Stop. Don’t you dare think suicide. [Part 2]

Dear You Wishing Suicide,

Please stop and get some little wee bit of rest before you actually want to do suicide now. I know nothing seems to make any sense when you are feeling this low, even if you are or are not in the self-explanatory “depressive state” within the harrows of dying. Yes, I know. Whatever is happening outside is none of your business already, and you are all set to hang or burn yourself to body motionless mode. Well, life isn’t cut out for everybody. But how about, allowing yourself another 20 years to live first and see how it goes? If you really have decided and pinned your hopes on death later, you can do that but don’t get caught. BUT, excuse me, that is not the point I wish to make.

We are all lonely and suffering. In some way or many ways, somehow. Some people have many coping methods and supportive networks that made it work better for them, so they don’t feel the weight so much on their shoulders. Others that are not so lucky, probably live like pain lasts forever. Sorrow lives on to drown all the good sides of their very own souls till they become this mindless drone moving about without care and remorse. They become emotionless because pain has gone so deep till they no longer feel. And of course, some people slide into an incredibly numb and woody stupor after which they head down the long depression route and eventually will contemplate suicide.

Being a classic INFJ, I really don’t have have a tonne of friends who can weather the storm with me. As an empath, I have heightened sensitivities. I can get sad and angry easily when others become sad and angry, and I take in the world around by a snap of a finger. My mind and heart can get very busy and racy, and often I shut out the world by embracing solitude more than my peers, which sometimes isn’t the best thing. However, I have developed some helpful mechanisms to allow me to go on my daily activities without disturbance, and even to an extent leverage on my sensitivities to boost my productivity at work.

Thankfully, my parents who ironically speaking, ain’t quite the best parents in the world as they were so punitive to me when I was young while stubbornly standing tall as republican-traditional, is still there for me when I feel like crying out ass. Even if they don’t indulge me perpetual hugs or tell me it’s going to be all right (they are not so expressive) while throwing in untimely lectures, they would sometimes cook or buy me simple delicious lunches or dinners so that I don’t go hungry. They would tell me to go to bed early and don’t stay up to tire those eyebags. They would share with me nifty life habits which would benefit me so that I don’t worsen into some rotting shit-hole by myself when life’s miseries are alllllll hell yeahhh happening full steam ahead.

Committing suicide is a superbly massive form of courage. This courage could measure up to the same courage a warrior would take on, to die for the country at battle with the risk of everything in demise and all the grand aspirations they have dreamed of, falling apart as they perish. The courage of possibly not having a home to go back to after fighting so much and giving back to the nation what the nation has given to them more. In other words, dying for nothing is immense bravery.

Before you use this courage to reach for the hanging noose or that lighter to burn yourself down, why don’t you try these options instead?

1. Have that very same courage to be grateful for what you have

Thank anybody and anything that comes to your mind. If you think your career is practically going down the pipe, with nothing else that you can save, think why you have this job and why others still DON’T. Do you know many people out there in this world would want what you have, but can’t? Or because of poverty or a lack of education, they would never even live in a city like you do, with clean water and beautiful sidewalks? Be thankful.

2. Have that courage to talk to someone first

It doesn’t even have to be a friend or family. You could strike up a short conversation with a McDonalds crew staff smiling whenever you order, a Starbucks employee, or someone you encounter in your commute. If you have a pleasant and fun work colleague, you could have a short chat about life with them. You don’t have to directly let them in, into your personal life, but you can hear what they have to say about certain topics, like politics or entertainment. It can be interesting, but do steer clear away from narcissistic assholes. Effectively, even 5 mins of talk can be uplifting with a friendly acquaintance.

