freelancing

I freelance not by choice, but because of its perks and allowances. Being sick means I can't do full-time work that requires clocking in - because then most days of a weak I would need to rest at home and take emergency medication; fourteen days of MC would fit a month, not a year. Or I would take long term sabbaticals never to return. Even as a freelancer, my doctor told me I have to try to work only alternate days. I tried to do more, and my system broke down so to speak, and I fell even sicker.

Now, I seemed to have regressed even further. Simple tasks like taking a shower, cleaning the house, is so difficult for me. I can't even do these things, how am I supposed to have lessons with my students in my home? Thankfully, they chose to take sabbaticals too - for the exams, and then for the holidays. Usually I would press them to have lessons in the holidays, my practice for the ten over years I have been teaching. But this year, no. Usually spending time with my teenage students energises me, for I love working with teenagers. But now the thought of anything social in the first place is driving me anxious.

Yes this seems like a regression in my depression, and it is, plain and simple. I didn't realise it at first, but now I do. Instead of moving forward and being able to do more of my paying freelance work, I can't find the strength to do it anymore, when it comes to teaching. When the school year starts, of course, I will have to teach again, because all the academic problems my students face will rear their heads fiercely. And maybe during the last week of December I will invite my students to come over for a pre-school-year lesson - yes, I will do that. But for now till then, I really want some more respite.

How can work be so difficult for an individual? I thought I was getting better. But as always, it is one step forward two steps back. I feel the working class guilt, the protestant work ethic, kicking in and telling me that I should do more paying work. I know I should, but wherefrom should I find the strength and health to?

I have tried working through the pain, sickness, depressive episodes and anxiety attacks. When I do that, basically all those attempts are half-fucked because I keep on, in gaming terms, afk-ing out. I tried. And people around me have to make allowances for me when I am semi-catatonic and very obviously unable to work. Imagine working with someone who is half faint, unable to talk, unable to move, or all of the above. Thankfully, it's freelance, so I can come and go. But I leave debris behind.

Work that doesn't require much strength from me regarding washing up and cleaning, would be my copywriting work. But that comes in less steadily than teaching. I enjoy it because I can do it unwashed and never have to step out of the house (unless necessary to meet). With my ad out in the web I get calls for quotes, and I have a regular entreprise using my services, but I am not actively seeking for more prospects as the salesperson in me should. Simply because I don't have the energy to, literally. Like I said, I have regressed. Doing simple, menial tasks already take all the energy out of me lately. I need to move on from this regression to move up.

I know I will move on, out, up from this recent regression in being unable to do many simple daily tasks like a regular person can - easily. That said, I know I will always have to be a freelancer because I never know when I will suffer a blip in my recovery and need to time out. No boss is going to understand this unless I work for myself.

And yes, this is the price of clinical depression on the economy.

In any case, writing about this has helped me. I will keep on going on. I will put up more ads for my copywriting services. I will schedule a last-week-of-December lesson week for my students. I will keep on doing things in small steps towards recovery, so they can become big steps. Even though I might have to do this for a long time, I will keep on doing it - getting better.

Years on, years to come? Maybe. So please understand us.

Today I went to IMH for the first time

And it was a terrible experience I will not repeat unless dire necessity dictates.

The service is as bad at Tan Tock Seng hospital.

Their waiting area beds are so small my anxiety went up even higher because I felt so claustrophobic - they refused to put the side barriers down even, saying I will fall down; I had to secretly lower it myself.

There are no tissues on the waiting area bedsides. What the fuck? Isn't this a psychiatric hospital?

The doctor was curt and mean and had poor bedside manners.

And they fucking had no Valium injection to give me which was what I needed and what my regular doctor asked me to ask for because he and his colleagues were offsite. What kind of psychiatric medical centre has NO VALIUM? They have valium injections at regular hospitals (like Eastshore) for crying out loud. And IMH doesn't have it? I had to settle for a lorazepam jab, which worked as well, but doesn't give the same kind of peace and tranquil and immediate sedation as Valium. I don't have Valium at home. I have lorazepam, though an injection is still better.

They wanted to ward me. For fuck? I just need a jab, and maybe some rest? The doctor gave in and let me go immediately.

Terrible terrible experience. No wonder those who go to IMH for treatment usually get worse not better. At least I am somewhat better than before I started seeing my psychiatrist, even if after years of treatment I am still sick.

First time I went to a hospital for psychiatric emergency. Last time I will step into IMH. Even if I ever need to be warded am definitely not going there. There are psychiatric wards in other hospitals. No thank you WH.

As you can see I am still in the throes of agitation, irritability and anger. This was how my day started, escalating into a full-blown panic attack and symptoms of paranoia so bad like I never had before. I didn't dare to close my eyes because I kept believing, for real, that I would die if I sleep. I couldn't talk properly. I couldn't walk and had to crawl to the medicine box to get my medication. Every single sound that emanated from outside seemed incredibly loud and sent me into a frenzy. I was in physical pain. I was aching. And for now the worst is over thanks to the jab I had to go through a lot of suffering to get.

I will need to take a lot of medication tonight because the rage and irritation is still on. Seeing my real doctor tomorrow for my monthly appointment.

pain and death

pain envelopes me
like a miasma
it starts in my core
and permeates throughout

I think of death
as my only escape
from pain or
religious treatment of it

my heart is gripped
in a net of splintered shards
piercing, shattering
until I no longer breathe

my body flails in lack
of verve, energy; I am
absolutely nothing
but sickness

tears soak my pillow

my lifelight struggles to flicker

I medicate to present myself sane to you

but I am already going.

I can't fight this alone.

how close I was to alcoholism

Since I started working or even before, I have relied on drinking regularly to help me cope with stress. I am predisposed to stress a lot more than normal people because of my psychological makeup so the stress occurred on a high, frequent level. I ended up drinking a lot.

Eventually I took to drinking alone at home after work to cope every day or every other day.

When my second bout of severe depression occurred, I drank to cope. And I started to become really drunk very often because I was already on antidepressant medication by then. When I tried to kill myself, I relished one can of Guinness Draught with the crazy amount of pills I swallowed. I survived but continued drinking. I chipped a tooth while drunk. I lost sobriety so much I endangered myself...

So instead of drinking I started smoking. I needed something to cope and alcohol was seriously becoming a danger to myself.

Today, I still enjoy the occasional drink. I can drink much better now, drunkenness is a rare occasion because I have become acclimatised to my large amount of medication.

Now when I want to drink at inappropriate moments like in the middle of the afternoon I smoke instead. It is the only vice I can turn to in safety knowing I won't be putting myself in direct harm's way. And no one has to clean my vomit, blood and tears when I am drunk anymore.

I could say more, but it is too painful to recollect via words. I just wanted to write this because, right now, I really really want a beer. But I shall smoke instead. Because I need to be sober.

31

I shouldn't have lived past this day. I wanted to be immortalised at thirty, with all the dreams untold and half-met. But for three people in my life, my parents and J, I resisted the urge to walk to the field across my home and drown myself in an overdose of pills that would kill me.

Instead, here I am. Alive.

I am grateful but sad to be alive. Living is painful torture. Living to me is going through each day debating the decision to live or die, overcoming constant lethargy and exhaustion, blighted with some sort of psychosomatic pain, allergy or ache, fighting the onslaught of feeling like I'm having a heart attack or a wave of extreme, fundamental sadness.

Every day, I fight this.

Still, I stayed alive. My cocktail of medication pleads sanity and rationale into me. I am still here, largely because of the thousands of dollars J and my parents have spent on my treatment. I am alive because God saved me. I am alive.

I write this with tears streaming down my face into my pillow. It is so painful to be alive but my life is no longer my own. I can only med-up and wait for the chemicals in my brain to re-balance. Meanwhile, sleep is the closest to not living I can find some respite in.

avoidance

I either do things well or not at all. Sounds like a good thing, except that it isn't. It means I avoid doing things if I don't feel up to it, which is often, because of my consistent lethargy, bouts of low mood, and fear of failure among other reasons. So I avoid most things when I feel overwhelmed. I end up pressuring myself when I eventually do get to doing something. Or retreat into complete isolation when I can't do it all, rather than just doing it arbitrarily or a little bit here and there.

Like this morning, I woke to a noisy, messy, dirty house. They say young children are like alarm clocks, literally waking you up to their playing around the kitchen in the morning with pots and pans. Well cats are the same, their toys are just different. I woke up to find the kitchen strewn with bits of tissue paper. And of course, empty bowls of food. And of course, mess and a dirty floor too. It never ends. I don't get angry in this situation, I assess whether to clean up now, later or avoid it altogether.

I tried avoidance first. So I retreat back to bed. I lay and finish reading a book, I think about how I want to sleep again, to avoid having to deal with the mess. I have by this time refilled the bowls of food, but I really don't want to deal with the mess in the kitchen.

I went back to bed and wanted to avoid it.

Avoidance is a manifestation of the fight or flight response. Avoidance is flight. It is an admission of failure and basically just running away to avoid further failure.

I sleep to avoid things. I sleep all day, all night if I could. Waking up is always some form of torture. Waking up daily means to me, 'face the failure again, bitch.'

Eventually, after a bout of retreat and isolation and curling up in bed, I had a second cup of coffee and cleaned the kitchen floor. I still have the rest of the house to clean. I still have more feeding to do. I still have to iron J's shirt.

