I talk to myself. Out loud. Conversations like, "Don't eat it all if you don't want to," "Oh I forgot what I wanted to do," "Things will be okay soon," "Don't be silly!" And sometimes I smile or laugh to myself.
I get panic attacks every other day.
I am extremely irritable. I wish I live in a no-human zone where around me are not flats full of people who make human noises, just quiet quiet quiet please! preferably if its just greenery and lots of space.
But overall I think things are on the upswing. At least I am not sad over things in life. I am just sad. Life is pretty good.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
advice
"Life is hard, Kid, you gotta be harder."
Leonard from A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
That helps.
Despite the controversy surrounding his book and despite the fact I am reading this book only now even though it hit the shelves four years earlier. Despite the fact that James was a druggie-alcoholic and I am a depressive the differences are only substance-based. Despite the fact I probably shouldn't be reading sad stuff like this and Prozac Nation and The Bell Jar. (I do alternate these books with Marie Claire et al and chick-lit and the Bible by the way).
Despite the fact that advice and other words, only help me in recovering slowly, not fast enough, alongside the Lexapro and Lorazepam I now take on a daily basis because I don't dare not to.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Things that stress me out nowadays:
When I cannot find any more books to read in the house. Thanks to God when I suddenly unearth re-readable or uncompleted books from my troves.
When I can't find enough new books to buy at the bookstore. A situation to put an obvious frown on my face. Very stressful.
When the cat doesn't want to come home the entire night. Which is actually normal since she is an outdoor cat. But I fret more now.
When small things don't go according to plan. Like when the snack shop is inside the cinema area where you need tickets to get into, and C has the tickets downstairs because he is buying cookies. Fretful, that I have to stand outside waiting alone.
Yes, I am still nervy.
When I can't find enough new books to buy at the bookstore. A situation to put an obvious frown on my face. Very stressful.
When the cat doesn't want to come home the entire night. Which is actually normal since she is an outdoor cat. But I fret more now.
When small things don't go according to plan. Like when the snack shop is inside the cinema area where you need tickets to get into, and C has the tickets downstairs because he is buying cookies. Fretful, that I have to stand outside waiting alone.
Yes, I am still nervy.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
thank God for medicinenet.com
I found a name for what I commonly feel.
"Panic attacks." The chest tightness, clenching of muscles unaware, a sense of worry and needing to rest, finding it hard to breathe yet not having asthmatic symptoms.
I also found out that the sleeping pills that my doctor gave me in August, actually help. Lorazepam, which falls in the same category as Xanax. I shall start on them right away. I really want my heart to slow down so I can finally sleep.
"Panic attacks." The chest tightness, clenching of muscles unaware, a sense of worry and needing to rest, finding it hard to breathe yet not having asthmatic symptoms.
I also found out that the sleeping pills that my doctor gave me in August, actually help. Lorazepam, which falls in the same category as Xanax. I shall start on them right away. I really want my heart to slow down so I can finally sleep.
pollock, the movie
I just watched Pollock, the movie directed and starring Ed Harris in 2000, about the life of Jackson Pollock.
The saddest moment in the movie was to me, the part when he was so broke and so depressed and he needed to drink so badly, he gave one of his paintings away to the grocer for a crate of beer. Only to fall from his bicycle on his way home from the shop, breaking all the bottles and spilling all the beer on the road. Somehow I strangely feel like I know completely how he felt. To have one desperate, poor material thing left in your life for solace, and yet to have it taken away from you and not be able to blame anyone for that. This scene broke my heart a little.
I felt sad when I saw the first scene of Pollock crying manically, I just felt so wronged, that talent often finds no rightful place in the world, that unique rich individuals that are such genius, often feel so frail and challenged by their finiteness. If only I was also a genius, then I could claim that as my reason for feeling the same way.
Another scene that broke my heart was when he saw an injured dog on the street at night while he was driving. He stopped the car to pick up the dog, and drove it over to the vet, saying desperately, "You gotta save him, he is such a beautiful dog, he is such a beautiful dog." And somehow, I know completely how he felt too.
It is a sad film, but very inspiring. I even watched the special features' section in the DVD.
