The Woman Who Belongs To Nowhere (10)

Kami adalah satu manusia, dwitunggal dalam diri

Dua sisi, asli dan sejati

Terang dan gelap

It was truly wonderful to have my spirit back, my confidence and self esteem rode sky high and everything seemed to be brighter. Yeah, I was breathing again, alive and thrived again, also made numerous decision. No more am I scared of being left alone by my housemate *in fact,I was going to leave her* nor am I afraid unable to get a new job in a new place nor being failed if I tried applying residency. This was me,the true me from high school year,who crazy enough to go after my crush and entered one of the most prestigious university in Singapore, learning physics. Crazy enough to dream of taking both medical and physics school, probably become a world renowned professor and snatched Nobel prize.

The plan of resigning and applying job elsewhere actually accomplished several things. First, I was aware of my ugly self image so I needed to make a good impression when applying. This resulted as me diligently working out every morning *for your information, I started exercising after moving with my housemate but never I working out so hard unless my housemate asked me every single morning* no matter how busy my schedule was. Also, I took care of my face a lot more, yeah buying some cosmetics and stuff. Second, I was also aware that I was clinging to my housemate a lot for reassurance. But, no more. With the return of my self esteem and confidence, I felt more empowered and independent. And ah, dat concert tho. I was so excited to go home, also I planned to meet my BFF and tried a french restaurant.

Oddly enough, the moment I waited on the boarding room, I looked around and realized when I resign later, there will come the same moment in which I’m flooded with sentimental memories which only means 1 things. I will never go back, or if I precisely define my fears, there will come that defining moment of separation that I will never meet my housemate and my senior, ever. The moment of change in which I leave work behind to go to uncertain places and future, leaving behind comfortable stability. Realizing that, the joy and excitement that fueled me for weeks were gone and dread settled in. Not even the thought of watching concert comforted my growing insecurity.

All the shines of thousands spotlights

All the stars we steal from the night sky

Will never be enough, never be enough

Towers of gold are still too little

These hands could hold the world but it’ll

Never be enough, never be enough for me

However, no matter I clinged so hard to my housemate and my current job, I had made that decision. It would happen, even it cost a lot. Gosh, growing up was hard.

I finally arrived at my home, which I wasn’t so attached to. I let my dad looked me and talked about so many things including my plan because I knew he missed me a lot and I still had some cheerful feelings to share and not to run immediately into my room. Also, that evening I went to the orchestra, which was wonderful. Conducted by Addie MS, the orchestra played several of my beloved soundtracks like The Avengers, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and The Greatest Showman. IT. WAS. WONDERFUL. HEAVENLY.

The next day, I went to French restaurant with my BFF and oh boy, did I miss them, particularly C, since she understood my condition and inspired me to go to therapist. We excitedly tried various menu, duh, I agreed that escargot couldn’t be shared for any reasons, the butter was so delicious. While eating, we talked many things. I wasn’t surprised if C and A had little interest on pursuing residency, after all, they heard more about the down side of residency and more realistic views than I did, or should I say, I still foolishly clinged to that dream, the dream that caused me suffered a lot because it was related to my job too. I told them that I had online consult with psychologist and her advices. C didn’t react well when I told her my psychologist advice. Toxic positivity wasn’t good and I agreed with her. I explained my psychologist told me such advice was necessary so I could hang on my own when my housemate left me. “Ah, to build your self reliance, I see.” And we talked about our support system, which in my case was compromised. If I told my parents I had depression and anciety, they wouldn’t get it, they would think as me unable to move on from job rejection and stressful work combined with lack of recommendation needed for applying residency.

The truth is, I wanted their opinions on me resigning my job. Unfortunately, we talked a little about that, distracted with the oncoming French cuisine. Funny things, I told them that having pets became my primary reason to live applying residency. My logic was : apply residency-become a radiologist-more income-have more money to adopt cats and dogs and their life necessity-get a cat. I imagined if I was interview during applying residency, the answer to question “what is your motivation admit to residency” was “I want to get a cat”. Yeah, probably not gonna happen, but nice thing that I had that small reason to keep going.

I told them I was going to resign from my job but still worried about the difficulty looking for new job, not to mention the salary. A gave me good tips : always relied on numbers. Meaning that if I resign, get a new job near my home, I can eliminate basic expenses since I share, or rather my parents pay, the basic necessities. C pretty much supported that idea and also, supporting my reason to own pets as a basis to apply residency, hehehe.