Avoidance is my coping mechanism. Apart from retreating under the covers, I also avoid the rest of the world by not answering my phone or replying messages and emails or tweeting or stepping out of the house when I just don't feel up to it. Not feeling up to it is a very common phenomenon with me, so I avoid the world very often.

Today, avoidance helped me recharge and to finally up and get going to my chores. I have always needed rest before work, not the other way around as most people deem appropriate. It helped me today. But it probably isn't a healthy and responsible way of dealing with things. In short it is a faulty coping mechanism. Yet for now, this is how I cope.

I feel guilty for coping this way. I am sorry for it.

Foursquare in a blog post

I tried to hop on the Foursquare bandwagon but found it rather troublesome. So I will here report where I usually go and so not have to 'check in' on this application.

Love Kuching Foster Home (@ 305 Ubi Ave 1)
The entire list of Ubi coffeeshops
Kampung Ubi Shop and Save
Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre
Parkway Parade

There! Foursquare in a blog post!

shards

I know I have said this before, that writing does not take the sadness away. Even painting does not take the sadness away. Medication does. But it hasn't made me happy - for long - either.

I still feel too raw for this world, like skin after a chemical peel. When I feel this way I want to be institutionalised. But that is escape from, not dealing with, the world. Still I yearn for hanging out in a quiet place where every one is sick like me, so that I don't feel so alone in my own sadness.

But even then, everyone's own sadness is their own. Their own splinters in their own hearts. Carrying around a heart of splinters, but shards from different glass. Will facing others' splintered hearts make my sadness go away?

Leading a normal life as I have been endeavouring to for a long time, is really, really difficult. Every hurt is amplified, every success dulled, laughter lasts but for a moment, the rest is bleary grey. I can't think my way out of these sensations that override the protocol of normalcy.

I try to be perfect because that is the only way I will be accepted. Every flaw that mars perfection, is a flaw in me and a lethal blow that is very hard for a perfectionist to accept within. I keep feeling like I failed, again, again and again. It is a never ending refrain. They say one fails forward, learning. That much is really true. They just forget to say that for someone like me, every failure - forward! - is another shard of glass staked into my heart and feels like so, really and truly. It physically hurts and recovery is extremely painful.

So I try to brave the world of normalcy. But accumulate shards of pain and sadness and failure in my heart. How long will it last before I bleed to death? Or will medical science prevent that from happening? It is no wonder so many of us with this disease die from it. One way or another, death becomes us.

I am a charlatan and a ruse -
Masquerade of light;
Really, vile.

Vodka, plain
Unsure in this world:
Let us try to be something.

I am wasted.

Air expended, is wasted
Asphyxiate me, soon
Await.

Death.
Rightful place in me,
My imaginary friend from eons gone -

I never knew you were vile
But I knew you
Intimately.

Serotonin.
That's what's missing,
Yet I feel you, so close by.

Blacker than black.

Falsely,
This I know
But all the same,

You asphyxiate me, every day.

bigotry, bias and burning

I don't consider myself to be a bigot. The only hatred that I outright express is of certain foreigners in the country who are marring the fabric of our Singaporean society. And I don't agree that expressing my own political opinions to be a form bigotry in any way. I tolerate differences in general pretty well.

However I do feel certain prejudices which I do not write about. I call them prejudices because that would be the politically apt term to use if I should express them, but personally I find myself to be right and that what I feel is the truth! But that's what prejudiced people think anyway.

I have little tolerance for religion. To disclaim upfront, there are extremists who use the name of religion in defence of obviously wrong actions and agendas, so no religion is spared. Am not talking about extremists here anyway.

Every single religion is flawed.

I don't consider myself to be a religious person because to me Christianity is not a religion. In fact, the Bible condemns religious people.

So, here is what I think, and writing these words now officially make me a prejudiced person.

I abhor religions that make people scared of things. Living in fear is no way to live and if your faith makes you scared of ghosts and shit, I think it is a major failure.

I abhor religions that requires you to kill animals for no reason or cause air pollution.

I abhor religions that defy human rationale to the point of senselessness - God gave you that brain didn't he? Reason and rational thinking came with it, do use it alongside faith. Take for example - if you are sick, see a doctor.

Here are some outright personal prejudices.

I abhor religions that have statues of any kind. They seriously creep me out. I hate them. They are creepy. They are not reminders. They are senseless enactments of faith that is bigger than the bloody statue. In this aspect I am glad Christians do things like smash statues when someone converts from a religion that has statues involved.

I abhor religions that make celibacy or fasting from human needs into an elevated position that makes everyone else pariahs. I think life on earth is meant for enjoyment. Making others feel like shit because we enjoy our lives is not cool at all. Fasting and celibacy is fine if you want to do it, just don't make others feel like shit for not doing so. Also do not attempt it over a long period of time if you obviously still feel like doing stuff. It makes you lot into repressed, sex-crazy hypocrites.

There, I have said it. Better in than out. I still love all human beings, even if you fall into the above categories. It doesn't matter either way, really. Now, if you can: try not to burn things. It is really quite inconsiderate. The PSI is very high. The world is heating up. Et cetera.

Bell Jar For You

Vodka, plain
I am that woman

Cheshire smile
I am that girl

"Why so many pills?"
"I wanted to die."

Revived, alive
For you.

I need to see this, do you?

“You need to be able to own the reality that depression is a physical illness like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer,” says Richard Raskin, PhD, a clinical psychologist in New York City and Litchfield, Conn. “You can’t get over it by ‘trying harder’ or adjusting your attitude. It requires acceptance that you have a physical illness that requires attention, and that it makes no sense to blame yourself for it.”

But can you emphatise with it if you don't have the disease? Or do you see us as weak folks too? It doesn't help when the world sees it as a weakness when medically it is a disease. Accept a friend with a psychological illness today, and realise it is not something they can help.

omegas vs acute

Recently I got myself more religiously on the omega oils because doctor says it will help my depressive episodes. After taking them, I felt myself either numb or tired, and I got fed up with feeling unfeeling. So I took myself off them.

After a week of not taking them I realise that my regular bouts of feeling blue for no reason are back to being more acute. I guess that means the omegas helped. Am not sure if it caused the constant lethargy and need for sleep during the day. I will only know when I get back on them.

In the meanwhile, I take the feelings of sorrow as they come. I know it has been years but depression is a tune that doesn't get off the radio. It may change tempo but the song will keep playing, rearing its head well past the trend.

I know having depression may well mean I will have lesser friends. By choice, and otherwise too. I choose to talk to less people because it is too tiring for me to talk. If I do want to talk, no one will be keen on listening anyway because it is too negative for anyone to bear. Either way, most of the time I bear with it on my own.

I could write daily on how I feel - today is a 3 out of 10, 0 being utter pain and misery and 10 being happy; marking each day with a score (it usually is around 3-4 daily, not much to report). But in truth nobody really cares about it. The daily scores will probably only make sense to my doctor, whom we pay to care about how I feel.

Do I remember ever feeling happy. Yes, when I first got on the right dose of medications, and was introduced to the effects of antidepressants. I remember feeling, 'So this is what happy feels like.' But eventually of course the effect doesn't remain, it merely stuck around to keep me afloat after pushing me up to the surface, and brought me back to life.

Most of my friends are married, and so am I to some extent. My best mates will be best mates but we don't talk much anymore and they will be there if I do wish to talk. Yet no matter how, the pain of depression is personal. It is something most people do not understand, rightly seeing it as a weakness, unable to fathom the inability of one to shake the negativity off. If you understand it, I feel for you because you must have been there yourself.

So I will write. And the only way I can write is if I feel. Somehow the omegas numbed that. I will get back on them eventually and try to suss out if there is an upside to feeling numb. Numbness means no pain, which for me, where I feel pain almost on a daily level, is supposedly a great improvement.

wordless and worthless

I am all drained out today. Not that I did much by normal standards. I am sub-human. Weak and therefore rightfully should be judged as unreliable, irresponsible and ungrateful. That is how I see myself.

I am functioning at even less than my estimated 30% lately. As usual I am either sick, tired, depressed or having an anxiety attack. Sicknesses plagued me last week, tiredness last and this week. What's new? Nothing, just the usual, but worse.

I need to write for work but have been wordless. If I am not physically tired I am mentally exhausted. I can't rev myself up to be more productive. I wish I could, but I could sleep after two coffees and have two naps a day despite.

I try to give myself a chance, to accept that I am a far below-par human to the fellow human, the humans to whom I am indebted, to the human race. But lately my self-worth is down the drain. I am still wondering if I will ever be normal.

If I will ever be someone who is healthy. Who is only tired when it's bedtime. Who doesn't dread showering and getting dressed. Who doesn't dread waking up. Who doesn't need half the day to sleep. Who doesn't fear the phone ringing. Who enjoys leaving the house. Who can stop relying on cabs because public transport is no longer a phobia. Who can actually enjoy and relish being contactable via telephone and MSN and suchlike. Who can eventually stop having moments of crouching in a corner under a blanket. Who will stop falling sick all the time. Who will go out with friends. Who can work 10 hours straight a day.

Ah, the list is endless. Fuck it world. Enjoy us people with major depression, because 25% of us die from it - we are a true 'dying breed'.

