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I suddenly feel inspired to write, maybe not here, maybe in some way that needs to be organized and well thought up before it’s enough to tell as a story that inspires someone, that will at least make someone think in a different light, that might make someone want to do something differently. Whether I’m good enough at expressing myself in written form I don’t know. But I feel like trying. It just has to make sense though, and at this point I don’t really know where or how to start. I keep thinking who am I to think that what I have to say is of importance enough that some other person might want to read. But I guess another way of looking at it is it could be something of my own, something to keep me in check, like my own journal. Or maybe I’ve just been smoking too many fags, reading too much crap and listening to too much obscure music for my own good! All this artsy stuff. It gets to you after a while, makes you think just because you’ve read or heard something meaningful that someone has put out, that you also have something meaningful to put out and say to the world.

I read this extract from Elizabeth Wurtzels book – More, now and again the other day. I was longing to read more of her stuff after thoroughly enjoying Prozac Nation. It was like some form of escape for me I don’t know. From the exerpt I read of More, now and again she says something like ” I don’t need drugs, I don’t need friends – for all I care the phone can be disconnected. I’m through with everything. Bye-bye life…I love it. I am not making this up. This is my idea of heaven. I’ve got a TV and a VCR, I’ve got 51 channels of cable, I’ve got a view of the Intracoastal, I can laugh at the pathos of human existence all day long because it does not matter any more.” I absolutely love it! That is so me at times, just some good food and some good tv or some good Tracy Chapman or something to sail me away from my troubles and I couldn’t care less about what’s going on outside.

So I’ve been like dying to get More, now and again so I went to MPH first thing in the morning before work yesterday to get it, and unfortunately to my disappointment they didn’t have it! So sad, anyway instead of that I got Anne Franks diary, which I should be digging into soon. Actually had planned to read half of it this morning, then get into some studying, and go out later to run some errands, prepare for my Sat morning tutoring session and finally dinner with Eunice, but I just got up, and it’s 1.30pm and now I’m sitting here blogging.

Work at the cafe was good yesterday, nothing out of the ordinary though, nothing like the randomness that goes off at the cafe some days. Like the day some random geezer walked into the cafe with a video cam and started filming the damn place, and me! Until Megan, my workmate had to ask him to leave. Well, that just killed me really it made my day, I do have to admit that I was quite flattered by it, though it still was a pretty strange sight! Anyway, nothing happened yesterday, I just love working with mama Helen and Eric, they are my people. Quite sad that Eric is leaving soon, but hopefully we’ll keep in touch.

Mama Helen doesn’t know it but I think she’s absolutely fabulous and she’s a legend and I love her. She inspires me in a lot of ways. She’s just, different from a lot of Singaporeans I’ve met. You know, like life isn’t all about being an overachiever and doing stuff so you can gain respect from people. It’s also about following your dreams, being yourself, just the way you are, being confident and happy with that person you are regardless of what other people think. I feel like in med school here I’ve met a lot of people that are brought up to think life is all about being a straight A student and being good and the best at everything and all that. Like most of my peers are in it because it’s prestigious, it’s a respectable thing to do, it seems like the best thing to do and not because they are truly passionate about science or about making a difference and helping people. That gets to me at times.

Like people that think they are the cream of the crop, there’s non better than them and are totally jaded of the fact that there are other people out there, another life out there, with people that are doing nothing but following their passions – being happy and living a pretty good life. Mama Helen said something to me once about how ignorance is bliss sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes – which I totally loved. I think it’s true, if you start thinking deeply about all the stuff that goes on around you, well at least if you’re like me that’s just when you start getting depressed.

Went out to watch Planet terror with Inch last night, it’s funny because my first impression of the movie was mindless gore, but after a while into it it’s like, it was intentionally mindless, it’s Quinten Tarantino, it was pretty obscure which kinda made it good in it’s own way! – One-legged girl with a machine gun on her stump, Bruce Willis and Fergie making a brief appearance, people getting zombified and having bubbles of puss dripping out of their faces, it was just, wierd! Inch and I were going on about the different reactions we would have had from our workmates if they’d gone to watch it with us, had a pretty good laugh.

