Winnie Lim » journal

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on-going mostly unedited stream of thoughts

April 28, 2024

Recently I chanced upon a tweet stating that highly sensitive persons (HSPs) are basically autistic without admitting it. It surprised me, since the traits of HSPs as I know it seem to be the opposite of stereotypical autistic traits. A couple of decades ago I identified as a HSP, but I somewhat grew out of it before deciding what I have is actually cptsd. Apparently the person who wrote the book on HSPs based it on her grand-nephews, who were later officially diagnosed as autistic. So I went into a research rabbithole.

non-stereotypical autism traits I have

hyper-empathy

Later on I came across this post that lists a bunch of non-stereotypical autism traits. Hyper-empathy which can be interpreted as being highly-sensitive is one of them. The author odescribes how her hyper-empathy manifests:

For those of us with hyper-empathy, this is one of the factors that make socializing difficult. Personally, socializing becomes a full-body sensory experience for me. I find myself absorbing the energy of those around me. In the presence of extroverted individuals exuding positive energy, my body vibrates with an overwhelming intensity that feels intrusive. When encountering sadness, I melt into the heaviness alongside them. Interacting with someone who is dissociating causes my senses to dull, and my mind becomes foggy. I experience muscle tension and stress when around people experiencing stress and anxiety.

I relate a lot to her experience. Maybe “absorbing energy” is a little too woo-woo for some people, but I could explain it scientifically in terms of mirror neurons and somatic stress. We have mirror neurons in our brains, and they fire when we observe someone doing something, possibly eliciting a similar response in us. This explains why we cringe when we see a knife cutting someone on tv, and therefore it is highly associated with empathy.

So I theorise hyper-empathetic people have over-active mirror neurons, and the psychological boundary between someone else and our selves becomes extremely fuzzy. For people with normal empathy there is probably some unconscious mechanism that quickly reminds the individual that they are observing is someone else, that this emotion does not belong to them. This mechanism does not really exist for hyper-empathetic people, or it is less robust. I feel pain when I see someone in pain, and it causes me a lot of stress. My body starts having a stress response – adrenaline starts flooding, muscles start tensing, emotions start overwhelming – as though I am the one in pain. Sometimes I may even over-identify with the pain, and it causes me more distress than the actual person. I was probably also over-projecting.

existential OCD

Existential OCD is also mentioned in the post. The concept of existential OCD is new to me so it was intriguing:

Existential OCD involves intrusive, repetitive thinking about questions which cannot possibly be answered, and which may be philosophical or frightening in nature, or both. The questions usually revolve around the meaning, purpose, or reality of life, or the existence of the universe or even one’s own existence. These same questions might come up in a university philosophy or physics class. However, most people can leave such classes or read about these topics and move on to other thoughts afterwards. Similar to other forms of OCD, individuals with Existential OCD can’t just drop these questions. – International OCD Foundation

So now I have something to explain and describe my obsessive thoughts about my own existence and/or the meaning of life. It is quite interesting how quickly I am able to accept my own quirks when it is an observed and documented phenomenon versus having to bear my own lonely weird quirk in this world.

internal repetition

Then there is internal repetition:

Another reason why high-masking Autistic adults are less likely to be identified is because of our tendency to internalize repetitions. This can manifest as internalized stimming, where we repeat the same sentence, or phrase, or engage in internal counting. It may also involve listening to a song on repeat for several hours.

I don’t know if constantly repeating hurtful things people say to me is considered as internal repetition. These things haunt and hurt me for decades, and I am really not exaggerating. I also tend to replay traumatic incidents in my mind over and over again.

I thought listening to a song on repeat for several hours/days/months was normal for a music fan?

special interests

Autistic people tend to have special interests they can spend hours on. They can also talk about it forever, sometimes without noticing other people are not interested. The stereotypical autistic interests may be like dinosaurs and trains, for example. According to the blog post above people with non-stereotypical autism may have special interests which are more socially accepted. Well as you can see, my special interest is the internet. More specifically, using the internet as an infrastructure for self-expression and self-directed learning.

When I am into a specific interest, I go all out to learn about it. Some people get into running and are satisfied being able to run faster, I read dozens of books and research papers to determine how I should run. It was similar when I was trying to fix my metabolism. I now know the specifics of insulin signalling, how much leucine one needs to start building muscle, and why eating some food can cause oxidative stress. Sometimes I share this information with people I care about, and you can see their faces turn blank.

stereotypical autistic traits I may have

stimming

So I was convinced I have no stims unless we count internal repetition. But I suddenly realised I have the tendency to shake my legs. A lot. A quick google search shows that shaking legs is a form of stimming.

sensory processing issues

I am definitely have auditory sensory processing issues, hence I really dislike podcasts and calls, including video calls. Along with light sensitivity – they are my migraine triggers. My devices are permanently set in night and dark mode, and if possible I use e-ink. I am also uncomfortable with strong smells, so walking into an aromatherapy store is a nightmare. But (so far) I have no issues with fabric or most food.

an intense hate/fear of phone calls

It only occurred to me recently (in the last 1-2 years) that the reason why I hate phone calls is mostly because of sensory issues. It literally hurts my ears when I have to listen to people talk over an earpiece or a speaker. The muscles around my head and neck would tense up badly as I struggle to listen.

Another reason why I intensely dislike them is because they don’t allow me time to think about my response. When I was trying to freelance for the first time in my early 20s I would also encounter very aggressive or rude people on the phone, and it would give me stomachaches. I went back to full-time work because I cannot handle phone calls, and later on when I tried freelancing again I had a strict no phone call policy that all my clients thought were weird (and unreasonable). But I didn’t budge on it no matter what, because I knew phone/video calls would render me unable to work. Thankfully remote working was starting to take off then, so I was lucky in that aspect. Singapore was behind, but my clients were mostly startups and fans of 37signals (which I was also a fan of but now eugh).

writing really long texts

Since I have auditory processing issues I have a huge preference for communication via text. Again, I didn’t know about this could be an autistic trait until I saw some memes and threads on reddit. This explains my excessively long blogging style so much!

I write long texts even in chat groups and 1:1 messaging, which I guess can be frustrating or endearing depending on who I am communicating with. Many people I know have a fear of writing especially in school, I thrived on it. They may also find it tedious, which is why they prefer phone calls.

disliking small talk

I thought this was just a personality preference, again. I never liked socialising, except for a short phase in my life when I thought I could become a different person because I was at a different place (SF). These days I don’t even like talking.

social anxiety

For quite a few years in my 20s – the same few years I refused phone calls – I refused to meet any new people because it made me very anxious. Internet friends would want to meet for coffee, and I just kept saying no. I prefer online friends and asynchronous communication. The thought of meeting people gave me stomachaches, again.