3. Have that courage to hang around animals or save them if you could

I used to do this all the time whenever I come back home from work, or have enough time before meeting a friend. I would actually search high and low for my neighbourhood cats and dogs, knowing all their hideouts and favourite hangouts. I know this particular calico cat which frankly loves to frequent the police post around my block, and is not shy of cops. I would go there to say hi, have it brush against my legs and just stare at it licking its paws and body fur. Neighbors do come round to feed those cats and if I’m lucky to chance upon that time, I would have a treat just looking at these cats chomp down their food in front of me. If you have the opportunity to save a cat or two should they bump into you for a rescue, you are the chosen one to change their fate (and yours too).

4. And..of course, be that courage to save someone who is in need

I know this may be overly dramatic like the movies and soooooo cliche being replicated tenfold in metaphors or memes. But.. the same courage you hold to kill yourself can be used to save other lives! Why can’t you volunteer as a youth detective or elderly assistant to lend a helping hand to the community? If you are not ready for that, you can start smaller by doing little things for your friends or family who might appreciate that thought the most when others weren’t so ready to help. Maybe when a stranger had dropped their purse? Now’s the time to do something. But remember, no one is asking you for the moon in saving their asses for real. You can still be who you want to be, and not sacrifice your daily life just to assist a person in need.

5. Have the courage to fight back at life or change it

Not saying you should not be a coward. But when life attacks you with shitcrates of lemons in automatic burst mode, you are supposed to retaliate with your own version of a submachine. You WILL holler back and ask what the hell life wants, then kick its butt till it flies to Yosemite. You will rise to the occasion and be a better person. Would you be put down by this setback when life keeps running you weary? It’s time to let life know what you are truly capable of. Get over a breakup, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

6. Have the courage to love your life even better

This is very difficult I know, when you already feel like dying. How do you even love your miserable life then? Well, you can. See all your mistakes as fun, and if there are no mistakes, you would not even have imagined life to be SUCH crazy fun in unconventional banter. Life can be very monotonous, dull and boring when everything is in their respective places and no one disagrees. Two days ago, I made a terrible mess at spray painting an already glazed ceramic vase. It looked so horrendously disfigured and distorted than it originally was meant to be, and I had wasted time doing it. Now, I have more hassles to deal with - I have to scrape all the excess dribbles of paint that made the surface uneven before painting more coats to hide the shit I’ve done. But mainly, I now need to spend more money buying more tools and better paint to resolve this failed spray paint job. Even so, I am beginning to love what the potential of this failure can become. It is exciting to imagine a new mess becoming avant-garde art soon, lol.

…….And so many, many, many more things you could do, with this courage to die. Really.

This suicidal courage which you have, you could muster the courage to confess to a girl or boy you’ve had a crush on since day lord knows when. You could use the courage to go on a solo road trip to Germany. You may even become a Minimalist with the courage to minimise and declutter your possessions for a cleaner home. You could even build your own empire business from scratch. The list goes on and on into multiple lists, and life is actually, not half bad. I hope you feel better soon. And if you don’t, pop me a message and I will get back to you. Seriously.

How To Quell Anxiety And Live Well With It

We live in a highly stressful environment (why of course), amid increased patterns of fast-paced city living, technological developments and heightened sensitivities. There will be frequent days when we get uneasy and overwhelmed. And no doubt about it the panic bug will all hit us at some point, to which baffling relapses will take a few more swings often than ever before. The anxiety we encounter in the face of uncertainties and unpredictabilities in life including pressing demands of circumstantial resolutions can immensely peeve and exhaust us. So how do we save ourselves? Here are a few tips (not going to impart the sublime art of breathing in and out slowly.)

Acknowledge And Acquaint Your Worst Fears and Anxieties

The first initial step. Accept all the doldrums that comes with your bagged up fears and anxieties. Don’t fight them. See them as friends to get to know, an ally, someone closer than you think. Fighting off anxiety only makes you repelled towards it, creating a wider distance and marking it off as alien. ANXIETY IS THERE, yes, yes, yes. Using Three Yes-es, confirm that you have detected, are aware and have encountered the anxiety. Then simply accept that it is here for a reason of guiding you to safe action. See that frightfully thrilling rollercoaster? Its actually pretty fun and cool to get on !

anxiety can be your friend.

