Sometimes I chortle to myself and wonder, "Why do we even bother to throw in a mix of happiness and melancholiness into our lives?" It would really save us so much trouble if we chose either of the two. Being happy all the time turns you into a 'kai xing guo', literal translation from chinese to english: a 'happy fruit'. You smile and beam all the time, are bubbly and cheerful (well at least most happy fruits are), and even if you're not, you don't let anything get you down, always looking at the cup as half full, looking for the silver lining within the cloud, and always looking on the bright side of life (doo dut, doo dut doo dut doo dut). People want to be around you because of your megawatt smile and infectious cheeriness, and because you always manage to turn a bad situation around and find a positive side to it, hence they come seeking your opinion and advice.

Life on the flipside isn't necessarily all that bad, either. You're melancholic, and people learn to deal with it. You're there to ground other people, to remind them that things may not as ideal or as great as they think they are, since many tend to be blinded by temporary satisfaction or euphoria such that they do not consider the future repercussions of whatever it is that is bringing them joy, or whether this thing affects others negatively. You brood silently during outings (if you even turn up at all, since most aren't even mandatory) and yet manage to entertain with your constant infusing of dark humour, dry wit and sarcasm to counter the sickeningly-sweet positiveness that radiates from the happy fruits. People constantly ask after you and whether you're okay, and this inevitably leads to conversations unless of course you're not in the mood for talking.

Being a mix of one and the other, however, just leads to a never-ending eternal turmoil within you that leaves you feeling confused and out of place. You're feeling melancholic, then you arrive at an outing and in the presence of all the chatting, jokes and laughter, your bubbliness surfaces and you join in the fun, cutting loose and throwing caution and decorum to the winds. You have a rolling good time with the rest of them and are the life of the party. Even if you slip back into melancholiness if something happens, your friends give you a hearty slap on the back as well as a good trouncing for dampening the spirits, and in the face of this good-natured ribbing you perk up again.

You're feeling cheerful and bubbly, fielding a million conversations online and spamming :D :) XD emoticons in every one of them. A good book or a document is currently occupying your time, or perhaps your favourite video game. Then you are presented with a gentle reminder that your life isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you begin falling deep into the gaping, abyssal maw of melancholiness and you just wonder over and over again to yourself, 'Why is my life so f***ed up?' You put everything off and put 9 Crimes on repeat, turning up the volume so you can perfectly hear the rhythm of your heart beating in time to the haunting vocals of Damien Rice.

You say to yourself, 'Nah it's not that extreme as he describes, Nigel the ever-exaggerator.' Whatever the degree, I'm pretty certain this mix is found in all of us. The scales may be tipped in favour of either trait, or perfectly balanced, I don't care. So why do we do it? We do it because to follow either 24/7 leads to a gigantic bundle of unrealistic expectations, untrue assumptions, jumped-to conclusions and false opinions of you, from others. And we'd much rather put ourselves through a churning tornado of crap than to have to deal with that.

I guess one good way of coping is letting yourself get as deep as you like into the quicksand whenever you step on a trap that springs it. This trap may be something you purposely step into, you masochist you, or one that you fall into accidentally because someone speaks out of turn or presents something to you that just turns your heart into the core of an unstable nuclear reactor. When you feel that you're just about as deep as you can get, remind yourself of the good things (if any) that are coming ahead, and about the bright side (if any) of the quicksand (hey, it rejuvenates the skin!) and you'll be sucked out of it faster than you can say 'emo'.

We hold dear, and keep secret to ourselves, those things that matter the most to us. That's why we disguise pledges and sweetness with generic phrases, words, symbols; anything that lets those that we want to know, know that we have them in mind and they bring joy to our lives. A simple 'Hooray.' or perhaps a smiley (: is equivalent to a knowing wink, directed at whom it may concern. We are no longer students, no longer teenagers. We no longer have youthful innocence or unkept secrets.

We are young adults, and the next chapter of our lives is just beginning.

We force ourselves to be cruel, to free ourselves from caring.