Tag: mental health

Dig deeper and/or let it go

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Feeling stuck because of overthinking? You might think you have two options. Dig deeper or let it go. But there might be another way.

What I find important for me is that I’m not able to let go of things I’m overthinking about easily. The best strategy is in fact to let it go for a while and wait for whether it comes back. If it does, it means it’s really important; if it doesn’t, well, it’s been let go.

And when it comes back, with the time distance, it doesn’t come back exactly as how it was. The new aspect of it might just be the crack of the shell that I was looking for to solve the problem. Or it might be the crack through which I can see a new world.

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Plan for 2022: write a memoir

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Who writes memoirs?

I thought only old and very famous people write memoirs. They must have much to say about their experience. And it’d be interesting for the world to know their side of the story. Because their view matters.

I want to write a memoir next year.

I’m not old. I’m in my early thirties. And I’m not famous either. Nobody cares about my past experience. Nobody cares about my point of view on things.

My view doesn’t matter to anyone…

Any one but myself.

I’m writing a memoir for myself.

I’m writing it because I was lost for a few years. I fell off track and couldn’t come back for a long time. I want to look back at when and how it happened. “Face it,” I hear myself saying, “so that you can grow from it.”

I’m writing it because I start to forget about things. Things that I wish I can keep in my memories forever. Like in the film “Coco”, we live to be remembered; we exist as long as we are remembered. I simply want to keep some people alive in mine, in the only way I know how.

I’m writing it because I’m feeling stuck in my own life. There are things I want that I don’t know how to get them; and doors I don’t want to go in but they were wide open. It feels like I’m standing mid-way in my life but I have to start from scratch anyway. I feel there’s nothing in my hand, since the “me” in the past didn’t earned us anything useful for the future.

I’m writing it for my child. I care about her view on me when she wants to know about me. And I want her to know my side of my own stories.

I’m writing it from the earliest memories of mine. I’m writing about my family, my childhood, my school time, friendships, rebellious time, struggles, persistence, dreams… choices, heartaches, hopes, disappointments, the beautiful and the ugly…

As a storyteller, finally I’m telling my own story.

That’s going to be quite a project. That’s why it’s going to be the project of the year 2022. I will keep this channel posted about the exact plan and record my progress.

Memoir, old feelings, and new wishes

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Maybe it was not the most important to have your memoir written as a statement for the court. 

Our brains alter our memories slightly or significantly to adjust to our current situation.

So how you are telling your stories from the past says less about how it was, but how you want it to be remembered now.

I want to write my memoir starting from my earliest memories. They are extremely fragmented that I’m having a hard time picking up anything else than very little pieces. I used to remember a lot of things from my early childhood. But now there are only “feelings” but no “scenes”.

Are those feelings also worth writing about?

How I felt excited when I was secretly awake during nap time at noon when I was in kindergarten.

How I felt scared when I really didn’t want to finish my bowl of noodles because I could taste ginger in the sauce. My mom was mad with me, and I cried.

How I felt confused when I couldn’t really cry at a funeral of a close relative because I didn’t know him well, even though I tried to cry like everybody else. And the only thing I remembered of him was how he looked at me – a long, long look. That made me sad many years later.

All these memories of “feelings” were from before I was five.

Now if I write them into my memoir, I will probably want to give meaning to them. 

Are they made-up memories? Maybe.

I’m sure the meanings will be made-up. And that’s ok.

Those meanings are my wishes.

Wishes for me, and that little girl who would become independent, loving, and spiritually close to her mother forever.

What you have is not that bad

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To the 15-year-old me:

I know that every morning you can’t wait to get out of the house.

I know that every evening you walk as slowly as you can while listening to heavy metal on your way home.

You want to spend as little time as you can to be in that house. Because your parents fight day in, day out.

I know you say to yourself “I can’t wait to leave this place for good. I don’t want to be around either of them.” 

You want to escape.

But believe me, what you have is really not that bad.

School is easy. You feel friends are closer to you than family is. 

It’s like everything outside of that house is just 100 percent better.

It’s like that house is hell.

Just because your parents fight over everything.

They are either loud or ice-cold or sarcastic to each other.

And to you too.

I know you hate being stuck in between them. 

I know you don’t want to choose sides.

But you don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 15 years, my friend.

You don’t know that your parents are going to repair their relationship from then on. They will still have ups and downs, but they never will go on that long with their “war”.

So you don’t have to think about running away anymore.

You don’t know that you will move half of the globe away from them.

You will get what you have always wanted — to escape their control, almost completely.

But you don’t know that you will miss this time so much — when you are 15, being in high school.

When you can spend every moment doing the things you love. (Reading, writing, and well, learning too)

When you have the closest friends that you feel like you want to be with forever.

When you can find either an apple or an orange, or a small carton of yogurt every afternoon in your school bag — your mother doesn’t want you to get hungry before you come home.

When you can have dinner with both of your parents every night.

When you still have both of your parents alive.

It’s really not that bad.

What you have right now, I mean.

Life does slowly move in the direction that you’ve always wanted. 

Something goes better. Some other things will go terribly wrong.

No matter how much you want to escape from your parents now, how disappointed you are of them when they say those hurtful things to each other, I want you to know this:

In the future, they will find their way back together.

And they will stick together, persistently, until the day death parts them.

No matter how anyone defines love, this is love.

They love each other. And they will not stop loving you.

So take off that pair of earphones. I know the loud music has been hurting your ears lately. It’s giving you a headache now.