I felt healthy last night, like the kind of healthy I would normally tell my therapist about, like last night I was sociable and I had a pretty long day at work yet I still managed to go out to watch a movie with a mate and have a good time at it. I kind of miss having therapy in that sense. At times I was always looking for something good to tell my therapist in the next session, because it made me feel good when my progress was pleasing to her, so I learnt to try and look at the good simple things in my life. I guess that’s one good thing I got out of therapy. Sometimes I wish I could go back for that, for having someone that’s just there to listen to me speak about… hmm not much really lol. But we had a wierd sort of misunderstanding in the end when I stopped seeing her. I kind of suffered from it, it almost felt like breaking up with someone I’d come to trust and look to for assurance.

And I miss J.C. J.C was this guy I met and sorta had a fling with if I can say that. You know, one of those when u meet someone that seems pretty cool and you really want to get to know them and date them and stuff but then they don’t really want to date you and it turns out to be like a fling thing. J.C told me after a while that he wasn’t really looking for a girlfriend, but instead was looking to date a lot. Which was yeh u know, I really liked him though. And I quite miss him, because he smoked menthol ciggarettes and seemed to appreciate me as a person, my niceness and all, and he too was nice. And he did teach me that I have to be assertive about what I want. I was kinda upset for a while but we’re friends now, except we’re both really busy.

i can speak

Sooo excited about learning Mandarin after my first lesson today, I’m like, I can speak a bit! I’m trying so hard to keep reiterating the few phrases I’ve learnt just so I don’t forget by next week. It’s kind of fun actually, I had fun, so much that I had my mind off other stuff for a while, until I got back to PGP and to my room and it’s suddenly like, oh, back to life, back to it all. I wish I could be away, distracted like that all the time, I wish I could find a way to keep my mind completely off, , my mind.  I need to get away, or something!

in random depression stuff

1. I had a bit of a breakdown last night, which was pretty strange because I hadn’t been feeling depressed or ought. I got back home from work, put some music on and found myself crying! It might have been partly to do with me pmsing and thus being hyperemotional, and also partly to do with my reading Prozac nation and winding up reflecting and thinking about my own life. Reading about Elizabeth Wurtzels life, especially her early preadolescent life brought back a lot of unfond memories of my own – feelings of rejection – my dad, past failed relationships etc, although some of it did help in that it made me think in a different light. I hadn’t thought for example, like the way I think now that my dad was probably the way he was because he had his own problems that he couldn’t deal with, and wasn’t very good at expressing himself. That I might actually find myself being able to relate to his issues, if only we could have a conversation about it. That he might be able to share his pain with me and I might understand. At the same time it’s hard, it’s not easy for me to just forget everything that he did.

2. Anyway, I finished reading Prozac nation and now I’m like so sad it’s over, but at the same time I do feel somewhat refreshed. I had the chance to think about a lot of it, and about my life in between reading it. I totally related to a lot of it, and loved the ending which was the whole reason I got the book. Because I wanted to know why it was she thought she recovered, or at least got better, what it was that she felt took away the whole black wave. I love how she says towards the end, “Any time I am bothered about anything, whether it’s a line that’s too long at the bank or a man who doesn’t return my love, I have to remind myself that these emotional experiences (petty annoyance in the former instance, heartbreak in the latter) are reasonable and discrete unto themselves.”

