Catcher in the Rye - Quotes

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (1951)

"What I was really hanging for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse"

"I don't know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it"

"... and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."

"'Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.'

'Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.'

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shits, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."

"It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true."

"People never notice anything."

"That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times."

"The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

"I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking, or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills."

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

"That's something else that gives me royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place."

"When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go."

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

"You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is."

"The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don't want it to be."

"The only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood. If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right."

"I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway."

"There isn't any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out."

"He's so good he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning his goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of a guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot."

"The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying 'Glad to've met you' to somebody I'm not all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though."

"When you're feeling depressed, you can't even think."

"If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voices. They sound so phony when they talk."

"The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs - if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine."

"I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee."

"The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed - especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all - and it's somebody else's fault."

"Catholic are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic."

"Catholic are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name."

"He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all."

"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

"That's what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going to anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway."

"The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute."

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

"I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it."

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."

"You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were."

"The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it."

"You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding."

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery."

"People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

"It rained on his lousy tombstones, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn't there. You didn't know him. If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean."

"It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out."

"You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look all right. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look all right."

"But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody - you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door - that's all you have to do."

"Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake - especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

"But what I mean it, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most."

"I hated them once in a while - I admit it - but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them."

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

"Something else and academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

"But this damn article I started reading made me feel almost worse. It was all about hormones. It described how you should look, your face and eyes and all, if your hormones were in good shape, and I didn't look that way at all. I looked exactly like the guy in the article with lousy hormones. So I started getting worried about my hormones. Then I read this other article about how you can tell if you have cancer or not. It said if you had any sores in your mouth that didn't heal pretty quickly, it was a sign that you probably had cancer. I'd had this sore on the inside of my lip for about two weeks. So figured I was getting cancer. That magazine was some little cheerer upper. I finally quit reading it and went outside for a walk. I figured I'd be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer. I really did. I was even positive I would be. It certainly didn't make me feel to gorgeous."

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves."

"I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed."

"I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

South of the Border, West of the Sun - Quotes

South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami (1999)

 "But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair"

"If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost for ever - something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen."

"... 'Did you see that Disney film in elementary school - The Living Desert?'

'Yes', I answered.

'Our world's exactly the same. Rainfalls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.'

'Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things just vanish, as if they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.'"

"'You're here,' I continued.

'At least you look as if you're here. But maybe you aren't. Maybe it's just your shadow. The real you may be somewhere else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you've hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys.'"

"'I read this somewhere a long time ago. Maybe in junior high - I can't for the life of me recall what book I read it in. Anyway, it affects farmers living in Siberia. Try to imagine this. You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plough your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep.

... And then one day something inside you dies.'

'What do you mean?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Something. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You throw you plough aside and your head completely empty of thought. You begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun, like someone possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana.'"

"Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality - call it an alternate reality - to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is really on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?"

"Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it. The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining."

Norwegian Wood - Quotes

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (1987)

"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life"

"What makes us most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal"
 

"I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me."

"People are strange when you're a stranger"

"Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go somewhere where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really, really want to do it sometimes. Like, suppose you whisked me somewhere far, far away, I'd make lots of babies for you as tough as little bulls. And we'd all live happily ever after, rolling on the floor."

Who's Your Catcher in the Rye?

Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
(1951)

By the time I am writing this, it is simply the best book I have ever read. How I got to know this book was actually from a song titled "Who Wrote Holden Caufield?". It was inspired by this book. So the very next day I stopped by at Borders, picked up one copy from the shelf and headed to the register. I didn't even know that it was a very popular book at all. Let alone the fact that it was the book that inspired Chapman to kill Lennon and many other killings.

When I finished reading the book, I was left in tears. For weeks.

This is new because I don't usually cry over movies or TV series.  Let alone books. I had never cried over books.

The book is about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who was developing a nervous breakdown. Got expelled from a school, he impulsively decided to 'take a vacation' before going back to his home in New York. The book was about those few days, told from Holden's point of view, describing the activities and the minds of Holden - a confused mind of a youth who seemed to despise phonies, perverts, adult society and all - well basically he bitterly hated everything.

I found the book depressing yet entertaining at the same time. At some point Holden's sarcastic and humorous attitude made me laugh. There was just too much honesty that made Holden believable that sometimes I think of him as a real person, not just fictional. As I kept reading, I couldn't help but think of me as Holden Caulfield himself. I could relate to him on every level. It just felt like reading my own biography. Throughout the book, it was obvious to see that Holden was still struggling with the loss of his younger brother Allie, who died from leukemia.