The Woman Who Belongs To Nowhere (9)

Aku tak lagi pura-pura, jadi seorang yang bukan aku

Kurangkul bayang-bayang memasuki kegelapan

Agar cahaya berona terang

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

I should congratulate myself on the bravery of finally asking help or consulting therapist and I did. I kindly said to myself repeatedly that I did good on looking for help. After all, all the intense emotions or feelings, some were pretty hard to describe, really need to be resolved so it wouldn’t reappear again. Previously I wrote all my worries, fears, unfulfilled expectations, wishes in several posts regarding to several moments, mostly centered on the job rejection and the separation from my housemate, and the two directly and indirectly influenced my insight on the future, mostly I saw it as a grim future, since I had no confidence on myself and I believed some day that I would kill myself because I no longer saw the future. yeah, that suicidal and/or nihilist thought had occurred as early several months after the job rejection, no matter how bright the momentarily happiness came, that dark cloud stayed and became the baseline climate of my mood.

My housemate provided that occasional sunlight so powerful it still shone behind the dark cloud and the heat actually dried the wet clothes *wrong analogy here*. In a place which was left in the cold humid climate for a long time, that sunlight was very nice, but we all know the day didn’t stay forever and there would come the dark cold night. The “threat” of being left by my housemate caused intense emotional pain and distress that comparable of heartbreak. It isn’t heartbreak because I was simply left with intact but rotten heart, nonetheless intact. She didn’t break it nor my senior. Come to think about it, I had experienced it once when I looked back at the hotel where I stayed during ASC and met my true love, while wondering at the same time, wheteher I would meet him again and catched him up. Even then, I knew the answer : we wouldn’t meet again and it still held true for 11 years. So I also knew the answer of whether I would meet my housemate again after the separation, the answer was 97% I would not meet her again, I would save the 3% for optimism since we still stay in the same country, but maybe not the same province, be it the same city or same island.

I last left the story with me consulting an online psychologist. And I pretty much tried hard to build my so-called positive thinking, meaning self reliance. Yeah, I used to be independent myself, not counting on other people so it was a little bit of shame I was reduced from that to this fragile, easily afraid of loneliness and frustrated, pessimistic young woman. With a little help from my housemate and the psychologist, the true me slowly returned.

The Woman Who Belongs To Nowhere (8)

Jangan kira, ketika digelapi

Kami mati, ketika dunia menghilang

Kami kehilangan kehidupan

Topeng-topeng tak berguna

Melupakan bukan jalan

Menyembunyikan bukan jawaban

Bersahabatlah dengan kami, bayang-bayangmu

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

As my previous post said, Bayang-Bayang Retak *there I said it* was that school anniversary drama that I wanted so badly to participate as in my stories before. Yes, it was that event that my dad had his hand to completely ruined my chance and the first time I experience, what, depression? On a high school student? Even then and now I would “you’ve gotta be shitting me”. I used to think I was that unfeminine and strong girl, there was no way I wanted to be weak. But then, I didn’t even know about it and I had no one to actually talk about my thoughts and feelings. Certainly not my parents who were the source of my distress or my sister-figure who got busy with his date nor my cousins who enjoyed priviledge and affections from my dad and my aunts nor my friends whom i got jealous because they were lucky to participate while I got stuck with my parents.

The drama was a story about humanities’ collective consciousness vs their subconsciousness (typical good vs evil, light vs dark, brain vs heart, jedi vs sith) with one side was influenced by the Devil. The orchestra and the choir was pretty awesome.

Yep, while looking for my old anatomy ebooks, suddenly I was overwhelmed by the thoughts of revisiting the songs from the drama, Scene 83 was the song which described the willingness to embraces weakness/darkness while Scene 87 was the song of the rejected darkness/subconsciousness arising. I definitely should make a post about that while still remembering the complete lyrics, the script was in my house, tho.

The last I left my post with the arising feelings of despair, hopelessness, loneliness which couldn’t be curbed by any other means. My housemate had successfully calmed me the first time about my growing and steady anxiety about being accepted into residency. However, there was this underlying emotions of fear that couldn’t be resolved and it was peaked again when I started to think about the future. I finally opened up to my housemate because I desperately needed help to calm my mind which began to spiral out of control. And fortunately, my housemate succeeded to calm me for a while before I started to overthink about completely anything else. By this time, I realized that I became a little bit dependent on her, which was comfortable and not comfortable. Comfortable because I finally had someone that I could trust, someone that understand me and can tell me the world and I are okay and I believe it. Uncomfortable because I knew this was temporary, that everything would come crushing down again, everything would be gone.

