[UPDATE: I forgot to send this out on 7th!! It was just sitting in Drafts…]
This week has been busy. I fell sick on Monday and had an interview on Friday, so not much room to breathe. Sorry for the lack of a real post this round, especially for those who wanted to see Charlotte’s backstory… I’ll catch up on that soon.
Here are a collection of some random thoughts this week which I may elaborate on:
Results Release
The day I’ve always feared since 2018, with my A levels. (To my dear friend who said she was getting nightmares every night before that day, I empathise with you. But look where you are now, 8 time zones away! I think it all worked out.)
Anyway, back to me. I think it was a blessing that I fell sick - sneezing 6 times in a row is not fun - and didn’t suffer from my usual routine of waking up too early, waiting for the magic letters to appear on the univus app.
You can always rely on that app to show you the results at 7 am. Disregard what the emails say about “waiting for your faculty”, if you want the freshest news, univus is where you go.
And there it was. NM4401HM - my Honours Thesis, The Charlotte Crisis - A+.
I might have felt happier. Not because I wasn’t happy with the project or the score. Maybe it was because I was still sneezing like mad. But most importantly, how would I feel happy knowing that I still live under the same roof as the antagonist of The Charlotte Crisis?
But discounting that, I guess I’ve done well in school. Look at this graph~
At my lowest point, two major changes happened. One, I finished almost all my Economics modules, and could pivot to my desired major of CNM. Two, I discovered Charlotte, and could pivot to my desired gender of “both, please”.
Both of those changes saw an uptick in my GPA, and the most learning and self-expression I’ve ever had.
Would be a shame to see that all wiped away with the micellar wipe that is real life…
What if Charlotte never was?
I was talking to another friend about the long-lost days of 2020, back when we were all wearing masks and quarantined.
They hated it, of course. Their family situation is worse than mine and being under circuit breaker felt like jail.
That got me thinking. I’ve lived a pretty idyllic life on campus, away from home, but what if that fateful day where I had to choose my residential college, I hadn’t checked my email and let that opportunity slip by?
Would Charlotte even exist?
The short answer, of course, is no. You’ve read about my big coming out event: that was an RVRC exclusive. Without that motivation, I probably would never have bought my first dress, learned my first makeup, visited my first Pink Dot. And that’s not even going into a lack of safe spaces outside campus living.
Of course, this might yield better results for most parties involved. My life would be heteronormative. My family would find other reasons to fight and stress me out. I would even have taken different modules, maybe I’d be more employable.
But when I think about that alternate reality, where I never had the space to discover Charlotte… it’s a sad one. Maybe I’d have gone down the incel path (yes, I still don’t have a girlfriend but I’m okay with that!). Or maybe I’d repress even further until I could no longer bear it and do something truly drastic. None of those scenarios are better than the one I’m in now.
I quote Dr Strange: “this is the timeline where we win”. Things may not be as ideal as I think they could be or fit nicely into society’s ideals for me. But this is the path I am on, warts and all. And I have faith it’s the right one.
And that’s it…
for this week, at least.
Next week there’ll be more content, I’m going out with my queer friends. But this weekend, please just let me just sink into my video games once more.
The Woman Who Discovered Her Name, is gonna play The Man Who Erased His Name.