I managed to overcome this later especially for the development of my career, but on hindsight I realised it was because I was forced (by myself and by some people) to become better at masking. In-person engagements drain me terribly, even till now. I would lie on the floor and not move after attending meetings for work.

feeling like an alien

So I’ve always felt like I was an alien (not joking) since I was a small kid. I kept wishing that a spaceship would bring me back to my home planet. Entering adulthood, I had one single friend who also felt the same – she was instrumental to my life in many ways and kept me alive – later on we lost touch because she probably had enough of me. Back then I was an emotionally taxing person without being aware of it especially because I relied psychologically so much on her.

I thought feeling like an alien is a pretty rare phenomenon since I have not encountered anyone else feeling the same way, but a quick google search shows that it is very common for autistic people.

rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD)

Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is when you experience severe emotional pain because of a failure or feeling rejected. This condition is linked to ADHD and experts suspect it happens due to differences in brain structure. Those differences mean your brain can’t regulate rejection-related emotions and behaviors, making them much more intense.
– Cleveland clinic

I didn’t know something like this exists as a condition. This is also why I identified as a HSP when I was younger. I have always been told I am over-sensitive. This is a major trigger for my suicidal tendencies, because it felt like ending my life was the only way I could end the pain. It is highly related to my fear of abandonment as well, I react badly if I feel that someone I care about is abandoning me.

demand avoidance

Like RSD, I have only learnt about this term in the recent months. I thought I was simply being lazy. I have a lot of trauma associated with this, because there is a lot of shame being labelled as lazy or that I lack determination, and then there is a lot of fatigue having to do all sorts of things I don’t actually want to do. Sometimes there is intense fear or dislike behind doing something, and an entire life of having to suppress that fear or dislike is very draining. Which probably explains why I kept burning out.

repeated burnouts

I just believed I was a fragile person prone to burnouts. Now I can see why living in this world exhausts me.

defining autistic traits I may not have

bottom-up processing

In the book Unmasking Autism, the author similarly explores non-stereotypical autistic traits, but maintains what defines autism is the bottom-up processing style whereas neurotypicals use the top-down processing style. People who use bottom-up processing tend to use details to piece the entire picture, whereas people who use top-down processing tend to see the big picture first before adding the details. At least that is the conventional rudimentary explanation.

Based on this explanation I am definitely more of a top-down person. However I consulted an autistic friend, and she also relates more to the top-down style. It gets more confusing when I browsed online communities where some people say they too look at the big picture first, but the difference is they tend to need a lot of details thereafter, whereas most people are okay being fuzzy. For me it really depends on how interested I am in that topic.

alexithymia

I believe I can read people’s emotions and facial expressions pretty well, and I thrive on sarcasm. Or so I think. At least it is being corroborated by my close friends. I was told I am highly intuitive, many times I could sense someone’s emotions even before they are aware of them themselves. There are autistic people who don’t identify with having alexthymia too, or they feel like they are at the extreme opposite end.

avoidance of eye contact

I have no issues with eye-contact, but they were challenging for me during my socially anxious days. It still makes me uncomfortable at times depending on the other party.

the overlap with cptsd

Many of the above traits overlap with cptsd. People with cptsd may have hyper-empathy too, because they have to quickly learn how to read/sense people’s moods and reactions in order to avoid being more hurt. They also have issues with emotional regulation.

But for me, suddenly I am not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg. Did my cptsd cause my neurodivergence, or did my neurodivergence cause my cptsd? Since my brain is over-sensitive and I have rejection sensitivity dysphoria, I may have reacted a lot worse to traumatic experiences in my life compared to the average person. Maybe for some people they would shrug it off eventually, and be able to appreciate the bright spots in their lives, but I was basically swimming in a pool of pain and sadness my entire life.

throwing adhd in the mix

It was also in the past year or so through memes that I realised I may have adhd. From what I learnt online, it may be highly confusing to have both autism and adhd. They can cancel each other out, which explains why so many audhd people are undiagnosed until late in life.

“How can you be extremely rigid and need routines and structure, but also be completely incapable of maintaining a routine and structure?” – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/04/audhd-what-is-behind-rocketing-rates-life-changing-diagnosis

the definition of autism

I guess it boils down to how we define autism. I am not autistic going by the DSM criteria. But based on the blog post above I seem to exhibit many of the non-stereotypical autistic traits. The traditional autism diagnostic criteria is also biased towards a certain gender and race, so autism symptoms may manifest differently in minorities because of social pressure – i.e. they tend to mask in order to avoid upsetting people.

But what is autism exactly? I am not wiser after researching for a while. How does one decide that those non-stereotypical autistic traits are autistic traits versus some other form of neurodivergence? It seems like we still have a limited vocabulary and understanding when it comes to atypical brains. Is anyone who doesn’t process the world the same way as neurotypicals considered autistic?

According to UK’s National Autistic Society, autism is characterised by

Social communication and social interaction challenges
Repetitive and restrictive behaviour
Over- or under-sensitivity to light, sound, taste or touch
Highly focused interests or hobbies
Extreme anxiety
Meltdowns and shutdowns

I can relate to all of the above. But I think the confusion comes from all of them not being extreme enough to be easily identifiable or recognisable for me.

I scored pretty high (103) on an online test that was recommended by an autism subreddit. The interpretation of the score is: Stronger indications of autism, although non-autistics may score as high.

autism as a spectrum

My friend reminded me that autism is a spectrum. I found this very helpful sketch that illustrates what a spectrum may look like:

sketch of the autism spectrum by autism_sketches — source

does it matter if I am actually autistic or not

I guess people can argue labels are just labels. Who cares about slapping on a label which may narrowly define who we are? But it matters for me. Ever since I began to contemplate I may be actually autistic I’ve started to look at myself differently, in a more compassionate manner. You could argue that I can be more compassionate regardless of my labels, but unfortunately my brain is not built that way.

My relationship with my partner has had noticeable improvements after we realised we may be both on the spectrum – albeit on different areas. My adhd self would get frustrated with her obsession with details that didn’t seem to relate to the topic at hand, and I thought she got too easily annoyed by my doom piles (it is a form of visual stress for her). She doesn’t get overwhelmed as easily as me, so she may find it difficult to understand my meltdowns. We both have sound and light sensitivities.

