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 θΏ½ 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.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
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.)
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.)
Monday, August 23, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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.
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.
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