Which is so true, that’s exactly how you need to look at it, instead of thinking each time something happens for example – oh no, he broke my heart, oh crap my whole life has been like this, it’s always going to be like this, and letting it bring you back to the same place you were the last time you got depressed, to letting it bring back past grievances, it’s actually ok to think you know what, someone broke my heart today, it’s shit, and it’s ok for me to feel sad for a bit, but what is it to me? It’s just something that’s been thrown at me but it’s not me so I’m allowed to feel sad but I have to move on. I’m not in it.

verse of the day

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

prozac nation

I FINALLY got Prozac Nation the book! I’m in awe of Elizabeth Wurtzels writing. Reading the prologue of the book makes me feel a bit weary of the thought that I could possibly get back on drugs. How I used to sleep for at least 10/11 hours a day when I was on Prozac and tranxene, it sort of haunts me thinking about all that. To think that was only a few months back and yet I’m in a completely different place now from where I was then. I can completely relate to the way Elizabeth writes about how she would be tired in her dreams and wake up tired. Of how depression isn’t really just about how you feel about your situation. As in, I feel like most people don’t understand depression because they think they can just tell someone  that’s depressed for reasons they don’t understand, or for apparently no reason at all, that they should just snap out of it. When it really isn’t that simple. Depression is also an illness. The chances of one getting depressed do not necessarily depend on the intensity of one’s troubles.

Anyway what I’m really looking forward to is more about her journey out of depression, something I didn’t really get from watching the movie. How she changed from waking up every morning and thinking that everything’s plastic and we’re all going to die to actually having something worth living for.

black swan

Took some time out for myself yesterday morning just to relax and I don’t know like get in touch with my spiritual self. The initial plan was to go to the botanical gardens and enjoy some fresh air while I read a few verses and some psychological self-help stuff but, I got caught in the rain! Fortunately i managed to find a nice cafe to sit at and read, that worked. I realised I need to do this sort of thing more often to keep myself in check, after all the Bible talks of how we are to renew our minds.

One of the books I had was the Black Swan, which is a self help book which was written by Susan Anderson to help provide emotional healing for those suffering from the loss of a love. The twelve lessons of abandonment recovery. It uses an allegory of a little girl, Amanda abandoned on a rock in the middle of a forest by her dad. With the help of a black swan she meets, Amanda learns how to accept her aloneness and strengthen her sense of self.

I just had to quote a few bits that I found quite helpful for future reference:

” You must go all the way inside, Amanda, to the place where you exist all by yourself. Your parents are not here with you now. In this moment you are alone, as we are all alone. for the moment, accept your aloneness. It is your surviving self….In the very center lives an aloneness that isn’t awful anymore. It is an aloneness we all share.”

“Fear is of the future, Amanda, and we cannot do anything about the future. We have no control over it because it doesn’t exist yet. There is only now. The past and futre may seem very big, but the biggest part is always now. Now is where reality lives, and all of your fears, Amanda, are about the future-an imagined place.”

“Go…where nature’s most welcoming elements can be felt most intensely and imagine experiencing them alone, all for yourself. Know that you are whole – all by yourself”

“It’s not about being special, Amanda. It’s about being important to yourself.”

“Pronounce your name boldly and know that this is you. There is only one you, nobody like you, a separate person, you.”

“It will feel empty inside until you fill it with  things in life that have importance to you..Now you must think about what things in life you like. That’s what your name will mean.”

“It may not be the reality you want, but it is the reality you have, at least for the moment. If aloneness is the reality facing you, you must face it back.”

“That’s right, Amanda. Breathe in the present an breathe out the past.”

“I found my place among the others, even when they did not welcome me, when I found my capacity to love. Love has become my beacon, guiding my way through the giant ocean, ever since”

“Practise the golden rule, Amanda, and find things that bring you good feelings. It will help you be with others.”

“Some things you will get, some you may not. Some involve a lot of work, patience, others, luck. Whether or not you get all you imagine, the important thing is that it is possible. Live your life now, realizing all is possible.”

Verse of the day – For I know well the plans I have in mind for you… plans for your welfare, not for woe! Plans to give you a future full of hope. When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will listen to you. When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you… Jeremiah 29:11-14