worlds upon words

So I didn't get ECT

2012-01-22T17:48:00.001+08:00

My Experience At CGH Psych Ward by avalonelaine

going for ECT, it's confirmed

2012-01-19T17:53:00.000+08:00

I have had enough therapy, medication, pain and sadness despite. So i will be booking myself in hospital, with the agreed advice of my psychiatrist, for ECT. I got the referral last week, and took some time to prepare work that needed to be done to ease my absence when I'm hospitalised. The time has come - I will go tomorrow.

Enough is enough.

pain, a nine-tailed fox

2012-01-11T09:09:00.000+08:00

Everyday a residual pain
emerging like a nine-tailed fox:
its monstrosity depends
entirely on it -
not on me.

I want to kill this fox. This numbing pain. This pain that reduces me to a mess. This pain that has accompanied me through my life.

Medication upon medication, coupled with therapy, counselling and the like. Staying in the hospital for my own safety. But the nine-tailed fox, like Churchill's black dog, still resides, resiliently.

I am considering going for ECT. Electricity and seizures might kill it. It had better, for it is the last resort that factors in staying alive.

I just can't keep living like this, living in a living hell. The number of bad days far outnumber good days, heck, I don't even have good days, good moments maybe. Enough is enough.

A better day

2011-12-30T06:58:00.000+08:00

I told myself today would be a better day. The truth is, even as I awoke for no reason at five in the morning, I already felt the same sadness I felt for the past two days. The day has started in sadness, waves of it. And I tell myself today will be a better day.

Is this even possible? That even in sadness, my day will be better today than yesterday was?

I wonder why the Bible says, "Sow in tears, reap in joy." The tears are literal? If so I am staring at my computer screen blurry eyed. If so then I will work while I am in pain, if I can even think coherently.

In any case, like any other day, I will try. Try to work, try to stay alive. Today will be a better day, somehow.

An unbearable burden

2011-12-29T09:46:00.000+08:00

My psychiatrist recently changed my diagnosis from anxious depression to PTSD.

Either way it feels the same.

Today I feel like this truly is the end of the rope. My antidepressant dose is maxed out, and I am already on high doses of adjunct medications. Yet I still feel days of pain, uselessness, immobility, panic, and insanity.

I keep trying and I keep falling. You know how one should focus on strengths, to maximise potential? Life is my weakness. I keep trying at it. And falling. It makes me feel like living is not my strength and I should simply cut it off. It is a dead tree.

Everything is just welled up in me and I keep bearing all of it on my own. Help only subsides the burden that little bit. My life is still my own, as my thoughts and feelings are.

When can I be allowed to let go of life? It is truly unbearable.

Boulder

2011-12-14T13:49:00.001+08:00

Vision blurred by tears
Boulder in my chest -
Simply painful.

I medicate to kill this stone
It yet still resides in me
Simply unmoving.

Life is too hard with pain
That won't leave -

I wish I could kill this pain, me, forever.

De-emphasise - Can I do it?

2011-11-14T11:21:00.000+08:00

I am trying to write here to deviate away from what I was doing - planning my work day - because it started giving me anxiety. I feel the onset of a panic attack. I will have to work it into my day, this anxiety, not unlike how rural women carry babies into the fields to work. It is an extra burden that childless humans don't have to worry about. Such is my depression-related anxiety - it is an extra burden normal sane people don't have to worry about.

If I try to rationalise it all, the reason why my beloved volunteer work causes me to feel anxiety when I need to work on it: is just that, it is too beloved to me. I am willing to break up with J if he loses the vision and I am willing to go it alone. I will probably have no reason to live if I don't have this work. I am ambitious to the image of a corporate bitch type. I aim to do so much more every cycle next, and thereafter even more, continuously. This kind of importance is insane but I am like that. My dream, my ambition, overrides everything and needs to keep going up towards fulfillment.

Because my work is so important to me it ironically becomes my stumbling block to itself. Just like how I find it harder to sleep at night than I do taking naps, because sleep at night is so much more important. Just like how I need to de-emphasise sleep at night, I need to de-emphasise my work.

Can I do it?

Anti-psychotic

2011-11-09T10:42:00.000+08:00

What I call my 'emergency medication' is Fluanxol, which helps lift severe mood dips and suicidal ideation. It seems to work like an anti-depressant, but it is actually an anti-psychotic. Which makes me feel like I must be somewhat psychotic that Fluanxol works on me, even though that is an irrational thought; many medications meant for other mental illnesses work on major depression symptoms.

It saddens me more that I have to take it just to not feel sad. That regular things that cheer people up - normal people - don't work on me. Depression really lives up to its name: it is really depressing. I wish I could be more easily cheered up. But, for today's mood dip, I doubt even a bouquet of long-stemmed roses or a bunch of balloons could make it painless for me to smile.

And when I say it hurts to smile, it really does. My cheeks actually feel so heavy, smiling takes more effort and produces a weak smile, unlike the grins I give when I am not feeling low.

Right now I feel low, and lonely. I have no idea for what reason this has transpired. I took a Fluanxol because nothing worked to make this feeling go away. I feel lonely for someone to talk to but I have nothing to talk about. That makes me even sadder.

For now, this sadness has not turned into tears because I took my anti-psychotic in time. I am not smiling yet but my cheeks already feel slightly less heavy. And I don't think I should fight so hard for cheer all the time - the absence of pain and sadness is enough for today.

A hard dog

2011-11-03T14:35:00.001+08:00

- I felt castrated,
I need to feel alive;
we have nothing
in common anymore -
Base, animalistic,
Martian reasons:
These I have not.
What I do have
is a very base urge
to Destroy love
that costs him much,
that I do not Deserve.
Love that my blood
prevents my feeling of:
low self-worth, and
anhedonia - pleasureless
It takes very high highs
to feel a sigh of pleasure
Escapades - to smile
Conquests: that new smell
makes me that bit new.
We haven't a porch;
but I am a hard dog
Not because I love not
But for I Deserve not.

Grey

2011-11-02T10:05:00.000+08:00

Black is the state,
being, of my world;
elevated to grey by
another world named
Pharmacology -
applied vigorously
it brings blackness
to never-white
it brings pain
to numbness.

Numbness is grey
like translucency
applied over life;
like fog over rivers.
Such is like:
nerfed pain
a cracked window
haze and fog
scabbed wounds
a glazed painting.

Life isn't grey
But I see it thus
Elsewise black and
flowing blood-red.
Grey is far better:
Light is present
reflecting off waves
of deep black oceans,
seeping through
clouds of storms
impending and passed.

#ihavedepression #nostigma every day a battle

2011-11-02T09:45:00.000+08:00

It is baffling how I can be this heavily medicated and still feel mood swings of low. It is a higher low that I had been feeling recently since two of my core medications - SSRI and lithium - have doubled in doses. But right here right now, it is a low nonetheless.

I am functional: just made breakfasts for the foster kittens with their supplements. But cognitively I feel a bit challenged, I added a bit too much of one supplement for one kitten's meal, and am not sure if I added two or three capsules of another to three other kittens' meal. They are eating it all the same, which means the taste is not altered much, it probably just means they will recover faster from their sickies. But the thing is, I don't feel all quite there. Maybe it was just that moment.

Right now there is drilling going on outside my flat, the price we pay for urban development - noise pollution. Also baffling, in a good way, that I am not made anxious by it nor irritated. It just is. This is so far better than yesterday, where I was so miffed by the noise I swathed my head in pillows and slept to keep the noise out. I am still awake. Maybe today I will just take the noise in regardless.

But whether or not I can continue to be functional for the rest of this day, I do not know. I want to do my work. I want to be able to take a shower like it is second nature. I want to stay awake. I know it is okay if I can't do all these things today. There is tomorrow. But battling the symptoms of depression is just that - battles. And we fight battles to win. So every day I gear up and fight the battle. As I said to God before I left the house that day to try and take my life: "If this doesn't work out, so be it." So be it that I shall have to keep battling.

I will battle the low mood I feel this morning.

I will battle to lift up my cognitive functioning.

I will battle somnolence.

I will battle anxiety and stress.

I will battle to do the simple things I find difficult.

I will battle to keep up the good work.

So be it.

splicing work and recovery #ihavedepression #nostigma

2011-11-01T09:00:00.000+08:00

Trying to get back into the swing of things called work, but am feeling out of sorts; unsure of how fast or slow I should go, how much rest I should take, how to splice work and rest together for the entire day to be therapeutic yet productive.

Working from home where my volunteer work is based means I have no colleagues in the day to banter with, and that also means I have no sounding board to brainstorm aloud with. No banter no brainstorm unless I do it on my own to myself, which is how I have been sustaining. I guess it is a good thing I am an only child used to talking to self my whole life.

Not that I am complaining about the nature of my volunteer, also my full time, work. It is what I want to do and what will take me further along towards my dreams.

Writing has always made me think clearer, be it scrawls and flowcharts on paper or writing here like this. Coming to worlds upon words this morning has already cleared my mind somewhat on how to splice rest and work together, today.

Interesting, ain't it - normal folks just need to have morning coffee, work, lunch, work, dinner, rest, rinse repeat. And I have to drum up a whole new way of working to accommodate my recovery and my work. This is a daily battle depression sufferers face and often lose because paid work given by an employer very often does not give leeway for our depressive breakdowns, panic attacks, cognitive chokes and psychosomatic illnesses.

Welcome to the real world. Are you willing to accommodate us?

a quasi-explanation

2011-10-31T12:47:00.000+08:00

I have always identified myself with the phoenix - one who rises up from the ashes. But on Tuesday that symbolism was the furthest on my mind when I executed my plan, a plan that eventually failed. Now I guess I really am meant to be a phoenix and continue my journey in championing the cause of the weak till I am at least forty years old.

