what a way to start the year

a friend of mine killed himself the friday before valentine's.

it came as quite a shock when another friend informed me about this over the phone. i have never thought that any of my friends would really do something as drastic as taking one's own life. (killing another, maybe. ) all i could react to when i got the news over the phone was to agree with pooling together money for the family.

i'm not very close with this friend, so this is not some kinda orbituary or memorial post. just me, not understanding why people would wanna take their own lives.

i still remember him being a very active student back in high school. the fella's always somewhere among the top 20% of the class, did very well in public speaking and singing contests, ok in sports. he was in the school band, and was even the head prefect in school.

he didn't really get far after high school, from what i heard. family didn't do great and he couldn't get a good enough scholarship to get through college, since he was never anywhere near the top 5% in class.

the last time i heard from him was mid last year at another friend's wedding. a few of us car-pooled to KL for the banquet. he came across as a lil depressed, lacked confidence and pretty much tried to hide most of his feelings.

then came the phone call about him jumping off the top floor of the place he was living in.

come to think of it, i didn't do much better than he did, even in high school. even though i was a nerd and basically ended up in the top 3 in class every year, i was never very active in school activities. well, that's mostly because i hate the school's discipline. deliberately failed the prefect exam twice cos the diciplinary master's a bitch. after high school, i never really pour myself into studies anymore until i got back from the states. most of the time, i'm just enjoying myself by indulging in whatever fancies me at the time.

i probably wouldn't be suffering where i am now, if i'd lived paying more attention to my future. compared with most of my friends back from high school, i have really done much for a career.

so, i'm at a point in life where i should already be somewhere, but i'm still way behind on schedule. but i haven't lost hope yet. i still think i can hurry up and get back on schedule if i work hard enough.

one thing about playing games, especially RPGs, a lot is that it really made me realize that real life is not that kinda game -- you can't die and reload from a previously saved game; nor do you have extra lives to play with.

life's just a complicated one-way maze with more branches at every turn. you don't have a map, you can't go back and you're not sure whether you're headed to the correct exit (or if there really is an exit instead of all dead ends). kinda sucks if you think of it that way but i still think that there's always an exit, even if you came to a dead end, you might find a hidden door. :)

i guess that's what's interesting, not knowing where the path will really lead. that, and the other thing i learnt from games -- the bull-headed, stubborn insistence to make it all the way to the end.