Posts tagged wholehearted
In summary: When Elizabeth Wurtzel’s life went well, she was happy. As Sigmund Freud said, two of the most important aspects of anyone’s life are love and work. When Elizabeth Wurtzel did well in these areas of her life, she was happy - and with no help from psychiatry. When her life went poorly, she was despondent or “depressed,” whether or not she was taking Prozac and lithium or other psychiatric drugs or undergoing other psychiatric “therapy.” Whether she realizes it or not, her 368 page memoir illustrates that her salvation, both before and after Prozac, came from living a life she enjoyed, not from any of psychiatry’s so-called therapies.
Specially for Megan
I’ve posted this picture before but this is really the only picture I have with Megan. Apparently there’s a German saying that if you meet a good person, you will meet him/her at least twice in your lifetime. Even though Megan is thousands of miles away, she’s been a really good friend. The morning after, after having had 2 hours of sleep, I remember reaching for my iPad and just calling the only other person I knew on FT and she picked up. And she’s been there, helping me up from afar: empathizing with me, challenging me to do things, sometimes simply agreeing that it sucks and not trying to make it seem as if it doesn’t. Now with iMessage, I can message her on her iPad and it’s so easy.
Since I’ve been back [for good, for now],my friendships are with people have changed, some more than others. I’m probably different, they’re probably different and we’ve just grown apart which is entirely conceivable as we’ve had such different experiences in the last 5 years of our lives.
I have been lucky to have made new friends.
Today, my gratitude is for friends, both here and away. I know I am emotionally draining right now. I know I’m really hard to deal with and sometimes it seems as if nothing you do is right. I want you to know that there’s really nothing you need to do. Just be there and I’m grateful.
The things that make me happy
It is somewhat confusing how one day can be so different from the previous. Yesterday was a 2 and today I rate it an 8.
Brunch. Or breakfast, depending on what time food is consumed.
Today, I had brekkie with Joel. He’s a friend I’m really thankful for. We’ve been friends since end 2003. He’s seeing someone now but we’ve still remained good friends. We have great conversations every time we meet up and we though we don’t meet up often, it’s always easy to pick up where we’ve left off. I know if I needed something really importantly or urgently, he’d do his best to help me. So a few days ago, I told him that I was in the hospital recently but instead of trying to talk over the phone while I was Wee Nam Kee chicken rice, we decided on breafast today.
We went to Hatched, which is a little more troublesome to go to if you don’t drive though the new Circle Line should make it much easier. As its name suggest, it’s all about eggs! I had the Baked Billy Oozy bake egg. It’s slightly different from what’s described in the menu - it had caramalized onions (not my fave) and pesto (which I did like). Joel had the Burly Benedict - corned Wagyu beef and a poached egg. I love breakfasts, especially breakfasts that are centered around eggs.
Conversation with Joel is always good. And I want to get to know Joey, his girlfriend more. I like her.
Other things that made me happy today.
(Window) shopping at Lemon Zest at Holland Village and Phoon Huat. Cheese at Cold Storage - my faves are soft cheeses like Camembert and Brie. Champagne or Brut or Cava - anything with bubbles. And my pretty new float skirt from Mango which I’ve bought for a number of weeks that I haven’t worn.
I’ll have more “proper” pics of breakfast with my GF1 but today was a happy day. Like I said 8/10. The inertia always makes starting difficult but once one gets going it’s so much easier to keep it up. I was happy walking around Holland Village myself waiting for CC, taking pics of things that “made me happy” with my iPhone. Baking makes me happy and I made more sesame cake for my aunt when I go over to her place tomorrow. Chatting with CC about our business plan makes me happy. Joel remarked today that although I say that I have nothing anchoring myself down at the moment, he takes heart in seeing some things not changing - I may not take as many pictures but I still do. And the things I seem to be passionate and enthusiastic, talking about them, are creative things.
Yeah, I’m excited to be making a laptop bag tomorrow with the help of my aunt. I also would like her to take a look at the dress pattern that is beyond my level of understanding.
Little steps maybe, baby steps. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to realise that I can be happy just being me and doing the things that I like, independently of others. The time now is me time. The cards are right. I’m sure I’ll still have bad days but I have good ones too and I recognise them for what they are now.
“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest their horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”
“That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”
“Well then, why should I listen to my heart?”
“Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.
In 2010, my heart was telling me that it wasn’t right. But it only told me part of the truth. It didn’t tell me that things haven’t been right for a very long time. If I had even listened to that mustard seed of truth, things might have been different today. Had I the courage to lean into the discomfort that was coming through from the past beyond even then, I really might not be where I am today, struggling.
Emily said that I’d taken a wrong turn, but that somehow this wrong turn was something that I had to take. I don’t know how good a gypsy she is but the cards all seem to say the same thing. And my heart, my heart is still a traitor. It’s still telling me things that my head refuses to agree to.
He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.
Gabriel García Márquez, Love In The Time Of Cholera
I never did finish the book. I left it in London. Looking through some of my photos of New York, I was reminded of this passage in the book. Was I happy then? Yes without a doubt. Did my world crash? Of course it did. But I was happy again. And even though right this moment, it seems as if the dawn will never arrive, I think it might. I just don’t really know when yet.
