.

Posted on by paperflamingoes

writing down everything so that I can remember these moments of weakness and remind myself that I still managed to walk out of them alright.

i guess tonight was one of those nights. having had fun out surrounded by friends and distracted from the hollowness and emptiness in me, i laughed and joked and had fun. but the moment i was left alone, i feel myself choked up with tears. and once at home, all of a sudden, the tears just can’t seem to stop.

these times always feel the worse, because the truth of how i actually feel inside makes me feel pathetic. honestly. what a lie of a life im living. i was just trying my best to be in the present moment and enjoy simple happy moments with friends, so why does that have to make the emptiness more apparent when everything is gone? it’s so tiring,

it’s so tiring when i can’t seem to fend off thoughts that tell me that all happiness is temporary and that i will never be able to feel something like that. it’s so tiring to try to remember what happiness used to feel like.

as always, tomorrow will be a better day i hope

 

goodbye wordpress.

 

A slump.

Posted on by paperflamingoes

Today is the third day since the vetting on Sunday, and while I told myself that after I slept the night away on Sunday, Monday will be a better day, I still can’t seem to stop crying whenever I think about it.

I hate this slump I’m in, and I hate the self-hate that’s piling up, the same ones I’ve tried to slowly remove over the past few months.

Bangtan has always been there for me in both happy and sad times. Their words comfort me in a way that is very bewildering to me. But then again it’s not surprising, perhaps because they have experienced the very same feelings before, and hence are able to put them into such poetic lyrics that seek to comfort and heal those who listen to it.

Recently, while watching their happy videos, I start to cry even while laughing. I cried while watching run videos, while watching their funny compilations, while reading their stories on BTS World, and now, after I’ve watched Lights, their new Japanese single that dropped an hour ago.

The lyrics once again spoke to me, and they hit so close to home the tears fell before I knew it. They make me so happy that they make the sadness apparent.

“When I can’t answer any calls or texts on Sunday, I’m not in the mood for anything.”
“Though not very often, I feel sick of it. I feel a little helpless right now.”

“I don’t wanna listen to just happy songs.”
“I’ll face my loneliness, color my life.”
“Losing and gaining, but I’m still searching for something today.”

“Yeah I believe that things will change.”
“No one is perfect.”
“Even this moment has its own meaning.”

“I never thought there’ll be a sleepless night.”
“Turns out they weren’t lies and it made me get stronger.”
“What is love?”
“If there’s an answer I wanna know right now.”

“I’m breaking down I can see there’s light inside.”
“Dawn will come to the darkest of nights.”
“Overcome, even in the future, we won’t stop from now on.”
“Decide for yourself what it means to be happy.”

“Everyday, take a step to grow up.”

“Sometimes it’s ok to show weakness.”
“It’s ok to be you.”
“Don’t lie to yourself anymore.”

We were told on Sunday that our performance is lacking, and it shows that we don’t care enough. I know for myself that it is true, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. Since a year ago, I experienced a dance slump for the first time in my life after my worst bout of depression a year ago. I cried back then, the way I did on Sunday. Since then I’ve never felt the same kind of happiness I used to feel when I devote myself to this ‘passion’ of mine. I can’t seem to care as much as I used to. I want to be happy, I want to enjoy it, but I can’t. This feeling and guilt is paralyzing. To be told in such a harsh way what I’ve already realized for myself the past year, but yet am unable to get myself out of, has me thinking that perhaps it’s time I stopped dancing altogether.

What is the real me anymore? It feels like I’ve lost my old self, the one who believed that anything is possible if you tried, the one who believed that there is nothing more important and happy than working hard at a passion that you have.

All of those beliefs have since been clouded over by reality, negativity and a sense of helplessness.

It hurts, knowing that the things that used to make me happy no longer do so and might never do so again.

Sometimes I wish I can disappear off the face of the world, quietly, like I have never existed. Because I have existed there are relationships formed, and because of that, thoughts like this may hurt the people around me.

There is no place specific I want to go, perhaps somewhere where I’m away from people. A place where no one can contact me.