Things I Dread (Nowadays) and Avoid

The phone ringing
Unknown persons knocking on door
Having to clear the kitchen rubbish bin
Having to shower and get dressed
Numbers-related work like accounting
Logging on to Facebook

this week's emotional health

This whole week I have been a bundle of irritable nerves, almost always feeling about to get angry. Listless, sluggish, lethargic, can barely get myself out of the bed, let alone out of the house. I only left the house once in the whole week and that was Saturday evening. Good enough for me, I reckon. I felt totally anti-social, shutting off my phone, and the thought of leaving the house filled me with fear of oncoming noise pollution.

I have been taking my meds, and upping my protein intake as doctor has advised, and am also taking the omega oils, and exercised. All it makes me feel is not sad, just a tad mad. Often. I am so irritable but not enough to be borderline crazy. Instead of feeling very depressed I feel numb. If taking the omegas does this to me I rather feel something and take the right meds for it, than to have a numb, irritable, lethargic sensation.

I would rather stare into space than do productive things. I can't even bring myself to shower more than once a day, for most days this past week.

I have to get out of this funk as soon as possible because I have work to do; a big-ticket copywriting assignment. Maybe tomorrow will be a brand-new start to a great week. There you go, a glimmer of resolve, a sliver of optimism.

my stupid health

I have had major depression since I was a child, but I started falling ill from weird symptomatic sicknesses since I was 17. It was at the time, a stomachache I often got in school, that when a doctor saw me for it, he couldn't diagnose it, attributing it to 'stress'. Age 17 was right before my first major depressive episode. Ever since then, I often fall ill and often hear doctors after doctors telling me that the pain/ache/symptom etc. is due to stress. Which we all know is what doctors say when they don't know why or what.

I have tried everything of course. Exercise. Supplements. Eating well. But the rest of my life since 17 has been plagued with countless MCs (if I am salaried worker) and time-offs from work because I am ill. Before I knew I had depression, I thought I was just weak, and everyone thought I was simply making excuses. I started to think so too. I blamed myself terribly.

Then I learned of the word 'psychosomatic' and finally understood why I fell ill so often, to the tune of say once or twice a week or fortnight. And it doesn't have to happen when I am seriously depressed or suicidal. I could be feeling emotionally balanced (as far as the antidepressants make me) and still fall ill with some nagging sickness.

It is still on today. I was 17 in 1996. It has been over a decade of constantly falling ill. I developed a host of psychosomatic illness. I have been to almost every hospital in Singapore. I have had my heart, stomach, thyroid, etc. organs checked. I know the names of medicines inside out. Tell me a med and I would probably have taken it before.

This is one of the reasons why I consider myself in my recovery to only be leading a 30% normal life. Apart from constant lethargy, depressive and anxiety episodes perforating my daily life, I am often ridden with some kind of flu, allergy or ache.

Supplements you say? I have tried zinc, Vit C, echinecea, chicken essence, and don't even bother suggesting TCM because when I take it, I either get more sick or if healthy, I actually become sick from TCM.

When I was able to travel every year, every time I came home I would fall sick. Of course I take care of myself religiously when overseas, one must when travelling in Asia, but when I come home, I will definitely get some kind of sickness.

At any one time, I would be having eczema, rhinitis, headaches, flu', colds, or gastritis symptoms. Recently I had the experience of being diagnosed with having a migraine, something a doctor has never said to me before about me, it has been tension headaches for the past 10 years or so.

After so many years of flitting between salaried jobs and freelancing or entrepreneurship, I still reckon my state of health would suit freelancing the best because I have to have more sick days than regular people. This means my life has to be financially risky for a long time.

One of my favourite authors Marian Keyes is somewhat like this too - she need 16 hours of sleep a day, gets an illness by simply reading about it. For me, I used to fall sick right after an MRT train ride. Now I just don't take trains anymore (not just because of the germs of course, but I am still phobic of trains).

Having had almost half of my life's worth of psychosomatic illnesses, I now simply live with them. I only hope others will bear with me for them too, but the world isn't that forgiving. Illness is a sin to most. It was fashionable to be constantly ill probably only in Jane Austen's era, but not in workaholic current times. I want to be well too. But will you give me time? I just have to let opportunities pass me by because of my ill health, stock up on all kinds of medicines, and rest more than normal people need. And stop blaming myself for being sick.

flux

Weary.

Flux of activity:
I haven't been cleaning
I haven't been working for a living.
Well I try to do some of it but it doesn't always work out.

When I get tired I flip and become totally incumbent.

Life is expensive. Recovery is expensive.

The air is thick with hesitation and resignation.

Being able to hit rock-bottom is important for going up. Flux.

But it sucks.

Great will-power doesn't feed us and medicate me.

Money does.

And that's in flux too.

In the trough of the wave, I fall even more sick.

no way drug holiday

I feel like shit when I don't take just one of the essential meds I need. I utterly fall to pieces. And when I do I feel like such a weakling, for being nothing without medication and being nowhere near recovery if not for pharmacology.

Yes I do know recovery takes time and time has proven that in some cases my dosages have been reduced. But even on the drugs I feel only 30% normal and without them I am totally nothing. Imagine how it feels to feel only 30% normal functioning human and then feeling even less than that sometimes.

I took a drug holiday on Saturday because I was running low on one of my meds, a NASSA called mirtazapine, which is an adjunct medication to regular antidepressants like SSRI. I felt the lack of it the next day and crashed and burned.

So that is me. I scare my normal GP doctor with the amount of drugs I am taking. No one really understands that taking 3 Lexapros a day is a lot - the maximum dosage is 4. If you ranked the severity of my depression on that, I am between moderate and severely ill. If I lowered the dose to 2 for a day, I crash and burn too.

Yesterday I felt so ill that I puked and couldn't stomach a lot of things. I had to take time out from my volunteer work. I had to cover myself with a blanket and cry. I scared J and my cats but they hovered near me and comforted me.

Thankfully, doctor's visit on Wednesday. I just have to last through tomorrow now.

After yesterday's resolve to move my career up another notch to alleviate the stress, I got the fear that every entrepreneur has, one of taking risks and worrying about failure. The debts and mortgage and about having money to eat. I feel a flashback to my life nine years ago. But this risk is meant to be.

Today my stress from yesterday led to a blistering migraine from the moment I woke up. I tried coffee. I tried paracetamol. In the end, I had to go to the doctor to get some Arcoxia. It helped much, and at least I no longer have to torture my liver and just pop one pill.

The doctor intuited that the migraine was caused by stress. Yet actually I don't feel the stress today like yesterday. I guess my body is the same as always, breaking out in all manner of illness with any kind of stress. I stopped shouting at people in anger due to stress a long time back, oldness brings calmness. I guess that means more of the stress is held up inside me, like a heroin-filled condom waiting to explode in a mule's stomach.

I felt more serene today because I had a revelation. I heard God speak to my heart, telling me, "It's not time yet, but it will be soon, and you will know when it is time." I can always trust God for visions and revelations and Him bringing them to pass. Today's word comforted me.

But knowing the vision of building the social enterprise I aspire will happen, albeit not now, means I have to work the plans already. Write it down and carry it. I have been fashioning plans in my head and I know I have the skills to carry it through. One constant in my life is that I often feel over-endowed with talents I did not do anything much to deserve and I can only attribute it to God's way of directing me through a meaningful, successful life of vision. I feel my experiences in shitty work places rear their head for the sake of contributing to upcoming success - working in sales means I dare now to audaciously raise funds for a good cause; working in a bank means I know how to appropriate financial resources sustainably and fruitfully; starting a business with H means I no longer fear entrepreneurial risks; making the leap into salaried life with an NGO means I am officially in the know of the charity sector. I feel like a super-hero that became one because he got bitten by a spider. Affirmatively I have no doubts I will succeed and it is not pride that brings me to say it but conviction, passion, vision and revelation.

Reading some of my older blog posts introspectively made me tear up. I still love Indochina, Asia as a whole. I still think about missionary work, even though I know now I need to rest, here at home in Singapore. My heart is still set on making a difference in this world. I wanted to save humanity, but in my weakest point God gave me animals to save instead, as if it were a prelude, a stepping stone. To? I no longer make myself cry over dreams unrealised, taking things one at a time instead, taking what is given now instead of dreaming of inheriting the whole earth at the same time.

God brought my first cat Slinky into my life when I really needed her, even before I knew it myself. My human existence needed the comfort of a cat and she has really gone through the shittiest times of my depression and stayed with me nonetheless. She was the catalyst for our cat rescue work. And now I carry this dream of helping her kind.

I will keep on going on, resting often because my flesh is weak, weaker than most normal human beings. At least I am alive. Vision will carry me, and I will keep carrying it.

it's taking over

I found myself today working the whole day, till now. Volunteer work that is. I clocked the hours. It really was a full day. It just ending now, with breaks albeit in between. I haven't even eaten my dinner.

I realised this was becoming a trend, growing pains in our charity - and I only look to grow in this area - that more and more things need to be done just to build it big.

I dream big, so slowing down on the charity front is not an option for me. My heart is for the NGO, NPO industry, for charitable causes, for managing resources to make a humane difference. There is no turning back, only going forward and keep building on what has been built.

The thing is, I enjoy it. I enjoy every part of my voluntary job. My workaholic self rears its head when it comes to this job and truly, voluntarily. It's passion and ambition that drives this workaholism, not an endowed sense of slavery.

But it isn't going to work if I keep going on like this.

So, I have to put on my entrepreneurship hat again, coupled with my experience with social enterprise, to find a bloody solution to my career.