Up until yesterday I still thought of ways how my plan could have succeeded. I know this sounds morbid, but my plan was to die and that I failed means that - I failed, it is failure, it requires remorse. Remorse not because I wanted to die but remorse because I couldn't even plan my third attempt at suicide to succeed and not land up in hospital alive.

[Yes, to all the naysayers out there - I had planned to succeed. And - my actual suicide note (mostly instructions) is on paper. I liked where I was so I took a picture right before I was about to collapse, I had already gone through half my overdose by then. If I really wanted to be saved I would have told people where I was, the amount of medication and types of it that I had brought, and tweeted when I ingested each pill. If you want to do the same to attract attention - do that! It is far more effective.]

I thought that if I had removed my outerwear and sunbathed in the bikini I wore underneath no one would have thought me unconscious and called SCDF (the reason I was found). I thought that if I had remembered my towel I would look more like a sunbather. I thought that if instead of staying in the shade and lying where the tide had gone out I would have looked even more like a sunbather. I thought that if the tide was coming in instead, even better, I would have been washed away.

I chose to overdose amongst nature because this is the plan I have brewed over the years. My initial choice was the Ubi field but the Downtown Line construction started and I lost the place I wanted to die in. I would love to jump to my death but it would be very scarring and traumatic for people who witness it. Likewise hanging myself. I have tried cutting myself before but am not very good at it, so that was ruled out. I thought through which medicines to overdose with that would surely kill me - if I had not been discovered (who goes to Changi Beach? I didn't reconnaissance enough).

Having said the above, no, it wasn't supposed to be that particular Tuesday. It was just the self-destruction sequence I would activate when my depression takes over my daily ability to fight it. Yes it is a daily fight. There were a lot of triggers that Tuesday that prompted me to activate my self-destruction sequence. We - myself, my doctor and J - are working on strategies to prevent those triggers from happening again from now on.

I am by nature a very repressive person, perhaps the reason why I wrote - at last count on this blog, about seventy poems - instead of talking to people. There are even more poems floating out there given to lovers. I have become less repressive since my first official depressive episode in my early twenties because I realised it was a problem. I was also depressed in my childhood but of course in the eighties no one recognises a child is having clinical depression, particularly if I was repressing my feelings. So I began my journey in opening up to people but I have yet to perfect it. My blog and my twitter are probably the most revealing about myself because both mediums are of the written word. Both mediums don't require interaction unless I choose it. In real life it is rather hard to just sit there, catatonic-like, and not talk. Humans will worry because unless you are in a psychiatric ward catatonia is not a normal everyday sight!

So whatever happened on Tuesday, no human except my doctors and J know why it had to be that day I chose to end my life. Because I kept most of it to myself.

Today, this Monday, I no longer see my third suicide attempt as a failure and how I could have improved it to make it succeed. I am on increased medication doses - maximum dosage of my antidepressant Lexapro, and double the dosage of mood-stabiliser lithium. Yesterday I started to feel the effect of it - I finally felt some happiness. Happiness that was the absence of sadness and happiness that felt light. Up until I was on antidepressants for the first time I never felt that before, and yesterday I felt that again. Maybe that is why today I wake up and no longer feel like I failed in my suicide attempt and will instead focus on continuing the fight against depression. If this increase in medication combined with therapy does not work out over the long run again - I will bite the bullet and go for ECT. ECT is not painful, and while it does cause memory loss, it is the fact that it consumes a lot of time being hospitalised that I am not all very keen on it.

Why did I get discharged so soon from hospital? Medically I was okay by then but the psychiatrists did not want to discharge me, saying I was at 'severe suicide risk'. Unfortunately they also wanted to deny me my medication and put me back on the entire cocktail one by one, day by day, with no parole to go outside for smoke breaks and walks. This management, I knew, would make me very unstable, as I already was since I was admitted. CGH said that if I were to exhibit any more unstable behaviour they would send me to IMH. In my opinion IMH has one of the worst services in all the hospitals (I don't believe they are that award winning, personal bad experience there). So I chose to be discharged 'against physicians' advice' and went to see my own psychiatrist at Paragon the next morning after I went home. I got back on my medications, J has been learning more about caring for me, and things have been better. Had I stayed on in CGH, I know I would have been even more unhappy and probably by now I would really be in IMH or at least be tied up ('restrained') like some of the other psychiatric patients are.

Today, I feel like I normally do before that Tuesday, slightly not yet into the routine of my cat work, but more emotionally stable. Over the past few days I have been getting back into the rhythm of doing my cat work and aim to do more and more each day until I am back on full form. I have been doing my cat work with this illness for years, I will be able to get back to it as I am. After some damage control but hey, I am pretty good at writing press releases in my opinion.

Meanwhile, I will try to write more on worlds upon words. Writing among all the arts is my favourite and the one that I can express myself best. It is easier for me to write a poem than for me to tune and play my guitar or gather my paints and paint on a canvas. While depression causes anhedonia and makes me not want to do any of these things all that much I will force myself to and as my doctor says, use 'primary processing' to enjoy the experience. So, my name is Avalon and I will keep on writing, and fighting the big D.

Descent

2011-10-25T11:36:00.001+08:00

Descent -
First you are
Gripped -
By fear of an
Invisible danger.
Fight or flight?
All systems go
All systems down.
It passes like a
Freak storm
Flash flood
Then -
Tears. Of pain
For reasons:
Unknown, known
Descent -
Into darkness
Hell-like
Where I am
Truly alone
In this despair.

Will

2011-10-25T00:49:00.001+08:00

Ambition is not a will to live when depressive suicidal tendencies want to take over. Logic and rationale cannot counteract the imbalance of brain chemicals.

With this I realise I feel hesitant in further studying about my craft in non-profit management because lately much of what I feel like doing is taking my own life. What is the point of building upon my management strategy when I don't even have the desire to be alive?

Much as I would like my work to succeed, sometimes depression just keeps wanting to overrule. I know with this month's worth of depressive episodes and suicidal thought days I probably need an alteration in medication. Till the next time I see my doctor some time next week, I will have to eke it out.

Also: my suicide action plan, for it to be foolproof and leave as little damage behind as possible, requires a lot of logistics. I don't have the energy for it. I just live with the pain because I am mostly unable to move.

Will I be alive next week? Will my ambition keep me going as it will this week for its projects? I cannot answer definitively. I am a burden to this world. I cannot keep on living. No matter how much I want to leave behind a legacy.

The will to survive will be trumped when depression takes over. Fact.

Pain, my regular visitor

2011-10-22T22:34:00.001+08:00

I'm in so much pain right now. Depression really hurts. It hurts like fuck, you want to kill it by killing yourself. The pain is akin to a splinter rammed into an already open wound - because I am already afflicted with depression symptoms every day, and a crash like this today just feels exactly like that. A wound upon a wound. One that makes you really want to die.

It is that bad. It hurts physically. Years and years of this. I will try to go on but am already planning my suicide notes and instructions to carry out upon my passing. I already have a foolproof suicide plan in place. Eventually I will die to suicide. Not to cancer or anything else. It is only a matter of time.

I don't want to live but I have reasons to live for - my cat rescue work. It doesn't take the suicidal desire to die, away. But for now it makes me medicate and trudge on.

My doctor asked me to go to emergency if I didn't feel better after medicating. I can't get hospitalised again. I have work to do.

Cry and you cry alone. Shoulders to cry on are fleeting. Pillows are more ever-present. And so is this pain for now. A pain only I alone can feel. A pain that no one wants a part of.

Marriage? Maybe not for me

2011-10-21T05:10:00.001+08:00

I might never marry. Because I don't believe in divorce.
I remember Sam from Sex and the City ditched her boy-lover because to her, relationships can be merely short stories. Pondering that, I wonder if my life will be a series of short love stories, and not a novel.

It's not that I have high expectations of a partner. But maybe I just may never find a true soulmate. Soulmates are hard to find as it is; one for me, with crazy dreams of changing the world, the task becomes even more insurmountable. I might go through relationships and be an embodiment of a collection of love stories, and I may never meet a true soulmate till I'm really old.

So, marrying young is definitely not a good idea for me. I want things to be this way for me and my current, until our time is up, if it does come to that. No need for divorce, a break up will be far easier.

Anger

2011-10-20T03:02:00.001+08:00

I fear the wrath of my lovers so much that I would rather keep the status quo, bend to their will and not let them anger. But some things cannot be avoided, anger is an eventual avoidance that will emerge. Yet I fear it so. For all my life, anger was the response most poignant to all I did, no matter how trivial. I fear your anger. But one day some days it will be necessary.

Sabotage

2011-10-20T01:51:00.001+08:00

In some ways I feel like I avoid confrontation so I take the easy way out, too often. Instead of being an emissary I head out grab a grenade, unpin it and throw it in the building to destroy it, problem solved. No need for any more thoughts, meetings, discussions or pondering on problem-solving.

I think about what life will be like for me when I'm forty. That's eight years away. I would probably have pushed my depression into remission by then. Will I be doing management of a non-profit like I am now, but for different causes? Will I be on the ground, smoking Laotian cigarettes in slums?

Yes I still want to be a slum doctor. How that will work out for me financially I will find a way. If there is anything I'm good at I am probably good at fundraising.

But where does that leave my relationship in eight years' time? J won't be with me in that slum, or whichever village. He believes he needs to stay rooted in Singapore to provide for our family - us and our 4 cats. But that means we will be separated. That means that we can't minister together. I am scared of what that all will add up to.

