twenty;
I've spent these twenty years struggling without truly living at all - and it's about time that I won.
The past few years, I had never even thought about having a birthday cake, what more, eating it without the thought of losing control by eating everything and not keeping it down. It terrified me when it was a week prior to my nineteenth as my psychiatrist sat me down during the usual morning rounds, asking me of my birthday plans. I shrugged, disappointed that I would have to spend it while still labelled as an inpatient during that time, embarrassed to go out of the ward as I was grams away from my minimum healthy weight. I did not feel like I was worthy enough to be seen in public.
Funny ain't it? It was the same scenario as I faced just a week ago - I remained silent about my turn into the second decade mark of life because I simply felt that I was too enormous to even walk out of my house without hiding behind my curtain of hair and tears. I did not even dare to walk the streets because I sincerely thought that my existence would contaminate people's eyes, spoil their days and destroy their mood despite not even knowing me. Therefore, I deliberately scheduled a work shift on the 10th of May because Grain Traders was the only space I felt like I was somebody - I had the courage to face customer after customer cheerfully despite having bawled on my way to work. It may sound lame but back then, that was the only place that I felt needed.
Last year, 10/05/2016, right from the time I woke up to the nurse calls of medication, I had never felt more showered with love in all my life. The only difference between then and now, is that instead of downing a little cup of pills, I will be pouring dressing into those very little tubs this year haha!
The good thing about celebrating your birthday in the ward is that there is no way that people would forget or not know it's your birthday.
I mean it.
Being a patient meant that they say your case files everyday - nurses, doctors and all. I had never felt more remembered if you know what I mean. I can still remember it as if it was just yesterday - psychiatrist was clad in bananas in pajamas yellow and capri coloured bottoms. She smiled so widely as I walked in for morning rounds that day I swore it may have very well been the number of inches my waist grew in my stay at 46A. It warmed my heart so much as she was almost like my mom in that admission because I couldn't see my mom at all or talk much on the phone in those 4 months due to her condition. The treatment team made me feel so loved gosh - they planned a special baking session as part of the regular program that very Tuesday.
I had told them that I was not going to have a birthday cake because yknow extra calories etc. But they obviously insisted and said that "you have to eat birthday cake! It's your birthday!" Though I resented this, it almost made me tear to see how much they cared to go the extra mile for me - after the baking session, they whipped out a surprise happy birthday sign and candle to stick in the cake that my friend and I had just baked.
Yes. I baked my own cake LOL with the initials S (my friend) and C (me)!
And we even positioned it as S.C hahhaah which we all knew stood for Suicide Caution as an inside psych ward friend joke :)
It's finally the big twenty.
Oh, I'm still alive; struggling but here I am surviving despite it all. Shocking ain't it when I've been on the brink of falling short of hitting the big justin bieber 2.0 on so many occasions.
This is it, this is how I will go, alone in a bathroom stall. While others were terrified of being found dead with their head in the toilet bowl or simply passed out from blood loss, I fantasised for that more than anything in the world (or so I thought). However, there were times when I'd freak out after all I saw in front of me were spasmodic black splotches in my vision as blood tarnished the porcelain white of school bathrooms.
Despite my fervent desire to end everything, there was that slither of thought that whispered to me
"maybe I could"
It was that very phrase got me through every single episode I never thought I could.
In my admission in 46A last year, there were so many times when I would scream on the phone to tell my parents to let me out just so I could just continue kill myself slowly by starving myself. I dragged my words with a fit of desperation to beg them to remove me from any possible outcome of getting better. I stopped nurses in the hallway, shouting through the corridors of the psych ward, urging them with insistent pleas to pray for my death (which on hindsight must have scarred them - gosh so sorry!).
"Die for the welfare of others" became my go-to mantra since 2014 which never failed to swim around my consciousness everyday. I thought of how to combat each dissuasion with the extensive overthinking I had channeled into "good" rebuttals. "Can I just die? My parents need not hold a funeral, coz that costs money, they don't need to cremate me coz that will incur financial burden on them which I've done enough of. They can just dispose of me whichever way - I'll save everyone the trouble, everyone wins."
As I reflect on that very line that I was once proud of to deflect anyone who attacked my urge to off myself, I now realise how ridiculous I must have sounded. Yet here I am today - still around people who have shown me patient acceptance despite it all.
Right down to kindergarten days, I've kept all the pieces of written sunshine in a box.
Following my sister's ways whenever she had those horrible days, I'd whip these out to give me the strength to continue surviving. So to everyone, you have enabled me to live through these twenty years all in your own ways and I'll continue to be inferno level grateful for the love you made me feel.
There are so many more and I don't think that I could ever do everybody's actions justice but just know that I am immensely grateful for every little action - from giving me a sticker to hugs that I needed so much. I really mean it when I wouldn't be alive without the ammunition ya'll loaded my gun with.
I had spent ages trying to end something that was so precious - a life.
I was so fixated on demolishing every hope in my future based on either a singular incident or out of anxiety and pessimism.
As much as I said that I cherished all the words given by angels around me, the human rainboots that helped me cross puddles when I was already up to my chest in disappointment, I was not doing anything with my life that exhibited my gratitude.
I had to do something with my life, rather than just to live off the words of these amazing souls just to get me through another day.
This has to be the year that I try to justify their words - I can't let them and myself down - not again.
Last year, I had a gross packet of resource 2.0 as one out of my four supplement drinks to down as all my friends drank nice ice teas and I do not intend to repeat that ever again. I will stay on course, I will go the distance (far away from drinking that "delicious" milkshake that has the consistency of melted ice cream and condensed milk).