Thirty and Thriving

An update for the blog.

Hey there. It's been literally years since I came back to this blog again. My life has grown and veered off in so many different directions, it somehow made reading through all my previous posts feel like I was a vapid, air-headed teenager that didn't know enough about life. Haha.. I guess at some point, we all look back at our teen years and cringe. I am thirty this year. Can you believe it? I can't! I have so many white hairs on my head now, I've almost given up trying to color it back. My joints ache on and off. I'm taking supplements to help maintain some vitality (or at least give me the placebo effect that I'm doing something about my vitality). 18 year old me would have been horrified to see how she had grown up. =P

But you know what? I am proud of where I am. I struggled through depression and plenty of mental abuse from my parents to be where I am today. They still do abuse me every now and then but somehow, being 30 gave me the freedom to ignore it and move on with my life. Not to say that the things they say doesn't bug me, but I think I've gained the capacity to move past it and not let it bother me for too long. That fuck it attitude may rub others the wrong way... but fuck it. I worked too hard to gain it, if you don't like it then it's not my problem. As always, paiya was and has been a constant rock and an inspiration for me. Yes, we're still together. We've been married for over a year now, in fact. LDR success story, huh? <3 Over 12 years of being in a relationship (and a long-distance one at that) and just over 6 months of living with each other.. even I cannot fathom where all that time went. After reading through some of my earliest posts about him yesterday, I told him one thing when we were in bed last night. After all these years, I'm living the way I dreamed of. Taking care of our home together, cooking and eating together, exploring the world together.. these were things that the 17 year old me would have been wildly hoping for but would have not believed would eventually happen.

I am happy. For someone who went through clinical depression ever since I set foot into medical school, this statement is like feeling the sun on your face for the first time after a long and hard winter. I am genuinely happy. Of course we have our issues and disagreements. We end up hurting each other at times and also irritating each other. But the love is always there, and we always work our way back to it together. The love we have feels like it has grown and matured into something beautiful and solid. It fills my heart with so much of strength and courage to face the world, as long as he is by my side. It's awesome.. that feeling.

If only my relationship with my parents was that easy. Being in a healthy relationship with my husband made me realize how toxic my own family was to me. I knew they were the main reason I ended up depressed, but I'm still identifying all the trauma responses in me due to the way I was treated when I was young. Trying to unlearn my defense mechanisms and relearn healthier ones has been a major challenge for me since I started living together with paiya. Because my defense mechanisms protect my emotions but are in turn toxic and hurtful to him. I ended up unintentionally straining our relationship a few times all because I didn't know how to regulate my emotions safely. And yes, I blame my upbringing for that. Don't get me wrong. They did their responsibility as parents well. They go above and beyond, in fact. But that comes with a massive pile of expectations that is masked as love and wanting the best for me. If I choose not to conform to those expectations, I am a disappointment and failed them as their daughter. For a long time, the emotional burden of trying to fulfil their expectations drained the life and soul out of me. I worked hard to shed that, but I'm still a work in progress.

To them, the fact that I decided not to specialize is the biggest disappointment. They feel that I'm squandering my education and I'm being very complacent in my position. They hate the fact that I'm not working in a hospital anymore, because apparently doctor's working in a Klinik Kesihatan are not doctors. -_- I survived through housemanship, I survived working as an MO in medical for a year and ETD for almost 2 years. I've never felt at home as much as working in a KK has felt. Not only am I using my medical knowledge more, there is the unbeatable fact that I am working office hours now. I have weekends... after 5 years of working, I am finally experiencing weekends like everyone else. So they can say all they want, but I've come to a point where my sole focus is to keep myself happy.

If I'm not happy, there's no way I can keep anyone else around me happy. So that is my main priority. I struggled to do a degree I didn't like for their sakes. I'm not about to repeat the same thing again for a master's degree, just because they want to see me become a specialist. If I choose to do it, it will be because I genuinely want to put in the effort for it. Not because they want it.

So yeah... as you can guess, a lot has happened in the last 10 years. At the end of the day, I am content with where I am right now and I guess that's all that matters. :)

LUCIFER (2016-2021) 2.13 | A Good Day to Die

Waves

I’ve always wondered what it was about the waves of the sea that captivated me so. Something about those undulating rolls of briny water and sand constantly breaking upon the shore in a never ending cycle never failed to stir strong emotions in me and trigger my inner introspection.  In a way... my depression right now is much like the waves of my beloved sea. It comes in waves. There are moments when I’m smiling and happy. I’m able to be cheerful and to focus on my job as it comes.  But there are also moments when the depression overwhelms. The dark waves rear up and pull me under in its turbulence and just like that.. I’m struggling to breathe.  It’s a trial for me to remain positive. It’s a daily struggle to wake myself up enough to get out of bed, to muster enough energy to face another day full of ups and downs. I tell myself that that’s what life is all about... but it’s a challenge to make myself accept in enough to go with the flow.  In days like these, I remember the younger me. The person I used to be that could always make myself look at the brighter side of any difficult situation I was in. I miss myself.  I haven’t felt like I’ve been myself in forever. Of course, it’s not all the time. There were moments like me getting my tattoo done that brought back that irrefutable sense of “me” back for a few days. But nothing seems to last or bring that me back to myself again.  It’s so disheartening to lose sight of who you are as a person. To lose your sense of self, that inner guide that let you know how to respond to a sudden turn of tide in your life. It feels like I’m left floating, hanging on to dear life on a piece of driftwood and hoping I’d have enough strength not to let go and just drown. 

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The Final Days Of The World

My Story

Fair warning ahead, this is going to a be a long post. I have no other avenue to vent my hurt and frustration. And as humiliating it is to talk about this, I strongly believe that it needs to be said because I would not wish what is happening to me to happen to any other girl out there. 

My story begins from the time I was a 14 year old girl. My mom and her siblings are quite close-knit. We hang out with each other regularly and always meet up for the holidays. And her elder brother was a favourite uncle because he was cool and always knew how to make us children feel included. My story began when I got my first phone. Those were the days when we youngsters had to rely on a credit-based plan as part of our parents’ idea of teaching us responsibility. Credit for the phone line would come from our own pocket money so we had to learn to balance our expenditures. 

I forgot how my uncle ended up getting my number. He did somehow and he started texting me. He runs his own food business so sometimes he stays up until 2 or 3 in the morning selling food in the local street market. Initially, he texted me saying that he was bored and he wanted a friend to talk to. He was my favourite uncle and I liked that he considered me matured enough to be his friend. I began texting him and conversing with him too. 

The constant texts took a toll on my credit balance and he further hooked me into constantly texting him by topping up my balance with 20 to 30 bucks every week. For someone who learned to survive with 10 bucks for 2 weeks, it was a huge amount and I felt further obligated to keep him company when he used the excuse of being bored. My parents brought me up saying we should never accept something without giving something back in return, so I swallowed my discomfort at the growing attention he was paying me and carried on. The initial conversations were pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary. He’d ask me about my day, how was school.. how are my parents. Stuff like that. 

Then he slowly started getting personal. He’d ask me about my friends.. if I had any crushes. If I had any boyfriends. What would I do if I had a boyfriend. Have I ever been kissed. In my mind, it didn’t strike me at the time that his conversation topics were growing out of bounds, because he was my uncle. I trusted him. But eventually, even I began feeling uncomfortable at his probing questions and I started pulling away. He began guilting me into responding by pointing out that he was paying for my phone bill. 

One night, he went too far. He began texting as usual when out of nowhere, he started testing the waters saying that he had a question he wanted to ask me but he was worried I was not cool or open-minded enough to take it. After much leg pulling, he asked. “How big are your nipples?”

I cut all conversation with him and told him I didn’t want to text him anymore if he was going to keep talking like that. I thought it would end there. To my utter astonishment, a few days later, his wife called my number thinking that I was some bimbo preying on her husband. Even when she found out it was me, instead of admitting that her husband was a pedophile who was harassing his own niece, she made a huge fuss and blamed a 14 year old girl for trying to seduce her husband. She called up my mom and blew up about me. 

The biggest mistake I made in my life was deleting his texts. I was young and naive. I had never faced a situation like this before. And I was embarrassed by my uncle. So I erased his texts. This meant that I had no proof to support my claim. And until now, it hurts me so so bad that my mom never stood up for me. It hurts so much that instead of calling him out for what he is, the blame came squarely upon me that I had instigated him by texting him in the first place. I spent the next 2 years of my life avoiding him and refusing to be anywhere near him. 

