Being Me and Facing Reality

Those who have faithfully followed my blog here would have figured out that I'm not all there sometimes. For a while in 2013 I suffered a really bad relapse of my schizo-affective disorder.

The new doctors in my new care facility revert my diagnosis to bi-polar but I know myself better and know that I actually suffer from schizo-affective disorder.

It's a part of who I am. A part of me that makes me, me.

It is a knowledge that I struggle to accept that there will always be a part of me that could at any time take over my life and take it to directions that I don't even dare contemplate even though I've been through the ringers with it a few times. 

It's a challenge daily to wake up and face a new day and wondering if I am normal today or if I show signs of relapsing.

A doctor I once was under the care of told me that sometimes you can tell when you are about to fall to that precipice and relapse and if you take measures enough you can prevent the relapse from happening.

I don't know if it is my over tired mind or if it's actually happening, but I feel out of sorts, like I'm there at the edge just waiting for a hair-trigger to push me into that abyss once more.

So I write this. And hope and pray that this will not be a self fulfilling prophecy.

I hate to have to go through and put my family through another repeat of 2013.

I'm just writing this as a reminder for myself that I should always be vigilant and not let my mind wander and not let that spark of insanity back in my life.

Reality might not be as fun to contemplate as the delusions I am won't to get during relapse, but reality is the true reflection of what life is really like and I should never lose sight of what really matters just to ease the inadequacies and incompleteness that I suffer.

My emotions should not get the better of me. I can't afford to get sick. Each relapse become worse and worse. I'm afraid that there will come a day when the relapse is permanent and there will never be a normal me ever again.

I don't want to lose the real me while chasing some fantastical notion of my version of what I hope reality is actually like.

May Allah protect and guide me. 

Happy 41st Birthday Along

“I have a dream, a song to sing; to help me cope with anything.”  This line of Westlife song came to my mind as I was thinking of something to write for you. It seems apt to link you as a person to that line somehow.

Your songs always keep you going. Through the hardest part of your life songs can enliven and brighten your day. Your singing gives you joy and although the family, Abang in particular complains about it when you are singing and me too at times, I know the cathartic ability it has on your state of mind.

I wanted to conjure up a story for you consisting of song lyrics alone, but somehow I am not creative enough at this moment to think of connecting multiple song lyrics smoothly into one coherent, flowing prose.

So I write this for you instead.

Like I said before, it is hard to top my gift for your fortieth birthday. And you told me not to bother with anything this year since I’m having so much trouble thinking about what to get you this year, but you know me and birthdays, I have to make a capital issue of it, regardless of whose birthday it is.

I know you dread your birthdays, another year where you feel you didn’t achieve much, another year you feel unfulfilled. But I thank God for every year that you greet, for every year that you still walk this earth with me.

I lost Mom much too soon, and I dread thinking of a time when you would be gone too. I don’t know if you know just how much you mean to me. Perhaps I don’t tell you enough.

I know sometimes you feel as if I hate you at times or that I don’t appreciate you for all that you do, but I’m writing this too tell you now, that you mean the world to me.

There are too many things that I am so thankful for that you did for me. Like how many times you saved my life, or made my life richer, made my life better. How many times you’ve been there for me, had my back, supported me, build me up.

On this day, your special day, I just want to celebrate what a wonderful, giving, caring and loving person you are.

You always ask if I love you and when I say yes, you ask why and my automatic answer is because you are my sister, to which you would reply, if you weren’t my sister that means I wouldn’t love you. And to this I would say I love you because you are beautiful, clever, kind and you would scoff at me, and I know why, because for you this does not ring true.

If you could only see you the way I see you. To quote Simple Plan’s song which I’m crazy for at this moment, you are ‘perfectly perfect’.

Maybe you’ll never see it, but I’m telling you, flawed as you are you are one of the most wonderful person I have ever been lucky enough to meet, and per se we weren’t born sisters I would still find you to be awesome.

A sliver of your spirit would do the whole world good if everyone could but experience your special essence. You are good at your very core and your goodness is something that will not tarnish or spoil.

I am glad to know you and proud to call you my sister, my partner in crime, my best friend. And I know your dreams, and the songs you want to sing will always lift you high and help you cope with anything.

Happy 41^st Birthday Dear Sister and I’m posting this way ahead of time, so Happy Birthday in Advance.

Love you Always,

Adik

Happy Birthday Me!

38 today. 

That’s how long I’ve lived. And 31 of those years my Mom was beside me until God took her away at age 60 when I was 31 in 2010. Our family is less complete but nevertheless still strongly bonded.

As I celebrate yet another year of getting older (and hopefully wiser) I share with you the blessings of my life:

1. A loving father, I call Daddy, who is always there.

2. My sweet mother, Mommy, gone but never forgotten

3. My sister, Along, my rock and shoulder to cry on.

4.My lil brother, Abang, my constant joy and verbal sparring 

   partner.

5.The entire Ziarah Karyawan Family who gives my dad their 

  endless support, and in turn making me happy to see my dad 

  honoured all the time.

6. My feline family present and those that has crossed over the 

    rainbow bridge.

7.My friends, who stick by me despite the crazies I go through 

    from time to time.

8.A first time budding relationship that is still too early to make 

   anything out of but still brings me a secret joy.

9.My words, without which my life would be that much emptier.

10.My faith in the Almighty, who never steered me strong, and is 

    always looking out for me, and gives me strength to live this life 

    that was given to me.

And on that note, I want to share the well wishes Daddy and Along wrote for me.

What Daddy wrote:

Wishing our dearest beloved Adik Yasleh Hani Wati many happy returns on this auspicious day of her birth. May the year ahead be blissfully sublime, filled with happiness and contenments in health and prosperity. Happy Birthday Adik.

The poem Along wrote:

Happy 38 Birthday Adik
************************

Thirty eight years ago,
you took your time to arrive,
everyone had to reluctantly
do stuff instead of waiting for you
Da had to go be P. Ramlee in KL,
the midwife had to take her leave
because you don't seem to be
in a hurry to be born.

And that was when you decided,
one and a half month overdue,
the tenth anniversary of a historical date,
is a good time to greet the world
with the loudest demand for food.

Adik, you had your own unique way
of arriving to this world,
why are you questioning the unconventional way you're living your life?
Define your life as uniquely as you decided how and when you be born,
Happy 38 birthday Adik!
I love you.

rya
12/5/17
11.06 a.m.