As Holden continued heading to a helpless downward spiral, I felt incredibly depressed just to think about him. It felt like he desperately wanted to hold on to his innocence for as long as he could just as he was becoming an adult, one of the phonies that he had been loathing. Thus, he also felt responsible to protect younger children, especially his own sister named Phoebe, from the adult world where all the innocence is lost.
When Phoebe asked what he wanted to be, Holden stated his desire to catch the children falling off from the cliff into the corrupt world.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be a catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy"

My favorite part of the book was Holden's visit to a museum where he reflected his own fear of any changes, as much as I do.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

At the end of the book, Holden refused to mention much about the present day which made me worrying about Holden to an extent that you wouldn't understand. I wonder if he would make it, I was genuinely hoping that he would be okay. There was some urge of desire to assure him that everything was going to be okay. That bothered me the most. He wanted to be a catcher in the rye to all those innocent children, but would he find his? It depressed the hell out of me.

Lately I made some discovery about the ending, in which I hope it could provide some comfort to myself.   It seemed that I had failed to see that Phoebe was after all the one who saved Holden from his deep fall and set him straight. It was when Holden watched Phoebe riding a carousel. It was just almost adorable.

"... I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth, I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there".

I keep coming back to this book from time to time. I re-read the whole book or just several chapters. I am frequently amazed of how different my reaction is. I do and always will cherish this book. Well as strange as it sounds, Holden had become a part of my life.

I personally think that this book is a timeless classic. For as long as the society is as sick as it is today or even worse, Catcher in the Rye will always be relevant.  We got to admit that there are times when we all need a catcher in the rye. And as for me, I am actually blessed to have "catchers in the rye" during those sick times. Yes, I am referring to my family and beloved best friends which I can't name one by one here. I am just one hell of a lucky person to have them all :)

Jamie Cullum in Melbourne - 16.04.2010

Been a fan of him for years and now I got the chance to actually see him live. I got nervous just when buying the tickets.  It brought out the "kiasu" in me. Well I didn't get the first row but I was quite happy with the 4th row.

I was excited when Jamie Cullum appeared with his latest cover "Don't Stop The Music" by Rihanna. Jamie had successfully taken this song to a whole new level. I love his version much better than the original. For the first time in my life, I was blown away with a jazz show like this. Well it was also the first time I went to a jazz show anyway. We were sitting. Most of my friends thought that the show was going to be boring. But they were so wrong. The whole thing was mesmerizing. The best part was that there was this song titled "Frontin'". I didn't like it much before but when he played it, things changed. I love it! He showcased his talent by beatboxing, recording and looping the track live. It was my highlight of the show. He was playing alone without the band yet he was creating the most amazing show that night.

It was nothing like I had ever seen before. He would literally beat on the piano, ran to the drumset and beat on it or even jumping off from the piano with the energy that was so infectious to the audience. It was the kind of thing that you would never have expected from a jazz performer like him. With beers in hand, he surely had a great time as much as the audience that night.

Between the songs, he told funny stories about how he tried to smash up an old keyboard as he was trying to imitate Jimi Hendrix destroying his guitar which ended up making the stage covered in blood since Michael Franti didn't wear any shoes.

Also at one point he and the band ventured down off the stage, joined the crowd, set their instruments there and started playing. He danced with the crowd and it was such a really great time. 

During "Gran Torino" everything was silent and I was all caught up with the song. I didn't know how but the song totally had me. 

Some friends told me that there was something about Jamie that reminded them of Billie Joe but I didn't see it. Jamie is one of the performers who could bring genuine joy to the audience. And so I guess maybe that was what reminds my friends of Billie Joe. They are both great performers.

The show was absolutely amazing. Bravo, Jamie!

Jamie Cullum Setlist :

1. Don't Stop The Music 

2. Get Your Way

3. Just One of Those Things

4. I'm All Over It

5. If I Ruled The World

6. Frontin'

7. Photograph

8. Twentysomething

9. Love Ain't Gonna Let You Down

10. You and Me Are Gone

11. I Got A Woman

12. These Are The Days

13. I Get A Kick Out of You

14. Wheels

15. High and Dry

16. Cry Me A River

17. Mixtape

18. All at Sea

Soundwave Festival - 26.02.2010

I was and still am disappointed that My Chemical Romance had to pull out from the lineups. It was said that Gerard had a problem with his voice or something. Jimmy Eat World took over MCR place. Well I personally would much prefer MCR to JEW. 

