Unexpectedness

I opened my eyes,

I felt like I was dreaming.

It's like lucid dream,

but I knew it was reality.

If I could explain,

it's like something stole my identity.

It's like an entanglement,

which I secretly enjoy yet fear.

I think I enjoy,

feels like a gateway to answers.

I know it's scary,

because of false perception and reality.

I know it's unreal,

yet it wants to show something.

I gasp for reality,

yet reality doesn't come by reaching.

I sat back down,

with darkness and listened very carefully.

A love hate relationship,

with me myself and my mind.

When it dies down,

I stand on the other side.

Impossible to comprehend,

and impossible for self-empathy.

And all that's left,

an empty feeling of a dream.
As I stand opposite,
how ridiculous I must have been.

Certain days

https://themighty.com/2017/02/social-anxiety-how-people-think-of-you/

I avoid social situations of all types. I’m not afraid of disliking the activity or the people. To some extent, it’s being afraid of other people not liking me — but it’s more that I cannot turn off my inner voice.

When I am alone my inner voice may go on and on about things I dislike about myself or things I will never be able to achieve or have because of my failings, but when I am in social settings my thought patterns change. To the person who has never experienced social anxiety, it’s easy to assume that the reason I dislike being around people is because my thought patterns are like what I have described, like they are when I am alone.

When I’m around people, be it people I know and love or complete strangers, my inner dialogue becomes what I think those people think about me.

“She’s so ugly.”

“I thought she was smart?”

“I would rather be talking to anyone but her.”

It may seem selfish that I seem to think everyone is thinking about me, but it is never being selfish, it is visualizing my greatest fears. I want to turn and run and hope that I can be “out of sight, out of mind” because that is so much better than the alternative.

When I was young, I did not have this pervasive anxiety. I was outgoing and loved attention because it was always positive. I felt funny, smart, beautiful. I don’t mind admitting it now because I no longer believe I am these things as I once was. Sure, I’m smart enough, but to the people who have known me all my life, I have fallen short of what was expected of me to achieve. I am no longer the “beautiful dancer.” It took me many years more than it should have to get my degrees. I stopped dancing. I am not where I expected myself to be and not where I imagine those who knew me best and loved me most expected me to be. And that is hard to face.

Around people I take my negative thoughts and expand them. I imagine the popular girls from high school seeing me and then whispering behind my back.

The best I can do now is remind myself how far I have come. I’m not at my rock bottom anymore. I am climbing out of my sinkhole. I am having more control over my emotions and my actions. I did find someone who is my best friend who decided he wanted to be my best friend for the rest of our lives. I try to see me the way he sees me. And when I can’t, I ask him to remind me. I tell myself that yes, it took me a lot longer to get my college degree, but I got it in the end. And I’m getting a graduate degree now. Sure, it was supposed to be a two-year degree and I’m having to stretch it to three, but I did that for my physical and mental health. That’s a big thing! I didn’t run away; I didn’t let myself fail. I am working slowly and steadily towards my goal.

That doesn’t make it any easier to walk into a classroom of strangers. It doesn’t make going to a birthday party bonfire for my cousins any easier. It doesn’t mean I won’t make excuses when I’m terrified of meeting people for plans. I hope that one day I will be able to do all these things with ease. I hope the medication gets better, treatments get better and that doing the work slowly and steadily builds my confidence and tool set to go out without feeling the desperate urge to just run away or for the Earth to open up and swallow me whole.

I hope that by reading this article you may see that when it comes to social anxiety, I can only do as much as I can do before my brain tricks me into believing things I have no proof of. If you know someone with social anxiety, tell them often and honestly how you feel. Help them combat the lies their own mind is telling them. But don’t push too hard. They are doing the absolute best they can do. Be thankful they think you’re worth the work and discomfort. Let them know they are too.

Been a while since

I feel like it's a better day.
Thanks so much for talking to me.
Even though the night before we talked at punggol park, I feel like it wasn't complete?
Like I felt like I haven't finish talking but you were hungry already.
HAHAHA.
From the deepest of my heart, thank you for today.
:)

Maybe what I want,

isn't a hibernation from people.
Maybe all I want,
is a hibernation from my own thoughts.

I'm so fucking ridiculous

It doesn't even make sense as to why I ranted.

I have a serious problem

of being too judgemental.
A fucking serious one.
I tried.
And failed.
But I will still try.

If only I could explain myself

Maybe you won't talk to me in that tone

Listen to the voice

And for one of the rarest time, I questioned myself.

"I can't even study."
"I get distracted so easily."
"Why can't I do this anymore?"
"What's going on?"
"What's the problem with me?"

And then just out of the blue, suddenly, I told myself to listen to those voices.
Especially the last question.
I answered "Stop. There's no problem with you. It's just thoughts."

I identified it, and I rectified it on the spot.
I managed to see that it was the thoughts that made me feel in a certain way.
And that some thoughts aren't true even though it just keeps popping up.

Maybe that's what it means when people say "People can only help this much, but I'm the only one who can decide to stop it"
It felt so unreal at that point of time.
Or rather, it felt even more real when I questioned myself.
I realised that I've really been suppressing myself with too much negative thoughts.
And that I haven't been able to get out of the cycle.
But just a few moment ago, I managed to do it.
And agreed that there's nothing much people can do if I decide to let my thought run like this.
Because they can't understand fully what's happening in my head.
Only I can solve my own problems.
Only I can decide what to do with these thoughts.
And for a moment, everything disappeared.
Every fucked up negativity that tells me that I am weak, I am a bad person, I am too sensitive, I have too much worries, I am depressed, I can't get out of this, I am stuck forever, I am too needy;
All of them vanished like how a magical spell was cast and it dispersed all the clouds above me.

I feel again.
And it hurts to see that I've been really suffocating myself too much with my own thoughts.
Though I managed to get out this time, I can't say for sure that the next time I would.
It comes in different unique ways all the time.
Maybe when I'm smoking, maybe when I'm alone studying, maybe when I'm in a big group of friends.
And it can manage to bluff through your personality.
And convince you that things are bad.

But not this time.
Just not this time.

So tonight, (even if it's just temporary peace)
I learnt to listen to those voices.
And question them back.
I'm not really that bad of a person.
Stop lying to me.

Listen to the words

You use to comfort others.
And apply it to yourself.

At the end of the tornado

You can briefly say what happened, what you felt.
But you know words can never describe the feeling of being inside one again.
And you just don't have the ability to even type out what you felt when you're in it at that point of time.
All that's left is wreckage, part of what happened, and you can try to piece it together,
But it'll never symbolize the true event that happened.
It's a mess

Yesterday was such a bad day

A day where I can't get my head to work properly when I needed it to be.
And now just feeling like I wasted the whole of yesterday.
But I guess...
Today we'll be a better day.
How worse can it get?
We'll see.

I think I'm more worried

About me not worrying much about the test tomorrow.

It happened again

Panicking in front of people.
Fuck this shit man.
I hate how he made me sound so stupid.
I guess I didn't really understand the experiment too.
Whatever la fuck this shit.
Fuck education.
Don't even know why I'm studying for.
Fuck this society.
I can't believe I feel like the most stupid person on earth just now.
Felt exactly how I felt when I was in Thai class that time.
I feel so fucking judged.
I can't do this shit la.
Now I have to study for my paper in this mood.
Just fuck it all right?
But no.
I should do what everyone does right?

"Are you from physics major?"
"Did you do the experiment with your partner or did you all do it separately"
"You don't seem to quite understand the basic of physics."
*force a smile*
"Do you understand the experiment at all?"
*thinks about how I'm acting up, acts up even more*
*Fighting thoughts in my head before I break down in front of a stranger*
"Do you wanna do this another time?"
*Just stfu lemme breathe. I can't breathe.*
*Okay breathes, wtf did he just asked me?*
*Gone. Blank af*

It's funny

When it comes, it doesn't stop even as much as you want it to stop.
When it's not around, you feel weird and ponder why hasn't it come.

Trying so hard here

But when there's a crack,
everything seeps through.
Every fucking thing.

Looking blank

Because I have a separate world in my head to deal with first.

Learning how to take care of myself

And also to regard people's feelings in the process.