7/10

Just cause I am recovering doesn't mean you shouldn't care.
I wanted to tell you that day was a 9/10 scale of feeling depressed.
Today is a 7/10.
Don't remember what it's like to be 0/10.
Serotonin helps me survive.
Happy things? What happy things? I don't remember.
What's 10/10? When I truly want to die.
That's how close I came this week.
My meds keep me functioning. I get showered. I wash my hair.
I am not the same person if I am not on them, but I am, so you see me as sane.
Each tablet acts like a splint to keep me from falling to pieces.
It still hurts.
Hurt comes from nowhere and hurts, still does.
I sleep to cope.
Even if sleep is troubled.
I fall physically ill, because I am ill inside.
I break out in rashes.
I function for the sake of others, as far as I can.
But I just need you to care, so I don't disappear.
Like water on the ground percolating away, disappearing, still there but not anymore.
Seeping, like tears, for I am made of tears.
Meanwhile, I pop more pills to break out of the physical pain the tears bring me.

charity begins at home

My Dad said to me before, about my dreams to work for charitable causes, that, "Charity begins at home." He meant that if I was not well, if I could not take care of myself, I could not care for others properly.

Right now my drive to do more is waned by my inability to do more of my charity work. Inside me is all systems go, but my body betrays. It falls sick, it sends off breakdowns in my synapses and central nervous system.

I am getting quite frustrated at my constant inability to work. Even real work which pays, I can't be well enough to do. I have no idea but to keep going, and resting along the way.

I want to bang out my frustrations on this keyboard but I am having a headache at the moment and too tired to do so. That is how weak I am, that I cannot even mouth off my tempestuous feelings of frustration.

I am a charity case myself.

But I will keep on going on.

never good enough

It is now 4:12pm. Today is one of those days.

Most of the times when my depression symptoms worsen is during the late afternoon. It may come first as a panic attack, then it sinks in feelings of horrible sadness, miles worse than the latent sadness I have carried with me all my life. 

This afternoon, it began just an irritation, a tiredness, but as it sinks right in, it becomes a sadness and a regret. Peeves turn to tears, anger to regret.

A regret that all my life, I have been told I am not good enough. Praise was short, my academics were average. Even in Primary 3 during streaming, everyone in my class went for the second round of testing, and some got into the GEP classes at school; I was the only one who didn't attend the second round of tests because I hadn't made the mark. My parents openly discussed sending me to an orphanage, when already I didn't have enough of them because they were unaffectionate workaholics. My best friend in the younger half of my primary school days berated me all the time, called me a wretch (my primary school mates have superb vocabulary), accusing me repeatedly of things I did not do, hit me in public. Growing up, I nearly failed my A levels, and I only got a third class honours for a basic degree. Lovers despised me and threatened to leave me over and over before finally leaving. I was made unworthy of love so many times because of some inherent weakness in me, abandoned and spurned.

This is why I try to do things perfectly or not at all. This is why I am so sensitive to criticism, because I have had so much of it. Criticism and suggestions ain't bad, but my feelings towards them ain't invalid either. It hurts, because I always try so hard.

Intellectually, I know one can never truly be good enough. Spiritually, I know I am worthy of love despite my weaknesses. But emotionally and physically the reality of unworthiness is painful, cuts to the heart, and is uninspiring. 

I process these regrets and revelations, and I don't feel better.

What does help, is my medication - it makes the pain easier to bear.

Some may say, just be thankful that you are alive. I know God saved me from brink of death. Today, I think that, and I know it is supposed to be a blessing to be alive. But the feeling that thought brings is not of gratitude, but relief that I didn't die on this very day. Relief that today I don't feel overpowered by my continuous wrestle with pain and grief. Relief that I have my medication to keep me alive. 

waiting

I hate waiting. I used to be a patient, would-wait-for-two-hours-for-you kind of person, but now waiting makes me anxious.

When I was young, it was all about waiting for my parents to come home from work or pick me up from the babysitter. Sometimes they came back at close to midnight. Every day, I waited for them till day turned to night.

When I was in secondary school and had to commute to JB everyday because my parents moved there, I had to wait in line at the customs every day. Wait for the bus. Use of Walkmans were disallowed in school uniform in my school, and mine got stolen in a burglary anyway. So there was nothing else to do but wait.

When in love, I once waited for H for almost two hours to meet me at the MRT station after meeting his friends whom he always treated as more important than I was to him. He never showed that day. Years after, he didn't even remember that he had me waiting there that time. 

After all that waiting throughout my childhood and life peaked, my depression worsened my hate for waiting into a fear of it. Now I cannot stand waiting for buses and trains, one of the reasons why I cannot get myself into public transport more often, (apart from germs, confined spaces and humans). I hate waiting for the lift to arrive when I visit the hospital every month for my checkup. I get anxious waiting for cabs, but thankfully most of the time the wait is not long because there are plentiful cabs.

In any case, never keep me waiting for too long. It physically hurts me to have to wait now.

2003

The year that SARS hit the world, and I went through the hardest financial difficulty I could imagine, walking the streets with an empty stomach, developing gastritis for the first time yet unable to pay the doctor because I was so broke.

The year I read Lord of the Rings, and it resonated because the world seemed literally really dark.

The year Leslie Cheung committed suicide, and made the world seem bleaker. The song 追 was revived in our memories.

The year I joined an industry I totally hated because of the IT and finance involved, and developed a sickly pallor because it was where money lived and people died.

The year I developed adult asthma.

The year I fainted and was brought to hospital because of asthma, which I didn't know I had then.

The year I got conned by a small business who didn't pay me for one month of hard work.

The year I sat in the MRT train unknowingly for more than 2 hours, dazed, unsure where to go.

The year someone stole my chequebook and forged my signature to cash it. 

The year I broke up with who was then the love of my life, H and took the longest time it ever cost me to get over someone.

The year I started this blog. 

abstraction in therapy

During my EMDR therapy yesterday, my doctor tried to help me cognitively grasp the difference between potential and possibility.

I felt like I had gone back to uni and was writing a paper on concepts and such definitively.

In any case, I still have to mull over the difference between the two concepts. Apparently, one has the potential to do a task excellently. However, possibility is limited to parameters. For example, if you were given endless resources, the limit of possibility is way out of sight. However if you were under much stricter conditions, the potential of you being great is still there, but what you will achieve will be much less. That said, it does not mean that the task has been churned out in mediocrity. It means it is excellent, given the limits.

Hence, if I am sick, and can only do so much, I am not mediocre.

-

The revelation takes a while to sink in. Apparently perfectionists have difficulty distinguishing between the two abstract concepts of potential and possibility. I guess I had to be cured of my perfectionism, else I would never get anywhere. I am one of those perfectionists who either do and do it fuck-off-well or not do it at all. Hence oscillating between moments of brilliance and moments of lull, near-death, sickness and social-disappearance.

Well other things happened during EMDR therapy too. My doctor brought me to re-live the experience of a panic attack. It was traumatic at first, and I dropped emotionally till I felt suicidal, but he brought me back, and then I realised that the experience is simply physiological. Somehow I managed to detach my emotions from the pain of a panic attack or depressive episode. Like it is all just physiological and has nothing to mar on my soul. It was quite a revelation too, also abstract, but something I can cling on to when my body next plummets into a depressive episode or panic attack.

(Oh and yeah, my adrenal glands are fine, after taking the test. My panic attacks are undeniably caused by my clinical depression alone, nothing else. Healthy heart, kidneys, thyroid, but brain-wise still need chemicals to adjust the imbalance. My doctor said one day I could do without medication - I am on so much now, the possibility seems laughingly slim - have you encountered me when I am not on my meds? Not a pretty sight at all. But well, we will get there. It has been years already anyway, I can wait.)

never again

I had a bizarre dream on Saturday afternoon, one that woke me up in heart-racing breathlessness which led me to say out loud, "I had a nightmare" when I awoke.

J said there were no monsters in the dream after I recounted it to him, and I realised too, there weren't any horror elements of the usual kind in it.

One of the facets of that bizarre dream was that I found myself once again working for a corporation, one with offices and cubicles and bosses that berate me for constantly being ill. No doubt my work in the dream was truly a dream come true - fundraising for charity causes - the air in the office was stifling because I was a pariah, one who couldn't keep her health up to not fall sick so often, one that couldn't work the full week, every week, because of sickness.

I realise I never again will be able to work full-time in a normal environment that everyone else does - chugging the train in the morning, every day to work, five days out of seven, twelve hours out of twenty four. Simply because: I will always be sick.

My doctor asked me recently how normal I rate my life to be right now, and my answer was: 30% normal. I cannot work more than I already am, which isn't very much. I get exhausted. I fall ill with something, physiological or psychosomatic whatever, every so often. I have been struggling with such ill health since my early twenties which now makes it a decade of constant sickness and saying sorry to people.

Perhaps I am destined to be a freelancer, as I have been for the past few years because my sickness became so overwhelming I had to take a break to almost die. Now I am 30% living a normal life, and I have to be content that I can no longer be the workaholic over-achiever I intend to be when I enjoy my work. I have to be content with having insecure finances at times, the unfortunate effect of being a freelancer. I have to realise I don't need to work all the time. I have to realise it is not a blessing to be overworked: passion can go too far and kill me. And one thing is for sure, I will never again step into the office scenario in that bizarre Saturday afternoon dream - because I will make my own way, and set my own rules, according to my health.

