The Dark Place

I had severe headache yesterday and ended up spending the whole day in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. During my fitful sleep, I had a lot of weird and some really scary dreams… getting trapped in my old “teenage” bedroom and ending up having to jump out of the window, getting chased by someone through thick bushes with a metal grinder, (wondering in my dream, how on earth did he/she connect the plug in these thick bushes??) which sounded exactly the same as Chris’s scream….

In one of my dreams, I dreamt that I was sitting by a desk, writing a note of some sort. And I told myself, in my dream (this happens to me a lot, I know I’m dreaming), that I need to remember whatever I wrote because it described very much how I felt when I was at my lowest period of my life. This is the note, most of it are from my dreams and I filled in a few blanks after I woke up, coz I just couldn’t remember the exact words…

“Here I am in the dark place.

Where the darkness stretches on endlessly. Where my screams for help are suffocated by the weight in my heart. Where my negative and depressing thoughts are amplified and flickering like bright neon signs with faulty lightings.

The world is moving forward on the other side and I am trapped on this end.

Anger
Frustration
Sadness
Helplessness
Loneliness

It's another downward spiral.

I don't want to be in the dark place.

I don't like MY dark place.”

This is the exact description of how I felt most of the time when I was suffering from depression.

I don’t think a lot of people knew that I was suffering from depression for almost a year when my life hit its lowest point. Not my family or my friends, the only person who knew then, was my then-boyfriend-now-hubby, who was living on the other side of the planet.

I was, at that time, still getting quite a lot of crap from my relatives for being the rebel/black sheep of the family by sending my own father off to jail after a dramatic family issue, and on top of that, I was trying to finalise my divorce coz my then-husband simply refused to sign the papers and was calling me to threaten me, calling me names, getting his family members/relatives to call me and scold me, etc. Also the credit card companies are calling me every week to chase me for payment and sending me lawyers’ letters asking me to pay, all for the debts which were incurred by my then-husband, who max’ed out all the supplementary cards attached to my credit cards. Above all these, I had a job which I desperately needed in order to pay the debts and take care of my family and 2 small babies and also, working with my lawyer in preparation for the custody fight for my children.

I started having problem sleeping. I had a lot on my mind, a lot of worries, anxieties and uncertainties of the future. I was lying in bed watching the sun rises everyday, waiting for my alarm to go off, got up and went to work. This continued for several weeks, I got really tired and easily agitated. I decided to consult a GP to see if I can get some sleeping pills. After some questions and probing, he told me that he’d give me 2 sleeping pills and a letter to consult a psychiatrist.

My first consultation with the psychiatrist cost me S$85 for less than an hour. It was a “establishing of background” kind of consultation, family medical history, any relatives who suffer from depression (my father)… I thought it was a waste of money which I didn’t have. My second (and last) consultation lasted probably 30/40 minutes, asking about my sleeping pattern (non-existence! hello! that was why I went to the GP!), my mood swings, my health… I didn’t trust her, I knew she didn’t care. I decided then that I couldn’t afford this crap.

It was clear to me at that time that I needed to maintain my grip on reality and stay as far away as I can from the sad and grey world in my head. I actually had a top-5-effective list of how to “go to a better place”, but after considering that I needed to go looking pretty as well, it was cut down to about 1. I had the list for a long time, considering options everyday, if it wasn’t for my 2 small angels, I might have executed one of them then.

I was determined to take control of my own “head”, my 2 small angels helped me to stay focus on what was important and my then-boyfriend-now-hubby doubled as my emotional “trash bin”, most of the time incoherent and sometimes, nonsensical. It was a painful, lonely and most of the time scary journey, but I did it.

For a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to think about that time, not to mention tell anybody about it. Today I’m writing this in my blog, knowing that someone I know will read this.

Today I am getting rid of one of my demons.