The saddest moment in the movie was to me, the part when he was so broke and so depressed and he needed to drink so badly, he gave one of his paintings away to the grocer for a crate of beer. Only to fall from his bicycle on his way home from the shop, breaking all the bottles and spilling all the beer on the road. Somehow I strangely feel like I know completely how he felt. To have one desperate, poor material thing left in your life for solace, and yet to have it taken away from you and not be able to blame anyone for that. This scene broke my heart a little.
I felt sad when I saw the first scene of Pollock crying manically, I just felt so wronged, that talent often finds no rightful place in the world, that unique rich individuals that are such genius, often feel so frail and challenged by their finiteness. If only I was also a genius, then I could claim that as my reason for feeling the same way.
Another scene that broke my heart was when he saw an injured dog on the street at night while he was driving. He stopped the car to pick up the dog, and drove it over to the vet, saying desperately, "You gotta save him, he is such a beautiful dog, he is such a beautiful dog." And somehow, I know completely how he felt too.
It is a sad film, but very inspiring. I even watched the special features' section in the DVD.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
unnerved
Every early morning there are heavy delivery lorries that arrive in my block's car park, killing the silence of the night by their making of all kinds of noises. Hoisting, reversing, making tight turns, blaring radio music while unloading, creaky wooden crates and styrofoam boxes being moved, verbal instructions from one delivery mate to another. The noise bothers me in a way where I perpetually wish that each next second would be the one where they stop and leave the car park. Eventually they do, and it is sunrise. I fall asleep by this time on most mornings.
I need something to calm me down. I don't know how to calm down without alcohol; not drinking is great for my health I suppose but it leaves my nerves on a loose end. Alcohol is an unrealistic solution because I can't possibly swig from a bottle when I am in a crowded MRT train which is precisely one of the scenarios that really unnerve me desperately. The best way to go about it at the moment is to take a cab wherever I go. In the dead of the early morning like it is now at the time of writing, where I stress over my morning's affairs, I can only stay awake and read or write to feel better; alternatives include forcing sleep through medicine, which I don't want to do either for fear of a medicinal hangover.
I hope to be normal (again?), they say it is mind over matter. Meanwhile I make conscious choices not to order my books through Amazon so no one will knock my house door unexpectedly to deliver them, stressing me out in the process. I also spend a lot of time sedentary, doing nothing. I wish my heart will beat less hard and fast so I can deal with things better.
I need something to calm me down. I don't know how to calm down without alcohol; not drinking is great for my health I suppose but it leaves my nerves on a loose end. Alcohol is an unrealistic solution because I can't possibly swig from a bottle when I am in a crowded MRT train which is precisely one of the scenarios that really unnerve me desperately. The best way to go about it at the moment is to take a cab wherever I go. In the dead of the early morning like it is now at the time of writing, where I stress over my morning's affairs, I can only stay awake and read or write to feel better; alternatives include forcing sleep through medicine, which I don't want to do either for fear of a medicinal hangover.
I hope to be normal (again?), they say it is mind over matter. Meanwhile I make conscious choices not to order my books through Amazon so no one will knock my house door unexpectedly to deliver them, stressing me out in the process. I also spend a lot of time sedentary, doing nothing. I wish my heart will beat less hard and fast so I can deal with things better.
ho-hum
Tomorrow I am going for a job meeting, for the only response I have gotten this week out of the three places I applied. I don't feel wildly ecstatic, but I am going through it nonetheless, braced by my revived sense of adult-responsibility, fuelled by my being on the mend via medication and resolve.
I guess I am dampened by the horrible work year I have had thus far; I no longer expect much out of a job, and I see myself as a blue-collared factory worker literally in a blue uniform - dehumanised. My girlfriends once declared that our self worth is not determined by our jobs. I find that hard to realistically be lived out, because my work is so important to me, everything has to be right, problems have to be soluble. And so I try to lower my drive and expectations and lose my ecstasy.
And so, on I go, rationalising along the way and hopefully shake off my sloth even without the adrenaline rush of exciting work.
I guess I am dampened by the horrible work year I have had thus far; I no longer expect much out of a job, and I see myself as a blue-collared factory worker literally in a blue uniform - dehumanised. My girlfriends once declared that our self worth is not determined by our jobs. I find that hard to realistically be lived out, because my work is so important to me, everything has to be right, problems have to be soluble. And so I try to lower my drive and expectations and lose my ecstasy.
And so, on I go, rationalising along the way and hopefully shake off my sloth even without the adrenaline rush of exciting work.