Things just make so much more sense if my brain is simply structured differently. It ironically makes me feel less misanthropic because now I can actually understand why I find it so challenging to accept typical human behaviour. It is not an intellectual concept that I cannot understand them. I neurologically cannot relate. Even my chronic suicidal ideation makes sense to me now.

moving forward

I am still in exploratory stages, so I am not sure what I am going to do. Will I get officially diagnosed? I am not sure if that is even possible, since I think people are still quite behind here in Singapore in terms of diagnostic criteria. I may hope to find an adult adhd/autism aware therapist, because I have experienced so many challenges and trauma in my entire life due to this. People who are diagnosed late in life go through a grieving process, because an earlier diagnosis would have spared them so much trauma, and appropriate interventions or adjustments could have improved the quality of their lives by leaps and bounds. If they have been diagnosed earlier, they could have learnt to thrive earlier.

Even if I am not autistic, I am definitely on some weird neurodivergent spectrum. Writing this post makes it crystal clear as I go through all my difficulties in writing.

I would at least attempt to redesign the way I live in order to be more protective of my difficulties. For example I have always been sensitive to noise on public transport but most of the time I don’t bother with headphones because it didn’t seem like a big deal. But I would probably be more inclined to put them on now since I would rather not deplete myself for unnecessary reasons.

I’ll probably write more of my experiences navigating this, and how it has and will change the way I interact with the world.

(Will appreciate your thoughts in the comments, if any)

April 21, 2024

one-year covid anniversary reflections

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day I tested positive for covid for the first time. All things considered I thought I had done well to avoid it for three years though it obviously also involves a lot of luck and privilege (of not having kids, having to work in an office, or needing a lot of social contact). On hindsight I could have done better: I trusted my loosely fitted kf94 too much and didn’t run for my life even when people around me were sniffing and coughing in a library, and had even stayed there for an hour around those clearly sick people. These days we don’t take any chances. N95s for all public transport, kf94s for all indoor spaces including our family’s apartments, and we run from sick people. I know some covid cautious people who don’t venture out of their homes at all so our measures could have been more extreme, but I had to find a balance between what I could do sustainably versus what would make me lose my desire to live. In the past year we also went on four international flights which we safely completed with 3m Auras fitted with sip valves and strictly no eating.

Why go to such extremes when it is mild and just a cold, one may ask if they are new to me. My infection had extremely mild respiratory symptoms and my fever hardly broke 38 degrees celsius, but I felt like my whole life had been drained out of me. I mean, why not when the virus attacks every cell and vessel of our body. I am lucky enough to not develop any visible neurological symptoms like brain fog or loss of smell and taste, and the debilitating fatigue I felt eventually went away after a few weeks. I even got back to running after a few months and now I am lifting weights. But till now I am not in a good place neurologically – depression, anxiety are all known post covid symptoms – and my heart rate goes berserk every now and then. My last episode was just a couple of weeks ago. My heart rate variability never recovered to pre-covid numbers.

But yes, call it a cold.

It is my belief that people think it is mild because they don’t monitor their biometrics. Perhaps with each infection their resting heart rate is permanently elevated by at least 10 beats but they see no cause for alarm. We can’t see DNA damage or easily test for immune system damage. People are suddenly developing chronic conditions like diabetes or thyroid disease but nope it is not covid.

I can’t tell how much of my depression is caused by my self, the neurological effects of the infection, or that this pandemic has really exposed how self-sabotaging we really are as a species.

My social ties with the people around me are now permanently altered, since no one around us is covid cautious we cannot unmask around anybody. I haven’t had coffee with a friend since the omicron variant arrived. I am pretty anti-social and I like being alone, but it would have been nice to grab a drink with someone once in a while, especially with those who are visiting from abroad.

This is my new reality, as long as I value my health. I have to choose having all my bodily and mental functions, or being human.

I wonder if I would have cared this much of my health if I didn’t spend the last 8 years trying to recover from a chronic illness which I may never recover from. If I was still healthy I would perhaps believe “it wouldn’t happen to me” when it comes to long covid. Like many others I would have blind faith in my immune system and trust that it would do its job like what the governments say. Don’t be like me and read too many books, and learn how fragile homeostasis can be. Just one hormone here and one neurotransmitter there stops functioning, and everything can cascade into a giant dtysfunctioning mess. Ask me how I know.

Nevertheless I celebrate passing one year without getting reinfected. In this day and age I think it is an incredible feat – I seldom pat myself on the back since you probably know how self-deprecating I am. But even Singapore has stopped reporting numbers though we held out much longer than others. I have no idea whether we are going through waves now, except for the cluster of positive tests that pop up on my ig stories sometimes.

I developed some ptsd from my infection too, and now every time I feel slightly weird in my throat or if my heart rate is elevated I go into a panic. I had gotten it shortly after my birthday last year, so this year my birthday made me feel impending doom, as though the same thing was going to happen again. I tell people I am afraid to get covid again and they look at me funny, telling me it is just flu what (singlish). I guess they don’t know flu viruses are carcinogenic too, do they?

I felt such a sense of relief that yesterday went by without much drama. I know it is irrational and arbitrary, I could get infected today or tomorrow. But it just seemed so hard to get through one year unscathed.

I guess I left out the most important factor to stay covid free apart from work and kids – one must survive a non-existent social life. Since a lot of the spread is caused by close contact and some of it is asymptomatic, it is virtually impossible to hang out with people since it is also virtually impossible to expect anyone to wear any mask, much less n95s. It is uncomfortable and awkward masked and trying to have a good conversation. In some other countries people form covid cautious bubbles so they can all go mask-free and have a good time. Here, I am fortunate to find a covid-cautious chat group that shares research, fears and anxieties. It really helped a lot, especially with my mental health.

I must not complain since I am partnered with someone on the same page as me, and I am sort of used to this – having to rely on online social contact instead of physical ones since I did spend long parts of my life pre-covid refraining from social contact due to social anxiety. But it still feels awfully alienating, and it is not fun being judged as a hypochondriac.

Even writing this post feels weird. I am weird, but I am not very good at doing weird things I suppose. Like any human I still crave for belonging and acceptance. I am not sure how many bloggers out there (who are not primarily long covid advocates because they have long covid) write about covid as much as I do. I can’t help but feel like people must tire of my constant attention on this by now. I am tired too, I too wish the pandemic is genuinely over so I can stop writing about this. Being able to stop writing means I am able to stop having it in my consciousness so much, and that would mean society has finally done something about it. I am just not that type of person who is able to ignore glaring parts of reality, which explains why I am in a poor mental state almost all the time.