 Line-ups : Jimmy Eat World, Placebo, Paramore, AFI, Taking Back Sunday, Faith No More, HIM, Alexisonfire, Shinedown, Jane's Addiction, Motion City Soundtrack, Reel Big Fish, Eagles of Death Metal, Trivium, Anti-Flag, All Time Low, Anthrax, The Get Up Kids, Enter Shikari, A Day to Remember, Escape The Fate, Isis, Meshuggah, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Weakerthans, It Dies Today, Glassjaw, Comeback Kid, The Almost, The Aquabats, Clutch, Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong, RX Bandits, Gallows, Dance Gavin Dance, You Me at Six, A Wilhelm Scream, Emarosa, Whitechapel, Baroness, Architects,  This Is Hell, The Creepshow, Anvil, Rolo Tomassi and Death Audio.

It was scorching hot at that day. I was only interested in Jimmy Eat World so I arrived there at around 2pm when some bands had already played. JEW was scheduled sometime in the evening, so we just wandered around from one stage to another. They were great though, but the highlights for me was Jimmy Eat World (of course) and Shinedown. Shinedown put an amazing show even though the stage was not big. There were just a bunch of people and I gotta say that it was my favorite performance amongst all the bands at Soundwave this year.

Jimmy Eat World Setlist :

1. Sweetness

2. A Praise Chorus

3. Let It Happen

4. Always Be

5. Lucky Denver Mint

6. 23

7. Get It Faster

8. Work

9. Futures

10. Big Casino

11. Blister

12. Hear You Me

13. Bleed American

14. Pain

15. The Middle

Overeat No More

Once a friend of mine asked me, "Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?". I quickly replied "Of course I live to eat!" and I was smiling widely and beaming with pride even though I didn't know what the hell I was proud of. I love eating so much that I was assured that I was born to eat. Eating makes me happy. Food adds color to my days. I was proudly claiming myself as a food addict and I thought it was sort of cute. Food lover. Food addict. Foodie. That's me. Little did I know that the word "food addict" could be destructive.

One night everything was changed. The thought of food drove me crazy. I was constantly thinking about food, food and more food. I was binge eating. I went through the kitchen cupboards to find something to eat even when I wasn't hungry at all. It was like I was in a battle with food, more like "attack your food or it will attack you". In this case the food was "attacking" me in the mind. You won't believe what I did. I could eat a Nestle's Cooking Chocolate, which was supposed to be cooked first. Well it was supposed to be my baking supply. I could eat a jar of Nuttela. If you think that's not weird enough, I could eat a jar of peanut butter too! I could eat a box of cereal in one night. I could eat everything edible I saw. Believe me. I ate without tasting them. I just ate and ate. The only thing that could stop me was when there was no food left. My trick was I always dump the rest of the food I was eating in the bin so that I don't finish the whole thing. Before chucking them in the trash bin, I always made sure that I trashed them by putting some tissues or papers in the food so that I wouldn't pick it up again from the bin. Refer to the scene of Miranda from Sex And The City where she was obsessed with eating brownies! She did take the brownies from the bin. It was so bad that I was so depressed. I couldn't stop even when I felt so sick from eating too much.

Desperate, I typed "How to stop eating" and "How to stop thinking about food" in the Google search box. I was relieved when I found out that I wasn't the only one. I found lots of forums with the same questions and there were many of them! Soon the feeling of relieved was gone when I read further about the matter. It all boiled down to this: "Compulsive Overeating Disorder" and "Binge Eating Disorder". It was said in Wikipedia that they're different but I can't see how different since they all come hand in hand. All of the symptoms stated (taken from Wikipedia) were describing what I had been experiencing :
1. Binge eating, or eating uncontrollably even when not physically hungry.
2. Eating much more rapidly than normal.
3. Eating alone due to shame and embarrassment.
4. Feelings of guilt due to overeating.
5. Preoccupation with body weight.
6. Depression or mood swing.
7. Awareness that eating patterns are abnormal.
8. Rapid weight gain or sudden onset of obesity.
9. Significantly decreased mobility due to weight gain.
10. History of weight fluctuation.
11. Withdrawal from activities due to embarrassment about weight.
12. History of many different unsuccessful diets.
13. Eating little in public, but maintaining a high body weight.
14. Very low self-esteem and feeling need to eat greater and greater amounts.

I had a quick read for an article in Wikipedia of what triggers overeating. I even bought a boring book called "The End of Overeating". I didn't get it really clear of what causes it since I hate things related to Biology. For all I know, it has something to do with the reward system in the brain and the abnormality of endorphin metabolism. Some also argues it is due to excessive neurological sensitivity in taste and/or smell.