Grenades are popping up in my mind now. Waiting to sabotage a what-could-be. J now is my best friend who cares for me like a caregiver should for one with severe depression. But some buildings may not be meant to last forever. In comes the grenade, thumb in the pin ring, ready to pull. I just don't know if I should sabotage what we have now for something I fear in the future.

Some things aren't meant to last forever. Marriage is, for I don't believe in divorce. But relationships aren't on paper and can end easily, with some simple logistics. I don't want to lose J as my best friend but yet I worry about what happens when we have to separate because our dreams are so different - that it might become a real separation.

Should I pull the grenade? Stick it out for the next few years and see where God leads my path towards? Keep a treasured best friend, or let him go to greener pastures?

I haven't a clue. But being afraid of confrontation, that grenade will be with me ready to be activated anytime.

Fair and square

2011-10-18T23:42:00.001+08:00

A blue room brought me out of my rut and back into my pink one, where he sat contrite, subconsciously realising what I was in a rut about.

For the next day, he made up for it, made it clear he was in the wrong. And I, while wrestling with loss of love, decided to fall back into our normalcy eventually.

Is there still love? Love covers a multitude of sins. But as humans there are always non-negotiables. For me - not sharing a dream, and helping to shatter it, is one. For the other - adultery.

Fair is fair and fair and square.

Mourning

2011-10-18T10:18:00.001+08:00

I imagine tears vividly falling,
plop into a basin as I clean the floor
Heaves of cries as I do the laundry
Mourning what we had
But vision is important
Without vision, we perish
And two is better than one
Three more so but only if intertwined
We are already perishing
Unless you regain your sight
I have nothing more to say
And will walk into the sunset.

Enamoured and More

2011-10-16T21:25:00.001+08:00

Enamoured and more but I shall reserve;
To twilight moments in trees and on earth;
For I want you, yet you to be well and loved
- few deserve it more than you.

Enamoured and more but I have little -
To give if at all, but for stolen whispers.
Walk away, but pass me by for a kiss, first
- if but a glimpse of you, suffice.

Enamoured and more yet I cannot reach -
You are your self-proclaimed enigma -
A heart with no heart, a paradox of you
- 'tis not true: I have seen it beat

Enamoured and more, a friend I love so,
That I hurriedly not want to lose no matter
Whose wounds I want to wrap with love-gauze
And tears I want to catch.

Clandestine

2011-10-15T18:46:00.001+08:00

Clandestine ops - you
Would be my first mission
No matter how vanilla
You and all of you
Are and profess to be

I have nought to say
Except to reveal myself
To spur you to the same:
I want know you completely
No matter how simple

Adulteress

2011-10-15T03:36:00.001+08:00

Like a huntress -
I am a Seductress:
I will have you
And you will comply
For I snipe in for the kill.

Like a temptress -
I am a Tease
I will have you
And you will wonder
About reality and lust.

Like a stalker -
I am a Predator
When I have you
I will have you whole
Leaving you breathless.

Flawless

2011-10-15T01:02:00.001+08:00

You count yourself imperfect,
Immensely flawed
Heartless, even

When that is the net result
Of caring too much -
Then a breakdown

She sends u princess cards
Didn't give you time
To cover your tracks

She said, "Here boy,
Here are your -
Ball and your jacks."

Is that the sum of your loves?
Springsteen's For You?
I'm the Cheshire smile -

Too - but I know you,
Even if you don't
For you -

Are amazing, regardless
More in your heart -
Than resources can give

Be contrite, but stand tall
As you are physically
For your heart

Is a treasure trove, that
I want to discover
And comfort bits of

That is how special you are.
For you - I will
With my Cheshire smile

Intense

2011-10-15T00:22:00.001+08:00

Intense, like a pulsating magnetic resonance machine
Meant to create happiness in the brain with shocks,
That is what you make me feel
Yes, yes.

But it is all irrational intensity for I barely know you
Save for the fact that you are an extraordinary life
That cares a tad about me
Wiping a tear.

Just a boy

2011-10-15T00:09:00.000+08:00

You are just a boy
Extraordinary in many ways
And yet, just a boy

Because of this - just -
You radiate gloriousness
As Springsteen says:

From small things Mama
Big things one day come
That is you, boy.

Because of this - just -
You drive me insane
Like wild horses in abandon

On a plain. I like plain.
And you - just -
I like you very much.

Crush

2011-10-14T02:28:00.001+08:00

When I was sixteen I had an intense crush on a girl named JY, two classes away from me. It was purely physical, sexual attraction, for I didn't know anything about her personally. Everytime I saw her my heart leaped, and I wrote a whole essay about her and my feelings for her. On prom night, I approached her finally, to ask if I could take a photo with her. It was an orgasmic moment - she said yes, and draped her arm around me.

Physical or not, a crush is a crush, and it is like that that I described: heart racing, orgasmic, almost illogical.

I have an intense crush on someone now, and it is not just sexual, because I know more about him than I did JY; he is an amazing person. Yet it feels exactly the same, makes me feel like a sixteen year old again. Heart racing so bad, and wanting to do all kinds of things with him like I wanted to with JY.

I am a bit too old to have a crush like this and being sent sixteen years back to relive the feelings of a crush is puzzling me. Why am I having a crush at this age, and one this intense?

Yet yes, you make my heart race and I wonder: with my stature now, will I end up doing the things I want to do with you for real now that we are both adults? Wondering this makes my heart race even more.

Incapacitated

2011-09-16T20:03:00.001+08:00

Incapacitation is the norm for me for it happens
Oh every other day, and yet when it appears
It grips me like Death or with thoughts of Death
Until it passes, like a tease.

For I am forlorn when it visits me, rendering me
Into the foetal position, revisiting Mother's womb -
But at least being in her, I was gripped by Love,
Not Death or the semblances of it.

In case of emergency, the step is not to contact --
But to rage against the machine that destroys!
Named Depression, which incapacitates me
Silently or audibly - for life.

Hiatus

2011-08-12T17:38:00.001+08:00

From life; from acting normal, from trying to achieve sanity. From all that is human - humans and human activity. For life is too tiring for me right now.

One of the could-have-beens

2011-07-13T18:57:00.000+08:00

He was too young; I was too young. Five years' difference meant a lot at that age. We were in different places, but our heartstrings strummed as one.

Then, he moved to one end of the continuum, and I the other, as the years went by. I was never single for long, and we were also too different by then.

Now I look back and wonder if we had met five years later, or extended our friendship by five years, would it have made a difference?

"If you were five years older would you date me?"

He had nodded enthusiastically, while holding my umbrella for me in the rain, like a gentleman.

He nearly ruined one of my relationships later down the years, because we remained close.

But it would never have worked five years down the road, you were meant for that path, and I for this. I wish you well and I know you will be happy - if only I could tell you this in person.

Sleep

2011-06-15T01:16:00.000+08:00

Elude me more,
I invite you in,
Mouth wide open,
And you escape me

I need you to enter
Bring me to hours of bliss
Render me senseless
Till dawn arrives.

I want need and crave
You - to consume me
But you tease instead
For hours on end

I am still waiting for you.

Pain, death and insomnia

2011-06-10T00:35:00.000+08:00

The pain just keeps returning.

Today it did with full force and medication could barely stem it.

I started making specific plans again about how to rid myself of this pain through death.

I double-dosed more Fluanxol so I wouldn't have to do it, and break my promises never to abandon my cats.

Regardless, while the pain subsides now, I lie awake. Again.

Sleep keeps eluding me at night.

I ordered sleep supplements to help. Nothing working so far.

I asked my doctor for more sleeping medication. He hasn't replied yet with a "Come and get it."

This recurring pain, this consistent insomnia - makes me wonder, do I have to increase one of the multiple meds I am taking?

I can't afford it. But I might die if I don't, and fall into that 25% of those who die from depression.

Invisible pain

2011-06-01T19:29:00.001+08:00

How can something so invisible hurt so much?

What the world doesn't see and know are the amount of times you are under the covers or beneath your desk crying from this invisible, very-present pain.

Everything is shrouded in a deep cool blue or black or bloody purple. Nothing is pastel or warm.

Nothing brings solace.

Talking to someone makes you cry, as do lyrics of music you listen to 'for distraction'. Hugs are just not enough to squeeze away the pain.

And it is invisible, spirit in the night, an intimate stranger that only you know oh too well. A pain that knows no source and knows very little end too often.

Extinction

2011-06-01T17:39:00.001+08:00

Humanity must become
extinct, and die with it
diseases, poverty
injustice.

And all that we use
to cope with life, should
end, for existence is
futile,

Meaningless, polluting
corrupting, destructive
Life requires death -
Annihilation.

Production and reproduction
must come to end
Let humanity die out
For peace.

Do you ever?

2011-05-30T02:03:00.001+08:00

Do you ever feel that the spoken word, exchanged between lovers-to-be, or deeply bonded friends, have become replaced with written - no, typed - words through online communication mediums?

Right as I am about to try my darnedest best sometimes to sleep, I long for a phone conversation. Even Skype will suffice. A conversation that reveals. A conversation in hushed husky tones because it is late. A conversation that ends with "Goodnight," that is for real.

I live with my lover so J and I don't have that kind of phonecalls any more. My friends are also no longer nightlifers like we were in our youth, that I can chat with at 2 a.m. awake and lucidly.

Also, the phone rings nowadays are usually always work related. Volunteer work related. It has been a long time a phone was just a phone, a means of connecting with someone not physically near you, through spoken words, sharing vulnerabilities, stories, histories, secrets, comfort.