If You Can’t Acknowledge The Anxiety, Avoid The Anxiety Situation (For A brief while.)

Now, I’m not persuading you to run away at every difficult situation (don’t be an easily bruised strawberry!). However, in certain direly tense situations, you may want to avoid the deathly gallows altogether and skip the attempt to accept the encounter. How do you know if some circumstances significantly calls for a direct flee? Size up the anxiety situation in a minute by rating it a 8/10 or 9/10 out of anxiety levels. Once its an 8 or 9, it’s time to get out of it for awhile either by excusing yourself from school or work for a few minutes, hours or a day if absolutely required. Take that breather to strategise on your next move. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not recommending you to be lazy inexplicably resigning or surrendering to your fate when dealt a bad hand in life.

Unabashedly, Get Into Self-Love Version 2.0

After anxiety submission and acceptance, it is a deserving primer you take time-off from your mundane duties and responsibilities, where you switch into Self-Love Version 2.0. This means doing all the things you never got to do during busy periods, or interests you never got around to enjoy. You could also prepare an Anxiety Emergency Case for yourself containing your favourite things and stuff to do when you are indeed stressing out. Special things work wonders during this time, such as single-estate tea bags and coffee, limited edition books and games, quality yoga meditation guides, and even a year-long membership card to an exclusive spa. Otherwise, even the most basic activities you enjoy often (journaling like manybody else) can help to take your mind off overthinking and the tremors of anxiety scenarios. Another quick trick is to go away somewhere quiet (it could be a favourite corner in the office or home) and close your eyes for a few seconds, mindfully listening to your heartbeat beat by beat and then sipping a cup of piping hot tea slowly until your mood changes and the anxiety sensation comes to a standstill. You can even inhale the steam from the tea and watch the condensation on the cup forming.

See Anxiety As A Damn Routine You Gotta Live With

A great way to counter anxiety in the long term is to perceive anxiety as a routine you just gotta get on and over with, as events that keep occurring and the need to resolve it frequently in banal measure. In that way, anxiety is not so much of the unknown and unfamiliar, but a repeated scenario you have gone through and appropriated corrective actions to fix it before. Besides, the confidence from acting on a routine “ANXIOUS” episode will develop overtime, and it is this confidence that will allow anxiety to be a friendlier mate. You can imagine your anxiety case to an incoming bus or train which you have to hop on sooner or later in order to go places as part of the daily commute.

anxiety,

just another call.

Tackle At The Root Of Your Anxiety (tactfully)

Once you have gathered sufficient resources for anxiety coping, you may want to tackle the root of your anxiety right away. Analyse what causes your anxiety. Even some answers and solutions to issues at hand can add to your anxiety because they may not be the best remedy yet. Sit down and recollect all events happening around that is distressing. Is it those irksome dirty floors that you have been wanting to clean but couldn’t find the time and energy to get it done after a long day? For some others, it could be bullies in school awaiting principal punishment or a police report if severe. If you are dealing with low self-esteem due to weight problems, you may want to embark on a natural approach to diet and weight loss instead of consuming slimming pills from bogus sources and plastic surgery. Find out what is truly bothering you and think of the most effective way to eliminate the bugging misery.

refrain from The maddening complex multi-tasking (if you can.)

Already leading busy lives with countless responsibilities coupled with so many other varied tasks on hand to accomplish as much as you can, is disastrous. I term this the paradox of multi-tasking monstrosity. Humans were never made to multi-task, at least not for long, because how else to focus on what is important to focus on? Check out why human brains weren’t made to multi-task here. If you are on an anxiety attack already, please prioritise over multi-tasking, as prioritising allows more productivity once you know how to allocate and deploy your time in the most efficient way without wasting your brain’s resources and sacrificing your psychological wellbeing. If you absolutely need to multi-task complex tasks, perform a maximum of two tasks at one go so your mind can keep count.

the system hangs.

