Waking up from my bourgeois illusion

I have always wondered what about me that accounts for my seemingly eternal regret about not going to ACS(I) 12 years ago and constantly longing for some kind of connection with the whole AC family.

For a long time now, it gave me perverse joy when people mistake me for an AC boy or a Rafflesian because I "speak/behave like one" or "exude the essence/spirit of an AC boy" because it went a long way in compensating for choosing Fairfield.

But forced by recent events to reconsider, I think I am starting to get a better idea and more importantly, coming to terms with not only my motivations, but also getting out of the illusion that I have made myself live under for most of my life.

I have been a pseudo-AC boy for as long as I can remember simply because the whole AC thing represented some form of upward social mobility for me. The AC culture is English-speaking, bourgeois/upper middle class, affluent and perhaps, even liberal -- elements that appealed to me still.

I never went to ACS or ACJC. I am not only pseudo-AC simply because I attended a fellow Methodist school (Fairfield), but also AC by proxy since I had so many friends from the AC family.

Manifest in outward appearances, this means baggy berms and expensive surf-brand tee shirts or Nike/adidas apparel as a kid in secondary school.

It also meant lounging at coffee places like Coffeebean and later, Starbucks as a college kid. Clubbing gear as a late-teen and early twenty-something meant niffy labels like Maharishi, Staple and being a shoe-whore who frequented Left Foot at Far East and dining at mid-range places like Olio Dome, Crystal Jade and Marches with alarming regularity.

I guess this explains the kind of friends I wanted and continued to hang out with despite feeling somewhat left out hanging around them.

But no matter what I chose to wear, what I chose to fill my time with, what company I chose to keep -- especially in church, my upper middle-class choices could never mask my lower middle-class sensibilities and reality.

Because in my mid-twenties, indulging in upper middle-classness meant going to friends' houses to play numerous rounds of poker or mahjong, smoking not only cigarettes but Middle Eastern seisha and all the while regarding alcohol as your best friend.

But that was where my lower middle class sensibilities prevailed. I decided I have to draw the line somewhere. It just so happened that I started being more conscious of how I spent my money since I turned 21.

Where I didn't have any cares in the world and spent money from hand to mouth before, I think a lot before I spend now -- especially after tasting and knowing how difficult it is to be earning your own money, what with my stint in army and my internship last year.

The extent of my detest for cigarettes and second-hand smoke also played a very big role in helping me wake up from this illusion I was creating for myself. Wanting to be doing what God wanted me to be doing also inevitably played a huge role in this.

I realised that wanting to be cool didn't mean having to associate myself with upper middle class people or engaging in upper middle class activities. Pretending what I am not not only costs money that I can no longer afford, but is also more importantly, very tiring and utterly fake.

Creating this illusion for myself meant that I not only reject myself, but not to be able to fully belong with my upper middle choices meant that I belonged to neither factions and am consequently in limbo, or what is anthropologically referred to as "betwixt and between."

So maybe my identity crisis, my rebel without a cause days when I was in school were all an indirect result of all these impressionistic pinings.

I have only been recently undoing the the effects of living under this illusion. Coping with downward mobility is not as hard as some people might think -- especially with money in short supply. Guess it's just a matter of what you treasure more -- your face or your existence.

I just regret that it had to take so long before I realised that I was rejecting what God perceived as being perfect for me for so long.