To ease my need for a phone conversation with someone I would want to talk to, I write here instead. Sometimes I feel that I write because I have no one who would be able to listen to me talk. This is my panacea.

Call me.

A Chat With My Cat

2011-05-24T03:12:00.001+08:00

One my boys, Scooter, has been kneading on my bare arms and back when it is bed time, him snuggling into me, lying between me and J.

Scooter's claws are sharp and long so his kneading has been very painful.

Tonight he did his usual. I decided to listen to him and have a chat with him instead; he must be feeling a lot of thoughts that he is trying to communicate through the nightly kneading.

As soon as we started chatting, he stopped his kneading. I told him I would always love him and always be his Mommy - kneading is what kittens do to mothers, and Scooter has only started this of late, all grown up. I told Scooter that I won't die just because I'm sick, am not going to abandon him, and even if I'm not around, Daddy will be. I told him I won't get better so soon and all he needed to do was be a good boy, eat and drink, and purr and snuggle with me.

Scooter is becoming like Slinky - in sync with my health and emotions. I worry he falls sick when I do and I worry that he worries about me. Because Slinky is like that - a barometer of my emotional health. She is happy when I'm less sick, unhappy when I was much sicker than I am now.

I told Scooter, God takes care of all animals.

He finally calmed his insecurity and decided to stop accidentally hurting me through his kneading, and promptly went under the blanket to snuggle between me and J.

Knowing

2011-05-19T20:56:00.001+08:00

I don't know what's happening to me. Well, I do know, but I make that statement more to encapsulate feelings of despair and frustration, than to mean a lack of knowledge.

But knowing why I feel the lacklustre ways I feel too often to be counted normal, doesn't make it all easier to bear. The stress that comes too easily; the exhaustion; the anxiety attacks; the sudden depressive episodes-within-episodes; the pain; the phobias - they all have an explanation behind them, they all feel awful.

Even with active application, knowledge about my anxious depression doesn't help. So what if I'm rehabilitating with pharmacology, remedies, coping skills, all kinds of therapy? My journey is easier with them, but it is still one taken in the valley of the shadow of death. It is like taking a lone walk on the streets at night, doing 360 degrees surveillance for self-preservation but still feeling awfully lonely.

Blood

2011-05-18T09:00:00.001+08:00

Blood -
You pump chemicals
Into my life
For sanity
A necessity

Blood -
You draw it out
Of my arm
For testing of
Chemicals, again

Blood -
Not enough of you
I will faint
Unless hydration
And diet, preserves

Blood -
Keeps me mortal
And sometimes;
That is all I
Have - of mortality

Before sunrise, before work begins

2011-05-17T06:31:00.000+08:00

It is a new day, barely sunrise. I decided that today I would do all the tasks that have been backlogged since I fell ill.

Yet just before even I plunge into it all, I felt a sense of anxiety and stress overtaking my breathing and chest, and needed to medicate before I even began doing a single work task.

So I turn to my only respite aside from medication, that is writing. I am a cliche of a writer, smoking and having a coffee as I write this.

The medication has kicked in, so I will get to doing the stuff I need to do after this.

The sheer overwhelming load of the things-to-do is driving me insane because I can't handle long processes, and need to do things in small bits. So I will just have to try doing things a little at a time even though that need itself also drives me insane.

How normal do I feel today? If 10 was normal, I would be a 2 today. On my best days I am a 3 or a 4.

It ain't easy but I am trying.

Sleep eludes me

2011-05-16T01:33:00.001+08:00

limbo of sleep and insomnia -
caught in between a tug o' war
as if I were allergic to slumber

it feels anxious, to lay down
pharmaceuticals - hardly helping

loneliness suddenly realises -
rears its head at sleep time

rest eludes me, as does -
pleasure, for I feel numb
all I want now is sweetness of sleep.

Dichotomy

2011-05-11T23:18:00.001+08:00

As I grasp straws of my sanity, trying to dam the flow of pain and tears, I act normal, as medication enables me to do, as far as its dose can reach.

But really, what I'm feeling and what, how I say aloud to those beyond my inner circle are completely dichotomous.

I truly never realised this till now, now when I'm trying to mask my pain for not only others' sake but my own, trying to take things on with a lesser burden by being cheerful and witty as long as I can bear it.

Am not sure when the real Elaines will merge as one and no longer be a dichotomy of two: the public one, and the melancholic one.

In the meantime, I shall continue in this dichotomy, and seem somewhat bipolar (am not). So if you read me, you will probably understand now why I sometimes seem so sane, and others so irrationally in pain.

Poem 410 by Emily Dickinson

2011-05-11T21:24:00.001+08:00

The first Day's Night had come -
And grateful that a thing
So terrible - had been endured -
I told my Soul to sing -

She said her Strings were snapt -
Her Bow - to Atoms blown -
And so to mend her - gave me work
Until another Morn -

And then - a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face -
Until it blocked my eyes -

My Brain - begun to laugh -
I mumbled - like a fool -
And tho' 'tis Years ago - that Day -
My Brain keeps giggling - still.

And Something's odd - within -
That person that I was -
And this One - do not feel the same -
Could it be Madness - this?

Words cannot describe

2011-05-10T17:51:00.001+08:00

Fetal position, curled
Limp, tense
Tear-soaked hair -
Pain that barges in,
violating my sanity

My very core, smashed
broken and in demise
Irreparable but for
minuscule steps
For remission

Loneliness - fact of life
Yet - this pain -
magnifies it;
Alone in pain.
Alone in death.

Naked, exposed in
This indescribable pain
I can hold on for
but one more day,
one more everyday.

My words, but a glimpse
inside my broken psyche
The pen is dry
For pain - eternal
And ink - finite.

Trying to kill this pain

2011-05-10T13:11:00.001+08:00

I haven't come this close again in a while.

Preparing to take my own life requires a few things. Nice underwear. Make-up. Making sure nobody finds me in the secret location - a field - where I want to die in.

I know I promised a lot of you I wouldn't do this again, but, it was really too painful these few days, weeks?, culminating in the most extreme pain yesterday, pain that mirrored what I felt before I last tried to die. I am truly sorry.

J came home just as I was selecting my underwear. If he didn't come home that hour, I would have already gone to the field.

"I just want to kill this pain... it's too painful."

He said, "If you ever decide you really want to go, don't leave without telling me. I am willing to die with you so you won't be alone in your pain."

Apart from J's intervention, my psychiatrist also called me back, and by then I had stayed alive for one more day.

The pain is still here, and am just medicating as much as possible to make it diminish so it doesn't hurt that much. I don't know when I will get out of this, this time around.

Sunrise

2011-05-09T08:39:00.001+08:00

Scorched by the sun
That takes away darkness
My veil -
Shrouds me,
knows me intimately
For we are alike.

Sunlight, piercing
Taking away joy
of solitude and quiet
that is night,
that is escape
from pain that is life.

When I choose death
I will enjoy one last night
- before a dreaded sunrise
Let the sun
Catalyse my departure
From pain exposed.

Everything hurts -
More in the sun.
It quickens death
Brings dread as it rises
Makes for insecurity
and lamentation

Sunrise
You magnify my pain
brought it forward
into another dreaded day
I want to escape underground
from you.

You bleed me dry,
make me raw
naked, alone, in pain
I feel my skin,
crawl as you kill me
till dust alone remains.

Pain and numbness

2011-05-08T22:01:00.000+08:00

Everything I feel manifests physiologically. I can experience the myriad of normal human emotions normally, with the aid of medication.

But deep down all I feel is pain, and if that is not felt at any present moment, what is left behind is emotional numbness.

The only time the inside of me matches the outside of what I show to the world is when I'm crying in pain. Sadness is the only synchronicity I have known for a long time, tears the only true physical manifestation of how I feel.

I can laugh sometimes, but with laughs coming from a hollow shell, echoes of what could have been from actually emotionally feeling happy.

I can present myself sane to the public for the sake of work and recovery, but deep down I only feel numbness, that euphoria of successes can hardly pierce through.

It makes me wonder how well and far in I am on my journey to push my depression into remission.

As of this moment, I am in pain inside so truly that tears manifest. Yet I also feel numbness in despair of what I cannot do. Helplessness is a numbing agent.

Every outward mark of sanity I present to humans is but from an empty shell, and afterward the experience of artificial sanity only exhausts me inside, that I keep sleeping to feel no longer pain or numbness.

When will this end so I can end the suffering of those who love me? I have no clue. I also don't know how much longer I want to drag others along with my pain and emptiness.

Demise

2011-05-08T21:26:00.001+08:00

rotting - inside out
demolishing my psyche,
my mortal shell
and all who surround me
for I am the plague
a failure that succeeds
only in destruction
of all - of love.

Nostalgic Ruin

2011-05-06T23:42:00.000+08:00

a patch of ruin
like parasitic growth
like footholds
seeking domination
completely

romance -
unnecessary, for
ruin is a masquerade
that first sweet-kisses,
knows you outside-in

not flowers - prairies -
but fire and candle-
wax to pain you
into subordination
and pleasure

doubtlessly
human, masculine,
monstrous,
lovely, beautiful,
ecstatic - phantom.

In nostalgia,
no regrets, but for
wanting encores of
ones in a million
you, then, there.

Sharing my words

2011-05-06T05:36:00.001+08:00

I am not a social person anymore, not like I once was. Call it social phobia if you want; but isn't really that per se. I no longer want to have to explain to others my depression which I feel is a failure of mine. I no longer have the energy and stamina required for social gatherings. I no longer want to spend money at social events. So I seclude myself, make a smaller social circle, and relish making new friends who need no explanations.

