Monday, November 29, 2010

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.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

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.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

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.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

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!