optional you can click play while reading
Before starting to read this, let me warn you that this post might make you feel sick of me. You will feel annoyed. You will think that I'm seeking for attention. You will think I'm an ungrateful brat. You will think that I'm just craving for sympathy. Anything new? Anything else I haven't thought before? Humans are like that. We all want to feel important, we all want to be sympathized, to be comforted. That's it. I'm human.
I'm really ok.
Don't overthink it.
Don't even start it again.
This will probably be unposted. This is my first time talking about d________n publicly. Maybe I don't even have it and I'm just exaggerating. Only one friend of mine know about this, and she's not even one of my closest friend.
Reasons why I don't share it? Number 1: Because I'm a hypocrite and I feel bad about it. I scoff at others who post things about insecurity, hating themselves, being broken etc online. I jeer at people, even my friend who talks about them being bipolar, anxious and having d________n, all "self-diagnosed." Number 2: What I'm having is nothing compared to my friends. Two of the people I spend the most time with in school has mothers who are suffering from terminal illnesses, and one's mum just passed away recently. What I'm having.. Really.. It's nothing worth mentioning and thinking about it makes me hate myself more. Number 3: Scared. Of other's reactions. Will other people react to it the same hateful way as I do? I know my family doesn't accept it well. I've tried telling my mum but she told me that I was being selfish and I was a spoilt brat.
That left me being alone.
I don't remember when it started. The self-loathing probably started a long time ago. I was a freak in primary school. How would you feel if you were taller and you looked older than your teachers when you were 11? When everyone had perfect vision, I was one of the earliest to wear glasses. When everyone had blemish free skin, I was literally bombarded by insults from boys, teachers and family members due to gross pimples all over my face. I'll never forget people who were obviously older than me calling me 'kak' when I order food at McDonalds, people who thought I was my mother's sister, older sister. It was a laughing matter, but it hurt. It hurt a lot. When I thought it would be okay to enter secondary school, I have people making fun of my name and pulling my tudung and hiding my bottle and I was just thinking why am I born like this.. It's just a memory now and I hold no grudges, what's past is past but I get flashbacks now and then when I flip my Form 1 notebook and read my miserable thoughts at that time.
Everything was ok for a while then in Form 3, I had a group of seniors who forced me to sit with them as they compared my height to their boyfriends, asked me weird questions and imitated my voice mockingly whenever I answered, followed by high-pitched cackling. One of them even had a camera to record it. My jobs as a prefect was getting heavier and last year there were so many breakdowns due to it especially when I was staying back every day alone until 6PM carrying heavy files from the office to the prefect room in the canteen to check them, having meetings with the discipline teacher alone, yet my fellow bureau mate was the one voted to become a nominee for Head Prefect. Karma. I must have deserved this. I only realized it last year, but then I was talking with Sharon and my friends about the old times and she recalled how I used to cry a lot at home. After PMR during one of those post-PMR activities, our school counselor's made us do this quiz about mental health and while laughing all about it, the results were weird to me. Severe d________n. Last year was.. memorable. It was the year I had the most fun and the year I had the most terrible time. I couldn't even stand having a normal family lunch at a hotel before I had to excuse myself in the toilet to cry.
There was no reason to cry or feel sad about. Yet, I made a reason about everything. I cried because I was lonely. I cried because I hated myself so, so much. I cried because I wanted to die, the world would be so much better without me. I cried for my mother's relationship with my grandmother. I cried because of my parents relationship so much I almost ran away from home. I cried because I made my mother cried so much I was such a burden I'm such a monster and I deserve to die so, so much. I cried about how my parents are so worried about my brother. I cried for my brother's state. I cried in Ramadhan because no matter how much I begged God to make me happier or not hate myself, it didn't change anything. Heck, I even cried in the car when there was an MH17 tribute and while crying quietly, I hated myself so so much for even daring to think of myself while there are people whose family members passed away tragically. But that's the thing. I can't help it. I hated it. I hated how selfish it was for me, but I can't control it. Last year I cried so much when I received the offer to study in a boarding school because I wanted to go so badly but I couldn't because I was so scared of what will happen to my parents relationship without having any of their children at home.
No happiness comes for free. True, with all the joy and fun I had last year, each time a wave of d________n comes in, I thought to myself, ah, here's the payment. Petty things became triggers. A simple harsh comment from my friend in a religious event got me wiping tears furiously in the bus so that my sleeping friend beside me won't hear, with me thinking, she's right she's right why can't I just die I deserve to die I deserve to die I'm so annoying I don't deserve to live I'M A BURDEN WHY CAN'T I JUST DIE ALREADY- . A senior blatantly cursed at me and my friend on Whatsapp and tweeted how much she feels like slapping someone. As people on the Whatsapp group wished me happy birthday, she ignored it and changed the topic. I woke up on my birthday last year crying hating myself for causing someone to be so angry. Then there was my brother who looked through my drawings and laughed with my other brother on Skype, flipping each page and insisting that "no one in their right mind would draw things like this", putting words like "crazy"and such. My mum as usual was telling me I had no real problems, I was a spoilt brat and I was selfish. I wonder why people like to call us with d________n as selfish, when selfish means putting high importance and worth on self when all I had was loathing. I told my mum why can't I just go see a doctor and she said maybe she would bring me if it was a real problem. Maybe I was just looking for sympathy. So I tried asking my friend about it and she agreed with my mum. Cue self loathing and voices in my head telling me to just die just die just die and stop being so pathetic. I didn't even realize those voices were not normal until I read an issue about d________n on stuff@school where someone almost went crazy because of the voices. I can't stand looking at mirrors and my photos on Instagram are just waiting to be deleted because I was so, so disgusted by myself and was sure everyone else thought the same.
