Q

Category: DIY Therapy Sessions

the body as ____.

The body as a machine. And what if this machine cannot do what it has been doing — as natural as breathing, and just as essential?

Since I found out the news, I have had to let go off a series of activities that are part of my daily life. HIIT, running, yoga, pilates, strength. Too much impact. Too much jumping. Too much twisting. Too much core. Too much weight.

I could not help thinking my body has failed me, against my best efforts. How wrong was I to think that. Against all my working it, my body has protected me. Now it is time for me to be kind to it, and allow it the space to heal.

For days I felt myself a caged lion. Pacing, restless, erratic energy bouncing off walls. Day one of meditation failed miserably. My mind was in high frequency, as it often is, leaping from one node to another, a scatter and a scribble.

The only safe, kind way I could move my body, was to confront an old friend / fear of mine: swimming.

Some background on my fear of water, a near drowning exactly 10 years ago.

Since then, I have been swimming, intermittently. Baby swims. Recreational swims. Not the many laps, few times a week, solitary swims I used to do — until that happened.

Even today, I feel that inky fear pool in my tummy and fill my chest again, compelling me to find solid ground with foot. I no longer swam with my head underwater, something I loved to do before. I said swam, because I did it, for the first time (again), today.

After a few laps of shallow-breathed gulping for air, stemming from confused rhythms, something just –

clicked. I got it, altogether, all at once. How to dip my head and breathe out, watch the stream of bubbles float above me. How to push the water like an arrow just as I kick right beneath the surface. How to draw my arms in, like reading a book, pulling my shoulders back, the certainty of air, and all over again, a glide, a cadence, a fluid movement.

I remember now how peaceful it was to swim. To be underwater and watch this quiet belly of the world, no sound, all fuzzy, where you have left thought just above the surface, and here where light distorts in blue, they do not matter.

I remember now the weightlessness, the feeling of being buoyed as in amniota. Leaving the water, heaving on the heavy clock of life and all its mechanical complexities was so much to bear.

May 20, 2025
Batam, 2024

There is a special joy in being a girls’ girl.

It is to be heard, and seen, and known, and felt. It is to simply be yourself, to shrug off the costumes of roles you perform, with the confidence of knowing you are wholly accepted. And if you have forgotten who the ‘simply you’ is, they will help you find it again.

I’ve half-jokingly referred to this weekend’s getaway with the girls as ‘a spiritual and emotional retreat’.

The truth is it is closer to the truth than the humour implies.

What did we do besides sit around and talk about ourselves, each other, and life? A top-notch massage with the sound of waves, excellent breakfast spreads that kept us dreaming the entire day for more, spontaneous deadlift and pull-up tutorials. Being vulnerable and sharing what we have carried as a heavy stone for years.

I am sitting at the cusp of having so much to learn about the world and others, and so, SO much to unlearn to be better for this world and others. To be a girls’ girl is the strength that comes with knowing they will rally around you. I’m ready to take on what’s upcoming.

August 26, 2024
the nonlinearity of age

i’m amused at how world-weary i assumed myself to be at 23. in my early 20s, or even my teens, there was such a firm confidence in my maturity. i felt old. i felt like i’d experienced all that life could offer. i felt blasé.

at 31 i think of myself mostly a child. just yesterday i fell while trying to tightrope walk on a tree root. just last week i felt inchoate, dwarfed by the presence of nature vast and ancient as i’ve never encountered.

how was i so certain – about myself, my thoughts, and the end of novelty – when i had yet to have a snowflake melt on my palm?

yet there is no condescension when i face my age-young self. i was, perhaps, truly old in some ways. in relation too, in context of. i admire my earnest commitment to beliefs i had no way of verifying. today i am fenced by the sole certainty that an absolute truth is often out of reach, or perhaps requires far more courage and effort than the lethargy of my intellectual cowardice can rattle into being.

that aside,

my modest little epiphany is that feeling your age has nothing to do with the linear progression of time and years.

i enjoy today my infant-like wonder at the world, and my hope that there is more to discover.

maybe tomorrow some of that old-young bravado will re-emerge, and i will again assert this and that, wanting a better world that i deem to have explored to its ends.

August 19, 2024
A feather from a boulder

One of those nights where sleeplessness was welcome. I felt again that sensation, wrapped within a dream, both somatic and cognitive: that contrast between what’s unbearably heavy and oppressively light.

Have you ever had one of those dream-not dreams? Not a chain of events, but a repetition of a feeling.

The first time I had this dream I was a child. The first and most vivid of all acceding instances. In it, I carried a large object — I will call it a boulder, although in my mind it had the incomparable largeness and weight of the perceivable world.

Bearing this weight, I walked door-to-door. I say that for as a metaphor. In the reality of the non-reality they were intervals of nothing. At each interval, I took from the boulder, each time I could only grasp and release a pinch. Each pinch was light as nothing, a down feather of a baby bird.