The last year was spent in a somewhat hedonistic manner, partially because after getting infected and suffering from several POTS-like episodes including fainting twice with a 130+bpm heart rate, I felt like life has become too uncertain. Who knows when I’ll get reinfected again, and who knows when POTS or chronic fatigue will become a permanent part of my reality? Precautions as an individual may not work as well anymore, since the rest of society has given up. How effective is a n95 mask in a virus-laden environment? I have also spent countless time and energy worrying about my loved ones getting reinfected and not making full recoveries. It is exhausting.

To live a functioning life, I have to basically ignore reality, and become somewhat heartless since I cannot overcome people’s lack of desire to care about their own health. If they start faltering right in front of my eyes, I just have to be stoic and trudge on. Can I?

I celebrate one year of not getting reinfected. But the reality has not changed. There is some promising news about vaccine technology, but there is no longer an incentive to quickly bring it to market since no one cares anymore. I think the world is suffering from a collective trauma they are denying.

There can only be acceptance and coping. Nothing in this world says that reality has to be kind, or human beings have to be rational. I guess I have to be somewhat grateful that it is just a disabling virus that is causing me so much grief, and not bombs dropping on my apartment right now. I think life is pretty screwed up that we have to think this way. It is not a suffering competition, yet we have to minimise our own suffering in order to find some bright spot.

I wonder how did people cope during times of war and violence. Did they feel guilt too when they are able to carve out some joy in their lives when people were fighting and dying? Am I spoilt by the relative peace we’ve enjoyed in the past 50 years because most of human history is just full of destruction? Perhaps the difference is in an outright war most people are visibly suffering, whereas if not for the small covid cautious community and thousands of research papers I might seriously think I am insane.

I might as well get used to living in this sort of despair and chaos. The first 2-3 years of the pandemic felt like I was holding out for an end in sight, whereas the past year felt like I was going through the five stages of grief. The world may never feel safe anymore, or perhaps it was an illusion that it ever did. How do I live in an unsafe world, is an existential search I am going through. Maybe the damage brought by sars-cov-2 is minuscule compared to future viruses. H5N1 is already infecting cattle in the US and is found in raw milk. Viruses aside, there are ongoing wars, and the environment is getting hotter every day.

Like many others I want the life before 2020 back, and it is difficult to accept it may never come back. I have begun to read zen buddhism books again, because its entire philosophy is based on meeting life as it is. In buddhism all perceptions of solidity is an illusion, and I find that frame of mind very helpful trying to interact with a world that is threatening to fall apart any moment.

Can I survive another year without getting reinfected? I doubt it. But I will till try. Trying unfortunately means continuing to jeopardise my relationships as I continue to feel sad and disappointed every time someone minimises the virus, while they think I clearly have mental issues. I am trying not to let my ongoing sadness and grief affect the only relationship I have left – my partner – but it is hard. I have been shrinking as a person, because my world has been shrinking too. Yet ironically, to be less unhappy my world must shrink, because it is untenable to care about people who don’t want to care about themselves, or a world that is bent on self-destruction. I don’t have the emotional capacity to care enough about myself, much less anything else. Is it okay to exist with a broken mind and soul?

At the very least it feels comforting to be able to type this long page of words out. That I can still have this tiny will in me to write this despite believing I will be judged for it. This is the only place I can hold on to some sense of truth and self.

April 14, 2024

messy thoughts while in hong kong

I haven’t been well since my birth day. The very next day I woke up with elevated heart rate again – I am more aware of this because I use a bunch of health monitoring tools. Without them I may not know I am in bad shape, and would probably unknowingly put my body under more stress. Sometimes I find myself thinking about all the “knowledge” I’ve gained because of my chronic illness and sars-cov-2. It is not knowledge I’ve sought out of intense curiousity or desire to learn, but rather out of necessity. I now know more about nutrients, mitochondria, exercise science, electrolytes, ventilation, neurodivergence, viruses, immunity, ventilation, etc – more than the average person, and arguably more than the average doctor. Is this a good thing? I don’t know, except that I cannot really choose who I become. So much of it is dictated by the whims of my body.

It is worse now that I am also ageing. Of course everyone is ageing, but I am also undergoing the early phases of the dreaded perimenopause. So when episodes occur now I have no idea which part of it belongs to my original illness, post-covid effects, or perimenopause. Probably all of the above. I probably wish to write something smart on this blog, but these days my life is very much coloured by my mind and body. Still, I remain faithful to my commitment to document the thoughts that plague the forefront of my mind. We think so little of our experiences because they seem so mundane, but we’re like rovers exploring life with different configurations and equipment. No two people can be the same, or even remotely similar if we truly dial it down to the most intimate of their thoughts, interpretations and preferences. This is extremely interesting and intriguing to me. Is it for you?

Every time nowadays I see a person wearing a mask I would really like to ask them why. In fact if not for my social awkwardness and fear of conflict I would approach them to do a humans of new york style interview portrait series of them and their masks, with a story of why they are still masking. I mask myself because of all the research I’ve read, but most people are just going by government advisories. Most governments are like YOLO because the virus is “mild”. So it becomes intriguing to me when I see people masking – why are they resisting that annoying discomfort and alluring social pressure? What makes them different?

It is weird how I think it is weird that some people actually care about their health. I guess it says something about the world nowadays.

I feel a lot less depressed since travelling to Hong Kong despite being mildly physically unwell due to some form of dysautonomia (thanks covid). It has been 8 years since I was last here. Like Japan I wanted to know how my relationship with this location has changed, because I have changed so much.

photo of a crossing at mongkong, hongkong

I have many thoughts and feelings about Hong Kong, which I would probably write in another post. But one thing I know for sure: I need travel to survive. Travel is not just a fun or pleasurable thing for me. It is sustenance. It provokes me and keeps me awake. It is my umbilical cord to life. I know it sounds frivolous, like how dare I say something like this. But I am sure throughout history there were others like me, people who wanted and needed to know the world as a whole. Because it develops us as a whole too, to get to know the different parts of our selves that slowly awaken every time we venture to somewhere previously unknown.

I am struggling to navigate this realisation with my covid cautiousness, because travelling is always riskier than just holing myself up at home. In Singapore we can’t do road trips or local travel, since a marathon runner can basically run across her in an afternoon.

Do I really have to choose my soul over my body? I can only hope our current covid travelling protocol is good enough.

I guess I am writing 3 different posts in one. I used to be uncomfortable with this, but now as part of my ageing goals I would just really like to be my messy self.

April 6, 2024

43

I wrote this time last year that I felt like I was coping better than the year before. This year I don’t feel like I have made much progress, and perhaps I feel like I have regressed – possibly a trend detected in the darker tone of my recent posts. But unless we can truly zoom out and have a top-down view of our lives, who can truly say what is progression and what is regression?

I think in general human beings are good at playing roles. We take on roles of a child, parent, educator, student, friend, lover, etc, and plenty of times we act according to what we think is expected of us including expectations we have of ourselves. We all want to be certain types of people, and so much influence comes from environmental conditioning that I no longer really know who do I really want to be, versus who I think I should be. It is no longer very clear to me when I am playing a role and when I am just being my self. Does my self even exist? According to buddhism, it doesn’t – because our selves are never truly independent of conditions.

The roles I consciously or unconsciously play affect how I perceive my life. Sometimes I get too caught up in a role, and playing it well makes me believe I am making progress in terms of how well I am coping with life. Other times I snap out of it and break down, realising whatever progress I perceived was just an illusion I have created for myself. I don’t really want to be unhappy all the time, so I try to pretend. Is the breakdown a regression if it allows me to get closer to myself? I don’t really know because this world functions precisely because we’re all very good at upkeeping these illusions. Is functioning more important than truth?

As usual I don’t have an answer. As I age I feel like I have less and less answers because I am now seeing the complexity and nuances that age have gifted to me. When I was younger I thought truth is everything. Now I am not so sure. If truth makes me want to stop living, then is it worth the pursuit?

I guess I just want to be more at ease with myself. Or more at ease with the unease I would perhaps always feel for the rest of my life. If I live till 80ish I’m at my mid-life now, and it seems unlikely I’ll develop a positive relationship with life at this point. And if I do develop one later, then was it worth it having the navigate more than half my life in this existential pain, aloneness and confusion?

Sometimes I think that I am contemplating the wrong question and answer. That perhaps it is meaningless to wonder about the worthiness of existence. It is just something that has to unfold, even if it is meaningless, empty and worthless. Us human beings like to derive value in everything we do: we seem to only want to do something if we consider it to be valuable. That attitude has poisoned every part of my life and unconscious thinking, even if by now I am a lot more comfortable with meaninglessness and purposelessness than the average person.

There doesn’t need to be a reason for everything. Ageing one year doesn’t automatically confer more wisdom. The passage of time doesn’t equate to progress. Why are we so obsessed with progress anyway? The environment is always dynamically changing, it is just neither practical or sustainable to always expect things to get better.

Part of my internal suffering comes from so many “shoulds”. I want to be a certain way, and it gives me a lot of anguish that I can’t be that way. I once made an observation with my therapist: I said all my life I was expecting a fine-dining experience from a world that is actually a MacDonald’s.

Similarly I have been wanting myself to be able-bodied when I am actually disabled. Wanting reality to be different from what it is can cause a lot of suffering. Just like wanting myself to be someone I cannot be.

There are complex reasons why I am the way I am now. Why I go around living life as though I have not much life-force left in me. Everything takes so much effort. I have lived so much of my life against the mainstream, and sadly even being covid-cautious (which is just basically being concerned about my health) also invites existential loneliness. This is triggering for me because it reminds me of the painful loneliness I had felt as a child. The feelings of being abandoned.

I wish I can be like some others who are clearly a lot more comfortable being different. Again, wishing to be someone I am not. It seems I will never be part of the mainstream because we just have different living philosophies, and yet these differences trigger so much existential pain because I fear being abandoned. It doesn’t matter what I intellectually think, my body simply reacts (apparently rejection sensitive dysphoria is an adhd thing, and they think it is related to the brain structure).

If I can have a birthday wish, I wish for more emotional strength. To just be the way I am. To truly be able to accept my self, not just an intellectual acceptance, but with the whole of my body. I don’t want to keep on feeling immense sadness in my body every single time I get triggered. It really sucks especially when I intellectually know the trigger is truly innocuous, yet my body cannot help reacting. There is unending sadness in me, and I can feel it bubbling up even as I am writing this.

If this is something that has to be with me for the entirety of my life, then I wish I can co-exist better with it. To just be able to tolerate the sensations, or to compassionately hold it. Maybe I can’t abandon my self too, no matter how uncomfortable and painful she makes me feel.

Growing old is perhaps becoming more accepting of all the painful realities that exist, whether they are external or inside of us. I thought I’ll be less unhappy as I get older, because it seemed that was the trajectory. But I think I am becoming more intimate with my sadness.

I write one of these every year.

March 30, 2024

sending out pieces of my self

In one of my recent posts I documented my experience with the risograph, and at the bottom of the post I wrote that I’ll be giving away 5 pieces of the poster to anyone who deemed it worthy. Honestly I wrote that thinking no one would respond, but I thought it would be a nice experiment anyway.

Surprisingly someone responded almost right away, and more trickled in over the next few days. I had to figure out how to send an A3 poster – I thought I’ll send them in postal tubes but my partner reminded me that the risograph ink may leave marks on the paper if curled, and it may tend to have a memory of being curled. She had a rigid A3 envelope on hand (it is very convenient to live with an artist), so I made sure the post office is able to accept it since they have strict restrictions on dimensions.

I bought plastic sheets to protect the poster, put them into the rigid envelopes, and sent them through registered mail. US, India, Canada and Italy. I thought that was pretty cool, to distribute them to different geographical locations.

I felt like I had a taste of what it is like to be an artist. The wonder of having someone appreciating your art, so much that they are willing to place it somewhere in the intimacy of their homes. Yes, I am giving them away for free, but somehow it seems unbelievable still that someone out there would like to have them.

That I channeled a part of me out into a physical media, and reproduced them into prints, and now they are floating somewhere out there on some postal route. One day, hopefully they will reach their eventual homes. This seems like a miracle that this is even possible – imagine living a couple of hundred years back, how difficult would it be to accomplish this?

Thanks to those who took the effort to request a poster, I am in your gratitude. Maybe it seems weird to have this gratitude because I am the giver – I don’t know how to articulate this accurately, but I lived a life feeling so much alienation and rejection, the fact that some stranger out there wants my art is difficult for me to fathom.

I cannot objectively appreciate something I’ve worked on, so to have people visibly appreciate it for me is truly a gift.

I still have one copy left if anyone’s interested!

March 24, 2024

the dam

[tw warning: suicide ideation] Yesterday I had another episode where I spent hours crying. This actually feels embarrassing to write, but intellectually I think it is society that conditions us to think that crying is embarrassing. I also feel like it seems wrong to keep writing posts about my sadness, but why is this so? The reason why I keep writing posts like these is because it is reflective of my on-going current state. I have to do a lot of conscious and unconscious pretending in real life, I don’t wish to also feel like I have to cut out parts of myself at the only place in the world where I can be truly myself.

