For most of my life, I’ve known depression for almost as long as I’ve known myself. There was a “me” before mental illness and there is still a me even with mental illness, but my mental illness is not the all-encompassing way I know myself. Just as there is a you in spite of all [...]
This is not the end of the world
The world may feel like it’s ending right now. A lot of us are at a loss for words to capture how we’re feeling amidst this chaos of a global pandemic, the largest civil rights movement, and the turmoil of our own lives as we learn to adapt to the politics of living and doing. [...]
The Equilibrium of Change
A lot of the people I admire have told me, “The only constant in life is change.” My high school robotics coach told me this along with her wife followed by some of my family members and therapists. It seems as if they are all reading from the same hymn and if a myriad of [...]
Remembering the Human Spirit
When the world is moving incredibly fast, it’s hard to take a deep breath. Today, I was driving back from the grocery store when this wave of anxiety washed over me. My heart started palpitating and I noticed myself holding in my breath. I pulled over to a nearby parking lot of a park and [...]
10 Things ‘Incandescent Alphabets’ taught me about psychosis
GoodReads describes Annie Roger’s book as, “Psychosis, an invasion of mind and body from without, creates an enigma about what is happening and thrusts the individual into radical isolation. What are the subjective details of such experiences? This book explores psychosis as knowledge cut off from history, truth that cannot be articulated in any other [...]
Process oriented vs outcome oriented
“So often we judge ourselves by our outcomes," are the last words my therapist offered me as a food for thought before we ended our conversation today. My therapist and I were talking about how just because a decision you made turned sour or caused trouble, its outcome is not a reflection on your character. [...]
Productivity During COVID-19
April 10, 2020 I’ve been seeing this tweet float around a lot these past few weeks: Subsequently, this Tumblr thread gained traction in response to the original Twitter poster: I’ve been reflecting on this idea of productivity during isolation a lot especially because all the chaos prior to COVID-19 hasn’t halted to make space for [...]
Six Feet Apart
I’ve been hesitating on writing about this for a while, but I’ve been thinking about this collective traumatic experience we are all going through as the COVID-19 pandemic ensues. News articles and live streams of press conference briefings from state officials sit heavy with me as I lay in my bed in the morning. It [...]
It isn’t in your deck
Suicide. What an awful combination of letters that manage to hold such unbearable pain. Three weeks ago, I sat in my therapist’s office and the words, “I can’t get what I did out of my head,” rattle off my tongue. I’ve attempted suicide before, self-harm has been a vicious cycle in my life no matter [...]
The Legacy We Leave
What if we die having done nothing remarkable or novel? Is that truly a failure? A while back I wrote about the Novelty of Depression especially in connection to the American Dream. What if our legacy is one of emotional impact rather than vocational achievements? Have we really robbed ourselves of the potential of a [...]