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depressionkat-blog · 8 years ago

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Confidence?

I have been feeling so distracted today. I have this immense urge to write. Write my thoughts out. The thoughts that are speaking to me from my mind. When this happens, they flow really easily. Like a story waiting to be told. Yet, writing is so calming for me. I should get a writing job. My typing speed is 80 words per minute. It’s easy, why do I even try...

Yet I am trying. I am trying despite flailing at what I do.

In life I have always taken the easy way out. When I got a new hobby like drawing or painting or piano lessons and attended classes I grew bored of it. I told myself not to give up but I wasn’t sure why I was continuing when I clearly wasn’t that good. I wanted to be good, to know how it feels like being good, to be admired by people, to be respected. I knew practice was key but every-time I practiced it was so painfully bad and boring. Now looking back, was I afraid of the practice or mere loneliness? Perhaps I would have continued if I had a good support system to egg me on. I’m not sure why I was so bad, or how can I improve. The mind-less sessions doing the same things over and over again, it didn’t help, but it just stirred my frustration at myself. Why wasn’t I any good.

Luckily for the more crucial things in life like dropping out of school, my friends that I had in those periods would encourage me to continue on and check in if I was ok.

But it’s one of those things that I am upset about my childhood. I wish my parents had been more supportive in the right ways. Sometimes it wasn’t about the practice. It was about the lack of confidence in myself. Yet I kind of know that it’s a very hard problem to untangle. How do you unfix someone’s lack of confidence from various sources of trauma? How do you tell someone that they are worthy of opportunities when they have been denied all along, by others and themselves? The easier way out would be to give up and to stop hurting. The easier way would be not to learn how to grit through and achieve success, because that is more painful.

Hence, at this current stage, I am ambivalent towards what is “good yet painful” for me vs “easy”. “Easy” means doing things that are so natural, that I incline towards. As you can tell I really love to write, I have been writing here for close to 4 hours (excluding time that I sporadically went back to writing other things). I don’t feel at pain, I feel at peace. The words and stories are all in my head.

And then there’s the ideal version of myself. Working at preferably a startup that I like. Doing a job challenging, rewarding and makes me feel good that it is ‘hard enough’. Changing the world from my contributions. Assertive, confident and hot.

So I try to be that ideal version of me. But it is tiring to be someone that I am not at the moment. The ideal of doing a challenging job gives me a headache because it is challenging.

Change is hard. Changing is harder.

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depressionkat-blog · 8 years ago

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Guys?

Aka male homo sapiens.

When I was young I always wondered what would it be like to be in love? What would it be like to kiss and more than just kiss? I think I was pretty sexual as a kid.

It seemed that every-time I dated someone, something sexual (okay not really, just a kiss!) would happen first when we were just hanging-out. I would be shocked but come to accept it.

Boyfriend #1 was some one I met online, he was in a gang. I didn’t really like him, he was too quiet. Maybe at this stage boyfriend meant boy-friend, like a close male friend. But he respected my boundaries. Then he apparently cheated on me with some chick and text-messaged me to break up. I was ok.

Boyfriend #2 was my friends’ friend, we met in a karaoke session. It was my friend’s birthday celebration and we sang through the entire night. However they left later that night. Me and the aforementioned guy stayed on. We continued talking till daylight, had a Mac’s breakfast and went to the arcade to play our favorite game. And then he suddenly introduced me to his family (Jesus Christ it was only the first day we met) and it was history. However it ended due to some ‘ploy’ and ‘accusation of cheating’, tons of female drama and crying. :(

Boyfriend #3 was another guy I met on the internet. I had just finished my major examinations and I was looking for adventure again (by then, I was one year sober of late-night thrills and staying out). I slept over at his home and then it happened. He was pretty nice, there were the nice moments of cycling that I still fondly remember. But then he ‘cheated’ with some chick he met at a party and apparently she was a witch who hex-ed him to break-up with me. I felt confused and sad but whatever.

Boyfriend #4 was a guy I met from school. He was so cute, just like someone from a Korean drama. He gym-ed a little and had decent aesthetics. But he was super whiny and I hated the clingyness. Drama ensued and I broke up with him. I had the power.

Boyfriend #5 was a guy I met on the internet, but he was a senior from my school. He didn’t look cute to me. But he was nice. So nice. Too nice. I loved the nice-ness but I can’t help but wonder and wish for a cuter boyfriend (aka huge muscles) and more into my hobbies (at this point I was quite into working out). I wanted a guy who would work out with me and support me in the gym. At that juncture I was looking for a personal trainer as well. He tried to introduce me to his male friend who was ‘into gym’ as well and ‘could possibly train me in the weekends’ and ‘if you guys meet up you would get along very well because he likes to eat chicken breast as well’, but I wanted weekday training and not that far away. So I broke up with him because at this point, gym was so important to me. See the pattern yet?