Maybe, one day, I will regain superb health and be able to become a workaholic again. But for now, the rules need to be re-written for I cannot endure yet another decade of apologising for being sick all the time, wearing sackcloth everyday for being someone who cannot 'manage' her health.

Some people are horrible workers with excellent health. Some are in between, average workers with average health. These people occupy most of the cubicles in that nightmare-office scenario. As for me, I believe I am good at whatever I do because rarely do I endeavour anything I don't excel in. But my penance for that is that I have horrible health. Where in the world is there a place for someone like me? I am a misfit.

The bizarre dream culminated in an investigative journalist threatening to expose me as someone who, using the public's charitable investments, was constantly taking time off work and thus an equivalent to an embezzler of donations. It was a nightmare because I would have to apologise, once again, for being someone who was constantly ill and not able to work like a normal person. I know we don't have true investigative journalists in Singapore, but the dream seemed real. I was going to be declared in print to be a fraud because of my ill health. It was truly a nightmare. Thankfully, unreal.

Perhaps a warning it was. A warning to be content with my current freelancing charity worker - thus poor - status. A warning to never again, subject myself to a corporation.

stolen

J is the first boyfriend I have ever shared a common 'sporting' activity with, and that is bicycling. We went as far to buy two similar aluminium frame bikes, 18-speed with suspension, from one of our two local Ubi bicycle shops.

We were quite enthusiastic about our biking but as laziness stepped in we slackened a bit, and things were getting rusty and dusty on the bike front.

In any case, our waning interest can no longer be revived because our bicycles have been stolen from right outside our door. We live in a walk-up apartment; our bicycles can't fit in the house and are chained locked together - spokes, frames and all - outside our door. The perpetrators must have been at least two people to carry off bikes and chain locks down three flights of stairs. 

trauma

Wafting. As opposed to
Assault -
miniature drumbeats
of alarm and panic
drifting,
diffusing into my soul.

Like boiling a frog
Death -
eminent, incoming
convecting invisibly -
Snap.
Flee, fight, or die.

mega-busy week ahead

I think about the week ahead and I am getting into a funk. I will be ultra-busy, teaching every weekday, having to do my volunteer work - both of which means a lot of cleaning needs ot be done.

My hands already feel wrecked from dryness and irritation from detergents, so much washing and cleaning to do and more to come, endlessly.

On the bright side my tryptophan supplements should be arriving today or tomorrow, and that means I should have more serotonin on my side and hopefully the cheer and energy level of mine will elevate. I will take the maximum dose needed.

Meanwhile, I soak myself with lavender and clary sage essential oil filled air.

And rely on Fluanxol I guess.

taking my SSRIs at night now...

... and that solved my daytime drowsiness problem by leaps and bounds.

But I am still often on verge of panic attacks, sometimes more frequently, sometimes hardly. Still, doctor ordered a urine test to check if there is something wrong with my adrenal glands. And my Xa*nax dose has increased to cope with the anxiety till we find out if so.

trepidation

Before I fall asleep.
I feel a sense of fear
- irrational fear,
one that cannot be qualified.

I murmur Psalm 121 to myself.
It helps. The Lord will watch over
your coming and going both
now and forevermore.

I am now on a new cycle of meds.
Will I sleep eventually? I hope.
Else I will need a drink to cope.
For now, chasing trepidation then.

flf

I feel like fuck, well and truly. Medication has not provided respite. It did, against the crazy-exhaustion that took hold of me most of today. Then now, I feel like I am swimming in sewage and nothing is helping. I want to write this agony away. I want to take my heart out of my chest so that it can stop clamouring for my attention by beating so hard. I want to reboot my tear ducts so that it can either cry or not at all, instead of the half-fucked sadness I am feeling right now.


I am waiting. Waiting for my dinner, but waiting is the pits. I hate waiting so much that the thing desired at the end of the wait does not hold hope against the agony of waiting. When J arrives home, he will turn on the room light, which will illuminate all, and make things worse, but I cannot possibly eat my dinner in darkness. And hopefully, his return will bring relief to the mental and physiological turmoil that is me, now. Then the light will be forgiven.


I would very much like a beer, and that would be the third drink of the day if I give in to the craving. But it may prove a relief. Perhaps I should get dressed and go walk around in the supermarket for the second time today, perhaps it will bring me some measure of safety and peace in such a time.


On the bright side, I think my claustrophobia is getting so much better. Therapy helped lots. I will keep working on it, and the supermarket beckons despite the people that will be there, I will probably find comfort being there now.

buoyant

I haven't been eating more protein like I was told by the doc on Wednesday, to reduce the severity of my depression. My fridge is full of eggs, untouched. I eat a muesli bar every now and then. My appetite sucks, lunch is impossible, dinner needs to be split into two meals.

The funks are still occurring. Earlier this afternoon, I told J, "We are in danger." when it was a peaceful afternoon. I told him to get me 2 Xan*axes and napped. I felt my heart palpitating badly when I awoke. I took two beta-blockers. Then I felt my mood descend into deep. I took a Fluanxol, burned a mix of clary sage, lavender and eucalyptus essential oil, soaked in the negative ions of my new (cheap) negative ioniser. It could be worse, I could be cowering under the sheets right now crying. But with medication, negative ions and aromatherapy, I feel literally afloat, neither out of the water nor sinking deep.

I don't know how long I can tread water tonight though. I think about a long day of work tomorrow and am not mentally prepared. Work three days a week, ha. I indulge in the hobby of my volunteer work everyday, and rest as much as possible. I still look forward to work with trepidation at times, feeling like I will let my students (or clients, if copywriting work) down.

I feel like a long glass of ice-cold Guinness Draught right now.

Love crashes;
Serotonin refill, please?
Double, neat

Tears retracted,
Strung back by meds -
Double shots

Free fall --
Kingdom of madness
A chaser, too

What works?
Not me, I'm damaged.
A broken glass.

respite, maelstrom, catatonia and protein

I don't eat three meals in a day, usually. Just dinner and sometimes supper when hunger is brought on by my nightly Remeron dosage. My doctor says that my lack of eating means that I am not getting enough protein and thus making each depressive episode even worse. I am now supposed to eat an egg a day. And protein bars if I can stomach it.

During today's EMDR therapy, towards the end, I think I went into a catatonic state. I tried my best to get out of it. I was conscious, but unable to move or speak. It has happened before. And this was the second time my doctor managed to witness it. Before I went into muteness I said I felt safe in the doctor's office, which is where I was. I also said I felt safe at home, and when with my cats, and when with J. Then I went catatonic and stared into space, muted, rigid. I could feel the whole experience. When I forced myself out of it, I said that while I felt safe, inside me was a maelstrom. My doctor then said that our goal was to have the feeling of safety brought inside of me, so I could bring it wherever I went.

And because I have been sleeping much better lately - I am off melatonin and can sleep well with half my Remeron dosage - my doctor finally halved my Remeron dosage permanently. I hope I can do well on this new lowered dose. The cost savings and cessation of weight gain are key motivators in my wanting to have my Remeron reduced.

I had a really hard time on Monday. I felt an emotional crash, and it felt as bad as it was when I first started seeking treatment for my depression. Eventually, I took the meds I needed to, wrote my doctor an email, and had a shot of Glenfiddich whisky and can of Guinness Draught. It became better. I told my doctor that that was how I coped with the horrible depressive feeling on Monday, and that by Tuesday when he called me back, I was already better. He said today that the fact that the crash only lasted a day, it was good progress from the past when it would last for much, much longer. And that alcohol was an acceptable way to cope when necessary and not too often, and as long as I didn't drink as much as I did that I ended up hurting myself.

He also said that my discipline in regulating my work three-days-weekly, rest-four-days regime is paying off. Hence my sleeping better. During my non-work-days I force myself to rest and relax. I guess I can't expect to be a normal person so soon and be working six days a week as one should.

The weekly visits to the doctor are paying off, although it means I have to find ways to pay for them. God will provide, and I will work hard on the three-days-weekly. J might take a credit line to help out in the meanwhile. And my parents are helping me when they can. Do I still feel sad? Even right now, yes. But my eye-makeup stays in place; I will distract the tears with other things.

takotsubo

Octopus-trap
clamping my heart
Keeping it alive
for delayed death

As if consumption-
dying inside-out
and claustrophobia-
weren't wasting enough

Death by trap:
not ideal by
any means, no
Freedom beckons

Lying liberated
in an open field
where no one sees
as I leave earth alone

That - would be
The way to leave
Unencumbered
- a Release.

back on EMDR, and Springsteen's Thunder Road

Because my illness - my clinical depression - recently took a turn back to worse, or faced multiple 'troughs in an emotional waves' as my doctor put it, I am now back on EMDR therapy. To analyse, process and solve the bouts of severe depressive and anxiety episodes I keep having lately. Which is also why I am back on once-weekly doctor visits instead of once-monthly.

A funny thing came up during EMDR. I thought of Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road. About how he sings to the girl to throw everything aside and head for a road trip. It made me feel better just hearing the lyrics inside my head while in the doctor's room.

Doctor taught me more again on how to battle the debilitating bouts of depression and anxiety that are happening so frequently now. Aside from the necessary medications - Xa*nax, Fluanxol, which treat the physiological distress a depressive episode or anxiety attack brings me; pain literally. Things like: Go for a run whenever it happens. Remember that it will not last forever. Do something else like a have a caffeinated drink, read or listen to music. It is normal to have a crash, especially in people who are artistically inclined. Where there are crests there are troughs (I replied to this by telling him it is so 'Men Are From Mars'. He responded by using other analogies of valleys and mountains and of sine curves).