But these are few. I don't knock doors to spill my guts out in the name of confiding in friends. The whole truth of who I am can only be handled by very few who can stand the test of dealing with someone who is clinically depressed, for a long time.

So I put them in written words. Monologues. Soliloquys. Poetry, to shroud my pain in cryptic words. I have a right to write and that is what I do to retire from repression. I write to also alleviate the burden of the act of my confiding, because no human, even the sum of a few humans, can bear it all at once.

And that reminds me to come here more often, to write, to not repress, to keep my book open, after finally having the courage to open it, after years of repression.

Twitter has been an easy medium for me to be real, to confide, to not repress. What I say on Twitter sometimes concerns others, irritates some. But I don't tweet to need to be read. Just as I don't blog to need to be read. If you want to read me, I'm blessed, but do read me right. If you are already reading me and have accepted my confidence, you are en route to being a friend and comforter to one who may truly need you. Whether or not you can stand the test of reeling in my depression symptoms when I write them, that is an extra hurdle in friendship-building that unfortunately is very-present from me.

I do need people in my life. As I was instructed sternly by my psychiatrist from the beginning, I cannot live alone, which means I cannot be emotionally alone. With all that I have written here this night, it means only more certainly that I have to write - blog, tweet - more, as I truly am.

Vulnerability begets vulnerability, and my words are the extrinsic being that represents my own vulnerability. Share me with you too. Or skip reading me. Or just read me silently. I will never stop writing me. Words are much of who I am, a necessity, like air is to breathing, writing is - to my life.

untitled

2011-05-06T03:25:00.001+08:00

You ruin my sanctity
Rape - with your
Ignorance.

Not one is justified,
but Nature alone!

Despise weakness
For the right is yours,
mine even.

In love, there is hate;
words - destitution.

Your shadows haunt me
years after you.
Indestructible.

I will not weep
but for your poverty

Words are my right.
Ignorance -
yours solely.

#sgelections PAP, you are missing the point

2011-05-02T02:30:00.000+08:00

I am sick of the words 'track record', are you?

This term being repeatedly used as a trump card by the incumbent party's members further cements the fact that they are truly missing the point.

So, what is the point exactly?

The PAP does indeed have a track record - a cleaned up Singapore River, HDB flats, tuberculosis control, making spitting in public illegal, transitioning Singapore's economy from primary to tertiary industries, et cetera. Note that these examples really are, firstly, true - just pick up any history book - secondly, they are facts in history, that is, the past.

If the PAP continues to advocate that its track record in the past is the basis for our future, it is nakedly acknowledging that Singapore as a society has not evolved as a civilisation since the time of our independence from the British. Which is saying that Singapore has not truly developed, a huge political leadership failure! The implication of what they have been touting, is that as long as we have our basic needs met, we are satisfied, and should be, (or else). That may be true for the poorest of the poor: food to eat, shelter and safety, these are the basic needs of any human being, cf. Abraham Maslow. Before you can talk about intrinsic needs of a human being such as self-esteem, we really do need shelter, be it HDB flats or the what-have-you sheltered walkways.

But harping on and on about having provided the basics as their track record only reflects how archaic and uncivilised the minds of the PAPies are. I refer you to Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, 1893 (emphases mine) -

This does not mean that civilization has no use, but that it is not the services that it renders that make it progress. It develops because it cannot fail to develop. Once effectuated, this development is found to be generally useful, or, at least, it is utilized. It responds to needs formed at the same time because they depend upon the same causes. But this is an adjustment after the fact. Yet, we must notice that the good it renders in this direction is not a positive enrichment, a growth in our stock of happiness, but only repairs the losses that it has itself caused. It is because this superactivity of general life fatigues and weakens our nervous system that it needs reparations proportionate to its expenditures, that is to say, more varied and complex satisfactions. In that, we see even better how false it is to make civilization the function of the division of labor; it is only a consequence of it. It can explain neither the existence nor the progress of the division of labor, since it has, of itself, no intrinsic or absolute value, but, on the contrary, has a reason for existing only in so far as the division of labor is itself found necessary.

In layman's terms, "Who cares about upgrading?!" is the very essence of this sociological thought, and this extract alone should be read in accompaniment with the rest of Durkheim's writings to gain a full picture of what I am about to say. We have evolved as a society, which means that now what we need apart from food and shelter, and 'upgrading', are 'complex satisfactions': Political freedom, not a mock sense of democracy. Solidarity - a feeling of kinship and community. I could go on, but let's just stick to these two examples.

You have probably heard enough from opposition party members about how the PAP wayangs and kelongs through the GRC system and suchlike. I shan't elaborate more, but I will refer you to an extract from NSP's Ken Sun's book, "Concerns for Political Balance" which quotes Dr Lawrence Britt in his article, "Fascism Anyone". According to Sun's book, Britt listed several critical features of Fascism:

... Disdain for human rights: people are persuaded that it is all right to ignore certain human rights such as imprisonment without trial, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc... Cronyism and corruption: important state institutions are often governed by friends, relatives and associates who appoint or support one another, without much accountability and transparency. Unfair elections: common use of threats, and legislation to control or influence the voters. Other tactics include boundary gerrymandering, smear campaigns, character assassinations, hounding of opposition candidates, media manipulation and lawsuits.

I think you can make your own conclusions as to how fascist, or democratic, Singapore's political regime is from what Sun has written. (I would advise that you research on the history of Fascism on your own too; triangulate your research from multiple sources.)

What I do want to pitch in on is the need for Singaporeans to feel a sense of connectedness to one another. As Durkheim has expounded also in his sociological theory, population growth that is too rapid leads a society towards a disintegration of its persona, essentially degrading the solidarity of its people. As I have written before, nobody is propagating a supremacist regime of completely disallowing population growth through foreign immigration to our country. But the toll it takes on the social structure of our nation is apparent, valid, and relevant. When the PAP fails to address this issue, it fails to fulfill the human need to feel a sense of belonging. Yes, I am referencing Maslow again, because really, who hasn't read his theory of the hierarchy of needs? Yet the PAP seems stuck on merely wanting to fulfill the lowest rungs of this hierarchy of needs and banging on about its track record of already doing so. It really makes me wonder how well-read my majority representatives of state truly are, if they do not even exhibit basic academic knowledge of psychology, sociology and management schools of thought.

I am no academic, I only got a third class honours grade, and I had to dig up Durkheim to read again because I only scraped through first year sociology. But if I can write this, and the PAP can't even make one layman reference to the more intrinsic needs of Singapore as a civilisation, then really, the party has missed the point so greatly that there may never be any way back.

#sgelections My parents brought me up this way.

2011-04-30T04:48:00.000+08:00

Today I am not ashamed to say I am anti-PAP, nor am I afraid to do so regardless of where I am declaring this. As I have been saying a lot recently, I am just a kucing kurap 3-room flat resident and am no threat to anyone. If declaring my political alliance and disagreements is illegal, saying I am anti-PAP would merely be a petty crime. That is also why I firmly stand on planting the opposing party's flag at my corridor window on the very night I bought one.

That flag represents my household's vote - officially on paper, my mom and myself are the owners and family unit members of this flat. My dad is a Malaysian, I have no siblings, and I only have a common law husband. When I called my mom to tell her she had to come back to Singapore to vote this May 7, she said, "Come back just vote for the opposition will do." That's my folks for you. If we could have voted every year there were elections in Singapore, it would always be a cross in the opposition party's check box. My dad has told me before, and I paraphrase, that PAP sucks. He did not elaborate much further than that. My dad is a river-runs-deep kind of guy.

The audacity with which I proclaim my anti-PAP sentiments today would have been a big problem in the past, so I never heard my parents outright declare their disdain for the ruling government too often when I was growing up; I shut up for a long while myself too, only proseletysing the need to rage against the machine in private circles, in somewhat hushed tones. Well, if you know me in person, you know I can't really do hushed tones, but you get the drift.

Even in the early noughties, it would have been quite a silly thing to declare on the internet your hatred for the ruling party - the blogosphere was small and blogs were the bread and butter of online citizen journalists. With the proliferation of social media today I doubt any one will knock on your door to send you to jail just because you tweeted with a hashtag that states an opposition party's name or have become a fan of an opposition party's Facebook page.

This levels the playing field, so now I am about to delve into how my parents helped turn me against the Lee regime from early childhood.

You know by now I was that girl who went up on stage to deliver flowers to Tan Chee Kien at an opposition rally when I was around nine years old. That night itself was my first experience in rally-chasing. In my parents' car, we drove round from location to location and I remember thinking to myself, 'Finally!' when we arrived at the rally I was supposed to do my job at.

As time unfolded, so did more stories from my parents about their political affiliations and the forces behind them.

My dad is a Malaysian, and when he first arrived in Singapore in the early seventies, he worked for the Singapore police. After that, he and my mom, aspiring entrepreneurs with a kid in tow, tried countless times to apply for some form of residency for him to remain in Singapore with his Singaporean wife, Singaporean daughter and to build a Singaporean registered company.

They went to meet the MP in their ward. They wrote letters of appeal, they hired lawyers to write the same. My mom was chided by the PAP MP she met to discuss this, told off with a "Who asked you to marry a Malaysian?" and sent away from the Meet-the-People's session. No can do, didn't work, my dad had to leave the country. For good.

So my mom had to raise me on her own. I didn't know that till much later. I had depression even as a child, so I really don't have a full-strung chain of memories.