When I was 16, he invited the whole family to get together for a beach vacation for New Year’s Eve. And since it was his invite, my mom warned me saying that it was impolite to be avoiding him after so long and she forced me to let things go. So I did. I tried my best to be polite and not cause him to look at me in that way again. The whole time we were there, I’d make myself sit in the table away from him. But after lunch, he came up to the table where my cousins and me were and sat himself down with a beer in his hand. He’d had a few by then so I don’t know if he was tipsy at the time. He sat next to me and began running his foot up my leg. Even when I pulled away, he’d start back again after a few minutes. I begged my brother to leave and he followed me out. 

The Eve dinner party was supposed to be by the beach with the promise of fresh grilled seafood and free flow booze. I was already traumatised by the afternoon incident so I made myself sit far away from him at the dinner table. But he did it again. And this time, my brother saw it. I got up on the pretense of getting myself a drink and when I came back, my brother had switched seats with me. But did that stop him? No. He ended up slouching as low as he could on his seat just so he could stretch his leg out to rub mine. I was close to tears by that point so I took my cousin sister and went out to the beach instead. 

He came with his children awhile later and made my cousin sister run after them. He came up behind me and hugged my waist. I pushed him away and ran back to my parents table. But yet I didn’t say a word because the last time I tried defending myself in my house, nobody stood up for me. Every one blamed me. So I kept my silence. 

The day after we came back from the beach, my brother broke it to my parents. And when I finally told them what happened, they still never fought for me. My mom actually said that if I never put myself out there to him when I was 14, none of this would have happened. At one point, she even defended him saying that he was drunk at the time and was not in control of his actions. I love my mom to bits, but this is one hurt I still carry so deep, it cuts like a knife every time I think about it. 

I resorted back to my old tactic of avoiding him at all costs. Even if I ended up meeting him in family functions, I wouldn’t talk to him. If he asked me a question, I’d give him a one-worded answer by looking at the floor or anywhere else but his face. And the harassment stopped for a while. Until a year back when he suffered a heart attack. Again, my mom told me I was being impolite, especially to someone who’s ill. 

So once again, I swallowed my terror and disgust towards him and talked somewhat normally. I didn’t go out of my way to make conversation but I wasn’t so rude to him either. I thought things were fine. Until the recent Diwali festivities this year. I noticed that he has now started eyeing me again. I’m a woman now. I know I’m not imagining it. I know how a male looks at a female like when he has “thoughts” in his head and that was the kind of look he has been giving me over the weekend. He began hinting that my college was only one hour away from his house so I should come over and stay if I was free. He started walking past me a little too close for my comfort. 

I came back to campus last night and exploded into terrified tears because I know he’s building up again. I can feel it. I don’t have the words to explain how terrified I am of him because time and time again, he has proven that whatever he does to me, he can get away with. I am stuck with no one else in my house to talk to or even believe my story to begin with. I have been branded for life as the one who is at fault. And I am now crying as I am typing this because I still feel so helpless. 

Please. To whoever who is reading this, just please. If you have a friend, a sister or a cousin who is telling you about a man harassing her, do NOT tell her she is at fault. Please help her out. Please stand up for her and show her that she is protected. Please don’t let her feel as vulnerable as I am feeling because no girl deserves to feel this way. Please.

The Art of Listening

The human brain is a funny thing. You can have everything in life going well for you but it’s still wired to make you anxious enough that you feel everything is in shambles and no one else out there gets you. It can be very easy for anyone to get irritated or upset with little things in life, enough to make a person feel like they’re lonely or that their life is a mess. As petty as people’s issues can seem to you as an outsider though, sometimes all they need is for you to take a minute out of your day and listen emphatically. Imagine yourself as best as you can in their shoes and just show them you’re listening and you’re there. They might not appreciate it immediately but they’ll feel it in their hearts as a burden set free. 

Sure, you can say that you have a lot going on in your lives too and maybe you really don’t have the time to spend for them or their issues. But are we really that tuned in to our own lives that we cannot look at another? Trust me when I say that if you really care about the person, no matter it be a friend, a child or a lover, you’d stop everything for them. Even so, many of us are yet to master the difference between listening to help and listening to give a response. 

It’s a daunting process when someone entrusts you with their emotions. One small word and it can all go wrong. Actively listening to someone when they approach you requires all parts of you, physically and mentally. 