I am glad I haven't been wearing much eye makeup to the doctor visits lately, because it hurts a lot sometimes when we resurface the pain to resolve it and I don't want to get mascara in my eyes when I wipe the tears off.

I told him that I already failed in my attempt to work only three days a week and that yesterday, supposed work day for me, I crashed into a storm of pain and despair, so much that I double-dosed on every medicine I had that would calm me. I ended up sleeping the whole day and not sleeping at night because I was so hungover from meds.

The subliminal message he has been trying to tell me is that is okay to fail, to let people down, to time-out when I have to, to do very little instead of planning to do it all and failing horrendously.

So I am going to relish today, a non-work day for me. And put Springsteen's Thunder Road on repeat.

flowers light up my day

I think the value of fresh flowers in the home is underrated. These gerberas, pale enough to match my faint mood, pink enough to be cheery.

For a few dollars every now and then, a worthwhile indulgence - no, necessity almost.

From now on, I need to bring my teaching down from 6 days a week to 3. I need to stop thinking I have to clean the house every day, but plan the cleaning for alternate days instead. Doctor says if I want to be perfectionist and have to do these things every day, I set myself up to fail. So now I must work only three days a week to get better.

I need to lengthen my exercise time.

I need to see my doctor every week now.

Meanwhile, aromatherapy helps. Clary sage is in the air. The storm of today has gone past, leaving behind its aftermath. I shall go to bed early and try to stick to my needed changes.

It's not really working. Writing away my pain, or cleaning, or reading, or hugging my purring cat who knows something is wrong with me. I try to sleep it away but I lie awake in the afternoon dark, curtains drawn of course. I think I just need to stop doing, and just lie down and stop escaping the pain. All those are useful distractions but also smokescreens for what lies beneath. Tears, I give you permission to express my pain now. Words and chores are not working at the moment.

resonance

of pain familiar
unending bleak
serotonin-crash
restless sleep

time creeps
tears salty
-unceasing

lost, in sorrow
awake, yet numb

- familiar resonance of.

more.
of burrowing
in covers, in pain
of wishing sun would set
of feeling almost-dead
of waking haven't slept
of death, of existing
of chemical imbalance
over nothing

a resonance of
glass splinters past
and pain baffling
of crazy voices:
 
'I never left.
Hear my echoes,
footsteps in glass
daggers of pain
everything crashing.
I resound through
chirpy efforts
daily chores
therapy,
your life.'

Like a well that never runs dry,
so you are, ever-trickling, so -
I always will have
a resonance of pain.

fix

I am in a fix.

Am so poor that I might not have enough to pay the doctor tomorrow for my monthly appointment - I still owe him money from last month's bill. I stew and worry about what will happen when the clerk shows me tomorrow's bill and -gasp- lo and behold I haven't got enough. My meds are running on empty or low, so I can't not go either.

I feel so tired that I can barely do chores let alone work. The kitchen floor is strewn with stray bits of cat litter because Scooter is sick with urinary tract infection, but I can't bring myself to sweep up. I don't even have the energy to take a shower.

I have no appetite. I ate a brownie and a bowl of instant noodles for the whole of yesterday. I have been having a runny nose for most part of the weekend till yesterday. Right now I feel like my stomach is so empty I can't chug my coffee for fear I will puke.

I feel bad that I turn down my students and push my writing deadlines because I am not capable of being productive every day.

Nothing will help fix this trepidation and extreme lacklustre level of energy. Accepting this to be true makes me feel better.

can't sleep
for residual anger
despite drugs
and alcohol
I'm only half asleep
I want to sleep
into oblivion
Deal with tomorrow
when the sun rises
will keep trying
to let the darkness
takeover

fire at rubbish collection point below my block in Ubi

We smelled something burning. We checked our house. There was no fire in the house but outside, at the rubbish collection point of Block 306 Ubi Avenue 1. A fire-engine and fire-men were on site, with onlookers. What is Marine Parade Town Council doing in waste disposal management that is causing fire so near to our home?

train

I took the train yesterday. I haven't been in an MRT train for a long time. It was the circle line, which is new, cleanish and less crowded, hence I said yes to taking that train ride. I did okay. I sat frozen, kept counting the stops till we reached, and J was there to soothe me and tell me it was okay.

it is happening again

The debilitating sadness, the panic attack, the crippling fear, the despair that sadness brings and the loop of disappointment and the setback it brings me. This pain is a waft of over-familiarity. I thought my tear ducts were dry by now but they aren't.

I can't even get myself to take a shower. I lie on the floor, or lean my forehead to the table, I can barely speak aloud. I call my doctor but he is out of town and have to settle for an email cry for help instead.

I want to stop crying but I can't. I don't even know what I am sad about, it is not a reaction to any sad situation, it is like my brain just short-circuited itself into severe serotonin deficiency again. It is happening again! Why!?

Must I always be in a life of leisure to keep this at bay? What about real life, where I have to work to pay the bills? I have to, but suddenly today, I can't, and I can't do anything about it. I can't teach while in the throes of a panic attack or in tears or sit across my student unwashed and barely vocal.

Like the fighter jet that wafts across the low-rise skies of my neighbourhood, the sound it emits comes and goes like a wail, and then no more, but the fighter jet still is somewhere out there, eventually returns to its military base nearby, but still remains.

It still remains. This incompetence of mine. The sudden ability to do anything that I ought to. Like work, like take a shower. Like be normal. I thought normalcy was returning but instead it is like my sky that has that fighter jet spit through it every so often as if beckoning for war.

War cries, like the pounding of my heart so hard that it wants to burst through my rib cage. Medication, and my cat coming to me and purring with her paw on my heart, all that is supposed to help but it ain't, yet, or perhaps never will properly.

Yes I feel a pain in my heart. From the physiological effect of a panic attack, from the sadness that is making me well up in tears. It hurts. I want to deny that. But I am supposed to acknowledge it.

I am lost and i don't know what to do.

i'm getting this familiar feeling --

-- of feeling totally limp, unable. Where even walking is like dragging a boulder up a scraggly hill. It is so familiar, because this is how it feels, and felt, when I had to stop working a full-time job because of my depression because I simply couldn't do things. It doesn't feel too sad now, because I'm on my meds, but somehow this waft of inability to be ambulatory just comes along now and it feels so familiar, it scares me.

Shouldn't I be better by now? My depression seems to be chronic, like dysthymia, never really coming to an end proper, like a 100-episode long Chinese drama that is full of rubbish and anger and stupidity. My recovery is like a leopard-crawl I did when I was at home alone once and fainted; when I came to somewhat, I crawled with my forearms to the telephone to call J for help. Inch by inch and every inch takes so much more effort than normalcy would dictate. This time round my depressive episode is lasting many more years than the first one I knew of, not counting the childhood ones which I don't even know count as what. It is no longer an episode. It feels like Prozac Nation - dysthymia and the constancy of it.

Maybe I will really have to be on my meds for a lifetime, like some people. I hope I feel up and perky soon. But I know that for a long time I will not be able to work a full-time job again simply because of such days as today, when I simply fall flat face down on the table when I try to get going to start my teaching (no, my student wasn't around to witness that, I told her and the others scheduled for today that I can't teach today). It was at that moment, when my face felt the coldness of the marble-top table, that I realised this feeling of being nearly immobile felt so familiar.

Am drugged enough to be sleepy, but unable to fall asleep. Bedtime is lonely-time - the quiet, the darkness, the lack of activity to keep my mind away from things. I will keep trying to Su Doku myself to sleep.

I am in the midst of a panic attack. At this very moment. My chest hurts like hell, my fingers feel detached from my body, my breathing shallow, my head feels light. I am trying my best to act normal while all this is going on. I might faint but will hang on till then. I have run out of the correct medication to take to prevent this from happening.

I haven't even had a proper panic attack for a long time but it has been tumultuous for me and thus my panic attacks return.

I think I just lost my ability to speak. Just like old times, when I lose my voice in the way a foetus is unable to cry in its womb.

Writing about my life is nothing glorious, but I have been doing for a long time, on this blog for the past seven years, on paper even longer. Right now I am writing because I can't, for the nth number of nights in a row, get to sleep despite my medication. I am sleepy yet awake, sheer discomfort that is.

Just those two lines, a preface to an attempt to produce coherent lyrical words, douses my insomnia somewhat already. But, a preface to what? There is nothing to produce words about.

What I would rather do right now is play the piano but I don't have one. I have been playing my guitar madly, figuring out the chords to songs I can sing to, but my playing has not improved much.

I am now going to try and drown myself to sleepiness by playing more Sudoku. Goodnight world.

ginger tea

A numb buzz.
Flitting heavily
About, without
Ricochet-recoil
The rounds are spent.

I wake asleep.
Creaminess rouses
in coffee and cigs -
meds in between -
I trudge, daily.

Chores, them all.
Damn life, damn all
Step-one-two,
milestones, blah,
Things that make sense -

Perhaps, - else:
Others, newness,
ginger tea like,
unceasing, or,
Anything to enjoy the day,

This dreadful day,
as are all others
the sun should stay
away from me,
make peace with death.

More tea perhaps,
a panacea, as is
alcohol, but
I've med up, so no
Just ginger tea now -

To settle my nerves
stomach and heart
to add spice to the - day-
and life to the dark.
Will put the kettle on.