Monday, October 15, 2007
panacea
(wrote this sometime back on my mobile phone:)
wide-eyed, struggle
to find a panacea
in a world where
none exists.
wide-eyed, struggle
to find a panacea
in a world where
none exists.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
all these help
Waiting to collapse,
held together up
like Moses' exhausted arms,
resembling sanity
through miracles
of dinner and laundry.
Unbeautiful:
like unartistic scrawls
on the doors of lifts,
beer stains in stairwells,
words on a screen,
with little reprieve.
Thank you God, for
You and for my guitar
for your words and mine
for tea and books
rock n' roll and the cat
the wretched 'net and Lexapro;
all these help.
held together up
like Moses' exhausted arms,
resembling sanity
through miracles
of dinner and laundry.
Unbeautiful:
like unartistic scrawls
on the doors of lifts,
beer stains in stairwells,
words on a screen,
with little reprieve.
Thank you God, for
You and for my guitar
for your words and mine
for tea and books
rock n' roll and the cat
the wretched 'net and Lexapro;
all these help.
slinky's pet faves and peeves
Faves:
Bicycles. She likes sniffing bicycle pedals, and saunters to one whenever one approaches. I believe this is because the neighbourhood cat lady does her rounds on bicycle. Slinky knows her as much as she knows me because that's how she gets fed when I am not around or whenever she doesn't want to come inside. As a result she like bicycles. There is a bicycle parking area nearby and she sometimes hangs out there with Spotty-cat who looks like her but is white with black patches.
My storeroom. She has scratched the storeroom door badly (notti-cat!) and whenever we open the storeroom door she scurries inside. We have since stopped her because it is impossible to extricate her when she hides inside - too many things within. Also, the first time she went inside we didn't realise and C shut the door on her. We went out for lunch and we couldn't trace the cat when we left (in the house or out?). We came home, wondering, calling 'Slinky!' and paused when we heard a small mew coming vaguely from somewhere in the house. So I stop her now. She gets the meaning of a loud 'no' and we have not lost our cat in the storeroom again since. Although still looks longingly whenever we open the storeroom door...
Whatever I am eating, especially chicken or fish. I enjoy feeding her tiny bits of my food if I know she will like it (minus the fats and gravy as much as possible). She once licked the cover of my ice cream tub though, and I think while it was interesting, coffee-chocolate flavoured ice-cream probably didn't really quite cut it for her. But yet she looks at me happily whenever I am helping myself to some food.
Nose rubs! I think this is a rather universal cat thing.
Boxes and paper bags. Her toys, in which she can pounce on or hide in.
C's laptop bag which she used to use as a bed, but has since moved on after C took it for a business trip and returned it in a less than ideal position for her.
Her other fave sleeping spots - the sofa, on the other end from me, the bed when no one else is on it, my chair when I am not sitting on it, the plastic boxes under the table, the corner behind the tv, and the bathroom mat.
I think she likes me and C although she often does the lashing out that cats do (quick reflexes and plasters help). She often sleeps on C's clothes lying on the bed, sits at our feet or anywhere near us, wags her tail when we call out her name. She also sometimes likes to sniff our legs and feet. When I see the doctor downstairs she will follow me. Into the clinic. And wait outside the doctor's room door in the clinic. I try to get her outside (sick people and furry cat together??) but she wants to be around and the other patients don't really seem to mind, they merely simply watch her. the cute one.
Peeves:
Crowds, like me! She kinda avoids people and physical contact with them unless she is wants to which is quite rare. She avoids going up the stairs to our flat when people are coming down it, she would rather not go out from the flat if she hears people on the stairs, that sort of thing. So to help her through the human traffic, I carry her. If I call her when she is downstairs to follow me home, she will mew at me to indicate she will follow, while stealthily avoiding human traffic along the way very carefully.
She rather hates being hugged and carried, and submits to it only rarely. Otherwise she mews and struggles her way out of my arms.
Catnip snacks and milk: strangely she does not take to these at all.
Other cats, except Gray Cat last time (who disappeared) and Spotty-cat. She is otherwise at loggerheads with all other cats.
Bicycles. She likes sniffing bicycle pedals, and saunters to one whenever one approaches. I believe this is because the neighbourhood cat lady does her rounds on bicycle. Slinky knows her as much as she knows me because that's how she gets fed when I am not around or whenever she doesn't want to come inside. As a result she like bicycles. There is a bicycle parking area nearby and she sometimes hangs out there with Spotty-cat who looks like her but is white with black patches.