Boyfriend #6 was a guy I met at work. He was quite cute, I think I have a thing for guys with long hair, he had good music taste, and pretty smart. But I hated the times we quarrelled (that happened pretty often). He hated that I loved to hit the gym more than I loved him, so I broke up with him.

A slew of dating adventures later, after my last boyfriend, I was feeling jaded. I wish there was the perfect guy for me to date. Someone who would be into the same interests and hobbies as me, someone who accepts me for who I am, the way I look and dress, the mood-swings and occasional depressive thoughts.

And then *cues magical moment, rainbow sparkles and drumroll*

I would like to think of it as the universe’s conspiracy, but I met boyfriend #5′s buff friend. At that time I didn’t know they were related, it was only a sudden thought in mind after 2 weeks of knowing each other, that this guy’s name sounded familiar.. where did i hear it from. And then I looked back at my old conversions with #5 and realised. When the psychiatrist tells me to ‘note down my moods’ I would rate this feeling a 1 - a state of excitement, nervousness yet happiness. I was thinking to myself, the first time we met in the gym, that this guy is so strong! I can’t embarrass myself in front of him by being weak.

We started to chat and i found out he was from my faculty!!! This was so incredulous. After that we arranged to meet-up for more gym sessions and attend the same modules, I was so elated that my new-found friend likes to go to the gym and is from my faculty. It’s so rare to find someone you can connect to. I didn’t think of him as boyfriend but just a friend that I could connect with.

I suspected that maybe he might possibly like me because he gave me a Christmas gift of something costing like $50. I had never received such an expensive gift before from an individual other than my parents. I was so shocked and happy! It was a good sign! He’s quite cute and strong and knowledgable and best of all likes my hobby and my future job, I don’t mind dating him. At that point we were sitting so close to one another and I really liked the feeling.

And then new years’ rolled around and lo and behold, he asked me out on a New Years’ date. I was so happy when he asked the question!

So now about this current boyfriend: it has been about 6 months but I am the happiest I have ever been in a relationship. It is the kind of relationship where it makes sense to live together so that meal-prep would be easy and we can dive into our project that we are working on together and overall we can optimise one another’s lives. We do everything together from gym to study and the other couple things. We don’t even quarrel about anything. I like to see him everyday and feel those large strong biceps.

Sometimes I would think to myself, is this unhealthy? I would rather have this one person in my life than other friends that I can barely connect with. Even though it is disconcerting that my friends claim I spend all my time with my boyfriend, I don’t really know what to feel about that. I enjoy the time spent and that’s what makes me happy. Unlike time spent with other people, which ends up feeling like work / stressed / situations for social anxiety. With him I can be any one of myself - the assertive one, the shy one, the sexual one, the impatient one, the depressed one, the nervous one, the contented one, the raging one. It’s so hard to find people who are so accepting.

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depressionkat-blog · 8 years ago

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Death?

Also another note: A lot of people have been dying. I used to have this immense wanting to die. If I can’t achieve anything useful in life, might as well end this suffering sooner than later. I’m someone who believes there must be a purpose for living on this earth. There’s always this hope that maybe as I walk along the pavement, a car swerves into me. And I die. After all, I am but a tiny speck of dust in the universe.

But death is such a sad thing. When I visit the reddit /r/watchpeopledie, the ways the people have died are so soul-crushingly brutal. I once heard a loud THUD at my block and when I went outside I saw a suicide scene and the brains are splattered on the ground. I realised that’s now how I wanted to die...

Closer to home, my boyfriend’s dad is dying from cancer. It’s really so saddening looking at a man’s old photos of a stern yet lively self, now reduced to a bag of bones who can barely utter yes or no. His colleagues had just organised a ‘party’ to commemorate his years of contribution in the work place. I can’t help but wonder if anyone would commemorate my time on earth, I am not sure I contributed much other than constant negativity.

I have kind-of experienced death before (if you would call it, a near death experience). The story goes like this: my friend passes me a bag of caffeine he didn’t want anymore because it tasted bad, so I took it. I tried some because I really wanted to stay up later for my test, and the information just wasn’t going into my brain cos I was so stressed. Unknowingly, I did not know ‘one microscoop’ was actually a small tiny 5 mcg scoop. I scooped ‘two microscoops’ of 30 mg total worth of caffeine into my Starbucks drink. 30 minutes later, I felt like I was going to puke... I was like f it I can’t study I should sleep. But I can’t sleep, my heart was palpitating, I was breaking out in cold sweat, I went to the washroom to puke. Everywhere hurt, something was wrong, but I couldn’t call for a doctor or anything... WTF is this? I took out my phone and googled the symptoms - just what I had expected, a caffeine overdose! I was wondering how would I get an overdose from the microscoops...