It got better. It got better when I shared about it over a plate of sushi in front of my brother in a shopping mall, having a heart-to-heart talk. It was difficult at first, because when you start talking about it, people's normal reaction would be "no, you're overreacting, you're just sad and it's not possible for you to have d________n, no you won't commit suicide because it's a big sin etc". Please, please, just listen. From then on, I think I could recognize my own emotions and can react to it better.
Until form 5 came. It was good at first, if I was crying, I was crying for the right reasons; stress, fatigue etc. There were the constant feeling-like-dying emotions due to a friend but it was bearable, although I did tell about it to my mum once. But d________n demands to be felt. I couldn't stand being on Twitter because I was, I am, convinced that I should be hated. I was scared. I was angry. I was annoyed. This is mostly due to K-Pop. Such a silly and ridiculous reason, right? I was convinced that new K-Pop fans hated me because I was an old K-Pop fan, and like other old people who hated and talked bad as well as being annoyed to new fans. At the same time, I was sure old K-Pop fans hated me for being a reason so many new people joining the fandom. It was a mess. Big Bang's Loser was my theme song ahahaha and seriously, I can't stop hanging my head down in nervousness to walk to class.
Then there is the issue about friends. I truly, truly believe I am incapable of having any best friend who I could share about anything. Sure there's lots of friends I have to have fun with, laughing about everything and such. It's all my fault I guess. I don't talk to any of my close friends in primary school. My close friends in Form 1 are people I don't interact with anymore. And things are not the same with people I used to be close with. Conversations are forced. Interactions are awkward. Same goes to some K-Pop friends, they find other friends and I find other friends. Two of the people I spend most of my time with in school are far too superior compared to me, too smart, too fast, they can talk about anything, they have so much in common and I fall short in everything. It's all about my brain messing up again, I know but I always see it metaphorically whenever our class has to go to the lab or somewhere and they'll rush off before everyone else, doing what needs to be done fast, leaving everyone behind. Thanks to this brain that is used to seeking meaning behind lines, you do not want to know what's going on in it everytime I walk behind them walking side-by-side together. Always the one who is catching up in everything. You do not know how terrible I felt, I felt like a fraud and such an evil person for having these thoughts, you're all supposed to be good friends gdi. Stop overthinking. Kem Peledak and Mantap Minda confirmed my thoughts. I just suck at being friends when all I do is think about myself, talking about myself most of the time, me, me, me. It's no wonder that all I want is to be left alone and cut off all contact with everyone after SPM. However, I am very very thankful for all my friends for everything good they have brought upon me. One kind friend of mine sent me a thank you message for making her feel happier and I just burst to tears because I couldn't even make myself happier.
This year marks the first time for a lot of things. I broke down in the school toilet. I started _______. Let's leave that space blank because it's such a horrible thing to do and I feel like a hypocrite for doing it, as there I was advising others to stop or don't start. Not to mention the irony of me being the president of an Islamic society, ha. That's why I'm saying, telling someone that having a good grip on religion to prevent d________n is.. well.. might be a way but it don't always work? I have khatam-ed the Al-Quran three times, I love Islam, I love Allah SWT and the Prophet Muhammad SAW so, so much that again, I just hated myself so,so much for doing it. I did it because I felt like I'm such a sinner, I deserved the pain, I hated myself and well.. yeah.. I felt like my insides were toxic, these horrible thoughts must mean I have a terrible character, right? Cue the annoying tears. And so we have tears coming down while reading the Al-Quran every night, while praying etc because of the guilt. Being the weak person I am, I told my mum. Heh. She made me promise to not continue, but the thing is, once you start, you become addicted. So I guess I.. cheated? I no longer do it, you can see my arms are clean without any hints of blemish. But when weird emotions come in, I just rake my nails over it again and again, leaving scratches that will fade off in a few hours. It doesn't help that those weird emotions come in constantly. By now, you're all probably be seeing me as a freak, and I'm not surprised. The thing is, we're all scared by what we're not used to and I'm still a normal person.
Look around you. You can easily spot people with d________n if you look hard enough. My brother has it, he had to see the psychologist several times due to this demon who now left my family with a huge debt. I have a friend who has it bad yet she goes on with a cheerful voice and smile masking her dozens of scars. I had to hold her hand throughout a study talk in school to calm her down and stop her from stabbing her notebook again and again with a compass. I have a friend who is so confident and bubbly but I'll never forget her crying at night as me and my friends comforted her that no, she does not have to feel guilty we do not hate her and it's just the demon in her head. She couldn't sleep for three months due to nightmares about it and missed more than a month of school. In the end, we're all trying to stop each other from feeling down, we all want to be normal again.
I don't understand why I wrote this myself. It wouldn't leave any effect on you unless you have it because everyone just have this negative stigma that d________n is just an excuse of being lazy, of being selfish etc. People don't believe it until you commit suicide and then they think, oh god, what she's feeling was real and all we did was ridicule her. No surprises there, no one understands unless they experienced it before. There's no such thing as being able to imagine how it's like if you've never had it. And no, it's not glamorous, it's not Tumblr worthy, it's not beautiful.
This is me procrastinating from studying, again. If it makes you feel better, you can see everything above as a piece of fiction. To friends, please don't screenshot anything. Please don't act weirdly around me. Please don't ask others to read it. Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment