Restructure- on your own terms

Depression

What is it about depression and me? It must be like my “look” for the longest time that I can remember. Actually, it is my look because those moments of short-lived happiness shine ever so clearly in my memory that I think it is pathetic.

That one bygone era of happiness in the short life of P must be the year 1996. It was during the months between January and March and then just as quickly, it was gone.

The last victorious moment of elation where I nearly got that huge creative break with Monsieur D in Paris in Autumn 2003 gave me a shimmer of hope but like a candle in the wind, the flame extinguished just as swiftly.

I know why people get admitted into mental asylums and I am surprised I haven’t been called up yet. I recently read a semi autobiography of Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar where she took her life a few weeks after it was published. Stuck her head in the oven. I could almost relate to the narrator. My first suicidal thought came in a fit of anger when I was five. I wanted to jump down from the 23rd storey HDB flat. By age twenty- five, I have a perfect suicide plan that would leave me to die in peace. No scarring or splattered guts and gory. XO, sleeping pills in an air-conditioned car will be the way to go. However, I guess I am still too narcissistic to hurt myself that way and scar that pretty face; then there is the fear for the existence of retribution and After-life where I would be flogged and condemned for subverting the sanctity of life. I only meant to end it all right there and then. When I die, I don’t want to have a soul- my existence vanishes into thin air since I never asked to be born.

By now, I have no wish for death. I suspect it has something to do with my financial independence and the belief that I have so much more to achieve and to add value to this world, that great expectations I have on myself. But recently, I have been unsettled yet again. No, it isn’t the men (though the Old Boy got me into a word sparring war yesterday while I was recuperating at home from a pounding headache and a cold virus and pushed me to pull the trigger on him to sever all interaction; as usual, I saved the day the way he liked it –P can be quite cunning and clever. P is quite the negotiator and I told him calmly that I have gone through tougher shits in my life). It has something to do with my work and greater ambitions.

I am disturbed. I am at the stage of discontentment for me to want to walk away from my job without another job waiting. Last week, I turned down a job offer diplomatically. I need a solid strategy. After all, P always has a plan for anything and everything. I do but it will be at the expense of an extra five digit sum of money that I could do with in my bank account to possible help grow the seeds to DL and my grand plans and for us to come faster together. Also, a defection to another firm this year meant a compromise on yet another significant pay rise that I have timed for the start of 2008. Barring money aside, I wonder why I am still where I am. After all, I never feel part of the team and worse still, of late, because I haven’t been included in things that I should be included in to help them get the job done. I am growing very angry and frustrated and then unmotivated. There are days where I reckon I should just leave now and part on good terms lest my lack of morale shows up too prominently in my work, which will leave me in a shittier position. I asked myself if it’s because I am not tenacious enough.

I am shaking. Shaking from the prospect of Monday. I am beginning to dislike many people that I work closely with and I am afraid it might start to show in my lacklustre and slight defiant ways at work. I don’t know what to do.

I have found enough excuses for my colleagues since I could remember and have psyched myself that it isn’t all about me and that red-letter day would come in time. I am now tired. I look at my peers with much envy and know that this was never how I meant my career progression to be. I thought this should be where I was in September 2006. But look, and there is only this much initiative one can take and get knocked back to the point that one gives up trying just to ensure that the day is not met with negativity. I am never good enough for some.

I have never been good enough at anything it seemed.

Guess being called a “pig brain” by a harsh mom, combined with critical teachers in various extracurricular activities from school to dance to choir to private tuition class wouldn’t do very much to one’s self esteem growing up. I grew up in the world of perfectionists and fault- finders and even now, albeit a lot better (since to a large extent, I still have enough respect for the people I work with given their intelligence). But I think in the midst, I grew up angry (not bitter) coloured by a slight rebelliousness with the need to prove a point to the world. Then, there is my quest for perfection that must have stemmed from my experiences.

I don’t stop at whingeing normally. My usual next step is to find out how I can extract myself from that sense of misery.

After all, I know how depression can grow exponentially and I am constantly trying to find ways to fight my moody disposition to spiral downwards like an endless pirouette.

Today in a bid to "save" myself, I started trying to restore some order in my life. I finally unpacked and empty the contents of my lugguage from my last trip in Asia two months ago. I started steaming my outfits before I hung them neatly in the wadrobe. Later, I will continue with my study desk that has not be re-organised despite the heaping of more statements and acessories and magazines since November 2006. The dust must be at least a few millimetres thick by now is my guess.

I am still inconsolable. I feel so trapped and claustrophobic with the way things are that I can barely psych myself positively that this is yet another challenge to make me a stronger and better person to prepare for that big break in my life.

FUCK ALL!!!!