Monday, December 08, 2014

DAY 1

8 December - Doha. 

I dont think I have ever felt so tired. The flight was long and uneventful. 
I am halfway through my 8 hour layover and I am trying not to sleep so that I can exhaust myself for the coming 14 hours flight out. 

I saw a guy in a tartan kilt at transfers. pretty random. 

it is certainly no wonder at all why some refuse to do these intercontinental flights. Next time I would do a layover of a day in London en route to the US. Not that it would cut short the time but that I could have an actual bed for the night. and tea with scones and clotted cream.  

after a horrible start to the journey, I am still not feeling it.  I think its the exhaustion so far. 
waiting for the euphoria to kick in.

Monday, October 06, 2014

Lessons of the Day

I don't know why I have not got myself to a psychiatrist for medication. Its a misguided attempt at maintaining my autonomy (says the dustspeck to the universe). I have hardly gotten over my depression, panic attacks and anxiety attacks. And I cry my eyes out as often as it rains, with equal severity. Is there any surprise that I am treated like a doormat when even I myself don't see the value in paying for my own healing.

Again and again, people disappoint me. This however is my fault because I have chosen to be vulnerable and depend on the wrong people. YES, some are heartless. YES, some are ungrateful. YES, some are assholes. Even absolute strangers.

So I put whats left of the broken pieces of my soul into a cast iron box and toss it into the abyss. Maybe this is how the Miss Havishams of the world are made. When bitterness, cobwebs and the cold fill the space of a long dead heart.

 

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

The ledge

I hear my own heartbeat. Its beats on. Loyal and true. Until it too will one day tire and rest.

The silence is thick and nights like this i think about the futility of existence.

I crave touch. Of warmth and familiarity. And it's now the very thing denied to me.

How meaningless is the dreary cycle.

When Robin Williams left us, my first thought was - oh how brave. Then came envy.

Unless you have been clinically depressed, you will never understand how gargantuan a feat it is to be happy. And like an erotic thought, the seductive allures of suicide flits in and around the concious and unconscious mind. Its tendrils lovingly caress and wipe away tears. Easy way out? Not by a longshot. It takes a lot of courage to take the cowardly way out.

Williams didnt want for anything but escape. As a lesser person, I have much to want but within the abyss of our souls, we seek the same death of personal demons, even if it means We lose ourselves in the process.

"Dude, get help". Said one person. I feel less confident.

In memory

I miss love letters, written in moon light. I miss sunflowers beaming in make shift vases. I miss sighs of reverie, warm hands, shared tea cups. I miss feeling anything but grey. I miss having conviction. I miss my rose tinted glasses.

The stranger in the mirror moves her lips as I do. Touches her face as I do. But her wispy hair and empty eyes are devoid of charm and if I don't know any better her soul is dead to the world. What a shame.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Will someone try to fix me? Anyone?

A candle in the dark. The screen dims. Melancholy playing softly. It's 1997 all over again. It has come full circle. Alone and alone again.

I still can't tell which is harder. Starting over. Or letting go.

The change is overwhelming. The best analogy i have is being at the base of the mountain, looking to the sky. Feeling defeated even before I begin.

Acceptance is humbling. When I am on my knees crying and nobody's there to comes save me. So there's nothing left to be done but stare at the stars as they travel further away.

My aspirations have always been modest. Still, a pebble has no business longing for love and belonging when they remain inconsequential, standing for nothing, offering nothing. It is devastating being replaced and ignored.

Hard lesson against trying to look for validation in other people. As I have been advised, I WILL be disappointed.

Only I am afraid of being my own hero. Heros dont usually run on empty.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Everything is Moving

Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.
- Frieda Kahlo

Spent the last hour removing pathetic soppy pins from my Pinterest account. I have come some distance from the days when I would just lie in bed in tears, going through every dog photo, gif and video I could find just to have enough motivation to get up and maybe eat or on good days, do laundry.

Looking back I can't help but find overwhelming compassion for the old me. Not self pity. But a sadness tinged with sympathy. How a human being can be so broken with not a single scratch on her skin. When self harm was only thwarted by cowardice.

It's a place I never want to be ever again.

The point when the chest hurts from too much crying and the heart sinks from the weight of living, alone, in the dark, abandoned. But you know, despite what well meaning people say, that my family is with me, my friends, even God..in the end it's a lonely battle, with myself, in my head.