Talk To Friends, Family and bundle in a good laugh as well

In the tumultuous face of anxiety, staying connected, having solid and sturdy friendships with people whom you care matters. Chatting up with friends and family, while having a blast in rolling stocks of laughter can de-sensitise your sensitive dark moods to deliver positive changes to your temperament. Works all the time. Once, I had a conversation with a dear neighbour who had the worst day of her life as she relayed the terrible events unfolding in a bad hair day to me. Although she was not in the mood for jokes, she seemed to be in lighter spirits illuminating the day’s ridicule and weird offences in the ostentaciously mean people met as I patiently listened to her describe. While we spoke, we exchanged smiles and laughters at the characters typified in our heads. In the end, as I left her house, both of us were cracking up like crackheads loaded. We had the best time. Although anxiety can isolate us to a point of despair, staying socially strong and bonding together builds unity, trust and hope to overcome ever daunting episodes.

Love Yourself: Be You, Be Proud, Be Happy.

This is not a reaction to K-Pop sensation BTS’ album “Love Yourself” (good lord, no.) and their epitome UN speech on self-love. But rather, an honest appeal to self-evaluation, self-reaffirmation, and the acceptance of who you truly are and should. This is especially so in youths these days who are constantly looking at their peers to mirror and social media for validation. Don’t get trapped in the labyrinth of media madness out there. Kudos to Lady Gaga sharing “Social Media is the Toilet of the Internet.” Yes, there are good things in social media, but toxic material proliferating on tweets and grams are far reaching viruses out there. Our Internet can be stinky and deplorable on excessive expectations and hate, and other nonsensical filth persistently clings on. No amount of cleaning would take out these remnants of excrements. Spending long hours hooked up on the online toilet (the dark side, I call it) can make you feel so small and unloved. Bear in mind, you don’t have time to lose yourself in there. You only have one life to live, and that is yours to own. Be yourself, before anybody else.

DON’T BE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. be you, be proud, be happy.

Oh. The Oddball-ish “Mulan Rockstar Tomboy” ?

Back when I was a teen and even up till my late twenties, I REALLY, genuinely hated myself. I hated how I look, how I was, and what prospects would lie ahead of me. Even now as a 33 year old, periodically at times, I would struggle to accept my actual body and soul and seek to be someone else. Essentially, throughout my lifetime, there were countless occasions I wanted to be like everybody else BUT me. Growing up as an Asian Chinese, I hated my tanned skin not reminiscent of a dainty damsel, I hated my less-than-demure big pouty Angelina Jolie lips, hated that I didn’t have a huge circle of friends while mostly being bullied in school and not the popular girl in class boys would date. Due to that, I also detested my birthdays because my so-called “friends” never ever remember or celebrate them. You could guess by now I had some form of terrible low self-esteem.

Of course, I hated that I was quite dumb and consecutively failed Math. I hated that I was way more Mulan than Sleeping Beauty, and I shot more arrows than played dolls when I was a kid. Although I too, played a lot of dolls because many girls my age played them and I had to join the famous girly club. In addition to playing dolls, I was building cool houses for them. I had used raw materials to build these houses. I stashed away emptied Yakult bottles for the formation of turrets. Designing the extent of how my dolls could live in my imagination set me on fire. I wanted my dolls to live in weird places and hang around esoteric objects that my girl friends found very odd and didn’t understand the tiniest bit why. I also had Barbie fight Ken very often LOL.

Then I went swimming every week to shy away from the Chinese dance class my Mom signed me up because the feathery fans were cringey and trigger my allergic sneezes. To complicate matters further, I was an introvert and an empath. I disliked talking too much, preferring to listen and kept things to myself. I had tonnes of unusual hobbies and interests at a time when kids were just following mainstream norms. I started learning Japanese when I was 12 years old, after the PSLE exams, because I wanted to read manga natively. So I pestered my highly impatient Mom about this and one day she finally caved in and allowed me to attend Japanese classes by myself. And then I was into loud rock music. I wanted to be a rockstar when I was a teenager in a country known as Singapore where rock is stereotypically reserved for Malay groupies. Not to mention, in the late 90s, the invasion of boyband/girlband pop hailed to be more popular than rock. Backstreet boys, Spice Girls anyone? Damn, the Spice Girls were hot.

i knew i’m different.