It was another seemingly innocuous trigger, but some dam broke in me, and overwhelming sadness and helplessness flowed out. At times like these I am surprised by the velocity of my sadness, it is as though I am so good at hiding it that I am hiding it even from myself. I walk around with a lot of chronic sadness, but the intensity of the sadness I feel during these episodes is obliterating. I would feel like I truly cannot go on, even for an inch. That I am very, very tired of trying. That I have spent decades trying, and I am sick of it. These are no longer mere thoughts, they are very visceral physical feelings that emanate out of my body.

In a way I am used to these episodes. I have been having them all my life. So they shouldn’t take the wind out of me. I should know that they are temporary and if I manage to tide it through I will slowly recover to a survivable baseline. But each and every time it happens it feels like the breaking point. I’ve written about this phenomenon before – that I can totally relate why people make irreversible decisions at times like these.

Thankfully my partner was there with me. She did not dismiss my feelings or try to use any form of positive psychology on me, but instead she told me she will be supportive if I am really suffering this much (I had discussed with her the possible option of euthanasia overseas, though I don’t know if this is truly a legal option). Just to be clear I am not saying this is the right thing to do for anybody in similar situations but for me it was, because I’ve just been dismissed all my life it is really important for me to feel acknowledged. As long as I am sane I would never voluntarily cause such immense suffering for her, but it means a lot that she sees why I have such a desire. In the background I always have this fear that one day she would tire, and I will lose the only person who genuinely knows me.

The sadness is still lingering as I write this post, but the worst is over. This seems to be a cycle: as though there must be a release after all that pent up pressure. All the pretense and masking has a cost. Once in a while I must meet my sadness at full force. Maybe I am learning to understand this is simply a spectrum of my existence I must have instead of being traumatised by it. Can I honour my own sadness?

I realised belatedly this morning that both recent episodes were after a strength training session. Out of curiousity I googled, and surprisingly it seems like a common experience to cry during or after a workout. Part of it seems to be hormonal since exercise triggers a cascade of hormones, the other seems to be somatic – exercise seems to put us closer to our body and feelings. Once my TCM physician asked me if my neck has always been this tight, I told her I honestly don’t know because I am very out of tune with my physical body and that’s why I wear gadgets.

My own interpretation is that mental strength and physical strength somewhat draw from the same inner reserve. Strength training takes a lot from that reserve, hence whatever dam I have in place is vastly weakened after a session. I also experience the same weakened dam during the last week of my luteal cycle. The question remains: is it healthy to experience this dam breaking once in a while, or do I have to do everything to avoid it? I reckon it is something like exercise and muscles. Controlled damage can be healthy, and over-doing it can be detrimental.

I remember reading that therapy/psychoanalysis/meditation can be detrimental to some people because they are not in a state to face the full force of their true feelings. In some cases the dam is there for a reason, and maybe it is better for people to survive living in a shell versus having a permanent mental breakdown.

I feel like this is a huge reason why I am still covid-cautious (as though we need proper reasons to care about our own health). First of I’m barely getting better after years of chronic illness and I have no desire to go through it again. I don’t deal well with feelings of being trapped. That is what chronic illness means to me: being trapped in a body and existence that feels suffocating and tiring.

Secondly I have so little will to live as it is, I don’t think I can survive long covid. I know what it is like to have hormones and neurotransmitters working as though they are trying to kill you, and I cannot imagine having them in a worse state than it is now. I am also still dealing with feelings of perpetual fatigue and it is already hard enough as it is. I cannot imagine having crashes just from showering.

That’s where a major part of the sadness comes from currently. To live in a world where most people have no qualms giving you an illness that will disable you. And worse, they don’t even believe you’re disabled. Millions of people live with long covid and other chronic illnesses, and they have to put up with being dismissed by doctors, family and friends all the time.

I am always being told I am already very lucky, why should I feel like this? I have a partner who loves me, and I am not suffering economically, at least not for now. But I wish I can get them to live in my mind and body for just a bit.

The guilt-tripping continues, so does the dismissing and denial. I am tired.

What is it in it for me? I am perpetually tired, and I don’t particularly enjoy anything. Most of the time I feel like I am putting on an act so that people around me will not feel uncomfortable or hurt. That I have such a irreconcilable relationship with life fills me up with immense survivor’s guilt. There are people who desperately wants to live, and here I am struggling to keep myself alive.

There are some bright spots I have to admit. When I am faced with either annihilation or social rejection the choice is always clear. People say I have the courage to write honestly here, but the courage to put up with any societal judgement pales in comparison when faced intimately with one’s power to self-destruct. There can be liberation found, when one is not very attached to their selves.

There is a concept of psychological death, where instead of killing one’s physical existence we kill our psychological existence. We kill our old selves in order to have our new selves emerge. I have done this several times in my life, consciously or unconsciously. This has given me the strength to explore new dimensions of my life that would have never been possible if I was very strongly attached to my old selves. We can be addicted to the old images we have built: the social validation and acceptance that comes with those images. Societal admiration and belonging is very intoxicating. Conversely societal rejection is very painful. But I had to decide whether I wish to bear the pain of social rejection or self rejection.

And so ironically, I have always chosen my self over society. It can be psychologically exhausting of course, and there is accumulated fatigue, the feeling of having to do this over and over again. Watching other people ease into life with no effort, while I scream and flail as though I am drowning.

So sometimes even I am confused if I have a strong or weak sense of self. I have no qualms thinking about self-destruction, but yet I am still willing to choose loneliness over belonging. I protect my health like a vigilant hawk, but I contemplate my own death very often. Is this paradoxical or is there some coherence somewhere?

I am not sure where I am going with this. Today, I just want to write as my self. No attempts to mask or belong. I want to attempt to write as I am, even if language cannot fully convey my internal states.

Thank you for reading, if you’ve made it so far. I guess the only thing I can do while navigating all of this is to document it as faithfully as possible. People are like “why would they kill themselves?” because they cannot comprehend who would choose death when life is so precious. I cannot speak for anyone else, but here is a look into my mind.

As far as I know I’m not practically suicidal because as long as I can have some self-determination I would never bring suffering to those who would suffer from my decision, but I think about it often, because that’s the way I respond to my pain.

March 18, 2024

my first hate comment

This morning I woke up to my first ever hate comment in response to my latest post in the history of this blog. I am sharing a screenshot because I don’t wish to publish the comment:

screenshot of comment:" Your story isn't unique or even special. You're experiencing the same symptoms as humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, it's called the human condition. Suck it up buttercup and stop acting like life is as hard as you make it."

