AnYi 安亦

[WARNING: lots of grumbling and unoriginal stupidity]

[excerpt from Journal Entry 20220207]

Today the first rejection email came to my inbox with the cold, polite opening ‘Thank you for your application…’ I had, on a streak of forced genius or incompetence, set up the threshold of 50 rejections before I allow myself to feel discouraged or upset.

If only the rule were that easy to practice!

As I left the house this afternoon (mind you, dearest, I am now finally accustomed to saying ‘the house’ as naturally as if I didn’t spend the first 24 years of my life living in flats, shared dormitories and single rooms), I couldn’t but help notice how everyone’s head was marked with a giant label — ‘residency’, ‘employment’, or ‘so young that they don’t have to worry about it’, whereas my own was covered in cold, purple Times New Roman letters, not ‘unemployed’, but ‘unemployable’.

Knowing full well that this was by no means an original reaction, and fishing up all philosophically consoling words that are third-cousins to real wisdom to fill up the gnawing gaps in my head, I still eyed everybody on the bus with barely controlled envy, from the Gothic teenagers with nose piercings and bleached hair, to the old lady talking loudly on a dial-only phone, ‘Yes, I’m just on the bus in Durham!’ To be honest, none of them looked content; indeed, each bore the look of unspeakable boredom from being constantly unheard or unnoticed for one’s real worth. But my brain still decided to fill itself with the most uncharacteristic envy and longing at the faintest glimpse of their life — a sense of unrequited, helpless need for some kind of settlement, spiritual or physical.

Of course, I judge myself harshly for such behaviour, but, looking back on my love-hate relationship with UKVI and the Home Office, maybe it is only natural that one slight at my capabilities should uproot so much hidden anxiety. I’m not very familiar with anxiety; the imminence of the sensation always seems too organised for me. Depression, heartbreak, despair…these are the things I know how to deal with, but even in the face of the worst episode of each or all, I’ve ever let myself go liberal with anxiety — if the scores of the many questionnaires I had to take can be any proof — but maybe that, at the end of the day, is just yet another elaborate lie I have constructed to build up some shelter on my already shattered mental stability.