A place that is just nothingness.

used to this

Posted on by paperflamingoes

I think I’m used to this

crying for no reason

feeling like there’s no hope left in this world

fighting inside for a reason to live

feeling ashamed that I don’t feel more reasons to be

 

i love listening to sad songs, because they tell my story, and it’s as though the people in it are trying to reach out for help too

but i hate listening to sad songs because certain words make me cry

words like happiness and smile and a wish and hope for a better tomorrow

I think i’m used to this

hiding my tears behind my hair

putting my face down because I feel vulnerable

trying to quietly wipe the tears without bringing attention to myself

because no one cries out like that in public

I think I’m used to it

Healing is difficult, after all.

Posted on by paperflamingoes

Some days are like today.

I’ve had so much planned, I woke up okay, ate breakfast, felt ok, and wanted to allocate lots of study hours for my last and final exam paper.

But come mid-day, I knew it was going to be another of those days again.

I’m not tired but I can’t seem to budge from my bed, and I fall into restless and short lapses of sleep. But even so, I can’t seem to have the energy nor the motivation to get out of bed and do something productive.

The tears well up hot in my eyes occasionally, but they don’t well out. They dry and return, a couple of times throughout the day.

A month to two weeks ago, I was feeling great, and I believed that I am finally, finally, taking bigger steps toward recovery. However, the slump came back once again.

What’s the reason? I ask myself all the time as well, because if there was one, I could fix it.

Like before, I just couldn’t find one. Does this mean I’m not looking hard enough?
.

.

.

.
If life was a game, I could die and reload again, and have another go.
If the world was a game instead, that’ll be great, because it hurts so much.
I need to heal my medic.

I blame myself who couldn’t be perfect.
Brake in my head, brake in my step, always.
I wanted to do well, I wanted to smile.
Damn.

 
– Jamais Vu

Alone.

Posted on by paperflamingoes

This post is meant to be a healing one.

After this, I will try, my best, not to let my feelings continue consuming me for the rest of the day.

Perhaps because there is no right answer, but there’s so much to consider that I need to write down how I feel now, lest I forget.

Recently I’ve been learning how to deal with loneliness. It’s a funny predicament, isn’t it?

The loneliness is scary and hard to bear because there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it. What’s worse is that there’s no marker to tell me that things are not how it is, when my mind tries to be its own devil.

But I want to be alone. Countless times I’ve wished that I can disappear off the surface of the world. However, human connections are precious and important, and important people make life matter. So as not to bring harm to those people, it becomes a wish that I was never born at all. My mind tells me it’s better that way.

I don’t hate people, but I freeze up inside with anxiety when I have to talk to others, even those that I used to be close to. I know that in reality, these relationships probably haven’t changed. But the voice in my head tells me they did, which is why it feels like ‘I used to be’ close. It keeps telling me that these people find it irritating when they have to talk to me. That I have to stop being such a burden to others.

It’s so annoying, I’m annoying, it says. Fucking get a grip, it says. I can’t do that, it says. That’s why you suck, it says.

Life is so long, and I want to live it well. It’s precious, this chance to live, this chance to exist right now and figure things out with everyone else, because we are as lost as each other, and we are all here for support.

I just want to get better, am I applying the same twisted mentality to my recovery as well? The tiring part is maybe, not the ‘feeling better’. I can do that once in a while. The harder part is the feeling of sliding back into the slump I was in.

I’ve climbed two steps, but fall down three. When will it end? Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t have to focus on the end, but on the now?

I don’t know. Concepts, theories, advice. I nod at them, I understand, I try but they fall through. Does that mean I am not trying hard enough?

Why does it all seem so useless?

Incoherent post, well of course. As messy as my unsorted thoughts.

Let go. Let go of all these today, or at least for the next few hours.

Stop letting the demon eat you up inside.

everything goes.

