Friday, June 28, 2013

life since then

anyway, i crashed soon after the short 'high' of that book and movie. two school projects, both of them linked to the same social cause, nearly drove me insane due to (a) my mother's incessant nagging, and (b) working with an a**h***. at least with the solo project, it was just my mother's nagging that was driving me suicidal. add the second project which forced the class to pair up (up to this day, i still question why i took my partner in when no one in our class would...i attribute it to the nostalgia i felt when the entire class, including my partner, was so nice and caring to each other when we all first met) and you get near insanity.

i absolutely resented having to be easily contactable during facebook during that time, because that jerk would consistently FB message me instead of using email, and often accuse me of not sending stuff, or suddenly make big decisions without previously asking for my input (and of course i had to check to see if i had missed anything, which was a major pain to have to do, considering how FB messages load progressively in double digits, instead of being visible all at once...not to mention how i detest mixing my work/stress space with what is supposed to be pleasure/a place to unwind).

anyway, i made it through, thanks to gathering enough b*lls**t to list it out to my teacher, who thankfully sided with me, and pointed out during mediation that hello, it's a joint project and not a slave-master one.

as for the solo project, i missed my deadlines. by nearly a month (for the last milestone). and if not for my teacher's clemency, i would most certainly have failed the module, and subsequently not graduated (which i did last month, and really dreaded having to attend because i was not proud in any way to have not-achieved it, if you know what i mean), because the entire module relied on three project milestones, all of which i was late for.

i was late because i had given up hope. i let my mother win, let the demented bint's nagging seep into my soul and kill my will to carry on. i literally woke up everyday and wondered how come i hadn't died from all the mental stress that was upon me (my mother, nagging her voice out, and my teachers, hounding me for what i owed them). i found it difficult to face each day so i slept as long as i possibly could (until my gastric-prone stomach could take it no longer) on my days off, and then slept some more after mealtime. i had no will to do or enjoy anything, was starting to feel like my dreams would just remain dreams. (later found out via random googling that these were signs of depression...which is kinda strange how i didn't realise them considering how i used to be the very epitome of chronic depression years ago.)

i had seen two mentors for consultation on what to do, and both only offered solutions that worked only on unfrazzled states of mind ("she does it because she wants the best for you; just keep reminding yourself of the key reason you decided to start this project in the first place" and "like cloud atlas, whatever you do might not have visible implications to you but it will definitely impact the world in some way or another; you have an external locus of control that you need to take back control of") but not in moments when you're being shouted at and your throat's tightening and you're finding it hard to breathe (i later googled and found out it was a symptom of anxiety instead of a genuine medical concern).

what ultimately brought me back to life (and helped me to finally complete my milestones, late as they were), was the very (and only thing next to piano-playing, which i was unfortunately unable to get my hands on, on a regular, private basis) thing that successfully propelled me back on the road up from my last (also my first) major pit of depression -- joel osteen sermons.

call him whatever you want (controversial, unconventional, etc.), but watching him speak, sermon after sermon, definitely caused faith and hope to rise in me and overpower the negative, hopeless voices within my mind and replace them with the promises of God he constantly reminded people of. i have an extremely short attention span for audio sermons, so thank God his were video-based (after a while, i started even subconsciously thumb-pointing and raising my hands to the heavens whenever i pepped myself with faith-filled scripture).

it happened quite by accident when i randomly decided to do a youtube search for videos on overcoming fear (i was basically afraid of doing a shitty job on my project), and a joel osteen sermon was one of them. i clicked on it, was greatly encouraged (more so than the other search results), and started looking up more of his uploaded sermons from then onwards. 

you'd think i'd have learned after the first time to go straight to joel's videos when dark clouds started forming in my mind, but for some reason i'd forgot all that. to my utter shame, i even realised i'd let my Bible and ODB collect dust because i'd honestly forgotten about them (i estimate about 3 months, judging from my last ODB reading -- both tend to go hand in hand and have been a consistent habit since tweenhood) -- my Bible has never gotten dusty before, so being able to find it in my pile of books in that state was somewhat disturbing.

that was the main thing that literally caused a paradigm shift, such that i was eventually able to wake up and not have my first thought be of death or negativity. everything else was secondary. like what? well, like having the only christian friend i actually met up (i didn't mean to, it kinda just spilled out after he asked how i was when we decided to meet for coffee, having not seen each other for a year) become the only person to pray for me, in my presence (he insisted on it instead of my suggesting that he could do it on his own), in a really long time.