When a once uttered derision echoes again and again, bouncing of the walls, to bend me down lower and lower until I believe that I am nothing more than dirt. Then I become my own persecutor. I don't only agree with detractors, I join in and strangle my own self worth with my bare hands. Left to rot, the mind ceases to see logic.

Although still far from freedom, my latest meltdown was less than a week ago, when I look back at my blog posts and pin from where I am now, how utterly miserable must I have been to relate to such sadness.

But the battle continues on. Hopefully there will come a time when even this post will feel unseemly.

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Playing with knives

I thought I was  on the razor edge of depression. Seems like I have already fallen. Somedays I believe me when I tell myself that I am alright. Oscar winning performances can somewhat fool some friends into thinking I am ok. At least I think they are fooled. Yet on other days, I can't lie to myself. I will never be ok anymore. I lost some pieces of me and I can't ever be whole.

I learnt how a friend lost her sister suddenly. And another acquaintance lost his close friend to suicide. I have spent hours stalking their Facebook reading the beautiful notes left behind by their loved  ones. And I feel jealous of all the love they had in their lives and the difference they made. I feel jealous that one had the courage to take her own life.

And I think about my own mortality. How empty my own service would be. How stark my own page would be. How discouraging. I don't have the will or motivation to carry on and neither the courage to end it all. To continually feel  deserving of hurt is of course not healthy but I can't deny what I feel.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Entitlement

It's not anger.It's bitterness. Bitter that I am only left with age and dust. And as I contemplate the days ahead I can't help but see darkness. As I contemplate death I only see loneliness.

There is no reason to be happy. There is no joy here. Go look elsewhere.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Musings

I started out this post several times. Mostly variations of emptiness. I collect specimen of my misery like an entomologist collects butterflies. Carefully preserved, labeled and mounted in a frame.
But fate intervened and put in my path three lines that has stuck.

The first being: To prove your courage
The second being: Not today
And the last : To regain what's lost

Monday, March 17, 2014

Second life or trying to cheer up

Having to lose it all to live again is extreme. It's not a shock to the system. It's death.

The person who once lived in the shell is gone. To be replace by a new tenant. Untried, unpredictable and unsure. It's not a reinvention of the self but it's getting to know the new person that's moved in.

I know why the phoenix has to rise from ashes. No rebirth can occur without annihilation.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Really

 

The lost

I learned to give not because I have much...But because I know exactly how it feels to have nothing. - Anon

Tales from My Mother - Chye Buey

Behind the Chinese restaurants that dot Penang Road and the maze of other knotted lanes, very late at night, the neighbourhood would be enticed by a delicious waft of sour spicy soup.

Leftovers from the day's wasteful patrons, uneaten prawns, poultry and pork collected from serving plates, would be tipped into a large pot with tamarind, chillies and vegetables, then stewed over a fire.

The restaurant's less well-heeled patrons, the ones that approach the kitchen door from the back lanes, would carry the hot soup in recycled tin cans of about 5 inches high, back into the night from whence they came. Dinner and comfort for a few cents.

My mother remembers that it was delicious.

Tales from My Mother

After her training in Alor Star, class of '66, my mother was posted to Baling, Kedah in 1970.

The hospital was tiny, sitting next to a mountain. The doors were weaved mengkuang leaves that swiveled. The hospital served the community consisting of rubber tappers. Not that her salary was generous. About a few hundred ringgit.

She stayed at the nurses' hostel just beside the hospital with 4 other nurses. The hostel was primarily a house on stilts, with an Ammah who would come to cook and then go on her way.

As there were only four nurses living there and duty rosters being what they were, it was not uncommon to be the only person at the hostel at any particular time. Being next to said mountain, there was hardly any discernible TV or radio reception. So afternoons were spent, not doing anything much. There was a cinema showing Hindustani movies in town. But that would entail a lonely walk back after the show.

Bear in mind, this was during the height of the Emergency and curfew was imposed after hours. There were soldiers in the area, as there were Communist guerillas.

She was serving here when the infamous Baling talks were held between the nation's founder, Tunku Abdul Rahman with Chin Peng, leader of the Malayan Communist Party. To say that the residents were not nervous would be a stretch.

She stayed for three years until her posting to Jerantut, Pahang.

We visited Baling today. The old hospital could not be traced. Development or perhaps, MRSM, has descended upon the sleepy hallow and there were so many people that to my mother, it is no longer recognizable.