Just go home. 

And go to the kitchen, to give mom a hug.

You do it far less than you should.

So go, hug her. 

And hug her one more time if you can, for me. 

It’s the thing I want the most in the world but I will never have again.

From the 30-year-old you

If I can keep living, here is my plan.

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Where do I see myself in three months, one year, five years, and ten years?

Provided that I’m lucky enough to live that long.

I have never been a fan of making plans. 

After my mom died of cancer a while back, I gave up making plans for myself altogether.

Planning things was one of the things she liked to do. Not just for herself, but for every one of us.

Planning was also the reason why she didn’t get to enjoy much of her life.

She just retired at that time. And since we the children already moved out and started our own lives, mom finally got to live her life free from work, and from her household responsibilities.

She wanted to hang out with her friends more. They made plans to travel through the country in the next year.

She wanted me to get married to my then-boyfriend, and have kids. “Sometime in the future I’d love to be a grandma,” she used to say, “I will take care of her/him for you if you need. You know, if you want to focus on your career.” 

But planning was also the reason why she suffered a lot when she got the bad news. 

Planning means setting up expectations. Expectations for the good stuff: the positive, happy, and ambitious ones. The more you invest in making this plan, the more hurt you get when it doesn’t get to become reality.

A month ago I became a mother myself. I spend many minutes every day thinking about what death means to me now.

Since my mother passed, every day I had to face my own mortality and the unpredictability of everything in life. And now, it didn’t stop. The rational side of my brain asks me more urgently: what would my death mean now? What if there is no tomorrow? What will happen to my little baby?

“Enjoy the present moment.” I tell myself, “Enjoy it now so that if anything happens at any time, you know you’ve had the most out of this purest love that you possibly could.”

But being a new mom means you can’t help but look forward to the future. You can’t stop yourself from imagining what it would be like for you and your baby in a month when she grows bigger and stronger; a year, when she starts to walk; three years, when she’s able to learn and plan with other kids in kindergarten; and six years, when she’s going to school for the first time…

Wait. What if anything happens? What if I don’t get it to see all of these happen…

I don’t want to make any plans for myself to help her go anywhere or be anything in her life. I’m afraid.

I’m afraid of making plans.

I’m afraid of plans fail to realize. I’m afraid that I will fail my own expectation.

But maybe, just maybe. 

Can I be a little unafraid? Can I be so bold that I make a little bit of plan for the nearest future without carrying the weight of possible death of myself?

The best I can do is to say, maybe the 6 to 12 months.

I’m up for all the challenges for new mothers. The books say she’s going to go through some very important stages in the first year. So I’m all about recording every little step she takes along her way, from taking photos and videos to writing stuff down. 

I want to make a multi-media project recording her first year in this life.

That’s my gift to her. 

As for myself, I’m doing this — writing, every day.

This is already what I want to do the most. Being a newborn’s mom in Germany finally gave me the chance to do it.

So even when my writing sucks and nobody reads them, I will keep writing and keep posting, every day.

Till the foreseeable future as I’m still breathing.

Every moment until the end of that future is my moment.

And every moment is crystallized into words, including the ones you are reading right now.

Thank you for being here for my plan.

This post was originally published on https://medium.com/@clearsong

Toxic Surroundings? Get The Hell Out

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I wanted to put this in my Inspiration Vault at first. But then I was wondering whether I’m really inspired by the toxic vibe I got today from a so-called friend of mine.

I’m still quite upset.

There’s always a spur of moment, where I might feel irritated and even mad. But I’d hold back my will to react immediately. Because I don’t want to do stupid things to hurt others just because I’m emotional.

Well, today I got an very emotional blame in really mean words via LinkedIn message because of a delayed reply (for two days).

It wasn’t the first time I told myself that I need to get out of that friendship.

He was all about soul-sisters and really good friendship love. And he doesn’t deliver.

The worst of all is that he’s over thirty-three now and still behave like a teenager.

Not the good kind of teenager who’s positive and energetic. (I was energetic but not really positive when I was in high school… I was into Linkin Park, so I was a good kid.)

But the worst part of being a teenager: all the emotional drama, the gossip, the love affairs where the ex would stalk him because she’s just so in love with him and she’s also loveable and crazy…

You know what? It’s fine. This kind of crap is not what I like, but I can put up with. But just don’t throw mean words on me with passive aggressiveness because I didn’t have the time to reply your messages.

Communicate. Like an adult does.

(I’m doing more of a “letting things out” than a writing exercise… so no, this is definitely not an inspiration, yet.)

Then it comes to my conclusion: I’m getting out of this. Life is too short to be in any kind of relationship that makes you feel bad for no good reason. (There are good reasons to make yourself feel bad… like when you are learning about something new by making mistakes. Make sense?)

I’ve thought about doing this to end this friendship a few times. Tried, but failed. I think that’s because I didn’t want to end things badly with anyone. I didn’t want to hurt people (even if they’ve hurt me), didn’t like confrontation, and also, didn’t want others to dislike me.

But nothing is worth putting my own mental health in jeopardy.

Handling difficult people, if it’s not really really essential, is a huge waste of emotional energy.

They drain your life out of you, literally.

I need peace and tranquility. So I can recharge my energy.

Anyway. I’m going to go to sleep and waiting for this whole thing to transform into inspiration for me, like all the other negativities always do.

Hope you, who’s reading these words now, are safe, and healthy (both physically and mentally).