certificate of participation

i just picked my mom up from school, as there was the NDP NE show and she was there to 'jaga' the school.

on the way home, i told her about this primary sch friend of mine who's going overseas for a year for work and study. then i went on to tell her that how i wish i can go for an exchange too, while thinking about the fact that i was supposed to go UK for an exchange but i botched it up.

somehow my mind wandered off, and then out of the blue, i asked her if she ever talks about me in front of her colleagues. She said she does and she tells them about how good i am with music. Hearing that brought upon me a bittersweet feeling. It's nice to know that she is proud of me. However, it saddens me that I have nothing more for her to boast about to her colleagues. The fact is, when it comes to music, I am crap. (I shall come back to this later)

Mother then told me that I can apply for summer exchange, as it wouldn't be a good idea for me to be abroad on my own for the whole of 5-6 months due to my condition.

I've always felt that my parents think of me as a 没用得孩子, and even though they called me that a few times when I was a little kid and it affected me alot, I've come to realise that it isn't them who think that I am useless, but it's I myself who often place that label upon myself...

In recent months, for reasons I don't know yet, I am surrounded by symbols of my past failures wherever I am... Many things I look at remind me of failed attempts of love and broken dreams... Disappointment is all around. And if you are reading this, you might (JUST MIGHT) be thinking that I should leave it to God and lay it at the altar or something, but guess what, every single time I've done that, the feelings come back sooner than I'd have preferred. And so, to be honest, my faith is waning...

Why is God turning a deaf ear to my prayers? I can't help but think that He has given up on me. I don't want to just suppress my feelings by occupying myself with something like leading a cell group (which I've done before) or participating in something like 40DOF, cos i'll only be escaping my feelings, and that totally isn't what a relationship with God is supposed to be, right?

Back to the fact that I'm crap when it comes to music. I just got my results for the performer's festival, the competition that I took part in, and I got a friggin certificate of participation. While I have no qualms about how badly I might have played, but can you believe it? A certificate of participation for someone who had a dream of pursuing music as a career, then flopped badly while attempting it, then putting on braces to try to forget about it all (so that I can't play my trumpet), then switching to the piano, and then a certificate of participation. It's either a symbol of how low i've fallen, or how so damn lofty my dreams were that i must have been building castles in the air all that while...

All i want now is to achieve something for Mother to be proud about. And yet, even going to school has been a struggle for me...