My storeroom. She has scratched the storeroom door badly (notti-cat!) and whenever we open the storeroom door she scurries inside. We have since stopped her because it is impossible to extricate her when she hides inside - too many things within. Also, the first time she went inside we didn't realise and C shut the door on her. We went out for lunch and we couldn't trace the cat when we left (in the house or out?). We came home, wondering, calling 'Slinky!' and paused when we heard a small mew coming vaguely from somewhere in the house. So I stop her now. She gets the meaning of a loud 'no' and we have not lost our cat in the storeroom again since. Although still looks longingly whenever we open the storeroom door...
Whatever I am eating, especially chicken or fish. I enjoy feeding her tiny bits of my food if I know she will like it (minus the fats and gravy as much as possible). She once licked the cover of my ice cream tub though, and I think while it was interesting, coffee-chocolate flavoured ice-cream probably didn't really quite cut it for her. But yet she looks at me happily whenever I am helping myself to some food.
Nose rubs! I think this is a rather universal cat thing.
Boxes and paper bags. Her toys, in which she can pounce on or hide in.
C's laptop bag which she used to use as a bed, but has since moved on after C took it for a business trip and returned it in a less than ideal position for her.
Her other fave sleeping spots - the sofa, on the other end from me, the bed when no one else is on it, my chair when I am not sitting on it, the plastic boxes under the table, the corner behind the tv, and the bathroom mat.
I think she likes me and C although she often does the lashing out that cats do (quick reflexes and plasters help). She often sleeps on C's clothes lying on the bed, sits at our feet or anywhere near us, wags her tail when we call out her name. She also sometimes likes to sniff our legs and feet. When I see the doctor downstairs she will follow me. Into the clinic. And wait outside the doctor's room door in the clinic. I try to get her outside (sick people and furry cat together??) but she wants to be around and the other patients don't really seem to mind, they merely simply watch her. the cute one.
Peeves:
Crowds, like me! She kinda avoids people and physical contact with them unless she is wants to which is quite rare. She avoids going up the stairs to our flat when people are coming down it, she would rather not go out from the flat if she hears people on the stairs, that sort of thing. So to help her through the human traffic, I carry her. If I call her when she is downstairs to follow me home, she will mew at me to indicate she will follow, while stealthily avoiding human traffic along the way very carefully.
She rather hates being hugged and carried, and submits to it only rarely. Otherwise she mews and struggles her way out of my arms.
Catnip snacks and milk: strangely she does not take to these at all.
Other cats, except Gray Cat last time (who disappeared) and Spotty-cat. She is otherwise at loggerheads with all other cats.
free burma
No more false facts
No more journalistic purging
No more military oppression
No more false reverence
God,
Set everyone free in Myanmar.
Heal the monks that are hurt.
Release the prisoners.
Free your people.
Be exalted in this country once again.
If I cannot do anything, I can write, and make each writing a prayer, a message, a balm, a signpost.
For Nagai-san and many unnamed others who have died in the line of truth.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
%@$?*&
ARGH
get me out of here please...
ARGH!!!
I need something that will take this chest-heavy feeling away I need to stop feeling hot cold not neither
ARGH
I feel desperate and anxious without any proper reason to, it is 3am surely I should be calm and wait for morning, but no....
get me out of here please...
ARGH!!!
I need something that will take this chest-heavy feeling away I need to stop feeling hot cold not neither
ARGH
I feel desperate and anxious without any proper reason to, it is 3am surely I should be calm and wait for morning, but no....
shit and feeling terrible
I feel terrible. Tonight's terrible comes with the same tiredness but instead of tears to make my eyes even puffier than they already are, it is more like a dreaded weightiness in my chest. I feel cold and weighty. I don't even feel like gaming or reading that much, I just feel numb and lost and I need some reprieve or I would hyperventilate.