Maybe I accept it

Because it is easier to blame something for it?

Pivotal moment of life

My old friends, if I don't turn up for meetups or I reject meetups, please understand that life hasn't been that nice to me.
Or rather life in my own perspective.
I don't know how to explain what's going on with me.
Life hasn't really been that bad in the physical sense.
Like I have friends who I can count on, my family is fine, and like still doing what I like to do like climbing etc.
But it's just this annoying little feeling that's inside.
Like what they say "an itch that can't be scratched".
I guess I might seem like I'm turning everyone down or like I'm avoiding everyone.
But do know that I still think of every single one of you (if you matter enough)
Sometimes it gets a little lonely and time is a little hard to pass.
But I tell myself that it'll pass soon.
Sometimes it gets a little dark here, but there are people who hold their torches and come and find me and I'm really appreciative of them.
And then there are people who are in this dark place with me.
I can't see them, I don't really know how bad things are going on over there, but I do know we're together in this darkness.
Writing this just makes me feel like maybe I'm starting to accept who I am?
And that my thoughts may be wired differently from other people.
And that it's okay that people don't understand?
Yet there's this constant self-doubt about how I'm feeling.
Yesterday you told me "I feel like maybe the more you question yourself, the more you're going to be?"
I do ask myself that question though.
And I've been trying to shun off thoughts of self-questioning the whole of today.
But when I'm alone and I have time to think, it starts.
Though it's not uncontrollable, it's still there.
Lol.
I don't know.

Before it gets uncontrollable, let's just keep it here for tonight.

Met you the second time

Second time after so long.

But told you so many things lol.

Guess you're the 4th person to know and to be honest, I still do feel vulnerable about it.

But your words just made me feel like it's not going to change much about our friendship.

And that's really nice.

And it's really like wow to know that you keep a blog for yourself too.

I realised we didn't really like "talked" before in the past.

And it's so interesting how we are able to talk so openly about certain things now.

Maybe it's just the familiarity that I've always talked about.

Thanks for opening up to me even though it's not suppose to be a "BARTER TRADE".

I guess it's really been a long time since I've talked to people like that at night. (other than mushroom)

Just sitting for so long and talking about so much things.

Hmm the previous time was with Ivan actually so it's not so long I guess.

But idk how we talked from 8pm to 11pm.

Got so many things to say meh hahaha.

Thanks yet again, you made me feel like it's okay for people to not understand what's going on.

But just accepting me for who I am.

Whenever we speak like that

It feels like we were both frozen in time.
And when we talked, it felt like a conversation brought back to life from the past.

Been awhile

Since I smiled at my own thoughts.
It's kinda nice

I'm late for class in the end

Sigh, guess it's a grumpy morning.

Forsee

A very bad morning to deal with tml.
Good night.

I realised

I'm quite hard to please as a person.

You know

The weird feeling when sometimes you say some words which you normally wouldn't say.
Or like words from your mouth just seemed to be like from a different person.
Makes you ponder about how different you've become.
But what's weirder is how you're still able to judge that there's something different now than from the past.
So are we who we speak or are we who we think?
I guess it's an integration of both.

But you know people who don't read this blog have never seen the other side of me.
I wonder what's their impression of me as a person then.
Thinking about that, I'm glad I only have a few important friends that I've to take care of.
And most of the times I don't really bother about what other people really think of me.
But those who I care about, what they think bothers me a lot.
I'm afraid that people start to distant themselves away from me as I've seemingly changed as a person in thoughts.
But yet again, what rights do I have for distancing from my own friends.

Idk.
Some days are harder to get through than others.
But I guess we'll still get through.
And learn something out of everyday.
(And back to the idea of saying something that I won't usually say. That weird self-judgmental feeling)
Good night.

Sometimes

it feels like people like us are connected even before we know it.
Feels like we're all in a different dimension from this physical world they know.
Like a dream world.
It's just a matter of time where we'll meet more people like us.
It's nice sometimes though, because we're living in this dimension that normal societal things don't really act on us.
And that we have our own rules and way of living that they won't understand.
But yet, our physical self is in this physical world.
And when their world seeps into ours, chaos happens.