"Cheating" My Way Through Life

I wonder if old age plays a part for people to muse more. I feel as if I am at this threshold of life where I have to reflect on things for a while. Moving on is good, but it is from the past that one draws experiences and painful reminders.

Growing up, I am never close to my parents. Typical, conservative, over-protective Asian parents whose mentalities are that children are to be seen and not heard. Children have to listen to the parents no matter what circumstances, even if the children know they are doing the right things.

I never liked way my parents brought me up, but then I cannot choose my parents, so I have to just live with it. At times I reflect, if I never sort of "cheated" my way a bit, I wonder where I would be now? But I am obstinate, even now. What I like, really care about, I will go all out despite what anyone will say. Similarly what I do not like, I will not even be bothered with.

When I was in primary three, my mum trained me for the Gifted Education examinations held later that year. She made me do IQ tests, higher-level mathematical problems and creative-thinking problems. When I passed the first round, she was totally ecstatic.

But I refused to go for the second round. If I entered the Gifted Education programme, I would have to change schools. At that time, I could not bear to leave my teachers, the friends I have made and the school I grew to love. My mum forced me to go to school to take the examinations, but when I was in the exam hall, I deliberately answered the questions wrongly (those questions I knew at least, as I was not able to do about 80% of the paper anyway).

Needless to say I did not get in. During upper primary, we had to choose six secondary school choices, then the results from the national examinations will determine which choice (if any) we would end up in. So my mum filled in all the choices for me, the six top girls' schools.

It did not include my secondary school, even though my school was ranked thirty to forty every year out of the top fifty secondary schools, it was not a good school in her eyes. And she wanted me to be in the Special stream, to take double first languages, which means studying the Mother Tongue at a higher level.

On the day we were supposed to submit the choices, I changed the choices. It was during those days when everything was still manual, so just by erasing everything off with correction tape and writing over it again would suffice.

She was livid of course when she found I changed my choices, but accepted it in the end since the school was within walking distance to my old place, and if I had gone somewhere else, transportation wise would be a problem since she still did not allow me to take public transport on my own.

The same thing happened again when I was enrolling for tertiary studies. My parents wanted me to choose a course more practical and can earn me more money in the future, but I wanted something I am interested in. I could no longer do Medicine or Engineering since I switched to the Arts stream and did not study science subjects at a higher level.

So she chose Business as first choice, Accounting as second. But for someone who almost flunked Economics and tried her hand at Accounting subjects and failed them, how could I ever do Business or related subjects? I swore I would never study Economics again! But as usual, my parents refused to sign unless I put the choices they wanted.

And as usual, on the day of submission, I switched the choices. But since I was accepted into Law, they relented, although now I feel I should have gone for Mass Communications or Arts specialising in Literature instead from the very beginning. Perhaps my life would then have a different course.

There were some other incidents when I "cheated". Like when I was with my second ex, I went out with my childhood friend, even though that time he was so possessive that he never allowed me to even mention any guys in his presence, let alone go out with one. But it was so rare that my friend and I meet up, so I went out a day with him.

I told my ex I was out with my parents. Yes, I lied, and I did not feel good about it, but if I told him the truth, I would be courting trouble not just for myself but my friend as well.

And I sort of "cheated" in my resume too. I did not put down anything which I have not done, but those which I have done, I made them sound as if I did such good work, when actually it was really some simple work which anyone could do. So in a way, I felt as if I was lying to my prospective employer by making it seem as if I am that good when actually I am not.

As a person, one should not lie or cheat. But do I feel guilty? As bad as I sound, I do not. Perhaps a little, over the resume thing. But for the rest, I do not. I know if I did not "cheat", I would never have gotten what I wanted.

But am I too self-centred, to resort to this to get what I want? If I did not, I would not have done what I wanted, made my own choices. What if my choices were the wrong choices, and it was my parents who were making the right choices all along? In this case, am I really such a bad person that I changed what my parents wanted of me to what I wanted for myself?