Post-Graduation Blues: What’s Next?

This is the post that I’ve been struggling to write. It’s this post that I couldn’t bring myself to publish. I didn’t blog for a month because of it.

I could just have brushed it off and removed it from my schedule. But I do insist on putting it out there. Then, we can go back to posts like the one I wrote last week on Asian movies.

Among all the blogs I’ve written, this is the only one that is still going strong 6 years later. Among all of them, this is the only one which I deem to be my ‘personal’ one. A blog that’s for everything and anything. No niche, no marketing. Just you and me.

And that’s why I wanna share this part of my life with you.

So I just finished my 3-year undergraduate course, as you may know. It’s now time to move on to the next step: get a job, create a career of my own, and stuff.

When I detach myself from my body… when I look at myself from outside of myself, I see someone who’s sad to leave her university and her friends, her societies and gangs. She’ll miss the student life for sure, that’s why she probably created a student blog. But I also see that she’s kinda excited. She does enjoy working based on her internship experiences. And she’d love to be financially independent.

But then, I get inside my head. I get inside my heart and I see… emptiness. 

Maybe it’s called home-culture shock. Maybe it was a depressive episode. When I left Malaysia and came back home to settle down, I felt like I had lost everything. Does this statement seem too hyperbolic? I could barely speak my own language.

I had left behind my friends, my community (a.k.a. theatre and dance), my boyfriend, my habits and lifestyle. My independence, my alone time, my dear room; I had everything and I had to leave it all.

Sure, I love my family, but the illusion of living on my own, within my own means, felt amazing… and I had to let it go. Even if it meant I had to live on instant noodles during emergencies, I loved the life I was living.

All my friends are abroad. I came back to be stuck home every day, especially since Uber doesn’t exist here and public transportation is a nightmare. I came home wanting nothing but to eat, sleep, maybe watch depressing movies/animes and see no one.

It took me more than a week to finally summon the courage to reach out to the few friends who were still in the country. Nevertheless, I’m still stuck at home because they’re all busy. But that’s okay I don’t blame them.

I do sign in to Instagram just to stalk all my friends in Malaysia, watching all the events I’m missing, everything I wished I was a part of.

No, I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to look for a job.

I mean, people promise you so many wonderful things when you take off to study abroad. But where are they now? What is wonderful about being fed lies about the prestige of studying abroad? Yes, they’re just lies, because when your student visa expires and you have to come home, you’ll be just like everyone else: unemployed and looking for a job.

Does it really make a difference whether you’ve been abroad or not? Maybe, but not a huge one. Have I done all this just to go back to where I started? Have I done all this to end up like everyone else?

Where are all the dreams and passion? Where are the artists, the challengers? What was this fake marketing of following your ambitions and opening thousands of opportunities?

Am I doomed to get a job, feed myself, find a boring respectable man, get married and just die?

Well, maybe it won’t be so bad. I don’t have the means to do anything else. I’m trapped, but I got to go through it. It’s the only way to get to what I really want.

But… what do I really want in the first place?

An Evil Nymph.