a long cathartic essay.

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Feels

I’m feeling the urge again because if it weren’t for my stupidity /inability to control myself yesterday, today I would’ve been doing the blue with a friend, and he would’ve brought them over. I’m glad I told him about my hospitalization because that was a deterrent for me as of now, to ask him to bring them over anyway. He knows a little about my situation, so I don’t think he’s going to come over any time soon, which is GOOD FOR ME.

How I got through today’s 3 urges: I shut my eyes and found a voice within myself that was basically kind of like a military man and they shouted “Don’t be a pussy, today is day one of being clean. You are more than these drugs and you’re gonna get fucked in the ass if anyone finds out. You can’t lock the door to your room so there’s a high chance of someone finding out”- this was a lie I told myself (#fakeittillyoumakeit) because I knew my dad wouldn’t check on me if I brought a friend over because idk shit with him isn’t great right now. To be explored later in “Parents”. But hell, I need to start somewhere and pushing back day 1 isnt gonna help.

I’m kind of numb right now, trying not to think so much. I realized a lot of the reason I started turning to the blue stuff is because I tried to force myself to feel things and experience life “more”. And it worked, but I didn’t realize that my primary “feelings” were composed mostly of despair and hopelessness. As a result, I had to find an escape to numb myself again. This is like, really confusing to me in a way because if you aren’t numb and if you aren’t feeling things all the time, then what do you do on a daily basis? I guess functionality-wise I should’ve stuck to being numb, because I was MOST functional when I was numb and mindless and I didn’t think about anything. And I guess that’s an unhealthy version of what most people do? Like, the no. 1 piece of advice people keep telling me is “keep yourself occupied” but to me that just sounds like “eh get better la” or “stop being so sad”. To be explored later in “Conflict”

I remember a long time ago, sometime this year when I was still dating my ex, someone asked me how I was doing and I think I replied that I was doing “okay, bordering on content”. I think im taking this growing up shit so hard because this is when I’m getting disillusioned about how idk, I used to think life was about the pursuit of happiness, idk that whole John Lennon quote about how all he wanted to be was happy. And now, people are telling me what I’ve been concurrently believing that “life is suffering” and that it’s all about learning how to tahan the pain. But that notion just feels wrong to me for some reason. I escaped into so many books and films when I was younger that I think they gave me very screwed up and exaggerated notions of what real life was supposed to be like-purely because to me, the characters were real people. I don’t think I ever processed the duality of the fact that some characters are meant to represent how real people think, but they’re still characters. All my adolescence I’ve been seeking MORE to life (“there must be more than this provincial life”-Beauty and the Beast). I don’t really know why I let the fiction affect me so much. But I know that the media I consumed as a child played a BIG part in why I have such fucked up notions of love. I wanted to be swept off my feet by a handsome boy who’d love me unconditionally and fit my personality like a glove. No book I read ever told me that relationships take work. And I think that’s why I take it so hard when people break up with me. I’ve been on tinder for so long that I KNOW what the dating ocean looks like. And sure, there will always be more fish in the sea yadda yadda yadda but.. can you keep eating fish for the rest of your life? Also, just because there are many of them, doesn’t mean they are of good quality??? (Probability!! Percentages do not translate to absolue numbers!!!). I think that’s why I tried/TRY to stand out so much (liking things PURELY because they were different from the norm), and that tendency bit me in the ass especially now, when I feel so isolated and DIFFERENT and (mean thought but) better or smarter than the people in NUS. I think that’s why I took it so hard when I found out literally everyone I know who applied to YNUS got the offer, but I didn’t. I wanted that life, surrounded by international people who were open and well, LIBERAL ARTSY. And idk, maybe I tried too hard during my interview, but it really didn’t feel like it. It felt like I was merely trying to make my personality clearer through my appearance, and being rejected after my interview made it seem like, there was something wrong with my personality (the one school I thought would appreciate my eccentricities and grow/harness them for better use rejected me), or that I wasn’t enough despite trying my whole life to be…enough of a person. To have substance. Like, being normal was never enough for me (maybe it was a cry for attention amongst my peers because of how suffocated and isolated I felt in my family growing up. I’m 7 years younger, everyone was at school when I was a child, and I was always held to different standard than my siblings eg. Staying in my parents’ room, witnessing their fights, spending weekends with them instead of with friends), and I think somewhere along the way, I started romanticizing mental illness and everything associated to it (it encompassed being different and being fucked up-2 things that I heavily leaned into) and therefore I misconstrued being different, with being dysfunctional. JP said something once that stuck in my mind a lot, which was “being different is great, but you shouldn’t stand out by being dysfunctional, you should stand out by being extraordinary”. That’s another thing. All my life, even today, I’ve been told “you have so much potential”, and when I was younger, I think I may have idk, excelled in things more than some peers (piano, grades, CCA) and that gave me pride. That was when I still remembered how to enjoy doing things. But over the years, the mental illness and everything related to it swallowed up my personality, and I suddenly became.. more average. Almost as if my achievements levelled out because I didn’t try new things for so many years. And I think that’s what pushed me into wanting to be known as “the stoner kid” or “the person who knows the most about mental illness and drugs and alcohol”. All this reflection is good and fine, but like many people in my support system have told me, I need to not only be aware of myself, but actually take steps to change all this toxic and self harming behavior, and that’s the part im stuck at.

