if the dream is a hint at my reluctance to return to work.

Nightmares

I've been having some weird dreams lately.

Just yesterday, I dreamt that Dr Ang screamed and shouted at me because he found me such a nuisance for enquiring so much. And he sneered at my intolerance of the pain of 1-cm dilation when others felt nothing at 2- or 3-cm dilation.

It was a scary and stressful dream.

The other day, I dreamt about some form of the Last Day, that I became a child and was friend with a kid I teach. And there were killings everywhere. She was axed by a few children on a grasspatch while I was too petrified to help her. I ran and ran for my life.

It was a nightmare I was glad I woke up from.

Scary dreams

I keep getting scary dreams these few months.

Some months before, I kept dreaming about someone trying to rape me.

Recently, I keep dreaming about escaping. Not necessarily me doing the escaping. I dreamt that two women were trying to escape from some people who were trying to harm them. And they went into this machine, supposedly an oven that makes sausages. They were sure that the machine was dormant and they wanted to escape through the oven. But halfway through, the machine started working, and both of them went through the process of being floured, splashed with water, and eventually a heat rush. Before the dream ended with the two of them thrown into a huge pile of sausages, the younger girl turned around to give me a look of utter dispair and seemed to blame me for not helping her.

I woke up frightened.