Singing Forever

Chapter Two

I faced the mirror in my room. It was one of the things I hated the most in my life. I combed my hair whilst avoiding looking at my own face. But somehow my eyes managed to take my attention to stare at my face for some moment. I saw a plain-looking girl getting ready to leave her boarding house. She looked back at me. I told her to stop but she refused. I saw her deeply in her dark brown eyes and asked, "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

That girl answered my questions using her eyes instead of her tongue. She said, "My name is Dila. I am you, and you are me. What I want from you is stop wasting your time, get up and wake up from your dreams, and start your move. I know you used to love bookstores so much that you wished your books would be there. And now you wish even more because you cannot help seeing books written by people you know well are on the shelves."

"I do not envy them," I said in whisper.

"No, you don't. But you desperately want to get your books put on the bestselling books shelf. You don't envy them, but seeing their books makes you underestimate yourself for not finishing your own yet, let alone sending it on a publisher," she said. I felt as if Excalibur, King Arthur's Excalibur, stabbed me on my back.

"Shut up," I told her. "I'm bloody inspired, now shut up."

"I will keep telling you stuffs like this until you stop wandering around doing nothing," she replied.

"SHUT UP!" No, I didn't say those words. I said it using my eyes, impersonating her. I looked at her even deeper in her eyes. I looked at her angrily. I kept looking at her so until I realised it was my own reflection I got angry with. In other words, myself.

Now I even hate myself for hating itself.

I know it is ridiculous, and I realise I am ridiculous even more. Just a few days ago I found a book written by a friend of mine was displayed on a shelf at the bookstore I usually went to. Finding that book made me sick of myself that I hardly get enough of it when I found that friend of mine posting his book displayed in that bookstore on his Twitter account. I don't like him showing off. That made me promise myself to not post similar stuff to any SNS account I have.

I grabbed my bag as well as my phone and I went to my campus. Along the road I took, in my head I repeatedly reading some pages of the book I read the night before. It was a book on literary theories, whilst the pages were about psychoanalysis, one of my favourite literary theories.

I had no idea when I realised that I suddenly got my mind back thinking about the matter in front of the mirror. I was thinking about two types of people who find out the successes of other people around them. The first type is the type with high self-esteem. This type of people tend to have high self confidence that when they find their friends' successes, they will be easily motivated to be successful despite being envious or not. On the other hand, people with low self-esteem tend to have low self confidence that when they find their friends' successes, they will most likely compare themselves to those successful friends. Despite being envious or not, they will probably feel guilty for not being able to reach what they want, maybe their dreams.

I am not a theorist, I just conclude those thoughts from observing things around me...

...and myself.

Anyways, by mentioning I observed myself in building that conclusion, I implied that I was the second type, and I rather pitied myself for being one.