This blog is more than 10 years old, so it is quite something that I haven’t gotten more hate comments before, since I tend to write about controversial topics. My writing is not that popular and it is pretty niche, most of the time most people don’t actually care about what I write. I think people tend to get trolls and hate comments when they reach a popularity threshold. I found myself wondering if this means I’ve finally made it on the blogging scene. I kid.

I guess I can understand why people simply turn off comments, or don’t bother to build it. But I love comments – I may not have the psychological space to respond to them in a timely manner, but I love them in general. In this day and age where people are used to instant messaging and status-based social networks, it takes a lot of effort to come to this website and type into a traditional online form.

Which is why I am also mind boggled that this person took the effort to leave this comment. They seem to be unable to tolerate the way I write about my life. No one is asking them to read my writing? I am not sure what is the sort of reaction they are trying to provoke? Shame? I had a ton of that while growing up. That I will read this comment and decide to finally pull up my socks? Wow thanks I’m finally cured.

I have never claimed that my story is unique or special, but the point of having a blog is to write my truth. When I was younger I really believed everybody felt like me, only to find out most people have never even once contemplated what it means to end their own life. There is inherent suffering in being human, but people will endure incredible suffering just to stay alive, because they want to be alive. To them, being alive is a gift.

Yet I struggle every single day. If this makes me a buttercup so be it. I’ve admitted multiple times on this blog that I am a very fragile person. It is precisely this fragility that makes it difficult to endure life, because I feel so sensitive to everything.

I’ve also endured this sort of comments from people supposedly close to me for my entire life. Do people really believe this sort of rebuke will make people like me have more will to live and survive? This comment is proving my sentiments right: that this world is hostile and relentlessly judgmental. If I was at a different place this could be a trigger for me to contemplate disappearing off the face of this earth. I mean, why bother to survive when people say and think such mean things about me?

Does this person feel better after saying this to a so-called buttercup? That a person is already admittedly weak and vulnerable, and that the next best thing to do to this person is to punch her down?

Honestly. I am not upset or even offended. I am just disturbed. I am fragile in many ways, but I am numb to these things because well, “training” from many years of enduring this sort of shit from worse sources because it fucking hurts to hear something like this from people I actually care about.

I am disturbed because who knows what else is being said to other people who are in an emotionally vulnerable state right now? This is unfortunately the world we live in. Though this person is not representative of the many kind and thoughtful people I interact with, it is also true that there are a ton of such people around, and bullying is still a thing.

I feel sympathy mostly, because I cannot imagine the process of becoming a person who genuinely thinks this is a worthwhile thing to do.

To the other buttercups like me: for what it is worth I think it is perfectly fine to be a buttercup. There is no rulebook in this world that says we have to toughen up and be thick like hide. This is the sort of insidious narrative that is causing so much unnecessary suffering in this world, because we are all afraid to be our true selves openly in this world. So we suppress and repress, and we knowingly and unknowingly hurt each other like this. In my opinion, it is better to be a weak buttercup that is mindful of the presence of the other buttercups in this world. That to me, is strength.

March 16, 2024

pretension

Lately I am trying to have more compassion for myself, but it has been a struggle. I tell myself just like I wouldn’t expect someone without a leg to run a marathon, I shouldn’t expect myself to function like a normal human being because my brain is dysfunctional.

I can’t tell how much of my mental state is inherent in me, and how much of it is impacted by the current conditions of the world. We’re entering year 5 of the pandemic but most of the world is denying that it exists, every day there is incredible violence and war, the weather never ceases to remind us that climate change is happening, and society is relentlessly judgemental. Is it truly a sign of health to be able to ignore everything that is going on and just go about as though everything is dandy and fine?

I try to imagine myself living in an imaginary world where people actually care about each other, where a pandemic like this would never drag on for five years because everyone would just agree to do the right thing for each other. A world where I would not feel insane for caring about my health or other people’s health. Or get gaslighted into feeling like I’m a hypochondriac when I know my anxieties are fully backed up by the research. Would I still feel the way I do now?

I think a lot of my feelings comes from my belief that this world is hostile, though it pretends otherwise. That is the messed up thing: because perhaps it would be better if it was outright hostile.

Every day I wake up I feel like something is wrong with me. It is like I don’t belong here. Some people have body dysmorphia, I have an existence dysmorphia. I feel like most days I am just pretending to be a human being – half the time it is because I love my partner and I don’t want to be a drag. Without her, would I simply let myself rot?

I have such a complicated relationship with life. If I didn’t care about it I guess I wouldn’t even be writing here, and I wouldn’t be so obsessive about documenting my memories. Yet I struggle. I can’t tell whether is it my brain that is uncooperative or I am just truly disinterested.

I feel like the only way I can cope with this is to continue to pretend to be a human being, to go through the motions of life, to intellectually participate. Maybe I can fake it till I make it, or maybe through the pretension I can find the sort of joy that comes from the immersion of acting in a play, or it is through travelling the lengths and widths of this void that I can find my way?

I guess I am somewhat still hopeful for a positive outcome, but maybe this is just my relationship to life. After reading a ton of autobiographies I know I am not the only person in history having this tenuous relationship with life. If this is my lot then perhaps I have to figure out how can I best cope with it instead of wishing I can be another person or have another brain.

March 10, 2024

documenting my first experience with the risograph

Last weekend to celebrate our 94th month anniversary we decided to attend a beginner’s risograph workshop at Knuckles & Notch. To be very honest I haven’t heard of the word “risograph” until last year – and I actually worked in print design for a few years so that is a tad embarrassing. Back in my day (early 2000s) there were hardly any art fairs – or at least I was too busy working to know about them if they existed – there was also no zine or sticker culture like it is now.

We encountered risograph prints at the Illustration Arts Fest last year. They have a distinctive neon-ish retro look. There was also where we first encountered Knuckles & Notch, and since then we’ve been following them on instagram. That’s how my partner knew of their workshops, and she asked if I was interested. I was, but the idea of attending a three-hour workshop in covid times sounded a little precarious and exhausting to me, so I just pushed the idea aside.

But we ran out of ideas of what to do on our 94th month, so at the very last minute my partner popped the idea again, and this time I agreed albeit reluctantly. We decided to wear n95s for the entire workshop.

I enquired if we needed to bring our digital devices to work on the designs, but they said no, we’ll use their materials available on-site. Thinking it was somewhat like letterpress or woodblock printing I was anticipating doing some cut outs to make some simple prints. I was half right! They offered paper for cutting, and I was surprised to learn that we could actually draw anything with markers.

There is a set number of fixed colours which we could pick any 2, and we can dictate the transparency of the colours via shades of grey. The overlap of translucent colours may produce beautiful effects.

