An Episode

Today I was having another episode of the crappy feeling. Despite the sunny and warm weather, I woke up a couple of hours before the alarm set to go off this morning, feeling... well, crappy. Trying to push aside the feeling, I got off the bed and drew open the curtain to let some sunlight in through the window. Lucky I have this giant window with the view of the street and houses. Sometimes I wonder if people can see through the window glass when I'm changing clothes with the curtain opened. But as you know I can't be bothered closing it, either.

Not only I woke up with the crappy feeling, I also woke up feeling hungry. Well, starving. Famished. Maybe it was from the jogging and workout session I did yesterday in the late afternoon, then I passed out from exhaustion after showered. So maybe that's why I had the crappy feeling, too. I don't know. I made a mental note to ask my counselor when I go to see her.

And so I did tell her about the feeling I had this morning in our counseling session today. I am by now her 'Friday 1 o'clock', by the way. That's what the old lady in the reception would always call me when she phones my counselor to announce my arrival; "Hi B*****, your 1 o'clock is here." Then she'd ask me to have a sit in the waiting room. I was then being called in after a few minutes.

Our counseling session today was about my crappy feeling I had in the morning. She helped me digging deeper into my thoughts to express my feeling by asking specific questions, so she could find out what could be the trigger of my depression and anxiety. We also talked about my past. I'm never uncomfortable talking about my past because I think the past is what made me right now. Not that I'm blaming my past for what I'm going through right now.

Lastly, we talked about something that is related to my sexual orientation. Who would have thought that I'm sometimes disturbed by my sexual orientation after I myself thought that I've passed the denial and acceptance phase? The thing is the deeper I dig my thoughts, with the help of my counselor, the more I find things about myself that I thought it wasn't me, but apparently that is actually me. It's kind of hard to explain without telling you exactly what it is. But at the same time I can't reveal every single thing that we've been talking about in those sessions. I can't expose myself any more than I already have.

Maybe not now or never.
Maybe when I'm ready.
Maybe I'll never be ready.
We'll see.

With the promise I made to myself that I would never let the crappy feeling take all over me, I treated myself with a bowl of pho and a three-colored-drink from the Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks down from my house. The counseling session went about an hour and a half and I found my tummy grumbling when it ended. The weather was a bit chill with cool breeze in the afternoon, it'd be nice to have a bowl of pho.

I was extremely full by the time I finished the meal but thought I could still get some coffee at the cafe just a few doors down the restaurant. So there I went. I ordered a cup of mocha-latte, despite my craving for real caffeine. But I know better not to have too much caffeine because of my sleep deprivation, yet I still can't get rid of it completely. Hence, I have to be satisfy with mocha-latte, which for me is more chocolate than coffee. And a few cents more expensive than a cup of cappuccino, which is ridiculuous.

The cafe is the only place that I patronise for a cup of coffee around my suburb. They make a good coffee and the place is really cozy to hang out for a chat or for reading. Once in a while I would stride a walk to the cafe.

 

I spent a couple of hours there, enjoying the drink while reading a book. They close at 6 o'clock so I made my way home before they start cleaning up. The sun was still shining so bright I decided to walk home. It was three tram stops away. A few blocks away. 30 minutes walk. 20 minutes if I walk fast. I just thought I could use some exercise after eating all that. 

By the time I got home, I still feel the need to burn more calories. Burn the crappy feeling away, to be honest. Obviously, the walk wasn't enough. So I changed into shorts and singlet, set the Spotify on some exercise station, and started exercising a bit; 50 squats, for the sake of nice and round buttocks. Cross that. It's for the sake of nicer and rounder buttocks. Yes, I already have a nice and round buttocks I don't need effort showing out my butt. I know it from the slaps I get that is usually followed by 'nice butt' comment when I'm wearing fitted jeans or leggings. I'm not sure if I should take it as sexual harassment or a compliment. I choose the latter since it's always coming from women, and not men. (This is me being sexist.)

Anyways, making my butt nicer and rounder wouldn't hurt me or anyone else, right? Well, it did hurt my thighs and legs and buttocks muscle I could barely feel them when I woke up this morning from the one-hundred squats I did yesterday. The jogging was absolutely nothing. I'm positive that I'm going to endure more muscle sore tomorrow morning.