I need money but I am too exhausted to work right now. I know that sounds lame but I really feel this way, everything is tiring. Small talk har, har, har is tiring. MRT trains stress me out I nearly scream. Trying to sleep resigns and tires me out. I want my old self back. The one that works like mad and never says die. My physical stamina may be weak but my inner drive is supposed to be strong. I love to work and I want that better job but I am too tired to or simply not qualified or else I am over-qualified for those jobs I don't want. I am moving each day on my inner witness and intuition and painfully removing all that is unnecessary from my life. But while I know my paths will be faithfully laid straight before me as I acknowledge God in everything, I have no energy to walk in them now, no light to see them clearly and too impatient as a result. Workaholics have no time for depression, they are mutually exclusive.
A phoenix needs to die to rise from the ashes.
A seed needs to fall and die to grow and bear fruit.
A murky lake needs to be drained out to find that treasure at the bottom of it.
I ain't giving up yet but I am feeling like shit in the process of it.
I feel like there is no place for me in this world right now. All I have are wretched tears for people in third world nations but with no qualifications to help them. I feel fucking terrible. My talents are useless. I lay them out for the taking for the reaping but nobody wants them. I am the fucking in-between, like the furry monster in Sesame Street who sings the song of the same title while caught in between two monsters unlike himself. The half-full glass. I just want to do something worthwhile and gain something from it, is it too much to ask?! Life is terrible enough and I think that what I am asking for is not unreasonable.
I need money but I am too exhausted to work right now. I know that sounds lame but I really feel this way, everything is tiring. Small talk har, har, har is tiring. MRT trains stress me out I nearly scream. Trying to sleep resigns and tires me out. I want my old self back. The one that works like mad and never says die. My physical stamina may be weak but my inner drive is supposed to be strong. I love to work and I want that better job but I am too tired to or simply not qualified or else I am over-qualified for those jobs I don't want. I am moving each day on my inner witness and intuition and painfully removing all that is unnecessary from my life. But while I know my paths will be faithfully laid straight before me as I acknowledge God in everything, I have no energy to walk in them now, no light to see them clearly and too impatient as a result. Workaholics have no time for depression, they are mutually exclusive.
A phoenix needs to die to rise from the ashes.
A seed needs to fall and die to grow and bear fruit.
A murky lake needs to be drained out to find that treasure at the bottom of it.
I ain't giving up yet but I am feeling like shit in the process of it.
I feel like there is no place for me in this world right now. All I have are wretched tears for people in third world nations but with no qualifications to help them. I feel fucking terrible. My talents are useless. I lay them out for the taking for the reaping but nobody wants them. I am the fucking in-between, like the furry monster in Sesame Street who sings the song of the same title while caught in between two monsters unlike himself. The half-full glass. I just want to do something worthwhile and gain something from it, is it too much to ask?! Life is terrible enough and I think that what I am asking for is not unreasonable.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
no words and a crash
When I was still in my old room at home, I discovered that the hardest part of each day, as is the case with most depressives, was simply getting out of bed in the morning. if I could do that much I had a fighting chance. To get through the day, that is. I decided to try to do some writing, hoping it might afford me the same sense of release that it once had, so many years efore. But as soon as I sat down at my typewriter, I froze before the keyboard. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words.
Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify it or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I'm feeling now. It's so bad, it's useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.
Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
I removed the things in my life that were not what I wanted or needed to do at this point. I made the career change, I resigned from the less-than-ideal job, I left the church that contained people whom I cannot be friends with because we are too different. Why then, am I still sad? I do not know how to get to the There which I need to go, but at least I know what I do not want or need. Surely it is supposed to help. But all that happens is that I crash again and I can only hope that C will not leave me because I am so depressed because he is all I have left that understands what I am going through. I am going to go back on my anti-depressants, and ask my doc for more. I am going to force my sleep when it should be, through Valerian root and not leave it to happen till morning when become thoroughly exhausted and awake.
Monday, October 1, 2007
I...
became so lost for words, or rather the words in my mind stayed there and my hands froze in type.
So I wrote in my notebook instead. My truth, uncensored by cordialities and the need to protect others, but it is not glamorous and instead, extremely scary, like discovering a lump in your breast, or similar.
What typing won't give you: pen marks on your tummy, a shroud of secrecy through illegible handwriting.
stuck in a pudding
I am stuck in a pudding.
Inert because it is comforting around my skin.
Unable because it is too hard to wade through.
And even if I get out of the pudding bowl,
I have nowhere else to go.
Inert because it is comforting around my skin.
Unable because it is too hard to wade through.
And even if I get out of the pudding bowl,
I have nowhere else to go.
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