Tag: thoughts

Who We Become

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I remember being asked what I wanted to be my whole life, I don’t know when it started, but I do know when it stopped. It stopped when I enrolled in my undergraduate degree – that was it, that was the day the world of uncles and aunties (If you’re not Asian, this isn’t only people who are related to you, but all people approx. 20+ years older than you, and you call them this as a sign of respect. We do not call our elders by name.) and my father decided I had become whatever I could be.

The question I’ve never been asked is who I want to be. Have you been asked this question? Since this isn’t a real conversation, I’ll just go ahead and assume that you answered ‘no’ to that. Why aren’t children asked this, or young adults? I guess it would be a heavy question to ask young ‘uns but so is asking them what they want to be. I had no idea at 17 what I wanted to be, and this is the age at which I was asked to choose to study something that would become my career. I also had no idea of all the career options out there, and most importantly, something we completely do not consider is that there are new career options that will come into existence every year.

Did we ever see a career in being a social media influencer (full disclosure, I do not consider this to be one of the great options, just an option), or becoming a YouTuber, or managing someone famous’ social media, being a meal prep chef, or even arranging someone’s closet all in exchange for money? My point is that there are just so many options! And there will always be more than you are aware of.

Okay, digression done away with, who would you have chosen to be if someone asked you? Yes, there are many options here too, but I believe that if you choose a few principles as your guiding factor in this fleeting life, then you can make other decisions better. Yes, we all become. We become something or the other, you can be negative, optimistic, adventurous, persistent, hard working, honest, loyal, kind, cruel, fair, biased, skeptical, so much. There is much we become, and my point is that we don’t always choose these things consciously.

If we are lucky, we are aware that we have become certain things, and with some introspection we can understand how these qualities became a part of who we, and others, are. It is life experiences, and when we find ourselves become a frustrated individual, quick to believe the naysayer, too ready to accept criticism and internalise it, I think we need to pause and evaluate if this is serving us well.

I am in my thirties and for the last 7 years or so, I have been working hard to unbecome certain things and become others. Is it easy? Hell no! And I am sure many of you reading this will have had the same experience if introspection has led you to the conclusion that you need to question who you are and how you got there.

Indulge me in this, if you go back to your childhood self – perhaps close your eyes and let your imagination stretch – and asked this child who they want to be, would their answer match with what you have become? Do the qualities they’re naming make you cringe, smile, or feel like you are on the right path even if you got a little lost somewhere along the way? Indulge me also in this – would these qualities which you could choose to be your lighthouse as you navigate tricky waters help make your decisions easier, quicker, less fraught with doubt? Would these principles (which you would practise daily in this ideal situation that I am creating) help you choose a career better, help you weigh up the options available to you, help you to not choose something because it will pay for the house, car and fancy vacations while slowly eating away at your soul?

What do you think of this train of thought? Does this make sense or am I absolutely nuts?

Flannel Pyjamas

When will we talk about mental health?

pinklenomadeLeave a comment

My previous post spoke about the loss of an actor that I did not personally know and my grief. This is probably not something that a lot of people can relate to. Heaven knows I did not understand it before – people openly crying, grieving, refusing to eat because their favourite celebrity died, whether due to old age, in an accident, due to illness or because of suicide. I thought these people were being unnecessarily caught up in the tragedy of another that did not directly impact them. I don’t know what that past me would say to the me that is grieving today.

As I said in that post, I did seek answers, but of course looked in the wrong places. Yesterday, realising that I needed to understand what I was feeling, for the sake of my own mental health, I looked to psychologists’ perspectives on the grief one feels for celebrities. I listened to a couple of podcasts and this is some of what I understood:

  • Grieving for celebrities is common – the major reason for this is because we project so much of our own dreams onto these larger than life people whom we admire or idolise.
  • It is okay to grieve for their loss, but not for too long as it is also important to understand that you do not have a personal connection to them.
  • Death comes for all of us, and if this person’s death shook you to your core, then use it as a reminder to live more mindfully because we all just get the one chance and never know when our moment will come.
  • Seek help if their death has either caused or aggravated your own mental health issues.

Depression. I have had it, I have been at the very bottom, in the pitch black of my mind, from where I didn’t have the energy to crane my neck upwards to look for a pinprick of light. I have had fleeting thoughts about taking my own life, but which were just those, stupid thoughts. When I contemplated suicide, it was with the aim of teaching the person who hurt me a lesson, which we all know does not work. Our life is lost and we leave behind grief for those who loved us, especially family and close friends. I would not do that to them. So it was very difficult for me to understand the mentality of someone who has seriously thought about taking their life. My little sister has told me she nearly did – I did not even probe the topic further at the time because to me it seemed like a hollow cry for attention. But I will speak to her about it now, even though I know she has worked through a lot of her problems and probably will not think such thoughts again.

The irony is that I finally understood how someone seriously considers suicide from a comedian. Daniel Fernandes. I “found” him today on YouTube, watched an excerpt from a show he did on his own mental battles. His explanation is the first I have heard that was articulated in a way that made sense to me. I am about to paraphrase heavily but what he said was that for someone whose mind has become their enemy, suicide is a way to make the inner demons stop. That it is an act of self preservation, a way to escape their own mind.

This hit me deep, because my mind has been my enemy too, dissecting every single joyful memory until all that was left was an empty husk where nothing positive dwelled. It started externally, with the ending of a marriage, but it also took with it all I thought I had experienced. And this is a terrible place to find yourself, in the labyrinth of your mind for which you suddenly need a map because it now looks alien to you. You fall to your knees, scramble amongst the rubble of what was your life mere seconds ago until your knuckles bleed, looking for something, anything you might be able to salvage.

Spoiler alert: I did not find anything. Almost 7 years later, I am working to thin the stone walls I put up around my heart back then. It’s an arduous task, but every day I chip away at them a little, tell myself “I am enough” and train my mind to work for me, not against me. I did not go to therapy when I didn’t have the energy to raise my head, I only went (for a few months) last year, because I found that my mental sewage was seeping into the newer areas of my life. Was it helpful? Yes, to a point. I did have some breakthroughs, and it has helped me relieve some extra loads I had taken upon myself which I did not need to.

The rest of the work is being done alone, and with some help from my sister. It isn’t easy, especially when you learn to feel and realise you are an empathetic person and this can sometimes work to your detriment because you can get swept up in the collective energy of the world. Which is why this heavy year has been three steps forward and two and half steps relinquished to the chaos. That remaining half step is still in the right direction though, so for now, I am moving forward.

All of this has taken years! I should have sought help and gone to therapy 7 years ago. Yes, I know, better late than never, but the reasons for which therapy wasn’t even considered were pure ignorance. I did not know a thing about mental health, the importance of it and how to identify something going wrong in the mind and how and where to seek help. It was still such a taboo subject, and it is only in retrospect that I am able to see the depth of my depression and I am able to appreciate the strength of my mind that I am here.

This seems to have become a rambling, mental unloading of all the thoughts that have been knocking around inside my head over the last few days. I am not really writing this for anyone to read in particular, so I will not apologise. I need to put these thoughts, feelings, debates, realisations out here, I have to see it in black and white, my words spilled across this digital page for me to make sense of it all. I will probably be back to unload some more but now I am going to make myself some toast and then go to bed.