By a stroke of luck I was sent to the hospital. I was salivating from my mouth and begging for help, for anti-pain injections, anything. It was literally a splitting headache, constant vomiting and an intense, tired feeling yet being unable to sleep. The nurse kept telling me, unable to move and on a wheelchair, that I’ll have to wait and get my blood pressure tested etc. I can’t wait anymore, I am going to die!

And then everything blacked out. There was a feeling of bliss that enveloped me. It was white, bring and warm. Is this death? Am I dead? Whatever this is, it feels nice, I want to feel like this forever...

And then my eyes opened. I am not dead yet!

“Are you okay?!”

“What happened...?” I uttered.

“You just had a seizure... any seconds longer and you may have died. Just hold on for a while longer, we are going to bring you the meds now”. The nurses around me continued wheeling me to a emergency bed. Random tubes and what seemed to be an IV drip was injected into me. Some medical school students introduced themselves and I am wondering why are medical students handling some emergency case. But I just nodded. I didn’t have the energy to talk much.

And then I lost consciousness again.

The next few hours, my mom had come to visit me. So did some of my other friends and professors and what not. Some of them, I felt, “WOW, you came!” (for a guy I was kind of seeing...), some of them, I felt, “why are you even here, you are disrupting my rest” (people that I am not close to), others I felt, “thanks for dropping by and taking time off your busy schedule” (ok-ok friends).

How was staying at a hospital like? It was good. I felt so useless and allowed to have a respite from life. Most of the time, I just slept. I had this ‘fall-risk’ tag on me so where-ever I went, I had to be wheeled around. I could not even shower alone, a nurse has to accompany me and ensure I was ok. I was treated like a fragile vase, and had to go for numerous brain-scans to ensure that the seizures did not break my brain. Most people were sympathetic to my condition and are ‘aww rest well’. But I knew the harsh reality was that I won’t be here permanently and still had to face life when I got out. I still remember asking my mum to bring my laptop to me so I could continue doing work when I wasn’t feeling so sleepy.

Anyway, my concluding thought is that dying isn’t so bad after all. If I was going to inevitably die soon, no way am I completing my work. I will just enjoy the rest of the time that I have got left, sleeping, playing video games, maybe writing a memorial for myself. It doesn’t matter if people remember you after you die or not.

Since death is inevitable, the main question to be asking ourselves is: why are we still alive?

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depressionkat-blog · 8 years ago

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Friends?

So I just re-used an old tumblr blog to pen down my thoughts on depression. Actually, I am not sure if I even have depression. Would it be more comforting to be diagnosed with depression rather than to solve an unknown problem?

So what is depressionkat? Maybe using the moniker depressionkat is bad, because that is self-labelling myself as depressed, and of course when you believe you are depressed, you start acting depressed. But whatever.

depressionkat (small d) is a cat who is kinda depressed. How did it even start? As a wee little kitten, depressionkat would lie in bed, pondering about the meaning of life. If all we ever feel is sadness and suffering, surely there must be a purpose. Would depressionkat be able to change the world?

But depressionkat felt despondent about that hope. depressionkat felt sad and lonely most of the time. It didn’t help that momma and popa cat weren’t around very often, moma cat was busy working while popa cat didn’t even live in the same home... that is another story for another day.

In school, depressionkat envied the others who seemed cheerful and smiley and pretty and had a lot of friends and had many wonderful hobbies. Of course ruminating about all of that did not help. depressionkat felt inferior in every aspect. Whenever depressionkat walked up to the mirror, depressionkat would think, why do I look so terrible with little shifty eyes and length awkward arms and rough fur everywhere, I don’t look like a proper cat, I don’t think anyone would want me. Sometimes the thoughts got so bad that depressionkat just cried, whether it stemmed from poor grades or feeling ugly or anything at all. It caused the class to call her ‘crybaby’.

It’s not like depressionkat had no friends, depressionkat started a blog, a comic, and a storybook with a few of them, writing/drawing and passing them around class. It was one of the only times depressionkat felt that she truly felt at peace and belonged with the rest of them. She loved it when the classmates laughed and smiled and asked for more sequels and continuations. But that didn’t help her to feel that they were close friends at all. There were the times where there were birthday parties and she wasn’t invited. There were the times that the teacher orders the kids to line up in twos and she had no partner. There were the times where she didn’t know what to say exactly to make friends. There were the times she was sick and no one messaged her to ask how are you. Those times stung badly and again depressionkat was reminded that she had no true friend to stick with. The world is a lonely place to be in.

Luckily, depressionkat was hardworking and fortunate enough to be in a family with adequate financial resources. The numerous tuitions and ‘learning camps’ and ‘enrichment’ helped depressionkat to adopt positive study habits and discipline. Even though depressionkat felt sad most of the time, she told herself to stop being sad or angry. Hence her results were pretty good, while not the best, it was always among the upper percentile. At least she was smart enough.

To be fair, depressionkat wasn’t always sad. The times punctuated with happiness included: going over to the neighbours’ and playing video games, reading books, drawing and talking to self about a fantasy world, writing guides for Pokemon, neopets or any other online games depressionkat chanced upon. All these activities passed the time, allowing her to tide over the day and forgetting about sadness for a moment. The internet was a safe place, where no one could know how ugly or lonely she was in real life. Plus she felt proficient in using computers, as there was this class in primary school where the teacher would instruct the kids on how to use certain programs, and depressionkat would be one of the first few to finish the task at hand.

When depressionkat was moving on to the next phase of education, she vowed that she had to become a new version of herself. The old depressionkat was gone. The new depressionkat was going to be popular, pretty, and smart. So she avoided going to the secondary school where most of her primary school friends had gone to, and went into one where everyone else was new. It was going to be a new start.

Even though depressionkat had more friends, she still felt horrible. It was not what she had expected. Most of the times spent together was so routine and boring - just grabbing some Burger King, Starbucks or 7-11 Mashed Potatoes and Slurpee. Where were the sleepovers and actual fun activities, the things she saw on high-school movies? I guess it was ok, but I wish it could be better. I still felt the tinge of loneliness whenever the teacher asks us to line up in pairs, because the cliques tend to be in even numbers, I seemed to be the odd one out... not sure who to pair with.

But overall it was better. She bonded with her new-found friends over nerdy things like anime, coding on blogskins.com, and of course blogging on blogger.com. The one thing she remembered fondly was the times rushing home from school to grind on maplestory with one of her friends, playing until the wee hours of night. In a span of one month of intense playing, she managed to level her character to 107. She even managed to get a certificate for high level of computer proficiency, as well as code Flash sites and MINDSTORM robots. That is so.. nerdy.

School was still pretty easy (ie. other than homework, there was still time to pursue mundane hobbies/time-wasting activities) so depressionkat managed to enter into a class with triple Science and Additional Mathematics. It was a bit sad because she had barely any old friends in her new class, but she re-assured herself that it was gonna be ok.

That was when her life began to change drastically. She found an online community where lots of ah-lians and ah-bengs resided. Feeling lonely and craving for excitement in her nerdy life, she reached out to them and met up to play in the arcades and hang out, go to clubs and smoke. She quit her ‘nerdy cca’. And a lot of bad things happened then.

There was this time where she was sending out a micro-tweetlike-message on the site. Suddenly she was meeting up some guy, who was her then ‘stead’s friend, at his place. It was her first time. His home was filled with foreign people like his aunties and what not. She didn’t know what to do. He offered her some respite in his room so she obliged.

And then the bad thing happened. A game of ‘truth or dare’. The dare was... taking out of clothes. I don’t remember much of it, except intense crying and begging to let me out. Eventually the guy relented and I fled the block, ran to the bus-stop and continued crying, texting my ‘stead’ about what had just happened. My ‘stead’s gang walloped the guy (who was also part of their gang) for the gang no-no of ‘stealing yo girl’.

That wasn’t the end of the drama and the bad company. But she felt popular. She felt wanted. She felt pretty with a little eyeliner on. She loved drinking because she felt good at it. There was the high and excitement in the life that she had craved. There was all the typical girl drama of getting boys, cheating on boys, getting found out, losing friends over getting found out, being sad and crying for days on end on the floor, wanting the boy back.

At this point, depressionkat’s grades plummeted down and she almost could not be promoted, but miraculously scraped by. It was a harsh wakeup call. At this point depressionkat’s looks also started to become worse, the acne had flared up due to stress and aggravation from a malicious facial company. Her scalp became so unbearably oily. Stop being depressed over boys, your ‘O’ levels are next year and you’re failing almost everything other than English. No more boys, no more social media, just study. The daily routine became something like this: wake up and attend school plus extra classes from 6am to 4pm. Go for tuition from 6pm to 8pm. Do homework from 9 to 11 or even 12/1am.

The efforts paid off eventually and depressionkat’s grades improved so much, that she got a ‘Most Improved!’ award from the school :’) She could go anywhere she wanted. What did she want?

Perhaps writing? Maybe journalism. She loved writing so much (as you can tell from this really long post).

Perhaps design? She loved drawing, and more so she discovered she loved digital design from the photoshop and html/css she did for school and her own personal hobbies.

With that regard, depressionkat’s goals was to enter a course for Mass Communication. She knew that course was perfect, she could write eloquently, she could dabble in web-design and collateral design, and maybe even DJ (not the remixing kind, but the ones in the radio station!)

But depressionkat soon got intrigued by psychology. Having such a (self-proclaimed) depressing past, she wanted to know what to do to get better. So she enrolled in psychology instead.

Bad move.

(I will detail about this in a future post!)

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