New York 2012
New York was somewhat planned for the fall of 2012 - for my birthday actually. I had great hopes and dreams and plans, new places to go, new things to try. Flights and accommodation have even been booked. I don’t know what’s going to happen with those tickets and perhaps I might not stay at the Sheraton by Central Park, but I’m hoping and planning to be in New York this September, to celebrate my birthday. It might be slightly different from what I envisioned but I’m determined to make it there.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt at home in New York. I never worried about getting lost and while I always had friends there, either living there or travelling through.
Dearest New York, one day I will wake up to your sunrises and jog along the East River. I will drink in bars on the Lower East Side and ice skate in Central Park. Dearest New York, I will work towards my dreams and one day they will come true.
My favorite song right now and a music video beautifully shot.
I have died every day waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more
And all along I believe I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have love you for a thousand years
I’ll love for a thousand more
~
This is for you.
New beginnings
Life for me, was thrown upside down about 7 weeks ago. Short of going into the painful details, I’ve been struggling. And my struggle has turned into a downward spiral of depression. Yesterday, I was admitted to hospital for observation. I sat on the ledge of my (parents’) 9th storey apartment. I don’t know if I would have hurled myself off. I wasn’t afraid but in the eyes of the doctors, this was a dangerous act.
I struggle with the feeling that life isn’t worth it (anymore). If I am really honest with myself, I probably needed help a long time ago. I probably should not have stopped the meds that I was on in 2010/2011 but at one point things (the situation) seemed alright, really. I don’t know medically what’s going on in my brain but maybe I should have stuck on with them even when I wasn’t sure. But enough is enough and I need to take responsibility for my life now. Last night, I was admitted to the Singapore General Hopsital for observation. Tonight, I swallowed my 2nd cocktail of Fluvoxamine & Diazepam - which should help with my depression & anxiety disorder, and insomnia.
Today, I teared once, just once. And only when I talked about It. So much has happened and I feel as if all my hopes and dreams have been ripped out from under me and I can’t see any way out of the humungous chasm I’ve fallen into. What makes it worse - I don’t know which part of the chasm I’m in. I don’t know if I’ve hit rock bottom yet or if there’s still a distance to go. They say that the meds help clear the fog. It doesn’t change the situation, but if there’s a chance that I might be able to view the situation in a different light that might possibly help me, I’m jumping at the chance.
Besides my parents, I had a few visitors today. My favourite grandma came. An old friend from Sunday School a long time ago came for a bit. And Emily (Paper Tiger Press) dropped by with a chocolate treat from Canelé and her deck of Tarot cards. And Emily was really kind and did a reading for me as she’s sorta known that I’ve been out of sorts lately.
I guess what I have come to believe in terms of “the future,” be it Tarot cards or fortune telling or faith in God or the Universe is that there is something (much) bigger than me out there and it is connected to me in some way. I believe that we know subconsciously much more than we do consciously - what’s good for us, what we want, what we need to do.
When It happened and I fled to Malaysia to be with Ling who shared her Goddess Oracle cards with me. I calculated the probability of drawing any given card to be about 2.27%. But it feels that there is something bigger than me guiding me, telling me in the cards time and time again, that this is what I need to do: take some [I don’t know how much] time out, learn who I am again, be happy with who I am. Focus on being me.
Emily’s cards today said that I may have taken a wrong turn in life but this seeming wrong turn was something that I needed to do. There are journeys left to be taken, paths to charter, roads that may take me to foreign lands. There will be money, money related to something foreign and/or travel. Even though right now, my core is full of anxiety and worry, it will not stay forever as the Sun card trumps the Owl card. My travels or journeys or movement are key in my growth and abundance.
While this doesn’t explicitly say that I need to take time out, Emily’s cards were also very about myself. Emily said that she’d done a reading for a friend whose cards were very social and friendship related and mine was definitely the opposite of that. At the moment too, there are no relationships. I guess for me, this really reinforces the Goddess cards. There are new beginnings. But for something new to come, the old must make way. And I need to chart the waters independently and strong.
Today I sit in the hospital and hope that I’m strong enough to leave the old behind and embrace newer things, better things, believe that I’m leaving rock bottom. I wonder if the meds will help clear the fog. I wonder if I can once again, believe in myself that I can achieve great things and fulfil my dreams, of which I have many.
I was at Brian Ferry’s blog today and he linked to an interview with Mikael Kennedy and the words that resonated with me were “Every moment in my past has brought me to where I am today, to this moment, what ever it may be” and “I realized I could make my life into anything I wanted, that I could choose my reality. That was when I put myself fully into this, that I decided to just go and see what happened, nothing else mattered.”
After having neglected this blog forever, I finally found words that came from a place in my heart that wasn’t a sad, angry, depressed place. I finally feel that perhaps, just perhaps, my life might not be a closed book after all. Tomorrow, I’ve asked my dad to bring me my camera with my fave 25mm lens and for starters, I’m doing the Feb photo a day challenge.
Jeanne and Mia are doing it with me. I think Emily might too. Since we all met at Pooja’s bookmaking class, I think I’d like to bind mine and turn it into a book. I’m also going to attempt this with my Lumix GF1. Oh and might I say that I’m very thankful for new people I’ve met since coming back to Singapore. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to the artsy meetup tomorrow (I don’t know if I have yet a “get out of jail free” card but if I do and have the energy to, I will try. New beginnings afterall. It’s time to learn to love me.
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