I think I need to re-evaluate myself as a person. But where should I begin? At the shrink's office?

I know there are people who make me feel useful. I don't think I'm useless. But I think I crave to be useful so much that I let myself be overused. And when I'm overused I don't feel appreciated. And when I don't feel appreciated I start looking for more job opportunities. And that's when I start bragging about myself and start putting people down so that, one day, I can stand up and say, WORSHIP ME, who cares about a Darth Daddy when YOUR BIG SISTER IS HERE.

I don't know why. I love bragging. I like to blow up details of my best and worst aspects. I like people to look at my life, I like it when people compliment me. I think I have the biggest ego in the entire universe. Despite being borderline overweight I can still look in the mirror and tell myself I'm the drop-dead gorgeous woman every man is hankering after. I lie in my bed every night and make up a thank-you speech, and hearing my voice recite it to the world is my lullaby. Even though I just said I sound like a tuba through a voice recorder, I still like to tell myself sometimes that I have a sexy bedroom voice and I get the impulse to belt out some vocal gymnastics in a crowded MRT station.

I just don't like it when people don't join me in the bragfest. As such hardly anyone joins me in my bragfests, because they either think I'm schizophrenic or feel belittled.

Either that or they're just so goddamn offended simply because I have a mouth that promotes itself twice as triumphantly as the Dynamo Man selling his ware.

I am arrogant by nature. But I would have led a better life if people would stop telling everyone how much they suck every single minute of Earth's existence. If that can happen, why not start promoting yourself. A "Pride without Prejudice" campaign.

ON THE OTHER HAND.

I'm emotionally insecure. There are times when I know I suck. There are times when I feel like a jerk for making everybody so mad. There are times when I feel ignored, there are times when the silence is so deafening I need a hearing aid to hear the sound of silence.

I pretty much lead a lonely life.

I remember my childhood.

As a kindergarten kid, I come home from school everyday without a soul in sight, except for my maid. Of course, my maid would spend some time to play with me, but I spent a bulk of my afternoons alone in my room, playing dress-up with my mother's old qipaos and dresses, cutting up old SIA hand towels to sew wedding dresses for my dolls, talking to them as though they were my sisters, hoping that one day they'll become real people who would be there to reply whenever I had to talk.

When I was in primary school, I had a more extensive social circle, but those circles lasted only for 6 hours because, well, that's how long a typical schoool day lasts. When I went home, I wished I was somewhere else instead. I wished I was the Caucasian girl whose name was Mary-Anne Jones and went to elementary school, wearing pretty little dresses to school, and not the mundane school uniforms I wear from Monday to Saturday. I wondered if I should be the Pakistani student, wearing a burka and reading a book written in a foreign script. I thought, maybe my ancestors came from Germany, Japan, Russia, France, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, USA, Tahiti, etc, etc, etc... And I have seven names in seven different languages. And I attend the international school that had just opened near Braddell. I created so many alter egos for myself that I felt like an international spy from Rio de Janeiro. So that's what I wrote down on my "IC" when my cousins and I played pretend espionage.

When I tranferred to a new school when I was 10 and a half, I was an alien from outer space, who could do things that was of no use to the Earthlings there. People ostracise me. They wouldn't even lend me correction tape, and when I told them my previous school banned them, they thought I was out to cheat them of 20 metres of white tape. When I answered the questions correctly, I was a suck-up, and when I answered them wrongly, I was branded I.Q.-negative.

When I was Primary Six, I was probably what people brand "le poseur". I was the ultimate poser. I learnt pop songs so that I could impress friends, even though I had no idea what Britney Spears' voice sounds like then. I tried to run around like many other kids so that I could fit in, so that people don't find out that I actually prefer lazing around and sleeping on a nice, warm bed. I forced my klutz of a right hand to write properly but gave up, and began to write in that poserish manner, the nice and neat bimbo writing where the 'r's and 'v's are indistinguisable and the letters don't join at the serifs.

When I was thirteen, I was every poser gang's nightmare - ugly, fat, noisy, uncool, lame, arrogant, old-fashioned and wore near-ankle-length skirts. I told myself to be unique. I followed my heart and listened to all sorts of music but all that angst only brought me to Linkin Park. My unstable energy levels made me an Energizer Bunny one hour and a giant sloth the next.

(I think that's never changed - you can catch me shouting Hokkien versions of the textbook across the class and slouching over the desk like a dead pig, all within the same half an hour lesson on Trigonometry)

Now I'm fifteen. I realised that I can decide who I am in my mind, but I don't decide who I am in others' minds. I do not want to rely on any propaganda just to have die-hard fans grovelling at my feet. What you see is what you get, the Fangying presented to you is the one and only Fangying. If thou like me I thee thank. If thou love me I thee wed. If thou hate me I thee ignore. If thou is traumatised by me I thee counsel. If thou hurts me I thee withstand, and wait for keloids to form and thy anger and hate to simmer. Then I thee ignore and hope thou shalt not burn my house at 2 am in the morning. I shalt be certain that thou do not want to hear me screaming bloody murder.