After the first dream, I have had frequent recurrences of this dream. Not as vivid but always, at the centre, that feeling. Not the heaviness nor the lightness, for when awake I carry sandbags and barbells above my weight, and have felt the slip of snowflake so inconsequential it dissolves on my palm.

No, it is that in-between, that contrast, the shock of nothing from everything, a down feather when I expected a boulder, that sticks with me.

The other night where I, in a rare state, welcomed sleeplessness, I felt that contrast, that discomfiting dissonance. Not in a dream but floating towards one. And after two decades of being called to this sensation in my sleep, it finally struck me the simplicity of what this meant. Or, let’s do away with maudlin needs to ascribe meaning. It struck me why and when I have these dreams.

When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, and when every action I take to address these stressors appear futile. Carrying the world, no amount of tasks ticked off is enough to complete what needs to be done.

This discovery, though, is less fascinating to me than that feeling of dissonance. It feels such a singular and isolating sensation that I’m not sure I share with anyone. The contrast of weight between boulder and feather.

June 30, 2024
to be good

when i look back at just a year or two ago, i’m surprised at how much i’ve grown. not changed – but grown. change i’ve had plenty of experience with.

and i’m proud of myself.

from someone who always thought of herself as ‘unambitious’, content to do whatever job she’s assigned well and sign off for the day; to this, today, someone who loves the hat she accidentally fell into. off work, i find myself consuming podcasts, articles, and (finally) non-fiction. i no longer feel the itch to pop open social media to numb my mind. i feel fulfilled, but no longer content. everyday i want to learn more, be more.

i found someone who enables and challenges me in all the right ways. someone who doesn’t force me to grow up because of circumstances, but encourages me to do so by example. where i was once consumed by ideals of possessive, all-encompassing, centre-of-my-world type relationships, i’ve been shown how to put myself front and centre. to be grounded, to balance, and then to love.

but one evening, inexplicably, i felt disgusted by how impatient i’ve become. how i’m quick to judge, quick to be annoyed by strangers. i’ve become so blind to the fact that everyone lives their own lives with their struggles and frustrations. why am i so desensitized to the pains of others, sometimes even my friends. why is my first reaction to think the worst of strangers based on their singular action. and most of all, schadenfreude.

in my impatience with others, i’d think “haha orbiquek” when they’re inconvenienced after inconveniencing me. and it disgusts me to even have these thoughts. that is has become my instinct to have them.

NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast on envy perfectly encapsulated the type of person who would have schadenfreude. It is the one emotion we surpress, never revealing them to others because it’s simply not socially appropriate to express joy at another’s misfortune. Beyond that, to admit that you’re glad of another’s misfortune shows that you harbored feelings of envy to begin with, and by admitting that you’re admitting to feeling inferior, to wanting what you don’t have.

for the past weeks i’ve been trying my hardest to stem negative thoughts. the judgement that has come so naturally to me. the temptation to gossip and speak with ill intent. i’m still selfish – i’m doing it not so much to benefit others as it is for my self. because it feels so much better to not be saturated with negative thoughts and judgements of others, because i can look at myself and respect the person i am. still in the works, but i’ll keep going.

March 14, 2018
Skincare

Every morning and night, i slather my face in skincare. It has such a therapeutic effect on me.

I’ve always been a moisturizing maniac, but recently got my act together and sketched out a proper skincare plan. Toner, advancer, essence, lotion/night cream. There is something about the consistency, the structure, that appeals to my primal need for order and routine. That and also, good skin.

I’m not the least bit ashamed to admit that i look forward to my twice daily slather-session. You’re also speaking to the person who does lymphatic face massages on public transport all the time, so i may be more prone to face-touching than the average human.

At this point, i’d say that the process of skincare matters more to me than the absolute results.

This reminds me of what i told H just yesterday about my nails.

“I don’t actually care how my nails look. I just enjoy painting them. It’s so therapeutic.”

Is it a coincidence that i find peace in activities of feminine beautification? Is this the part where i discover my psychological well-being is dependent on patriarchal determinants of worth?

I don’t mind it that so much though.

Zen and beautiful are great things to be.

February 12, 2017
Reader

I thought i’ve stopped reading as much as i used to, but i was wrong.

Somewhere along the way i’ve just switched tracks from books to blogs. And when it comes to blogs, i’m indiscriminate in my reading – just as i was with books as a child. I devour them all, the mundane and the weepy; the flowery and the grammatically incorrect.

Guess i was wrong about not liking non-fiction too.

It’s an addiction, really. I like stories that are human, that are raw. Nothing needs to happen. I like to access the surface, unfiltered thoughts of whoever you are and decipher the complexes beneath.