I felt a bit better after exercise and even better after showered. I changed into sweatpants and t-shirt, pulled my hair up and sat on the desk, checking my student email. I even managed to polish my resume and applied for some jobs, hoping that at least one of them will reach back to me. By the way, have I told you that it's about time for me to start looking for a better job? I don't think so. But I'll talk about it some time later. 

Working out always makes me hungry, so I made a toast - wholemeal bread - and a cup of tea for my evening snack (I cannot completely get away from caffeine, can I?). Learning from today's episode, I don't want to wake up hungry, which can cause the crappy feeling to come up. I ate the toast while continue reading the book. Then I ended up writing this. Somehow I needed to let the words out, instead of keeping them floating in my mind.

At least I'm hoping for a good sleep tonight after all the effort for today's episode. It's something that I really, really need and something that I haven't had for quite a while now: a good sleep. 

I'm off to sleep now and I bid you a good night. 

Until next post.

After Ten Years

Having a BFF who is half the globe away and lives in a opposite different time zone and different continent is definitely a hard thing, but it's something that is possible to live with. Well, meet Q (I swear she doesn't like to be called by her initial, and would probably kill me if she finds out I'm calling her by that name here), my 10-year-long-distance best friend.

She lives in America and I'm here in Australia (surely, it used to be between America and Indonesia), with, um, 13 hours difference. Wait, is it 14 hours? Or even 15 hours? Nevermind, I have long stopped counting the time difference and just completely ignore it. All I know is my bedtime is when she's getting ready for work. Yes, the time difference is such a pain in the ass when it comes to one of us is in emergency situation and needs an immediate respond, but apparently the other one is asleep. Alright, I exaggerate it and by any means 'emergency situation' isn't something like me calling her from inside a jail, asking her to bail me out, or vice versa. Nontheless, despite the delay of reply due to time differences, we happen to manage the communication just fine.

Ten years of long-distance-friendship, I have by now only vague memory of how we met randomly and stayed in touch through chat messenger. Who would have thought that she'd stay in my life and be the only person I tell about the silliest thing about me that I'd never ever tell other people? I certainly wouldn't. But there she is, standing by me through my darkest moment. It's something that I'm grateful for.

Ten years of friendship, never once we meet. Sure, we have had video chat long before Skype. Now we skype each other once in a while. But physically seeing each other? Never, yet. Through the ten years, many talks about visiting each other, many plans were created. We were still too young by then (she's three years younger than me, even), we could only talking and imagining about the day that we finally can meet. Until this year, the chance of us seeing each other seems so far away.

Yup. She is coming to Melbourne by the end of December. After life brought me to Melbourne and she has landed a full-time job, the talks and plans are eventually becoming real. We have started talking about visiting each other and her desire to travel to Australia in the beginning of this year, in which later on became a serious talk about her coming to Melbourne. Yes, if you're coming it has to be now before I turn 30 and don't have enough energy to keep up with you and do crazy and wild stuff, I told her. We decided that she should come in December, not only it's when I have the longest school break but also because summer is the best time in Melbourne. A few weeks went by and we didn't talk about it for a while until one day I woke up to her email contained her ticket itinerary.

You know, it feels like a dream come true for both of us. In about four weeks she's going to be here and after a long await of ten years, four weeks seems like forever although time goes by real quick. We have been talking about the things that she wants to do while she's here. Even an hour ago I just checked her email, listing all the stuff she wants to try out. We might also fly to Sydney for 2 or 3 days, depends on our budget (mine especially). Not so surprisingly, been over a year here in Melbourne and I still think that there's nothing much to do in this city, except for sight-seeing, shopping or eating out. Maybe because I live here that I find nothing interesting much. Therefore, she's the one doing all the research of things-to-do in Melbourne, while I'll be the one taking her around.