After I told my housemate about #everything, I got several tips on how I managed my feelings from my housemate. She even lent me a book by Thich Naht Hanh, How To Fight *my housemate asked it back to lend it to my senior, okay right, fine!*. My BFF also recommended some books to help me battling these, what, anxiety? Factfulness by Hans Rosling and Victor Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning. My housemate also recommended Factfulness, she probably thought that I was on my edge because all that fear, worry, despair and hopelessness were from my own thought, and the book could help me to see that the world or the reality wasn’t as bad as I thought. So guys, if you have anxiety, overrhinking or depression, I really recommend the books that I mentioned before. Also, I went back to my hobby, which was reading novels and astrophysics books. Ahhh, it felt sooo great to read those stuffs again. *I probably should quit becoming a physician, took a degree on modern physics and went after my old flame and declared my no-longer-existent love to him, achieved Ph.D and won Nobel, perhaps*

Also, my housemate also recommended to listen to TED talks and started meditation. Or maybe after I saw how calm she was, I kind learnt how she managed to do that, several of them were listening to podcasts and meditation. So I started to do that. At first, I did the anapanasati meditation which take focus on breathing. I used to do this long time ago when I diligently went to temple every week during med school. Then, I tried vipasanna/mindfulness meditation. Although the meditation went good, but I couldn’t sleep at night because I was hyper aware of my feelings and my fears and the overthinking became a little intense, although it wasn’t as stressful as it used to be. I resolved to do meditation every day and guess what, it never materialized.

Trying to hold my breath, let it stay this way

Can’t let this moment ends

You set off a dream in me, getting louder now

Can’t you hear it echoing?

My favorite TED talks usually around about astrophysics, depression, mental health, anxiety, psychology and self help. I desperately wanted to help myself and not to dwell in a state I had been in the last 2-3 years. Then, peace went by and my feelings got more stabilized.

However, after a period of peace, I started to overthink again about entirely new stuffs. I was right, I started to think about I had no place to come back if I became a radiologist, but more so that someday I would be alone again fighting my own demon because there would come time to part with my housemate, who provided me with warm and comfort I never knew I craved all time. By this time, I noticed that every single time my senior visited us or my housemate was gone for her business, these kind of thinking pattern just like to burst out and causing moderate distress and insomnia. However, as a compensation, I felt more patience in front of the patients *although lashing out still happened twice or three times in a very uncooperative patients*. Even the nurses noticed my general mood had been improved and I told them my housemate helped me to resolve several personal issues.

The Woman Who Belongs To Nowhere (7)

Lonely, the path you have chosen

A restless road, no turning back

One day you will find your life again

Don’t you know, don’t let go be strong

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Several years ago when my friends and I was about to take our national exams which the last obstacle before we became a full-fledged physicians, I used to listen to Il Divo ft. Toni Braxton – Time of Our Lives as a mood booster. I felt like finally after much fire tears and blood, this was it, our moments of truth. And I felt that there was no way I would fail, no matter how anxious I was. A month later, I was pleased to prove that I was right. I passed and finally became a physician. Just like the lyrics of the song “Cause it feels like we’re having the time of our lives, let’s find the glory in the end, for all that we are… for the time of our lives.” Funny sidenote is this was the anthem for 2006 FIFA World Cup, Germany. Since the tone was pretty slow and sad, this song was less popular than “Celebrate The Day”. Also, in the same album Voices from FIFA World Cup, another gold was Il Divo ft Celine Dion – I Believe In You. I read a comment in the song MV, since the song was sung by heavenly voices of Il Divo and Celine Dion, you be better believe in yourself 😀

So last I leave the story during the first 5 months of this year. I met a good woman and man, who became my friends (also my housemate). I started to open up, I got a second job, which didn’t pay much but I guess it’s kind of okay. I got busier. I felt a little bit calmer and more relaxed. I watched Avengers Endgame and achieved the ultimate happiness that after watching that, I finally could die peacefully and Detective Pikachu. Oh yeah, I wrote before that my housemate and my senior were dating. Yep, totally not awkward at all. I kind of concerned what to do if they, please oh any heavenly beings who could hear me don’t let this happens, broke up. It could potentially create an indirect awkward situation, in which I lost contact with my senior, since I was closer to my housemate and have been living with her. When I lost contact with people, that would meant I will lose one of the most important friendship to me. I am not good on keeping contact, I already wrote it.

