Battling Your Inner Demons

Hey Guys,

This is an issue I feel needs to be addressed. It is not commonly mentioned, not really considered taboo, but just rather ignored. This, is on the topic of breakdowns.

Let’s be honest, I hesitated quite a bit before posting this. It was written and all there was left to do was to press the publish button. I hesitated because I usually try to keep this space as happy as possible. I was worried about sounding like a whiny little kid, especially when I hated it so much when I read the blogs of others, and they keep painting a pitiful picture, as if the whole world is against them. I didn’t want to make myself look like a victim because I am not. Yes I was weak at some point in time, but I picked myself up (with plenty of help from my friends). It definitely was not easy to weave these words together and the lion share’s of credit definitely goes to Kirsty, who proof-read this for me to make sure 1. I was making sense and 2. I didn’t end up whining.

I’ll try to get her to write a guest piece here soon because she honestly is amazing.

If I’ve never mentioned it before, one of the reasons I started blogging was because I wanted to document my feelings and have an outlet to express my feelings. When I introduced myself on one of my previous sites, I mentioned that I was not as strong as I wished I was, and this is what that was about.

Like many others, I break down.

I vaguely remember my very first breakdown. It happened when I was 11, in China. It was a school trip, I remember. At that tender age, I was honestly really excited for the trip but the realisation sank in on that very first night that I won’t have my parents by my side for the next 9/10 nights, I cried so hard that I made myself sick. Like legitimately sick. I had to swallow pills (medication) every night just so that I could function properly for a day of sightseeing and school immersion. That lasted for a week, and I basically cried myself to sleep every night after weeping on the phone, talking to my parents about how much I wanted to ditch the group and go home.

I naively thought that I grew stronger from that trip since I stopped crying towards the last few days. But boy was I wrong.

Fast forward a couple of years and again, I was at the airport again, feeling so excited about going to China, YiWu, with my best friends. Again, it was a school trip. And again, I wept. For five whole days, I wept myself to sleep, I wept when I greeted my mother ‘Good Morning’ on WhatsApp. Essentially, I wept whenever I was in any contact with my parents. This time, I fell sick too, most probably because I wasn’t used to the food there but partly because of my homesickness. I remember feeling so dejected, I wanted more than anything to return to the comforts of my home. Imagine looking at the street lights and thinking, “Isn’t that the street lights I see when I am walking home?” Yes my homesickness was that bad. But with a whole lot of encouragement from my friends, I pulled through. I will never forget her saying, ‘It’s fine. You said you cried for a week when you were in P5 right? Even if you do that again, you will have 4 good days!’ I will also never forget how happy she was that on Day 7 when she was so hyped that I was fine the previous night. She went, ‘Yay! You only cried for 5 days this time! That’s an improvement!’ Now, this may sound sarcastic, reading about it as words that have been weaved together, but I never once doubted how genuine she was, and you won’t too if you had the chance to hear her.

With the help of the people I call my best friends, I overcame my homesickness, and though I still felt sad, I never shed another tear on my next 2 school trips.

There was another time…

It was 02/11/2017. I completed my Biology and Elective History paper that day and was preparing for my Physics paper the next day. Just before I turned in for the night, I broke down again. I cried and cried for a full hour. I didn’t know why I was crying, but I couldn’t stop. Every time I thought about taking the Physics paper the next day, and the next 5 papers spread over the next 2 weeks, I cried harder. I knew I needed to sleep, but the tears refused to leave me alone, threatening to choke me, the mucus threatening to suffocate me. Suffocate. Yes, that is the word that has been slipping away. I guess like many others may have, I felt suffocated, being tied down by my O Levels for nearly a month. I have to say, this was first drafted on the day ‘Hell Week’ ended.

And another time…

This time I was 18, I was so stressed out by school and everything I had going on that I couldn’t push on anymore. I started skipping lectures and making up excuse to not be in class. Every morning I would wake up and try to find a reason to not go to school. There were instances where I would really bargain with my mom to not go to school. I was at the point where I would literally do anything to stay at home. Eventually, I started skipping tuition as well. And the trigger point came when my tutor messaged me constantly to ask for work submission and that was when I broke down again. I cried and cried and it got so bad, I took a weekend off. It was a break I really needed to get back up again. (This one, I’ll elaborate more in an upcoming post.)

My point is, there have been many times I felt so vulnerable, so helpless. It felt as though I was in a hole of sadness, unreachable by all.

Especially during my O Level period, I felt depressed and dejected. My happiness came in small little bursts, like watching Mamma Mia with my mother over dinner, talking to my friends and cooing about how adorable my friend’s pet bunny, Earl, was. In general, though, I felt like I lost my spark in the midst of studying. Every day was a mad rush to revise things I learnt the previous year, attempting to spot questions for some but being a chicken and studying everything in the end. I was worried of course, that my grades would be terrible, but tried so hard to not think about it, since I had already handed in the script. I was encouraged by the post-exam activities my mother had planned, but pulling through those two weeks made me feel like I was in China again, all alone.

My point in sharing this?

It is alright to cry

Weep if you have to, but pull yourself back together. Because no one can do it for you.

There is no point in escaping this. You can’t. You can’t escape from something that comes from within you. So what else can you do except to conquer it.

I can hear some of you saying this already because these thoughts ran through my mind at some point in time too. It sounds really easy, but to actually do it, that’s another ball game altogether.

But this gives you an even bigger reason to try to conquer these demons because once you can do it, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.

It’s not going to be an easy journey, I don’t even know if I will be able to make it in the end, but with faith, with my friends, I believe that we are all going to make it. We WILL conquer this together. And even though I don’t know you personally, I believe that you can too.

If you ever need someone to talk to, I’ll always be here. You can always reach me on my instagram!!

Stay Strong guys! We CAN do this!