Posted on by paperflamingoes

I’ve just changed the title of my post.

naturally, I had typed it out as — ‘on days that I want to die’.

do people want to die because they want to, or do they want to because they want it all to end?

the pain, the shame, the self-blame, and the crushing disappointment, was it just a simple wish to end them all?

perhaps more aptly,
everything goes.

the pain that one is experiencing, excruciatingly, in this moment, it goes.
the pain that one wants to end forever, that too, goes.

we are all choosing just one way to make it go.
for some, there could be ‘better’ ways to make them go.
in terms we are used to, it’s called coping, instead of running.

coping isn’t more right than running, but it seems to be, because there’s lesser loss.

there are things I’ve come to realise
they come knocking in its raw entirety like a silent scream in the still night
the scream is in my head

it’s easier to cope when there’s a clear goal and an end,
it’s the way things go.
people don’t waste effort on endeavours that seem to go nowhere
what makes this illness evil is
it erases that goal for you
leaving no trace behind

wandering souls in a foggy abyss
it’s hard to explain why our eyes can see a fog that others cannot

I am proud of them however, everyone else, for they’ve built themselves minds strong enough
strong enough to keep the fog at bay
strong enough to keep them away from the abyss.

Their minds should be honoured.

for us, who wander and are lost
perhaps we are just clinging to the small cry of help
for the day we believe
that our minds can be honoured too

Chains

Posted on by paperflamingoes

There is so much to say, but nothing quite fits the bill.

Many times, I used to think that words are the all-powerful tool of human communication. They convey deep feelings, tell stories of individuals. They draw tears, they make smiles. These days, the words are at the tip of my tongue, and like before, perhaps more than before, I swallow them whole.

I reject them with my entire existence, for they feel dry and incomplete when uttered, when written. Nothing quite fits the bill.

The incompleteness reminds me of how inadequate I am in understanding and explaining my own condition. The helplessness is forced inwards, and I kill myself a little more inside.

Can I say the truth? May I?

I’m afraid, because there’s nothing I can see through the fog.

I’ve come to realise something deeply, that there are two sides to everything — the before and the after. I was once in the before, before I was diagnosed, before I was paralysed, before I became numb, before I became empty.

During then, there were many before’s and after’s. They were felt at the turn of every event, big or small. The after’s were almost always wiser than the before’s.

With depression, it convinces you that there will not be a better or a wiser after. You are in the permanent and painful after, and for the first time ever, you realise the before had always been better.

It was that sort of condition that messes with your mind, the kind that makes you abandon yourself in a ditch, the kind that makes you look down at your fallen self and laugh, the kind that makes you believe that you fully deserve to be abandoned.

It was that sort of condition.

I have always been naturally inquisitive about understanding human emotions. I was glad when friends told me that I “understand them very well” and that I always seem to “describe their feelings well”.

I was glad to be of help to those important to me, to make them feel understood. That was something I had been proud of, that I could help lighten their mental burdens in some way or another.

The ironic thing is, that is the very same thing that is now chaining me down. My mental consciousness lives like a person separate from me, and it is poisoning me from within.

I look down, and the chains lead into the fog all around me. They are connected to the before, that now seems so far, and the after, that is even further. I am in limbo.

At times like this, life… it just feels painfully long.

until when do I have to live like this?

I don’t live because I can’t die, but I’m chained to something.
– forever rain; RM

Occupying space

Posted on by paperflamingoes

We’re all here for a short amount of time in an infinite loop of time. Who’s there to see the start of time, and who will be there to see its end?

If it is true, that people live and die and get reborn, we might actually be living the entirety of time. Just different names, different bodies. Different stories, different lives. Despite so, one thing remains, this inescapable loop of life and death.

When given this short amount of time to live and breathe as this consciousness, this identity we own right now, how do we decide what we want to do with it?

Birth is not a choice, and death sometimes may be. When the world oversees death, it sees too many, too much. That’s why it moves on, a new day, a new life, like nothing has changed. Death is only shocking to those who have a short time in one consciousness, people occupying this space in this one time frame cut out of eternity. We get surprised, upset, affected, when someone chooses to end something already so short. It’s wasn’t theirs to begin, but it was theirs to end, and it wasn’t our place to say otherwise.

Yesterday, at 6am in the morning, another person left the world on the cold hard floor of the recently built learning hub in our school. The blue tent and blue tape were there the whole morning, and students milled about with hushed voices, wide eyes. What happened? He was only 22, male, a second-year student. What a pity.