Oh yeah, when we went to celebrate Vesakh, we stayed in my senior’s house and met his family. My housemate already knew them, but I was that confused and unable to socialized much because I was still shy and didn’t know what to talk. I was so used to being left on my own so sometimes interacting with many people left me uncomfortable. I was sure that I didn’t left a good impression on his family, since I clearly stated that every time I went to big city for holiday, mostly it was for movies. Pretty sure, they thought me as an childish woman. They had a pretty dog, who stormed at me and tried to lick me at the first time we met. Umm, wasn’t dog supposed to hostile to the people they met the first time? I just found out that dog nose was cold, brrr. And I whispered to his mom, I was about to give him a birthday gift and asked her to save it and gave it to him since I was going to send it to his house. I changed the plan anyway.

In less than 2 weeks, I think, my senior visited us again and stayed for almost a week. That’s unusual, but I thought that he wanted to make the best moments with my housemate during available holiday time. I just managed with the crazy shift again since it was Eid al-Fitr holiday. During my spare time, we were invited to our coworkers open house moment. It was during this time, the winter storm came. We went to my friend house, had a great time and snack while chit chatting. As usual, I was quiet, listened to every story being told. It was then when my senior said that he previously worked in the hospital which rejected me.

The Woman Who Belongs To Nowhere (6)

Part 1, Part 2,Part 3,Part 4, Part 5

Insert punchline here because I didn’t make or have one. *hunininining it’s time to learn geography NOW! Hey, I’m your host,Barbs…* So here I am during my night shift after being hounded by sick children and near critical patients,trying to write or to explore my feelings,which unfortunately they decide to go on holiday which means it’s getting harder to access objective memories and the associated emotions related to them. But, let me try.

I left the last post at the time where I got a new job in a remote city. Everything was great but I was still generally unhappy. I thought that I was stuck and wasted my time in a place I knew wouldn’t gave me much chance or encourage me to enter residency. Maybe it just a bad thought on my part since the consultant here were very welcoming and willing to teach or discuss many things. People asked me if I like staying there and I said fine. I couldn’t say yes because the truth I didn’t want to be there but I couldn’t say no either because I didn’t want lose what I had there : a stable job, a good income, cooperative coworkers, a job that defined me, a freedom from my parents. However, I was still wounded from the rejection (I know, this is the hundredth times I talk about it, since it, well, is the source of distress after all).

Almost at the end of last year, I acknowledged that maybe I wished or expected too much on, literally, everything. I expected if I worked on the hospital which rejected me,I could accumulate enough experiences, I could grow stronger, I could find comfort in work, environment and friends, I could get recommendation to enter cardiology residency and when I finished, I could back to the same hospital/city, continued working and stayed there. I would had a place which I really want to go back,a place which I called as my jone and which i could grow root. The rejection crushed out those dreams, not to mention my confidence and self esteem.

I started to doubt my worth, whether I was wasting my time being an MD, whether I could get that residency or that I had a future at all. I felt worthless, and useless to a certain degree. I didn’t even know if I would continue working as a physician, it seemed that everything I did and would do would be a failure and useless. I easily stressed out and had less patience with patients and coworkers. I still didn’t know what I would do so I decided to work for one more year.

Learned from the pain and the fear of having no future, I started to invest. First, in gold, then in peer-to-peer lending, then I started to save more and more so I could open a deposit. I found out that I wasted too much and my savings were corroded by many fees and with too little interest, I learned more and more about money management. It still a little mess, tho. However, I made a loose plan to not experience pain again if I got rejection again or if I failed, again.

As I wrote before, at the beginning of this year, I was invited to stay with a new pediatrician. There were so much thoughts involved. Would I still had my own private free time? Would I be watched? Would we be close friends, what should I do if we ddin’t become friends? How did we share electricity bills, gas, food and so on? Did we take turns to clean the house? Should I talk or accompany her every time? Would it be awkward? Would I feel like home there? Would she inspire me to be a better person? Would she take me well?