My mom and dad are renegades, so eventually they found a way to beat the system. It involved something illegal, and I will share it here only because it happened more than twenty years ago - I reckon it would be too late now to consider it a chargeable offence. My mom couldn't possibly run a business and raise a little girl on her own while knowing her husband was suffering and lonely in nearby JB, so she drove over with me in tow, and smuggled my dad back to Singapore. I was an accessory, told to smile and chat to the customs officer as we passed the gantry with my dad in the trunk. My dad stayed in Singapore to provide for his family - us - for five years, illegally.

My mom would only tell you this story in person when she is adequately inebriated, so that was how I found out about it myself too. When I did know about it at last - no, I didn't know at the time during the actual smuggling - I pieced together the reasons for my parent's disagreement with Singapore's ruling party.

Their MP didn't listen, and not only that, he provided no solution to my parents' very real problem in protecting their livelihood and family unit. The government declined my dad's countless applications and appeals for a permit to stay in Singapore, no matter that he worked for the very same government before, no matter that his family needed protection from separation and a means of living.They were tossed aside like garbage, literally, and my dad had to be reunited with us clandestinely.

My mom herself, she was more of an ardent PAP supporter to begin at first. Because she witnessed firsthand the advent of HDB flats - respite from the horrid longhouse conditions she grew up in. But after seeing what my dad had to go through at the hands of the same government that built the houses, she had her Hillary Clinton moment and switched sides. It was a gradual switch, my mom isn't easily convinced. Other clinchers included the cruel way she was instructed to have very few children and thereafter see the policy change in front of her when Singapore's birth rate declined too far. I don't know if she had to do drastic things like an abortion when she was young, which would be very much in line with the population policy advocated at the time. But having to go through two very different kinds of instructions where life is concerned, will be traumatising for any young woman.

Then came the financial hardship. My mom's family is wealthy, but being female, the family business she helped build did not give her any share of the profits. So it was just her and my dad, building a business on their own together. It was hard, because not too long after, the 1987 recession occurred.

Today we hear opposition parties talk about financial assistance for the poor and marginalised of society. For us when I was growing up, the only means my parents could turn to for financial assistance was by going into debt. We were the poor and marginalised, and we definitely did not get any help at all by the ruling party's government.

I pieced all of my experiences, recollections and retelling of my parents' stories, and now it has become our family's identity to be pro-opposition. For the marginalised like we were, the opposition parties were our only hope for change.

With that kind of a political upbringing, it isn't too difficult for me to be left-wing. Combine that with my constant desire to help the voiceless, the poorest of the poor, those without basic care. Combine that with the well of empathy in me that overflows into tears for the lonely. Combine that with my destiny to be in the business of making a difference in this world. It really is no wonder that I am a renegade replica of my parents.

Karl Marx was right, the marginalised population produces the political change necessary to overthrow the ruling power. The PAP marginalised my parents throughout their adulthood spent in this country. Thanks to that, May 7, the opposition party gets our votes.

#sgelections Against FT influx = Being a Supremacist?

2011-04-29T17:07:00.000+08:00

It has been said in the recent run-up to the elections that "Singaporeans feel like foreigners in our own country," with 36% of the population being foreign talents, affectionately also known as foreign trash. Of course, no one calls them trash publicly, we aren't neo-Nazis, right? But in the tethering fabric of what is left of Singaporean solidarity, calling foreign talents, foreign trash, endears us to one another more. Because we really feel like they are marring our country with their smells.

We also hate that FTs are given more opportunities in schools over true-bred Singaporeans. We hate that their cultures stain ours and deconstruct it to the point we feel alienated. We hate that they are given the privilege of citizenship in a blink of an eye, when not too long ago, it was near-impossible to become a foreign 'talent'. Yes, to that last reference I am citing the case of my father's mission-in-vain to become a Singaporean PR, nay, even a work permit would have sufficed, after serving in the Singapore Police Force, marrying my Singaporean mother locally, and having me, in this country, during the 80s.

But are we being supremacists in wanting to rid ourselves of the negativity that FTs have brought onto our island country? In wanting to 'give Singaporeans priority' in education and employment? Isn't that being somewhat Neo-Nazi and Bumiputera?

We aren't suggesting ethnic cleansing of any sort that involves degrading into some form of genocide of all FTs in Singapore. (Actually, I believe there are some out there would want that, social genocide at the very least). We want after all simply a true democracy that is relevant to this time and age. It makes sense because we are a moderate country without extremists anymore. By the way, if you are wondering where the radical Communists have gone, I hear some of them are still up north near Thailand. Anyway, no, we aren't degenerating into wanting to flush out the impure citizens that have already infiltrated our trains and supermarkets.

But even without genocidal thoughts, it may be misconstrued that wanting fewer FTs in our own country counts as being supremacist, like the Nazis and Neo-Nazis. I think I speak for all those who are against the influx of FTs, that it is not their arrival per se that makes us feel a lack in Singaporean-ness. It is the process in which they are integrated and the pace at which we are opening our doors to them coming in. We aren't being supremacist, we just feel that we need a little justice.

Look at other cosmopolitan cities, like say, New York City. The city loves itself for being cosmopolitan to the point they can get any kind of cuisine in the city and meet people from different nationalities all the time. It actually makes their city feel special. It makes New Yorkers - American - even, because they are the land of the free that opened its doors till today to all who want a better life.

So why don't we feel that way here in Singapore? Why do we feel an injustice with the current level of foreigner-to-local ratio?

I learned before in business school - human resource management - about procedural justice. Sometimes it is not the decision that is made that makes people feel unjustly treated, it is the way the decision was made. The process itself, not the end-result. Kind of how it is when you watch your team play your favourite sport - did they play well? If so, it was a good game to watch, even if your team lost in the end. NB. this rule does not apply to gamblers.

I am going to make a crude analogy to further explain our indignation against the current level of FTs living in Singapore, please skip this paragraph if you may get offended. If Singapore was a prostitute, we have opened our legs too wide, and too freely to FTs, inviting them to come and fuck us and get free memberships for life to do so. High class escorts serve one client a night, whereas comfort women during the Japanese Occupation were repeatedly abused to service the soldiers sexually with no breaks in between. Which kind of sexual servant are we, Singapore?

In order to become a cosmopolitan city that Singaporeans would be really proud and connected living in, we need to change the process and slow down the pace a little on inviting other nationalities to become part of us. How that should be done - you have heard and will hear more during the upcoming opposition party rallies in their promises.

We are not being supremacists. We just want our team to play well, and be a high-class social escort. We do feel Singaporean when we walk down, say, Katong, and find so many different cuisines available, from local to exotic. We do want to be the iconic Singapore Girl that smiles at tourists and newcomers to our island showing them how to get from point A to B. We just don't want to feel outnumbered and trumped unjustly. This feeling is not one of being supremacist. It is simply wanting to see justice in how well and how quickly FTs enter our land.

sabbatical thoughts

2011-04-21T11:27:00.000+08:00

I took a sabbatical off teaching for the week because I had a not-too-good depressive episode on Monday. I don't know if I will be well again next week to resume my paying work, but this arrangement will have to do for now.

I feel helpless... The work I do - teaching - is something I have been doing for over a decade and I truly like being with teenagers. And being able to say things like, "I hate maths too, but we can be good at it!" which makes me click just right with their sentiment. I feel even more discouraged because after I declared my sabbatical, my mood lifted, which meant that my depression relapsed-within-a-relapse because of enjoyable work commitments.

I did always suspect I was allergic to work because I so often fall ill when overworked, but truly, I love working. I am a workaholic in remission. That's because I always find career choices to make that are in line with my destiny, my skills and my passions, one or all of the above. True, work is a way to make money to survive and live my life but it is so much more than that. It is fulfillment. I love achieving days where I work from morning till midnight.

This week, I spend time instead on the stuff I need to do to run my cat rescue group, and in just taking things easy and on the down-low. To remember the words of my loved ones that I should take things easy and that they are on my side.

But the thing is, I already work very little. I don't teach enough to make a living, truly. I am totally dependent on rental income and J's income. I don't have money of my own most of the time and my bank account even closed off because moths had gathered in it. They say tuition teachers earn a lot but I can't do even half of what a full-time tutor does to earn shitloads of money, and so am nowhere near sustainable income-wise.

Depression is this debilitating. It takes away things, it makes things temporally impossible for you to do, and on bad days it would good enough if you can get out of bed to go to the loo. Blankets are a necessity for hiding under in a panic attack or to cry uncontrollably. We pop a lot of pills that make things normal, without them we are a train wreck on the ledge of a building wanting to jump off because the pain is so bad we just need it to go away.

Things improve, then they retro-spiral into the darkness that is symptoms of depressions again, then they improve, repeat ad infinitum. It will end one day, but during the years I have depressive episodes I don't remember what happens and time gaps land in my memory.

Will this end one day? Yes. Depression can go into full remission. No cure, just remission, like cancer. But it does happen. Just that for this week, I will remain in furlough to recharge for fighting the war against the disease that threatens me in some way, every day.

once again, time to write about -

2011-04-16T02:34:00.000+08:00

I seldom write about politics so it wasn't hard to try and find anything on this 8 year old blog that was vaguely political in content. I found two posts. One was the post I got quoted on Today from. The other is on Marxism. Those two are all there are on the topic of politics.

I guess the Marxist post still resonates with me because re-reading it inspired me to write this post, here, now. I see Marx as a sociologist more so as than the founder of Communism so I have no qualms about publicly writing that I agree with Marx.

Where I stand exactly on this - agreement - is what I shall clarify tonight.

There are books that are Communist-angled that have truly inspired me: Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Che Guevera's The Motorcycle Diaries. Even Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory is somewhat uplifting. I love the ideology that drives social change even if it is Marx-derived and therefore dangerous to admit so.