it was so long that it actually felt weird, having someone utter simple words of petition to God with his eyes closed as i looked on and wondered how things had gotten to this point. he also pointed out, from his Bible, a forgotten verse i used to hold dear in my heart (together with all my dreams and hopes): the all-familiar Jeremiah 29:11. (i've just read on some controversy on that verse but i still stick to my guns that God's Word is dual-purpose: one for the context of time in which it was written, and the second for the context of the reader's time in which it was read).

and, like what else? like being reminded of the previous situations in my working life that were similar to this, and how i had failed those times in completely shutting down and failing to complete the project at hand, thus forever regretting not seeing each one through, whereas now it was like a new chance and did i really want to regret again not seeing this project through?

that and me finding out that there were others who had also not yet finished their projects gave me the strength to actually not just finish the damn thing (the unrealistic idealist milestones were damnable,  not the actual social cause itself), but to finish it well (and get to graduate). fear then started to creep in almost immediately, fear of failure (of doing badly in the financial section of the report, which i knew absolutely nothing about -- i hate number-crunching). but thankfully a kind soul offered to show me the contents of his project (including the financials), to help me see that it was nothing but a puff of smoke: scary until the fog clears.

i also started getting inspired by other aspects of my project, so i finally got to complete it. i've always believed, even more so since these last few years of school whereby every piece of homework is a creative one, that inspiration comes only from god and that i have to wait for it to come, and then take the idea and run with it, instead of me just doing Plan B (i.e. the first sub-par thing that comes to mind) and just forcing myself to get along with the plan for the sake for completing the work early or on time. so i was truly thankful that help was finally starting to come from above.

the social cause behind the project still carries on until now, albeit at a much slower pace than i'd appreciate (the nag factor is still a huge part of its slowness...my mother is literally trying to beat my idea to death while i'm literally trying to drag it along, slowly but surely forward). i recently had another eye-opening, somewhat harrowing experience which slightly realigned my perspective on this whole nag conundrum i've been in, but i'll share it another time and sleep for now.

re: one day

i can't remember most of the book's specifics (as in my favourite parts) now that it's been several months on, but what i do remember was that it was true how it was mentioned in the behind-the-scenes special that the movie is more of dex's point of view, whereas the book focused more on em's thoughts.

that and how reading one day reminded me of my old (currently pushed-aside) ambition of getting a fictional novel published. i mean, this aspect of em does play out in the movie but in the book we actually read her thoughts throughout her life, like how at the start she's on fire for things and wants to start revolutions (no wonder that tracy chapman song was playing in her dorm room -- it was explained in the book), then to make a difference teaching and writing, but how she starts to lose that hope and take on that negativity that comes from taking on miserable jobs that are worlds away from what one was really meant to do in this life.

i rejoiced even more so when she finally did get to publish her first fiction novel, which wasn't mentioned in the movie as actually an indirect nod to her real life (a pseudo-autobiography, or whatever it's called when one writes about essentially one's life in dramatized, exaggerated form). made me rethink my dormant-for-years ambition of becoming an author of fiction. i heard of a cousin who recently made money off of it by selling hers as an e-book, which i probably could do, except for the fact that i find writing books these days to be much like scriptwriting -- commitment heavy, with the potential to literally drive you nuts aka. to f**k with your mind. i literally felt like i was going crazy early last year when i was in the process of writing a dark comedy script. sure, i could easily write fluff but...that doesn't interest me as much as it does the heavy stuff. maybe one day when i've truly got a long stretch of nothing to do and no one to keep nagging at me, i'll pick up the pen again and run with it.

i also read with fascination about em's take on second weddings, because i've yet to attend them (but probably will, seeing how my ex-teacher said everyone eventually gets to the age where they have to start attending second weddings nowadays). she (the fictional character em) said something about how the first ones tend to be big, pompous and extravagant affairs to sort of show off, whereas the second ones tended to be quiet, unpretentious and low-profile, as if bride and groom were embarrassed to have to try again at marriage. sounds totally opposite from celebrity weddings in tabloids so we'll see (in my own life) if what she/the writer says is true... :p