You are not meant to listen and provide them with a solution to their problem. You are meant to guide them to it when they’re too clouded to see it. You are not meant to ridicule them for getting upset over what you deem is a small matter. You are meant to give them positive words and a shoulder to lean on for a moment. You are not meant to make them feel worse and cry tears of frustration. You are meant to be a catharsis and let them cry tears of relief. 

It’s a thing where, if done properly, requires little effort from your part but goes a long way to making them feel understood and ready to face their issues. If the world had a little more empathy, it would be a much better place to live in. 

Sometimes in life, no matter how hard you try to remain cheerful and keep your spirits up, things happen one after another and you just lose the energy to maintain that smile on your face. When you're someone who absorbs a lot of the negative emotions around you and tries to give positive vibes in return, you pretty soon have none of those vibes for yourself. What I wouldn't give to just leave it all behind for a moment and quietly enjoy the waves on a beach somewhere alone. Call it a form of meditation if you will, but there's something serene and calming about being alone with the beauty of nature around you. At least for awhile, none of your problems seem too big to cope with. There's a kind of strength you accumulate from being alone instead of lonely. #nightramblings

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Perhaps you never really leave. You stay. You crawled into my notebooks with loosely drawn hearts and I love yous. Your touches left their prints on my back like neon signs saying this, this is where you belong. You stay. I feel almost as close to you right now, wrapped around the scent of you lingering in my bed, as I do when my chest is pressed up against your chest - almost, but not quite the same. But you stay. Oh you stay. My lips still taste like the laughter I caught from yours.

(NJ.) // everywhere, all at once (via nostalgicjoy)

Learn to be alone and to like it. There’s nothing more freeing and empowering than learning to like your own company.

Mandy Hale (via hplyrikz)

Sometimes you meet someone and even though you never liked brown eyes before, their eyes are your new favourite colour.

(via hplyrikz)

A Happy Heart

An old friend visited me at home today and it felt good catching up with him. Talking to him reminded me of a version of myself that was young, innocent, naive and full of hope for the world and my future. Talking to him reminded me of the intoxicating crush I had on him and also of my heartbreak when he didn’t feel the same. Looking at his face, seeing those features that I once obsessed over so passionately... a small part of my heart stirred at the thought of what could have been. Perhaps, my heart will always have a soft spot for him. Forget the fact that it’s been 6 years since that heartbreaking incident occurred when I confessed and he politely refused me. 6 years. All these years later and he still made my heart flutter a little when he looked at me.  It was then that I realised that he was a lonely soul who had no close friends besides me. And that made him clutch on to my friendship and treat me special. The fact that he made me feel special was exactly why I had such a deep crush on him and why it’s still there a little bit even though I’ve moved on. He treats me special but only because of my friendship and companionship. Not because he’s interested in me romantically. Today was when I realised what I was too blind to see 6 years ago. He needs me as a friend, but nothing more.  I guess you can say it has been an introspective kind of day. The crush I had on him was the closest I ever came to actually falling in love and I tend to unconsciously compare my feelings for my boyfriend with the feelings I had for this guy every time he visits me. Today was the first time that I realised that things between me and him wouldn’t have worked out, even if he did accept my proposal all those years ago.  He’s a sweet guy who knows exactly how to treat a girl right. But, being with him felt like hiding myself, even now. My relationship with him is comfortable, mostly because of the 8 years of friendship we have. I can see now that I only wanted to be with him because of how he made me feel, not because of who he was. At most, I tolerated him because he was my friend but I usually tend to disagree with the way he lives his life or chases his goals. Personally, I always found him a little too laid back and not as responsible for his future as I’d have liked him to be. But I purposely blinded myself to that because he made me feel like I was the only girl who mattered in his life. Which was true in the sense that he had no other friends who listened to him as much as I do. I just misinterpreted the attention he was giving me.  Today also made me realise why instead of having just a deep crush, I fell head over heels for my boyfriend. He didn’t treat me special or used lame pick up lines on me when we were getting to know each other. He’s not the over-the-top romantic gestures kind of guy that my friend is. But he knows who he is and what he wants for himself out of his life. He’s driven and passionate about his job and he’s loyal to a fault to his family. He cares about me so much that I trust him with everything I am. I fell in love with him because of who he was. Not for how he made me feel.  I guess that made all the difference in the world. Having a schoolgirl crush can be exhilarating and so intoxicating at times. But I can see now that it can never hold a candle to the real thing. When you have a love that is real, it doesn’t just light up your world. It sets you free. :) <3