I was on my way to this page, to write as I haven't for a while. To write as I haven't for so long, to write for the sake of making beautiful words.

But I always get sidetracked, and I did, by writing functionally, as I did just before this, writing to my students on their blog about their friend who had a violent manic episode, telling them about bipolar disorder.

And so I lost my resolve to try and write.

Trying to write in itself is a self-defeating purpose. When you have to try so hard, it becomes labour, it is far better to just jump write in and do, not try.

But I guess it will have to wait. Am now having gastric pain. Another time. And I need to finish that deadline I have on Monday.

update

I recently got a new phone, a Motorola Android. Instead of writing my thoughts here, I have been journalling inside my phone instead, password protected of course. The Android phone has really helped in my work, teaching and volunteer work alike.

Since my last psychotherapy session I have been forcing myself to do things I don't have the energy to do - going places, meeting people, getting out of the house in general. All these things I am usually too tired to do, I force myself to do them, medicating if necessary.

It is supposed to help positively reinforce me because I can use each success as a step further forward.

But as a result, I think I am becoming more depressed again. My recovery is not going all the way towards total normalcy but is instead reverse-turning. I feel each day like a step in a trek that would lead to no mountaintop or beautiful waterfall, just a journey in trudging and hopefully mercifully falling into or ending at a ravine. I don't think about it. I go on. But in any case, forcing oneself to do things without the physiological energy available of a healthy person is more negating for my health than it is beneficial. Screw all those who say, "Get out of the house more." Forcing myself to go out of my flat is not only making me so tired I lose sight of days and nights sleeping in recovery, or becoming just really sad and glum by doing the act of going-out in itself. How is getting out of the house, when I have simply no energy to, supposed to help?

Anyway, I trudge on. It is shocking for anyone to have to recover my dead body and I probably am just one who needs more effort to live a somewhat normal life. I try to be more religious in my medicine taking. I try to remember the good things. I try. But getting out of my house more does not work in itself, yet, I think I will keep forcing myself anyway. Life is pain and going out of the house is tiresomely painful, so I guess it equates and I should therefore do it.

On the bright side, I enjoy my teaching. I like my current lot of students, they are lovely girls.

interactive literature

The best I have had lately of contact with literature is through teaching it. That, and watching TV dramas; script writers really don't get enough credit for some of the incredible material that is being spewed by actors.

I find myself abandoning my reading projects, books left turned over to the last read page until they collect dust. I seem to lately prefer interactive literature through talking and listening to words, rather than to read and write them. My most enjoyable moments now are spent lying in bed using my netbook, all day and all night if I could, unless I have to clean the house, care or advocate for kittens or teach my students.

I hope tomorrow's student will bring me a list of poems that he will be doing in school, I need to be inspired, interactively.

object or person

Baby - object or person?

The answer is: object. Babies, like animals, are transitory objects. They help us grow, they help us learn to deal with people better.

When babies unfortunately grow up, they become persons.

Until then, they are children, which are monsters.

I hate most children. They give me a headache, make me angry, and are often raised by horrible humans that should have been sterilised and not allowed to procreate. Children are not innocent though, even though they say it's always the parents' faults. I think that monsters have no conscience, and children don't either. They are born without a conscience.

Just like animals.

But at least with animals, they deserve protection.

My central nervous system is going into fight-or-flight response mode again, and this time I don't know why, at all. It was a perfectly beautiful morning today - clear skies with white clouds instead of grey. The house is clean from J's cleaning up over the weekend. But I feel like my heart has been tied to a stone and thrown into the ocean while it is still in my ribcage, in my body. The tension that is my chest is making me so physiologically exhausted I can barely feel the blood coursing through the veins of my body. My fingers feel like feathers, numb and weightless.

stress

My new tenants move in on Tuesday. I need to get a plumber to fix their toilet but the plumber has been delaying for a long time and he needs to come by tomorrow otherwise the tenants have no toilet to use. It is awfully stressful. Cheap things don't come easy - this plumber is getting us a second-hand WC which is far better than the old HDB plastic ones. Every day this plumber doesn't arrive I am more stressed.

Andy is having a hard time replacing the lamp in the room for let because we don't have the original screws and had to get new ones that are really hard to screw in.

That and I still have to clean up the second-hand bed we got them and the curtains to wash for them.

I am almost so jittery with stress that I can barely type.

too much work

Almost everyone complains of too much work and too little money. To solve the money problem, work more, right? But I can't.

I found myself feeling half-dead yesterday evening after just teaching one lesson, which solves the dilemma - better to have not too much work and very little money, than to have to work more and die horribly.

I went to bed at about 8pm. Wanted to sleep till it was next day noon, but ended up waking in the middle of the night. It must be the Panadol Extra with all that caffeine inside. And now, early morning, I am still stone cold awake from those pills.

I felt so exhausted yesterday after teaching that I literally felt I was going to die. In the middle of the night when I awoke I coughed myself like mad because the haze was getting in the house. I felt my lungs collapsing, until I sealed up the whole house closing all the windows. And I still have the dizzy-headache I had last night which made me go to bed right after dinner. I want to fall asleep again soon to sleep away the dizziness.

Too much work? I am just weak.

morning trinity

Today I am going bravely towards the throngs of people that is church. Not the one that my pastor is in but another, more spacious one that is also within cycling distance.

Somehow a mix of events brought me to this morning of resolution. I woke up early because I was so exhausted yesterday that I slept early. I woke up early also because we have a foster dog with us, and she was with us in bed, and I woke up because of her. Even earlier than last night, I met a prospective tenant that somehow reminded us that we should try making it through the church doors once again.

Strangely I don't feel that much of a panic as I would feel if I were to even consider going to the other church which my paranoid self sees as Mecca during pilgrimage time - someone will surely get trampled over (me) and a fire may break out and likely everyone will be trapped within and die of smoke-inhalation. That is me. And yes, I still fear trains and haven't been on the MRT in a long time as well. I still sanitise my hands after pressing the lift buttons in the hospital whenever I go for my check-ups.

But today, everything comes together like a mini Big Bang Theory and I will be cycling to Trinity church at Paya Lebar. I will med-up. I will be there. I will enjoy the spaciousness of the place and the friendly anonymity. Thank you God.

kaput

I am on the verge of burn-out. Thinking of things I have to do - housework, teaching, preparation work for my lessons, my volunteer work at Ubi Kuching Project, prospecting for suitable new tenants for my spare room - I feel like a really old car that makes weird noises when it starts up, if at all. And not a cute Mini either, more like a van that is nearing the scrap heap.

I don't even have the energy to write. I just want to sleep into oblivion and never wake up, or disappear into a lakeside hut in the outskirts of Thailand. I want to cry but I am dry. I have no way of coping anymore now that I don't drink alone and can't.

And being broke makes it worse; I cannot make myself richer without working more but I cannot work more because I already cannot handle the current load, like a washing machine already stuffed beyond its brim.

Hanging on tethers, soon to be singular, and as in the law of physics, every tether that breaks makes it easier to break the following one. Snap. Snap. Snapsnapsnap. I am dying inside.

Medication to cope? Yes that is crucial. For the whole re-tuning of my mindset. But right now, I don't think my brain can be boosted beyond capacity. Milestones need to be signposts along the way, not a flagpole on the moon. I feel more somnolent when I remember to take my meds, more on edge and on the brink when I forget. Between the devil and the deep blue sea I would rather be neither.

I want to melt away into a reservoir of tears that I cannot cry.

rent

Hi all, my room is up for rent, available from March 15th 2010. See ad here.

(In any case, if I do not find a suitable tenant, I will be using the room as an office cum study, to teach in, so I no longer have to teach in my kitchen and therefore have a quiet place I can have weekend lessons in even if there are people coming to and from the kitchen during then. I also look forward to the savings in electricity without a tenant!)

But if you or someone you know needs a room, please refer them to this available space. Thanks!

got myself a threatening demand over sms

It has been a hot and really humid week. Early this week my air-con ran out of refrigerant. We got someone to top up the R22 and then the air-con worked. Later that night the air-con conked out again. We thought, jialat, must be pipe leaking. This was Thursday early morning. We couldn't get the contractor again to come on Thursday itself - checking for leaks means it has to be daytime, and they were already booked for Friday afternoon, the eve of the eve of Chinese New Year, when most contractors have already closed business since Thursday. My tenant, W, when I informed her that we are getting the air-con fixed again on Saturday. She said, "Why cannot come today? Another two more nights of suffering." I told her that no choice.

So Saturday it was that J got someone to come but the person couldn't make it in the end. When J called me - I was already here in JB by then - at the same time, my tenant got home and J rushed off the phone to go tell her that the air-con was not fixed.

She got upset and started complaining to J. J called me back to say so and that she would be calling me to talk about it.

She didn't call me. She sent this SMS instead:

I am very upset that the aircon is still not fixed today. My room is very humid and stuffy and I can't sleep and it is CNY! I will find hotel stay and deduct from rent this 15th.

I got really upset - what kind of a threat is this? She didn't call me to discuss her grievances and instead decided to demand me to reimburse her hotel stay over an SMS. I called her back and she didn't answer, she had taken sedatives and gone to sleep.

Since she didn't call me in the morning either, I SMSed her back - her preferred form of discussion so it seems - and so I wrote that she doesn't have to pay rental this month, her deposit (which is a hundred dollars short of the actual rent) shall be used for this month's rental and she should move out by March 15th.

