Tag Archives: resilience

There Is More To My Story

Posted on by bitter.sweet.alive

Arm muscles tense, anticipating.

I look to the ceiling, focusing on the hanging light.

A brief distraction; the needle drags across my skin.

Fuck. My courage falters.

I couldn’t do this to myself.

ying yang semicolons

I got a tattoo today. Physically it is two separate tattoos on separate parts of the body, but I say that it is one; connected. It’s a strange feeling, being ambivalent about something that is permanent. It is still fresh, colour jarringly bright, not yet aged and faded. I don’t yet love it: I don’t know if I ever will. It’s not really aesthetically nice. A lesson on acceptance of permanent imperfection?

One on the inside of each wrist, a marker to remind me that when life is totally fucked up, there will be more. Just, more. Not a qualitative “more”, I don’t know if it will be better or worse. The important thing is that I don’t end my story.

On some  of the occasions that I have thought about harming myself or ideated on suicide, my mind has gravitated to my wrists. I would forlornly look at my wrists, images flashing through my mind. I would cover my wrist with my hand, close my eyes, willing myself to stop thinking. From now on, when I look at my wrists, if I be forlorn and desperate, I will be reminded that there is more to my story, more untold.

The semicolon, a marker at a seemingly end of a sentence, but indicates that there is more to come. Not only something more, but something that is connected to what has just been. I’ve liked punctuation for a long time. Punctuation herds words into ideas. It tells us when to breathe. My semicolons will remind me that there is more to my story; to breathe.

Tattooing, in a way, is a form of self-harm. A sharpness, running across the skin, drawing blood. Today’s act was a defiance to any future self-harm that I may do. And fuck, it hurt. I don’t think I could ever cut my skin with my own hand. If ever I wanted to self harm, my semicolons will remind me that there is more to my story, and the pain that I persevered.

 

Energy Crash Part 2

Posted on by bitter.sweet.alive

Continuing my last post Energy Crash.

YouTube has been my symbiotic the last 2 days. I figured out that my symptoms/behaviours have been physcomotor retardation. Everything is so exhausting and too much. I woke up at 4am, exhausted and really stressed. I could feel my glands pump out stress hormones into my body, like I was constantly in the fight/flight response. These were the feelings why yesterday I felt the need to sleep so much, I was escaping away from the stress into the forgetfulness of sleep.

Anhedonia: the loss of being able to experience pleasure in life. Fuck, I have been experiencing this for so long. Food & sex = meh …

This is not the first time that I have realised this. This is not the first time of experiencing these. My doctors have explained it to me as well, many times. But I have problems with memory during a depressive state. I ruminate on traumas, not remember useful information that could give me an objective perspective.

Ergh, my mind feels like a thick cloud. I can hardly string a few sentences together.

I wish the ocean was wood.

Posted on by bitter.sweet.alive

Sitting, and also creeping through the morning traffic. People on their way to work. On their way to earn the dollars they think they need to survive. Slightly late for a yoga class. Anxious, knowing that I have been told that it is good for me, that it will help my mental resilience. Body and mind are one. It is mindful. I am letting myself down for being late, if only a little.

Where is the available parking? Okay, keep going. It is just a little bit farther. How late will I be if I have to walk more?

I hit the curb. Okay, try again. I hit the curb, again. Tears well in my eyes and I can’t see properly.

I can’t do this.

“Sometimes I wish the ocean was wood. I feel like drowning.”

Such small stresses, but they built up, and I just cracked. For the past 2 weeks, I have been feeling like a fog has been numbing my emotions; I didn’t feel sad and hopeless like I used to, but I didn’t feel much at all really. But as I was failing to park my car when I was late for my class, that fog disappeared and I just started to cry. I couldn’t handle, well, anything. I went home and wrote this post. I started to cry again as I drove home.

I can see objectively that these stressors are relatively mundane. My resilience is so low though. I am just so tired of putting so much effort into normal mundane things. I feel as if, mundane stress is like a 5kg weight that everyone carries around, but I’ve lost all my muscle strength. Most people carry that weight just fine, or even with ease. But I have to use so much more effort just to carry that normal weight. Sometimes I don’t feel like I can even do that by myself. Building mental strength / resilience is such a slow process. Part of me, the saboteur, wants me to fail. Keeping him quiet, not letting the saboteur have power, takes a lot of what little energy I have.

Feeling distressed? Please, see my “getting help now” tab at the top of the page.