Excited? Definitely! Anxious? Yes. (More to my part, of course.) Many questions are hanging in the air. What if we didn't get along? What if what she found here didn't meet her expectation? What if I didn't get better by the time she arrives? (God forbid, I'd be still a nervous wreck and ruin her vacation.) What if I didn't have enough budget for all of our plans? And so many 'what if's'. Her visit is going to be (only) three weeks. Yet, it seems not enough time to do all the things, to go around places, and most importantly not enough time to pay-off the ten years of not being able to meet for real. But we're gonna take what we have. And in regards to the 'what if's', I think that we should just be ourselves and enjoy the time we get to spend together because, honestly, it can be years away until we meet again.

Now we just wait until the day comes - the day where I'm going to pick her up at the airport. In around four weeks and we're going to meet for real, for the first time since I befriended her. We have waited for ten years, only a few more weeks to make this a lifetime moment to remember.

Until next post.

A Sticky Note

One of so many things that I've been keeping a mental note on is reading. I want to start reading again. I need to start reading again. This is one of the 'to-do list' I was talking about on the latest post.

Reading. 

It's been quite a while since the last time I read a book. In fact, it's been way too long, despite calling myself an avid reader. There's always an excuse for me not to read; a whole bunch of assignments, tests, finals, or workload. Sometimes I miss being so engrossed over a book that I can't put it down. I miss fantasizing a storyline or picturing myself as one of the characters. I miss burying my face behind a book, turning every page with excitement.

On top of all that, I miss the feeling of enjoying a very good read - a feeling that I can never explain and can never be understood by people who don't like reading, like Mum. She wholeheartedly disapproves my obsessive passion in reading (and apparently my obsessive and impulsive buying of books too), but she never stops me anyways. If I were to tell her that one of my most wanted dreams is to have a private library where I put all my book collection, she'd probably laugh at me, if not snapping at me. But what can I say? We both totally have different point of view in this matter (now you see, how different a mother and a daughter can be and most of the time people judge out of differences).

Lucky now I live in Melbourne that has plenty of libraries! I've come to a decision that I'd borrow rather than buy for the sake of keeping less stuff, just in case I'm going to move out again. It's gonna be a mission to move out with boxes and boxes of book, don't you think? And, of course, for money wise, too (hey, I'm a poor student, working to support myself, okay? I'm just kidding. But I'm serious about being poor, though).

Having the need to start reading haunted my mind for so long, I finally made myself go to the City Library yesterday, joined the membership and borrowed a book. I have to admit that I get remarkably excited every time I step into a bookstore/library (except for uni library) like a little girl enters a candy shop, and so did I when I walked into the City Library. I spent almost three hours looking over the online catalog, walking between the bookshelves, searching for books. I was actually such at loss that I don't know what book I want to read. After trying to dig it out of my head, I eventually picked a book that first came up in my head: Last Sacrifice (a series of Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead).

Wasting no more time, I pulled out the book out of my bag and started reading while on the tram home. I smiled when I turned the first page and found a sticky note written by a reader, who apparently borrowed the book about a year ago. The note says:

This might be nothing, no such a big deal, but I just think it's really sweet. It's some kind of a secret way to pass a message to another readers. Okay, I'm being too much here. But still, it's cute and I love it! Maybe I'll leave a note on a book one day... Glad that I dragged myself to the library and beat procrastination. One list is ticked off.

Until next post.

A New Chapter

This is a new record! I've been keeping the same layout and template, and pretty much the header image of this blog for almost as long as I started it. That means it's been around three years now. I'm thinking of changing everything, I even have some ideas of what changes would I make but I haven't really got into it and eventually make that happen. One of so many reason (aside from, oh well, you know, procrastination) that I can possibly think of  is I, honestly, like the current look of this blog. And I'm also aware that planning, designing and implementing the changes can be a time consuming (and, again, procrastination). So, it may have to wait for a little more while until it turns into action.

However, there is one change that is going to happen right here, right now, as I'm typing this post and you are about to find out.

Speaking of change, my life has been into some huge deal of so many changes over the past year. Looking at a bigger picture, the change is not just about moving abroad to another country by myself, going back to school and building up a new life from scratch. It is, in fact, more bigger than the bigger picture. The change itself, as I can say, is how I live my life. And unlike this blog, where I can actually decide when I want to make the change, to make it happen, my life and the way that I live my life have changed, whether I want it or not.

