Audi Khalid

Usually towards Christmas I fall into this state of melancholy. It's a time of reflection for me. I stay away from crowds, keep more to myself.

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It's a strange balance. It feels like I'm teetering on the verge of depression, despite everything else in my life going swell. But I know this feeling too well. It has no rhyme or reason to happen, but it does.

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Monochromatic photos actually is my favorite medium cause I'm not distracted by colors. All I need to take into account is the light and dark. This is gonna sound way too artsy pretentious, but it does somewhat reflect what I feel now about the things around me. I'm in this viewing glass, detached, protected by this shell. Like being in a glass room. The sounds are muffled, you can hear the blood pulsing in your ears.

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But I know come Christmas, I'll be back to the world of color. It's just a yearly psychological cycle.

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I was both, actually. I used to be bullied when I was young. Classmates would pick on me because I was an easy target; I was quiet, nerdy, and simply put, a bit of a softy. I hung out in the library, and read nerdy books.

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As I grew older I decided to make friends with my bullies. After all, if you can't beat them, join them, right?

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I bribed them with hamburgers daily. I hung out with them even when they initially pushed me, shoved me around whenever I came close. I stuck around. Soon enough they did warm up to me. I started speaking up, joined them in their bullying. They liked my quick mouth. They hung out at my place a few times. We surfed porn together and played Playstation. I had a really good library of games then.

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I remember we would pick on our classmate from Sri Lanka, calling him racist terms because of his skin color. His name was Rohit. We called him Roshit. I was 9 then. We had another girl we picked on, covering our noses every time she walked past. She was Indian and had BO. My grades dropped towards the end of grade school. I did try to befriend Rohit once, but I got bullied for that, so I turned my back on him just to 'fit in'. Peer pressure, I admit.

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When I came to Singapore, I kept that bullish attitude. I would lock classmates into an arm twist, choke them and we all played wrestling in the field so I had a lot of fun times throwing and body slamming my friends onto the ground. I harassed my classmates physically. For some reason the girls, though annoyed by my stupid mouth, tend to have a soft spot for me.

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Some time when I was 15/16, I got rid of the physical bullying but kept my spicy mouth going. I would call people names, make fun of others, until one day when I was playing paper airplanes, it hit a classmate from China. He crushed it and went back to his work. I called him a 'Stupid Chinaman'. Next thing you know, I had a group of mainland Chinese boys tailing me the whole day in school. They waited for me to be alone.

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School ended, and I was jumped by them at the school bus stop. One of my good friends grabbed one in the throat immediately and separated me from them. He lectured them in Chinese, and when he was done, I got an earful by my friend. He pointed out how troublesome my mouth and constant harassment was and I could get hurt cause of it. I started changing after that.

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Obviously I still keep my flair for spicy commentary these days.

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I do tend to fall back into my bullish character every once in a while, especially when my temper starts flaring and can throw some rather hurtful, abusive remarks to friends or lovers. I feel really bad after. Sometimes I think about it and feel so disappointed with myself. Partly why I try so hard to keep my temper in check.

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