The bad news is: in some way, food addicts are much more difficult to recover compared to drug addicts. There is a saying in "Overeaters Anonymous": "when you are addicted to drugs, you put the tiger in the cage to recover; when you are addicted to food you put the tiger in the cage but take it out three times a day for a walk"




"Overeaters Anonymous" is a twelve-step program designed to help people dealing with the food problem. It observes compulsive eating as a three-fold illness: physical, mental and spiritual. It states that in the mental dimension a compulsive eater is expressing an "inner hunger". In the recovery process, there is a need for changes of view to all members of OA. On the very first thing, OA always states, "... we are not a diet and calories club". The beliefs that needs to be altered are:
1. "It is bad to eat" to "One must eat to stay alive and should not feel guilty about it"
2. "One is simply overweight and needs to lose weight" to "One has underlying psychological and interpersonal problems"
3. "One must deprecate oneself, deprive oneself and take care of one's needs" to "It is okay to express positive feelings about oneself and take care others' needs"
4. "Food is the answer to all problems, the source of solace" to "Psychological and emotional needs should be fulfilled in relationships with people".
5. "I am a person who eats uncontrollably" to "I am someone who has limitations and does not eat what is harmful for me"

My weight scale had been one hell of a roller coaster ride. People constantly tell me I'm fat, I'm slim, or I'm too thin from time to time. Even during some period when I am able in keeping my weight stable, people always label me differently: "you're fat" or "you're thin". No wonder that the ideal body image in my mind is distorted. How fat is too fat? How thin is too thin?" I never get it clear.

That fluctuation on my weight scale is due to the constant battle against my own weight. I tried so many diet programs. Some failed and some succeeded. I deprived myself from eating. I starved myself until I became dumb and couldn't think properly. I was hardly satisfied with my own body.
When I'm on a diet, I deprive myself from eating. The deprivation leads me into thinking more about food excessively. Whenever I see food, I always think of how that would taste like in my mouth. I spent way a lot of time being on a diet, thus I spent way a lot of time too thinking about food. So when I finished the diet programs successfully, I did not just lose the unwanted kilos. I've lost control over food unconsciously.

It's true that after successful diet programs, I was happy with myself in a new body. But just like the joy of food, the feeling was ephemeral. Once I saw food, I couldn't stop thinking about it until the food was gone. I kept eating much more uncontrollably. I had much less control over food than before. I hated myself for having no self-control. I tried to make myself believe that I still had self-control by trying to compensate the calories consumed with drinking diuretic slimming tea. It went on and on just like a downward spiral to self-destruction. I loathed myself, especially when I was binge eating with a mouthful of Domino's Pizzas and the TV showed "20 Sexiest Bikini Bodies". It was one of the worst feelings in the world.

I know this has got to end. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a fierce losing battle with food. If this goes on like this, I've got a bad feeling I'd be dying from this illness. I know I'd rather be making peace with food and build a healthy relationship with it. You know "War is over... if you want it" (Lennon) and I've decided to end it. Just like cleaning up the mess of any war, it is not easy for me to make peace with food either.

It may sound bizarrely stupid but I hope that writing this can help me too:

I will try not to be affected when people say I am fat and need to lose weight.
I will try not to be affected when people say I am thin and need to gain weight.
For I will have my own healthy body image in which I am comfortable with.

When those who think I am fat offering me some food and I decline, I will try not to get sick of all the people asking, "Are you on a diet?", "What kind of a diet are you on?", or "Are you trying to lose weight?".
I will try not to get sick of answering, "No, thanks, I've had my lunch".
And when they started to shove me with more food, I will not cave in.
And if they still keep provoking me to eat, I will try not to feel like biting their faces.
When they say "Geez, you're on a diet, are you? You're always on a diet" and shaking their heads, I will try not to feel like eating up their heads.
And I will say to them, "No, I'm not on a diet. I am CHANGING my lifestyle, I am trying to liberate myself from the food slavery".

When I go eating and they see my portion of meal, I know they'll comment differently.
For one would say "Gosh you eat so little, are you on a diet?"
I would answer, "Hell no, I'm not, it's just enough to make me full".
For one would say, "Gosh, you eat to much, don't you feel fat?"
I would answer, "Hell no, I'm not, it's enough to feed my hunger away".
You know how we are created in different shapes and sizes? We too have different metabolism! A piece of cake may not make a lucky bastard gain one kilo, but it may make one unfortunate person gain one kilo.

I will try not to say "I am on a diet" anymore. Instead, I am going to say, "I am changing my lifestyle". For the word "diet" itself has been all the roots to all this mess I've created. Yes, my friend, say "diet" no more for it starts with "D-I-E".
I will learn to distinguish the feeling of full or hungry. It may sound stupid but I'm losing the ability to sense them.

When I go hitting the gym, that's because I want to be healthy, not to lose weight.

To cut it short, I am changing my focus on "being skinny" to "being healthy". I know there are going to be some setbacks await me in the future. And when they come, I'll try my best not to hate myself for I still believe that there will be days when I am healthy and free from all these chains. For I believe that there will be days when I eat to live. Amen!