No one is less interesting than the other.

Curated writing from those who possess more self-awareness, those are good reads. They present insights whole, complete with a tidy bow. Ramblings are all the better, where every pause, every word-used-instead-of-another is a code to what’s really going on.

I’m still an obsessive reader, just a very kaypoh one.

August 1, 2016
whether weather

When it gets cold, rainy, and dark like this, i regress.

Wake up feeling like a different time, when i was a lot younger and felt safer, simpler, maybe happier. Except this time with the full knowledge that i’m no longer that self. I get bouts of deep, disturbing nostalgia throughout my life. More than nostalgia (there is yet a name for it, which makes me think mine is a singular experience), I’m prone to feeling displaced – from places and time; a tugging homesickness even while i lie in bed at home.

This round i’m back in a time where i was a child without the responsibility of the future. Each day laid themselves out plain for me: holidays, relax; school, study. I awake cocooned in my blanket against the cold with smooth sheets beneath my feet (my favorite feeling) and am groggily aware that someone is preparing my breakfast. I may dread a day in class, i may loathe waking early, but there is never an unknown. I am cared for fully.

To so starkly be placed in this state emotionally, but cognitively understand i’m an adult and bear the onus of life, is shite.

For now though, i’m taking it easy.

Things to work for:

BTT

Productions

ISM research

June 5, 2016
i resolve to write more

personal stuff. like for this blog.

it has been sadly barren for too long.

part of the reason, i suspect, is that the role this blog has in my life has been usurped. i already have someone who listens with attention as rapt as my imaginary blog audience to all i need to say – the mundane to the dramatic; the gratuitous theorizing and endless analyzing of human behavior; the nonsense the rants and (sometimes) inspired insights. hi Hansies.

but i need to come back to this space because writing about my life is a thing. not just documenting but making sense of. what i’ve criticized about this space: that it forces me to filter and euphemize, is also part of its merit. all i experience is shaped by how i perceive, and how i perceive is informed by my filtering.

mere documenting isn’t enough anymore, because i don’t remember what my more nuanced thoughts about the happenings were.

so much words.

every May since 2012, without fail, i think about you again.

we spent no more than a night and day together. june through april you stay clear of my thoughts. and them BOOM. may – you again. tiny fledgling, raw and pink and grotesque. how is it that you crop up so uncannily on the anniversary of your death, some kind of macabre annual clockwork?

you make me think about death. how it is natural, expected, sometimes inconsequential because millions of tiny ones like you go every day. but if you’re lucky enough (or does it even matter to you?) someone remembers yours.

May 14, 2016
Sleep

I’ve had trouble sleeping recently AND IT’S TERRIFYING.

What started out as just simple insomnia from too much caffeine/late nights, became an obsessive worry about not getting enough sleep from the previous night and not being able to sleep the next.

It’s been on and off – some days i revert to Qing baby sleep cycles and can barely keep awake once i’m in bed. Others, my heart and brain race like the other ravaged their ancestral line. For someone who for most of her life has slept at 11 and clocked her 8 hours throughout uni, this is living hell.

The worry comes from my belief that a lot of what’s important to me: my skin, my general alertness, my energy, come from ample sleep. Take that away and what is left of me? Paradoxically, with the worry comes the inability to just let go and let sleep take over.

Sleep is the most natural thing of all – but once you consciously are aware of it, it doesn’t happen. Like someone pointing out that you blink and breathe and all at once you can’t help noticing that you’re doing all that and it becomes strange and unnatural.

Stupid as it is, it’s in my nature to be neurotic. So i perpetuate this cycle by thinking shit like WHAT IF THIS GOES ON FOREVER. OH SHIT I HAVE A FEELING I CAN’T SLEEP AGAIN AT NIGHT, etc etc. It’s endless.

Sometimes i feel myself nodding off, barely able to keep awake when i’m trying to stay up a little bit later. But once i’m ready and want to sleep, just having a milli-scrap of the thought: shit what if i can’t- anxiety floods through me. The effects are tangible: numb limbs and insane heart. Loud thoughts. It frightens me and that fear sends a new wave of anxiety and it continues from there.

I need to reframe my thinking.

So what if i miss a night of sleep? It happens to everyone. The sleep debt would be paid eventually.

I don’t NEED to sleep at a certain time, or even at night. I can just sleep when i’m sleepy and am ready for it. There’s always the choice of a daytime nap. If i can’t sleep, i can just get up and do whatever.

The human body will eventually crash when it needs sleep. I don’t ever have to worry not being able to sleep because it’ll find a way to shut my brain down when it needs to.

I literally cannot control my sleep consciously. So there is no fucking point in worrying. I just need to stop giving a shit.

It will eventually readjust itself.

Things will go back to before, i just have to give it time.

It’ll be alright.

April 3, 2016