Recently SDA's Chiam See Tong (once again, I am not related to him) made a declaration to participate in this year's elections because even though it is hard for him at his age, he says that it is more truly difficult for the people who are suffering in today's Singapore and it is for them that he is continuing to campaign. His declaration made me shed a tear. This is what should inspire political ambition. The sight of masses of humanity in need in your own nation - or in Che Guevera's case, continent - is what should trigger the need for a revolution.

Hence I support the ideals behind Communists such as Che Guevera because of the fact that the ideology, the ambition, and the cause were all because of the masses whose lives could be made far better.

But I disagree with Communism in practice. In reality, Communism as an administrative system does not work, as we can see in so many countries today. Imagery of bespectacled citizens being executed or exiled from their countries because they are educated does not sit with me at all and conjures up tears. Capitalism is still necessary and is in my opinion not the polar opposite of Communism such that they cannot co-exist in the same system. How else will we have food to eat? I am Protestant and believe in the Protestant work-ethic too, so no way am I against capitalism because I believe in Karl Marx's theory.

A new ideology needs to come up from another mind in present times that will be as brilliant as Marx was in his time, one that will be relevant to today's social structures, today's literacy levels, and one that can co-exist with capitalism without unfair power imbalances. If you ever write a thesis on such an theory, let me know.

Marx essentially said that the regular man (the peasant, the proletariat) will eventually 'wake up idea' and a revolution will definitely take place for a complete paradigm shift in the balance of power. But today, we are educated enough to have woken up our ideas so to speak. The problem today is not about realising that the bourgeoisie have intrinsic power over the people, because we already realise that. We have realised, and we are upset about it.

This emotional response breeds two kinds of behaviour in our society. One is nonchalance, where we admit that the ruling party simply has too much power shrouded in elitism - untouchable - then we sigh and shrug and just go on with our daily lives. The other response is to support left-centre ideology parties that have actually good plans in place to better our fellow man's welfare in this country simply because we want to fight the bourgeois elite ruling party.

As for those partisans contesting the ruling party, the real challenge is still Marxist in nature. To what extent have we woken up our ideas that the ruling party has too much power? What the opposition parties need to do is to realign the ideas that need to be 'woken up'. Ideas that will inspire them to change and want change and want your party to be the one to change the face of Singapore. Sylvia Lim of WP is doing a good job of that.

Obviously, a revolution Egyptian 2011 style is not going to take place because in Singapore, participation in anything remotely like that is going to be suicide in this country. But when the proletariat masses finally awaken and realise that, 'Hey, ruling party buys our votes with monetary gains, do I want my kids to be materialistic Singaporeans and nothing else?' a revolution of another kind will come into play. It will be slow, it will be small at first, but eventually, the tide will turn, and as it has been written - the Tipping Point will emerge to change the face of our political climate and therefore our societal power balances.

No revolution involved that involves guerrillas fighting in jungles or masses gathering with banners shouting for so-and-so to resign. But still a revolution is needed, and will happen. And that thought is Marxist is nature, because his pyramid imagery of society always turns over.

And that's that. Now you know where I stand on Marxism in relation to today's political climate in my own country. Sounds like a lot armchair-theorising about a very real and practical issue at hand, but Marxist ideology drives a lot of admirable politicians and change-makers whether they realise it or not. If you ever were moved to change something somewhere in society because you came face-to-face with a marginalised member of society in suffering - you have had a Che Guevera moment. Go buy a tee-shirt with his face on it, he looks better than Karl Marx.

when I feel like this, I only know how to write cryptic words, and vice versa

2011-03-02T18:14:00.000+08:00

~~rain in the gutter~~
~~murky milky green~~

~~the colour of nature~~
~~the colour of bile~~

~~bring life -~~
~~wash it away~~

~~swirl down the drains:~~
~~kill on sight~~

~~drown me,~~
~~or heal pain?~~

~~sun after the storm~~
~~- not worth looking for~~

~~not anymore,~~
~~not today~~

-

you silence me
render me glass-eyed
tether me, immobile

a lost cause, even
nature is at wit's end,

you take away everything.

-

Psychosomatic Sicknesses | Psycho till Sick, Sick till Psycho

2011-02-27T04:44:00.000+08:00

It was 1996 and I was seventeen.

Also, it was the year I first ever had a doctor in front of me figuratively scratching his head, because he couldn't diagnose the sickness I brought with me to him, finding no other reason for a stomach ailment I had than that of 'stress'. He had nothing to prescribe me for it, because he couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

The situation preceding that doctor's diagnosis was very kindly and loving. Two of my classmates at the time were very concerned that I had been having chronic stomachaches daily for two weeks, triggered by simple actions like bending down to sit at a chair, or eating fried egg. They did an intervention and dragged me to a doctor near their old school in Lorong Ah Soo, convincing me I simply had to get some help for it.

I remember that doctor somewhat: my friends said he was a Christian doctor, and he had stacks of 'Our Daily Bread' devotionals in his clinic. He didn't have charismatic bedside manners and wasn't an outstanding doctor in any particular way, and him finally saying in a baffled manner that my stomachache was 'due to stress' definitely did not make me want to see him again in a loyal fashion - as I did and still do, other doctors I have met later in life. I supposed he did keep me in his prayers, as did my two intervening friends, because the stomachache eventually went away. I avoided egg for a long time after, though - just in case.

But the trend started - many sicknesses after, many doctors saying the words 'due to stress' or similar. I now know that such sicknesses are 'psychosomatic' in nature, to give the whole issue a proper term. Being thirty two years old this year, it has been sixteen years of having psychosomatic sicknesses. All the freaking time.

Psychosomatic sicknesses affect me so badly not because they kill me, but because I always end up being so frequently sick it kills my productivity. The more stressful the environment I am in - work, school and so on - the more frequently I fall ill. Some are serious ailments, like developing adult asthma, or gastric problems, necessitating hospital visits or rushes to the emergency room. Some are irritating, like chronic eczema, or rhinitis. Usually it is just frequent flu', colds, coughs, headaches, giddiness and such.

Before I knew for sure they were psychosomatic illnesses, I tried every darn thing to 'take care of my health' as my irritated bosses kept saying to me whenever I had to take yet another MC. Nothing worked, but I sure did contribute a hell lot to the health-care industry in terms of buying supplements.

Eventually, I just explained it in simple terms to the people I worked with: When I am stressed, I fall sick. That's just me.

Ah, then the final revelation eventually came to me. I have clinical depression, and psychosomatic sicknesses are part of the deal! It took a while for that causal conclusion to sink in and thoroughly educate me. It started with regular doctors revealing the term 'psychosomatic' to me more often, and prescribing me anxiety medication and sedatives alongside treating stupid minor ailments.

By the time my second and still ongoing major depressive episode kicked in a few years ago, I became more concerned with getting treatment for depression itself - it is much more life-threatening than the sum of all the irritating sicknesses like gastritis and allergies. Years on, still getting treatment for depression, still not able to push the disease into entire remission, still not able to do a lot of things normal people can do. Am still trying, am still bleeding money into getting better.

Meanwhile, I still get psychosomatic sicknesses.

For the past few days, it has been terrible nausea that came with actual puking. Everything I puked was undigested, so definitely some incongruence in my gastric system somewhere.

Well, this bout of sickness may not be purely psychosomatic because I have been having side effects from my new antidepressant (works wonders for depression but): gastric problems, giddiness, severe headaches. I prescribed myself a dosage reduction and the headaches became slightly more bearable, the giddiness went away.

Whatever the cause, I am so sick of being sick. Psychosomatic, or caused by psychiatric medication, I am thoroughly fed up with being sick almost all the time for the past sixteen years. Right now, I am typing this in the middle of the night because I am too sick to fall asleep. I have just puked, and my head hurts. I feel like shit, and I wanna puke some more but there is nothing left to puke. My stomach keeps churning. Medication for it? If could afford any, have consumed them and finished them or puked them out - rinse and repeat - the pain and suffering continues.

And what makes it worse? I am too poor to be sick, and am poor because I am sick.

my own unusual wishlist

2011-02-21T22:01:00.000+08:00

Every now and then I post wishlists on our cat rescue blog to call for donations-in-kind. Then I realise, there are lots of human things I really need myself but am too poor or busy to buy or both. So here they are, just for fun:

A block candle for our bathroom. The starter on the lamp has broken and J hasn't found time to fix it. It has been about 2 weeks or so of showering in semi-darkness with nothing but an LED candle to help illuminate some.
Tealight candles. For my room's and kitchen's aromatherapy burners. Have been using my stash to light the bathroom because of said reason above. Have now run out.
Antibacterial hand soap. I am paranoid about hand washing and we are running out of it and no cash to buy since it's not an absolute survival necessity.
Tissue paper. Also no money to buy and it's not a do-or-die necessity either. 2 boxes left around the house. Really makes me save paper.
Panadol and antihistamines because I eat them too often and don't always have them in stock at home at the rate I consume them.
Restock on coffee and tea in house because there ain't no more.
Headphones to plug into my netbook for music and tv shows and drown out weird noises from outside the house and also not disturb J when he is asleep.
Earphones for my phone so I can be less phobic by spamming music when I am out of the house.
New specs or at least get my old ones fixed (not sure how much that would cost me).

And those are just the tangible, human things. Anyway, cash inflow expected this and next week so, after paying some debts, should have some left to buy some of these things. And maybe won't need the candle for the bathroom because J might finally fix the bathroom light.

dilemma about a space

2011-02-14T16:37:00.000+08:00

Our spare room, currently occupied by two tenants, is going to be empty soon, which is a good thing - mostly.