Despite all that I’ve liked and wanted to become, like many anxiety-ridden parents, my parents firmly devised numerous plans to model me into a “TO-BE” successful individual and chained me to lengthy Nazi-like learning programs. I was like this investment package they had invested their time and effort into building a future. Their system intensely limited my creativity and devalued my self-worth as time passes by. It was hell. I had to be really smart and get into white-collar jobs and earn loads of money enough to ferry them comfortably into retirement. I was constantly pressured to study, perform and continuously work hard to be like that cousin who became an engineer, or wealthy banker.

But I had retaliated on some events, went my own way, and then came back to them again because I thought they knew better.

So, I killed myself trying so hard, devoting copious spans of time on the goals my parents set out for me, but was frequently lost. After graduation, they wanted me to land a favourable respectful job. There was the badgering effervescent encouragement towards me to go into government service or work in an MNC. But I was a creative. Or at least I know I had that kind of blood. I knew back then, but not confidently enough. I was afraid to stand out to be myself, to be the sore thumb in the family. I kept thinking that if I didn’t think too much into it and just worked in their defined corporate jobs it would turn out fine. Would I be so very happy? Probably not. Much only in my later 20s, did I start doing things apart from my parents’ grand plans, ultimately determined to do what I want and to be myself.

no matter what, when and how old you are, you have all the right and control to be yourself.

Going into my 30s (but forever young, always young!), I am beginning to bear this conviction that if you BELIEVE, DECIDE AND DO love yourself, you will be a far more worthy, far more attractive person than anyone else you can ever emulate to be. Importantly, you will not constantly fall into senseless questioning of yourself should you encounter challenging environments that belittle your life and self-worth. And then engage in self-hurt. Plus the comparison game? Why should you even compare yourself against someone? You are in a different league altogether. You have your own standards. You only have to break the chains, cut loose from the cycle of identity crisis to be yourself. It is that simple. But difficult to commit. First, be aware and then act that it is just going to be you that matters. Everything about you - even those quirky, nasty habits that you think you possess are equally cherished and special.

So many successful people these days, it gets harder to validate yourself.

On the Internet, social media and lucrative billionaire entertainment, you will always find an opportunity to critique your life and self. IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE, those rich immaculate K-Pop idols got their shits together and are now world famous. However, all of these successful people had to realise who they truly were in each of their particular styles and callings, and had seriously worked hard on the one and only dream. It is not all glitzy dining along the Seine River in exclusivity the paparazzi permeates. Celebrities are just ordinary humans who knew and accepted themselves in greater clarity - including their strengths and weaknesses, and all the evil within. Most gradually have derived their own distinctive personalities and signature works, their own formula to the hunger games. Do you know you? Are you already doing you? What is your specialty you can bring to the world? Your niche? Don’t be a phoney replica of someone, frequently changing from one template copy to another. You will be very confused and led astray if you keep doing so.

Be proud and happy of who you are.

On the final and most hefty note, be proud (but not arrogant!) of who you are. There is a reason you are here on this Earth and aliens have no place to reside. Even the most trivial of things that you have done so far is considered unique and the stamp of your trademark. No one can replace you and nothing else can prevent your bloom, and you should be proud of that. Your parents, family, friends, colleagues and maybe strangers adore you just the way you are - if otherwise, they are foolish cucumbers, insincere and unappreciative of the beauty of your existence. They would rather go on the chopping board. Stay happy and contented in the fact that you are special sauce and many don’t deserve to get a taste of that if they don’t acknowledge your merits. Have faith, that in dire circumstances the pride and happiness of loving yourself will see you travel through and surpass the highest, thickest of setbacks even as you brace for (some) impact. Smile and look up!