In continuation of what I have written on Sepoci Kopi, my life is still in a downward slope - if it's not rock-bottom already. What happened to me in the past few months has changed the way I live (and, maybe, the way I see life). Yes, I still have the depression and anxiety, and every time me and my counselor try to measure my well-being over a scale, my measurement still falls down to the nearest bottom line (quite a disappointment, in my point of view, but my counselor always insists that it's alright - one step at a time). The anxiety attack is getting more often that it happens with or without a trigger. It gets uncontrollable sometimes and the after-feeling is always appalling.

But what really the hardest thing to deal with is the crappy feeling (I couldn't come up with any better - or should I say, horrible - name than that) that always comes to me. It's the feeling of sadness, loneliness, rejection, unappreciated, unwanted, and all sort of negative things that you can think of. Sometimes the crappy feeling gets unbearable and that's when the depression emerge and soon is followed by the anxiety. Imagine yourself being in a dark pitch room, it's too dark you can't even see your own hands, and you can hear the sound of ringing in your ears. You feel suffocated and depressed, while the fear that leads to anxiety slowly crawling out into the surface and you suddenly get all shaky and out of breath. That's really what the crappy feeling feels like.

As much as the breathing exercise helps me to calm down and to enable me to gather myself back together again, sometimes it just doesn't and most of the time I'm being left feeling even more horrible. I was going through a painful moment when I had the crappy feeling some time ago and something that Queenie, my long time bestie, said that eventually opened my eyes (and mind, should I add).

I realised that I have depression and anxiety, and I may never get cured of it. But to find out what really gets me into it and try to get the hell out of it is really crucial to my well-being. Avoiding wouldn't help much and it wouldn't take me anywhere near getting better. What I should really do is to make my brain think positively, filter all the negative thoughts and dump them all before they can get to my nerve. Shower myself with positive excitement and keep the positive vibe with me all the time, if possible. When I feel crappy and breathing exercise doesn't help, start thinking about things that make me happy and excited. Write every single thing that I want to do and do it when I have the time. Keep a journal of happy-sweet-cherry things and read them whenever I feel the need to.

Those are likely what she said to me. I don't know where did she get it from, but her wise sometimes amazes me.

Therefore, here is the change that is about to happen: a happy-sweet-cherry journal that I'm going to write from now on, under the tag of 'Life in Melbourne'. Looking through all of my blog posts, many (if not most) of them are really, really deep-mellow-dark-freaking-serious thoughts (I wonder how you guys keep up with the reading if it sorta-kinda overwhelmed you in a bad way, too?!), and that has to change. Well, of course I can't promise it's going to be all sugar. You know how twisted my mind can be, let alone when I have the depression and anxiety now, hanging at the tip of my brain. But I'm really trying here, buds!

One thing, for sure, behind all this change is me wanting to get better, even if I can't be cured and have to carry the 'illness' with me for the rest of my life. But at least I can get myself better each day. I know it's easier said than done, but I'm going to try.

Also, I would like to thank to those who commented on my post at Sepoci Kopi. It really means a lot to me. And to my friends who are always be there for me, whether you're here or far, far away in Indonesia. You guys are the best and I'm grateful to have you all in my life. Last but not least, Queenie, oh well, I'm sure you know yourself that you're an awesome person. A sincere thank you from me, and I know you know what I'm thanking you for, anyway. (LOL).

That's all about it for now. This is one hell of the longest post ever, perhaps? But that's should be enough to cover the almost four months of zero posting. No, this is not a bribe, I swear. This is... well, I guess I just missed writing so much and eventually exploded. Which is a good thing, right?

Until next post. 

Peek-a-boo

It's been months now, hey? How's life treating everyone? All good? Hopefully.

Anyway, I'm just peeking up in here and doing a little blog-walking here and there. Many blogs I follow don't update much either and as dead as mine. Shall afraid not, I'm surely picking up my mojo and am gonna start writing something again in the very near future. At least give me more break and let me finish my exams and I'll get back here.

This is, indeed, a promise to myself.