Parents

With my mom, she always kind of didn’t have time for me. And even if she did, she was still kind of closed minded and absolutist about how to deal with me. And I was okay for a while, not talking to her and not showing her affection. It legit worked for me because I could hide who I was and she was okay with it. But in the recent months, the fact that she’s taken the first step to be affectionate, in the same way my nai nai has, made it a lot easier to talk to her. She’s also all about the TLC whereas my dad is about being “firm” aka Angry. That being said, I know I’ll never be able to be my true self around her, and that’s something im gonna talk about in “Conflict”.

With my dad, shit isn’t great because he’s a typical Stoic Man and he fluctuates between being really angry or being really sad. And I can never tell when he’s going to be understanding (rarely, but we used to be able to talk more), or passive (let my mom handle me) or angry/annoyed (most of the time). I used to prefer him over my mom because he gave me cash and was super hands off, and more logical (wouldn’t tell me to just pray more), was more likely to admit when he was wrong. But nowadays, it feels like he’s on a similar path to me in that, he kind of doesn’t care as much about his failing health anymore and just wants to enjoy life before he passes away. Except he’s doing it more “healthily”??? He keeps sighing and being exasperated and it makes me feel like he’s ANNOYED that I’m having problems and that because he’s retired, he has to give up more time monitoring me. I mean, that’s a logical thing to think but if I were a parent I’d never let my child KNOW that their illness was inconveniencing me (my mom does this). These days I just feel very unsafe around him because I feel like he’s so volatile and I’m so fragile right now that I just don’t ever want to be alone with him. Thank god he’s the more hands off type and so he hasn’t checked on me. As I was typing the previous paragraph I felt a super strong urge and it hasn’t completely gone away yet so that’s a bit annoying.

Conflict

My parents have something in common in that they don’t think they need help. They think they’re right. I don’t think they think they KNOW what’s best for me but it’s something similar to that. They’re very Asian and conservative in their mindset and values, and that’s something that’s a BIG problem for me. Like, not being able to be myself around them made our relationship really strained over the years. On my part, I also assumed they’d never understand me more than they did at that time, so I never wanted to share anything. But today my therapist gave me some good advice in that, it’s not about changing who I am for them, but filtering my personality to maintain a civil relationship with them. A big problem with this is that I still don’t know who I am or want to be. I took in so much info from media and never sifted through it to ascertain what I believed in (for many things, not all. I don’t think I’m unopinionated but my opinions don’t ever feel valid). I feel more open minded than others because I’ve always kind of just leaned on the “you do you” policy. But it’s frustrating because some people make my feelings feel less valid and true, then I’m like… are my feelings not real?? How warped is my sense of reality? Nothing feels real and therefore nothing has meaning. My mind is a labyrinth (not a maze, but yeah life is a maze) of paradoxes and corners that have things that scare me and I’m not ready to deal with that and the multiple voices in my head, created from my need to be accepted and loved by the people who matter to me (usually not my family). My mom also suggested that maybe I don’t have friends because I a) try too hard and b) don’t let things come naturally. I’m impatient and I’m always wanting to jump straight to being friends without going through the process of being an acquaintance and building on that.

Goals (in order)

I’m working on eventually getting to be 30 days clean, and it’s a harrowing task. I don’t trust myself to go cold turkey. I always need a game plan, and I’ll elaborate on that later. For now, here’s a list of things I want to do. That even if I don’t want to do, I need to find that military man in my head to force these goals because they’re GOOD for me and I need to start LOVING MYSELF more.

1)      Gain back parents’ trust so that I can go back to hostel (MOST IMPORTANT)

2)      Get my life together (barely) by making sure I don’t overcommit to things (eg tuition)

3)      Create more discipline and rationality in my brain

4)      Eventually find that “self love” thing everyone’s always harping on about

Measures I can take to achieve these goals

1a) Not mention anne anymore

1b) Go 30 days clean eventually. It’s not going to be easy, and I KNOW im going to relapse but if I NEED to do it, make sure I’m NOT in a public space. After that, set an even longer goal. For the time being, I need to be strong till 5 September because I need to not let my mom worry about me when shes in chiang mai from 5-9 September.

1c) Intervals of being clean:

5 days (3 September)

7 days (10 september)

10 days (20 september)

13 days

17 days

20 days

Note: if I screw up and do it before the planned date, I have to restart that cycle and add another day to all the future planned cycles

2 and 4)

Time/Occasion	Phase 1	Phase 2
Every Morning	·         Wash Contact Lenses ·         Take Medication ·         Brush Teeth, Remove retainers ·         Misc. things (laid next to bag) ·         ATTEND ALL CLASSES ·         Check schedule	Sun salutation/ meditation for 10 mins
Every Night	·         Contact lenses ·         Brush teeth, retainers ·         Toner for face ·         To do list ·         Pack bag ·         Journal and send someone	Turn off phone and read for 15-20 mins Take some time to choose what I wear
Every Week	·         Wash towel ·         Soak retainers ·         Enzyme for contact lenses ·         Put pills into pill box ·         Schedule week ·         NAMS	Watch a movie in the cinema/ Go for a gig/ Go to the museum/ Go for a convention
Every Month	·         Sweep room ·         MO, Evelyn SGH ·         Cluster meeting
General	GO FOR ALL CLASSES
Notes:	Don’t beat myself up too much	don’t give up that day/week just because I feel I’ve “ruined” it alr because I can always change to be better

3a) Coping mechanisms for the urge:

·         Recognize the urge and physically get away from the trigger if possible

·         Sit somewhere and write out Fibonacci numbers or count how many red things there are in a room

·         Sit somewhere and close eyes, try to remember why im doing this, my motivations etc.

·         Call/ Text Immediate support system (Eli, Aamir, El, Chester, JP)

·         Call/ Text family (James, Andrew, Mummy)

·         Call NAMS helpline and speak to a counsellor

·         Call SOS or NUS 24hr hotline

·         Plug in music and blast it really loud esp rap, then get angry instead of sad. Remember the military voice in my head to stop being a pussy and tahan the withdrawal

·         Watch something/ read something

·         Go to another store (supermarket to count calories, clothes stores) and maybe buy something

3b) Punishments and rewards

Punishment: addition of days as mentioned above+go for a run (at least 2km)

Reward: buy dessert for myself at the end of the day/record a short cover/ do a small collage+paste a sticker in my diary

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