She SMSed back, asking for more time. I wrote, no, I have already put up my room for rental on the internet for $600 (fully furnished, bed size of your choosing, internet inclusive).

She finally relented and called me. She said that usually I tell her once the air-con is fixed or not. I replied saying that I had only just found out when J called me and he immediately rushed off to tell her when she came home. She said she needed more time to move out, I said that one-month notice is very fair. She asked me to talk to her nicely, I got even more upset and shouted back at her, "Why should I talk to you nicely if you choose to send me demands over SMS? You gave me no chance to discuss the issue, instead you choose to send me demands. So if you want to demand things from me, likewise I will demand from you. If you need time to move out, then fine, pay me $500 for this month's rental (the rent is actually $450) and the next month until you move out."

Am I right to get upset? Her SMS quoted above is verbatim. I have never shouted at her before. But I think in this case I am justified to get angry.

Feeling unhinged; that Geography class I am teaching keeps bearing on my mind. I feel so solely responsible for them, those few boys in my class. I want to relinquish sole-responsibility, I don't want to be the only one for them.

I think about the hot classroom, how dirty it is, how unlike my own home where I normally teach. I think about not being easily able to show them videos and pictures to help me in my teaching because there is no computer, no projector. I think about the very limited resources I have to help them wholly.

I feel like giving up before I have barely started; should I trust that feeling? Or should I bear on in it?

I have recently accepted and begun teaching in a class. I haven't been teaching in a classroom setting for a while, but I have to say I don't miss it. I don't know if I want to continue the assignment but I don't want to let the kids down for now, plus I could do with the extra money. For now, it's mixed emotions in the bag.

netbook

I killed my new netbook recently. Through a series of coffee accidents. It was a free netbook and the free printer-scanner that came with it is still working albeit out of ink, but nonetheless it had too short a lifespan.

So I need a new one. But with being short on funds - scarcity and infinite needs etc. - I am not sure when I will get one.

When it comes to me, I promise to use a keyboard protector.

independent charity work

I think about the work I do in my community, my neighbourhood, it is not much, but it signifies a lot. I have come to think that a lot more can be done to serve the community we live in without having to wait for an organisation to slip a donations envelop into our mail. There always will be a need to fill, and there will always be gaps that leave these needs unmet. New needs will appear all the time.

In Singapore we are so used to having institutions for everything. We think that the government takes care of everything, so we should leave it to 'them'. But when I learn about charity work overseas, I see the independent lobbyists and fund-raisers do so much to raise awareness to their causes, so much that does not come top-down, but really bottom-up, from the community to the community.

That, is the key to so many things. Right now I am only helping animals in Ubi, one day, I want to do much more and help humans too. It seems much more attainable now to me, when I realise how easy it has been for us to be an independent animal welfare group, devoid of institutionalised support. I want that.

I know when I am ready, God will drop a need in my lap, like he did with the cats in my life. I just need to connect the dots to get that need met, and it will all fall into place somehow. I may not be ready to work in an NGO again yet, but maybe I don't need an NGO now, maybe all it takes is for me to be in the middle of a real human need and its solution. A simple good deed may become tomorrow's world-changing movement if we keep it going.

Happy Birthday Sayang

She places one foreleg onto my forearm, nestling it just in the crook of my arm, proceeding then to place her dainty chin on her paw, purring with love. She smells like cotton, feels like it too, so soft, nothing the most expensive fabric could possibly replicate. Her name is Sayang, which means love.

She is not the prettiest cat in the world, there are far prettier ones. She is not of exquisite pedigree, nothing a feline fancier would take a shine to. She is just herself, loving, showing it through hugs and purrs and meows for attention.

Sayang has just turned a year old, although we cannot ascertain her exact birth date. I worry about her even at her age, worry that she might die young, worry that she might fall sick, sorry that I cannot afford to be more paranoid. For now, she warms my lap, happy, contented, probably happier now than she was when she was just born in the streets.

She may not be my first cat, but she is the first one that I chose to take home, without discussion with anyone else in the household, because I could not stand for her to have one more night alone and sick in her boarding pen. She is my first purring cat, one who loves hugs, so opposite from Slinky who is no doubt still very special to me, but Sayang will always be irreplaceable for her loving personality.

I remember the time she first came on heat, earlier than we had expected, when she was about five months old. She couldn't help meowing all night, she couldn't help being in need, and Slinky the queen of aloofness Herself, even went over to lick Sayang in concern. When we brought Sayang home from her spaying surgery, I remember weeping to see her in drowsy pain, but knowing that the procedure would save her from more pain for the rest of her life.

Sayang is an absolutely amazing cat. I love her to bits and hope she remains in my life for the next ten years and onward.

Happy Birthday Sayang.

Ever since I have been cycling again, this time with my own bicycle and for commuting purposes, I find my body becoming healthier. I have stopped exercising a while ago because it was really discouraging to see myself getting fatter the more I exercise - because I was on my Remeron and still am - which simply makes you fat whether you eat or exercise or not.

This year J and I bought bicycles and we have been using to commute short distances. I have a fear of riding on pavements, not just because it is illegal, but because I don't want to ram into people. I feel much safer on the road, where cyclists ought to be.

Cycling is not only a cardio workout, it is resistance training too, especially when I have to carry up my bike to my walk-up third floor flat. Very interesting experience in all, and very exhilarating.

When I feel up to it I will cycle to Pasir Ris where one of my students is. Taking the Kaki Bukit Tampines Ave 10 route then down Pasir Ris Drive 3. I hope I survive the distance.

It is not only a green way to travel, it is also cheaper.

rent

Room rental prices are sky-high crazy right now. I used to rent for $450 at the most for a common bedroom, now they are starting at $550 even for unfurnished rooms. My current spare room is being rented out at $450 which I have already raised twice from $350.

My tenant is a quiet gal who doesn't do her laundry at home nor cook, which is a bonus with the clutter-less feel she gives. The only problem is that she hates my cats and indirectly prevents me from keeping more, which I feel guilty about especially with the visit of this cutie.

And I can't drive her away for a higher rental income, I don't want to do that and make her homeless, not when she hasn't yet bought her new place. That and the possibility that I might not rent out the room again after she leaves; I want to turn it into a workspace again, because it has great light, suitable for teaching, painting, etc. I can extend my library of books inside the room, reducing the current overcrowding on the shelves. For now, I still need the rental income because I cannot afford the price if my tenant leaves now.

got us a pair

Being in the requisite cheesy mood that the upcoming wedding of the BFF has cast on me, I am glad to announce that J and I bought a pair of gifts for ourselves, as a 'couple'. Something like a pair of wedding rings, only much more practical.

J bought us both bicycles. Nothing overly fancy, costing about $190 each, 18-speed mountain bikes with aluminium frames. I haven't cycled in a really long time, about over a year. Our bikes are matching, and we took our first mini-expedition around Ubi tonight on our bikes.

J is officially the first man in my life I am committing to exercising together with. Big step! Thankfully, our interest concerning sporting activities are similar. He doesn't do ball games and neither do I. He finds running boring. My knees hurt when I run. We like swimming but I assert that I am too fat to swim now, so that's another dead end. Eventually we decided on bicycles. He likes skate scooters too and I think they are indeed fun, but I think that spending $300+ on an adult skate scooter is a tad extreme.

I have to say, cycling is very tedious and dangerous for a fat girl. I am no longer able to lean forward as much, to increase my aerodynamism and to lower my centre of gravity. This makes me slow and unsteady. I also have a phobia of riding on pavements, something which I personally hate of cyclists who do. (In fact, one of my local heroines is an old lady who uses her umbrella to whack cyclists who ride on pavements. I want to do the same, but I have to wait a long time before I can carry it off with senior-citizen licentiousness.) Also, being fat means I cannot twist around my upper body much to look peripherally for oncoming traffic. Being fat is a severe handicap.

Looks like I really have to re-start my exercise regimen again, after stopping for so long my exercise mat is collecting dust. Onward we go! And I also really ought to get a side-view mirror for my bike...

I don't know if I can do this. S's wedding is this Friday, a whole-day till evening starting as early as 5 a.m. I haven't altered my cheongsam which I can barely fit into. I haven't bought my outfit for the day. My nails are chipped. I will need to pack lots of things in my go-bag for the day itself. I feel too fat, which I am, since I am still on that stupid Remeron and have given up exercising because it makes me fatter than I can slim down through exercise. I haven't been remembering to take my Lexapro - and I feel terrible, and I must remember them from tomorrow morning onwards. I feel like I am mentally deflating fast, I worry I might breakdown on the actual day. I wish I could skip the wedding but a best friend is still a best friend, I don't think I have a choice, particularly when I have already been assigned important things to do throughout the day. I hate weddings.

slowwww

Is anyone else suffering from extremely-slow-internet-connection these days? Or actually I should say, these nights? The speeds at night are horrendously slow, so slow that I haven't been able to do any heavy-duty up- or downloading any night, every night.

I even tried to surf Hardwarezone forums to see if anyone else had the problem but the site is so slow for me too, so there's another dead end. We complained to M1 broadband about the situation and some sites have improved somewhat, at least to the extent of being able to enter the site at all. Right now, it feels like dial-up to me. Ah the days of dial-up. Sometimes M1 broadband feels like, or slower than, dial-up.