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.