I decided to hand-letter a haiku I wrote in 2017 (because this was the sentiment I intensely felt at the particular moment in time), and opted to keep the colour scheme stupid simple. Since this is our first time, we had no idea what to expect or how to visualise the potential outcomes. Hence I was more conservative.

Here I am lettering with correction liquid to make white letters (my hand tired from perpetually squeezing, had I known earlier I would have brought my giant white posca marker), and my partner elected to cut shapes from paper:

photo of me using correction liquid to determine the white areas

The lay outs of the separate two colours were created with a black marker and pencil. To create the giant block containing “heavy weight” I cut out some black paper and used correction liquid on it. The left would determine the pink areas and the right would determine dark blue areas:

left for the dark blue print, right for the pink print

The risograph printer in action:

photo of the printer completing the poster print

photo of the risograph printer at knuckles & notch

The risograph stencil:

My partner browsing risograph the art at the studio:

photo of my partner browsing the risograph art at knuckles and notch

Close-up of the overlapping blue and pink hearts – this effect is not obvious on the poster when seen from a distance, but pretty cool up close. But on hindsight perhaps I would have used a grey marker for a more translucent blue:

For the two lines that sandwich the word “only” I wanted to experiment with overlapping pencil lines. Since pencil is naturally grey (rather than solid black) I thought it would create an interesting effect with the overlapping colours. In the end the effect was pretty cool but I think it should have been more pronounced. Also since this is the first time I am hand-lettering blind I couldn’t balance the weight of the type properly – too used to being able to quickly toggle different typographic weights in a software. I felt this part of the poster was pretty weak:

closeup of the overlapping pencil markings on the poster

Another attempt at overlapping colours but again it wasn’t obvious except when seen close-up:

close up of the pink block with words "heavy weight", and the words "of existence" printed with overlapping blue and pink ink

The full poster:

Us with our posters at the studio – the effect of my partner’s overlapping colours were so much better:

photo of my partner and I with our risograph prints

Overall this was a very enriching experience for me. It is so cool to create a poster almost entirely manually versus using a software. I regard my hand-lettering as trash but I wanted to see how far I could go with it. After this experience I guess I can see why there are so many artists who are enamoured with risograph prints. It offers a different spectrum of creativity and creative constraints that often produces extraordinary results. I mean the only reason why we became aware of it is because the risograph prints at the art/book fairs kept catching our eye.

I’ve spent so much of my life creating with the computer and making digital visuals. I think there is some evolutionary biological reason why we are very drawn to analog things. When I first started to learn how to draw I thought I would be happier drawing on the ipad. I was wrong: I feel so much better sketching with a pen and painting with watercolour.

Risograph prints can never be perfect. My hand-lettering would never look like type set on a computer software. But there is perfection, and then there is beauty. The more encounters I have the roughness that comes with handmade and analog stuff, the more I am moved by the beauty that emanate from those layers of rough imperfections. Is it because nature is also never perfect? That the petals of flowers are never symmetrical, there is always a browning leaf on a tree. We gasp during autumn, when things start to decay. There can be an exhaustion that comes with endless summers.

p.s. I’m giving away five copies of the poster with free shipping if any of you deem it worthy. please leave a comment and i’ll get in touch with you.

March 3, 2024

some ruminations on the inherent dislike of my self

[cw: suicidal thoughts] I guess this does not come as a surprise to anyone – I think I have an inherent dislike for my self. No one who inherently likes them selves would keep having thoughts of whether their lives are meaningful, or if their lives are worthwhile. Them simply being alive should be enough.

A typical person being in this world cannot help but be affected by this world and in turn, affects the world. Their mere presence changes the world through their interactions. That to me, is the meaning of one’s life. The universe can one day implode, but nothing changes the fact that we were once there. We participated, even if it is a simulation.

This is where I stand philosophically at least intellectually, at this point in my life. But personally and psychologically I keep wondering whether my life is worthwhile. I don’t think the world is better or worse with or without me. I struggle to participate, because everything just seems so heavy and meaningless.

I just don’t have a good relationship with my self, life and this world. On a meta level I think this could be a good and fruitful thing. This void or conflict has pushed me to examine that space instead of living life like a drone on auto-pilot. There are a lot of things that most people take for granted that don’t come easy to me. But it feels difficult: living like I am fundamentally incompatible with life.

I wonder if a lot of how I feel stems from being the odd one out. Will I feel this desolation if I am surrounded by a community of people like me? I once believed I had found my tribe when I lived in SF for a while, only to drift apart from that spectrum of weirdness.

I think mentally I have a very strong drive to be independent in my thoughts and actions, but emotionally I wish to belong. That is the main difference between people who are unapologetic about their unique selves and me. I feel perpetually apologetic for being me.

Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking of myself as fully abled like the rest of the world, only to realise again and again no matter how many kilometres I can run, how many streaks I can accomplish, how much weight I can lift, I am still chronically ill. I have a lot less migraines than before, but they pop up when I am not careful. I still have to be hyper-vigilant about my health, and I tend to feel ill a lot more often than the average person. But I am so used to feeling unwell that it feels so normal, so I fall into the trap of thinking I am normal. Then I get irrationally upset when my normal sense of unwellness becomes sickeningly unwell.

Like many other people who minimise illness, I too minimise it for myself. If I truly believe I am ill, I would have way more compassion for myself. I would understand that I was incapable of doing all the things I thought I should do. But no, I feel contempt when I am unable to do anything. Memories of being labelled as lazy comes flooding back into me. I start to detest myself for my ongoing uselessness. There is an overwhelming sadness about my existence. Sometimes the pain feels unbearable. And this is when I wish for it to end.

I don’t have a lot of capacity for normal living. I am very easily overwhelmed. People are not very kind to this sort of fragility, because we prize “resilience”. It was worse when I was younger, and there was so much self-hatred and shame accumulated because I could not hustle. One day I just decided to finally acknowledge that I am fragile. I heaved a sigh of relief. I can finally stop pretending and trying to be who I am clearly not. We can’t keep asking the fish to climb a tree.

I dwell on things I cannot do – it grates on me slowly, draining the life out of me. But I don’t give myself credit for the things I can do. I just cannot think of and see my self clearly, like how I would objectively and logically evaluate someone else.

I don’t really know how to surface out of this, or if I even could, if this is something I have to learn to work with in order to have a better relationship with my own life. I am already in my 40s, if I lived in another era I would probably be dead by now. It seems unlikely that I can ever reprogram myself to think of myself differently. All I can do is to articulate these in ways I know how, like writing this now. Maybe just the act of processing is enough.