Today morning I walked into the building, with a bitter lump of emptiness in the back of my throat. What was I expecting? More explanation perhaps, explanation for things that were already clear as day. We are always seeking explanations for things we can’t explain. For things that supposedly did not make sense. But it did, and always did. People feel things that makes sense to themselves all the time, not anyone else.

Maybe I expected that classes will be moved away for the time being because hundreds of students pass by the area everyday but how could that even be? There was no reason to wait, when the world has shown time and again that it moves on well, and quickly. I stared at the empty spot where the blue tent was pictured yesterday. At the dirtied, grimy and rough brown tiles. It showed no trace, it was cold, unfeeling, and un-telling.

The spot where someone took his last breath yesterday morning, lying on those cold tiles in the cold morning before the warmth of the sun, broken and staring up at the circular piece of sky. The last piece of sky. Today, everything is back to normal. Tomorrow it’ll be as well. Time will pass and the past will be buried along with everything else.

Someone once explained that the night appeared to be apt for leaving and saying goodbyes, because it’s the end of a day. An end at an end. The next day will come and a brand new day will start. A new start means new beginnings, means proper moving-ons without yesterday’s weight. That’s why goodbyes in the mornings, it’s uncalled for.

Maybe it was a silent protest, because there are no good times for goodbyes, and no good explanations for one that’s been brought forward before it’s due.

Living, breathing,
living.

Tomorrow will come and it will go, and time will continue to live carelessly, the way it has always been.

Only those who remember become trapped in the past, trying to find sense within the cold mad world.

They never quite get away.

 

4 months later, I became depressed

Posted on by paperflamingoes

There, I said it.

I have to admit, my heart sank when I returned to this blog of mine, and read my last post before this one, the one dated in February last year, almost a year ago from now.

I was never one to re-read my old posts. Not blog posts, and not even my own personal diary, the classic pen to paper, tucked away in one corner of my shelf. It always felt painful to do so, probably because I always felt most compelled to jot down my feelings when they reach their most intense, and I had to get it out somewhere. And those intense feelings, they are extremely painful for me to revisit. That’s why I run. I run and still I run away.

Mindfulness has become a keyword of mine for 2019. I told myself that this year, I will be more honest, or try my best to be. I need to be honest to heal, and I need to stop running away. I know I have always been doing so, escaping.

You did well, the me from February 2018. You tried your best to fight your demons. From being aware of your insecurities, from silently screaming at those that tear you down, from fighting wilfully with the emotional logic of your mind. You did well enough then to protect your heart.

You did all you could then, in the moment of vulnerability, but yet, it was just as you said. There were only two outcomes. One that builds you up at the perceived end, and one that tears you down.

Unfortunately then, you believed that you would be strong enough. (And I really want to give you a big big hug for being so brave.) You recognised the unexplainable fear that clenches your heart when you think of the unpredictable end, and you tried to fight, but it happened anyway.

Four months later, my mind was torn apart, and I became clinically depressed. My emotional logic turned against me, and it made me an empty vessel. It was even hard to pen down my thoughts the way I used to. I lost my ability to fight and make sense of the unknown and resigned myself to live with a reduced state of my own mind. It was like the light switch in my life turned off, and disappeared to a place that I can no longer find.

Sometimes I wonder if there were signs all along, signs telling me that I should take better care of myself, before I was shoved into and made to live in this dark abyss of my own mind.

These past few months weren’t easy, nothing made sense. Was life always this hopeless? This questioned plagued me everyday. I knew that it wasn’t, in my heart, but I underestimated how tough the fight is, when your opponent is yourself. When your own body works against you.

Everyday I try to convince myself of the better, and everyday it resists. This journey is long – I can tell – I see the bricks of the path I need to take laid out before my eyes, under my nose, and everyday I take a small step forward.

In the distance however, the bricks fall away, and I can’t see where they lead. It seems, the fear and the unknown never goes away. It stays, far in the distance, but close enough to remind me that I can’t be careless.

I’m lost, but still I try. It’s getting tougher to do so, and I find myself wishing everyday that things could go back to the way it was, to a time in the distant past when it was easier to try. I had taken that time for granted, for the past 21 years of my life.