When our tenants confirmed they were moving out we smiled a bit. Our first response was, "Cat boarding!" because in the line of our work we meet cat owners that need a hotel to board their cats on holidays and they simply have to go elsewhere because we can't do it for them for lack of space. With a spare room, we can. Cat boarding is also in line with the social enterprise direction we are intending to grow along as a cat rescue. It is the only way I can finally move towards cat rescue as a full-time job, officially, because it will bring me income.

Right now, of course, I am already doing cat rescue full-time, and my unrelated but paying freelance jobs are just part-time. Well, full-time is a misnomer when it comes to me, because I can't really work that much, still. I still can't do a lot of things normal people can. I still get panic attacks albeit now less frequently (last one was on Saturday). I still fall sick with psychosomatic rubbish often; I have been having a headache for the past 3-4 weeks now and even as I am writing this. From the small pool of resources within myself to do anything occupational, almost all of it goes towards my cat rescue work. It isn't enough of course to count as much, but J does it with me, I am not alone. So, despite how weak I am, it is safe to define that I really am doing cat rescue full-time, just simply unpaid at the moment.

I could of course, abandon the cat boarding idea for the spare room, and think of my original idea before this pair of tenants came along: which was to make it my classroom to teach my students in. It has great light, the air-con is cooler. The hard part is prospecting for more students. Doable, I guess. The only problem is, what kind of student-load can I take on before I fall too sick again and need to be forced into a sabbatical and let everyone down? I need to take on 2-3 more students to replace the loss of rental income. I am not sure I can handle that without breaking down. And if my doctor tells me once again I need to work only on alternate days and not every day, I pretty much have to let go of the idea of more students to love and teach. A dedicated teaching room is too big an investment on a brittle person like myself.

We do relish the idea of having the whole flat to ourselves when our tenants leave. We can use the room to store the rescue cats' supplies, and finally clear up the cat-related clutter in the foster lounge (living room), make space to foster more rescue cats if possible. I also look forward eagerly to our electricity bills coming down with less humans in the house. And a cleaner toilet (current tenants don't really upkeep the bathroom), dedicated to cat-related uses like cleaning and baths. In any case, for the spare room, storing foster cats' stuff and boarding cats for owners on holidays are both synergistic uses that work together.

Yet at the back of our minds we worry about the loss of regular rental income. Sure, cat boarding income will be about the same as our current rental income. But it won't be regular, and thus will take some getting used to. And, considering how poor we are now no thanks to my inability to work more and my crazy-high medical bills, this will be a tough one to ride out.

The good thing is, while it is a fluctuating source of income, it has the potential to bring us much more than from simply renting out a room at a fixed rate monthly. There will be a teething period, there will be down times. But the financial potential is great. It is synergistic with our goals in our volunteer work. It is easier for me to do than teaching because I can go on furlough anytime if I break down.

But our financial drought will become worse before it gets better. If this is the route to take, we will have to survive it no matter what until we start on a financial trajectory.

an email to my doctor

2011-02-03T01:50:00.000+08:00

I didn't manage to go further into the recent spat I had with my mother over my not making a passport and thus not going to Malaysia to see them over the new year.

I told my mother that I was too stressed out to go make a new passport. I explained to her that it has too many steps for me to handle. I said that that just for this year, I wanted to stay in Singapore.

She attacked me verbally by saying that:

1. I am abandoning them, my ONLY family in this world and all I have.
2. I am purposely not recovering and purposely being sick.
3. That Andy is not supporting me at all financially because we live so frugally, when in fact he pays all the bills, even the cost of my medication and visits to you. That it is thus better that I be alone without an other half.
4. I am 32 years old and at this age I should be financially independent, why am I still needing financial help from them (she asked if I needed money to help pay the bills, I said okay, and that was her response to mine).
5. That my doctor - i.e. you - is lousy because I am still sick after so long and that I should stop seeing you.
6. When she dies she will not acknowledge me as her daughter.

What she said was very hurtful and I couldn't get through to her. The phone reception broke up and she didn't call me since to take back what she said. My dad tried to call me right after but I didn't want to answer because I was fearful that he would take her side and scold me even further. I couldn't take the emotional attack any further and I just opted out of it.

It is now the first day of the new year and I am not sure if I should call them to apologise to them for hurting me. I have always apologised to people who hurt me because it is my fault that others hurt me. But cognitively I know this to be an unhealthy pattern and thinking.

I don't think that they understand the extent of my disease and I have no idea how to explain it to them. If I try they would probably just keep perpetuating their point that I am 'purposely' being sick and 'purposely' not recovering.

I don't know how to deal with this. If I call them to apologise now then at least it would smooth things over. But if I completely shun them this new year they would probably hate me for much longer time.

Updates on lil' me in a nutshell

2011-01-28T11:22:00.000+08:00

Most of the stuff that happened between my last post and now are recorded in my tweets.

I have been experiencing the changes that Valdoxan, the new anti-depressant I am now on, has brought on. Some are good. Some are not so. The reason why I am on new meds is because, believe it or not, I began to relapse within this years-long relapse. How sick can one be anyway?

Valdoxan has been increasing my appetite. This causes gastric problems to resurface in me because now I eat in the day and for all gastritis sufferers, eating outside of normal times causes gastric pain. I can eat meals throughout the day and have painful gastric symptoms even then.

Valdoxan has subtly increased my energy level. To the naked eye and outsider, I don't do much more. But I have resumed my teaching after a sabbatical that both myself and my students wanted to take. To J, I reply emails faster - something so subtle only someone who loves me like J does will realise. I still can't do a lot of things because the energy level is not yet normal for me. Unfortunately, I also still have bouts of extreme sleepiness in the day. I reckon this is because I still need to adjust my sleeping medication - lorazepam or melatonin or both and how much of? Taking too little - I can't sleep, since I am now off Remeron. Taking too much and I get sleepy the whole day after I wake up.

Valdoxan claims to not need adjunct anti-anxiety medication but I take more Xanax now than before. So, that claim is rubbish. Am supposed to be on a new adjunct medication come February. (Adjunct medications are mood-stabilisers, sometimes they aren't even real antidepressants.) Meanwhile, I suffer the random frequent panic attacks, and still get paranoid phobias about doing a lot of things. A bit more so than before I got off the Lexapro+Remeron cocktail. But I have been stepping out of the house just that bit more. Progress to me. Though it ain't enough for my parents.

I had a major falling out with my parents. The Chinese New Year sucks. As J says, "I hate Chinese New Year." I feel too stressed out to go through the entire process of making a new passport since my beloved 10-year-old one expired last year. So I explained that I won't be going to visit them this CNY to my parents. Needless to say, my mom backlashed at me, accusing me of abandoning them, accusing me on 'purposely still being sick' and thus unable to go make a passport.

Yes I know I have been sick and in this relapse for years. You think I wanna be sick? I am trying so, so hard to recover, but every small step that is deemed minute by the world is so big a step for me, I can't take that many steps. To you, being able to get out of the house and run errands in the neighbourhood is nothing. To me it is a big leap.

At least I haven't been so randomly sad for a while now that I have begun taking Valdoxan. Yes I am still inherently sad. But it doesn't tsunami that much now. I take that as normalcy. I don't think I will ever be happy as a norm. I am 32 this year and that's 32 years of being sad every day of my life. If it doesn't impede my ability to do basic functions I am glad enough. Glad enough to not be stuck crying in a corner for no reason or cowering under the blanket. Glad enough to not want to die so badly. Overwhelming sadness kills everything and very nearly me. I am alive and able to do things like go to the bathroom or eat - I am glad enough.

I do have guilt for being still sick and not being able to push this particular episode of depression into remission. I am so so sorry for crying for no reason. I am so so sorry for being sick. I am really sorry.

Black Glass

2011-01-06T10:34:00.000+08:00

Beyond night;
dark as hell is
overlaid shadows
infinite ocean

It cuts me.
So deep, I bleed
Remorse, unending
tears - the burden

As black is glass
My hands quiver
with every shard
and splinter spite

So rampant, trite
Widespread
a daily affair
no one listens anymore

like cancer
it spreads
it goes into remission
it relapses

Shards and shards
of black glass, broken
and pounded into every
heartbeat

It is far better to die
alone with this pain
than to leave broken glass
for others to sweep.

-

freelancing

2010-12-16T13:21:00.000+08:00

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

2010-12-07T02:40:00.000+08:00

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

2010-11-30T13:37:00.001+08:00

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

2010-11-26T11:30:00.000+08:00

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

2010-11-18T14:57:00.001+08:00

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

2010-11-14T12:43:00.000+08:00

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

2010-11-08T14:50:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-26T10:54:00.000+08:00

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.

2010-10-26T10:39:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-23T16:42:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-17T15:14:00.000+08:00

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?

2010-10-16T18:55:00.000+08:00

“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

2010-10-16T18:49:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-12T23:20:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-12T01:33:00.001+08:00

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

2010-10-10T18:30:00.000+08:00

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

2010-10-07T16:43:00.001+08:00

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

2010-09-28T16:10:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-27T19:48:00.000+08:00

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.

2010-09-22T22:51:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-22T00:51:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-17T13:43:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-16T12:19:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-03T16:35:00.000+08:00

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

2010-09-02T16:34:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-27T23:56:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-26T11:55:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-23T15:55:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-18T23:30:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-16T14:30:00.000+08:00

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

2010-08-01T15:37:00.000+08:00

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...

2010-07-31T00:12:00.000+08:00

... 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

2010-07-21T00:14:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-16T21:47:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-11T20:32:00.000+08:00

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.

2010-07-09T16:39:00.000+08:00

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

2010-07-07T15:59:00.000+08:00

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.