I admit. I fell in love once. I fell in love with him. It
doesn’t matter if it took me 3 years to finally say this to myself, and out
loud. What matters is I’m finally at this stage. Acceptance.
If your major is medical related, or a person who read a lot
online, you probably know who Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is. If you don’t, perhaps
you’ve heard the 5 Stages of Loss and Grief? Most people I know call it the
grieving process. Thanks to Ms. Kubler-Ross we now have a name for this
process. The acronym is DABDA, a.k.a. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and
Acceptance.
Why am I telling you this? You know I don’t really know. I
just feel like I should write about it. I’m not sure if I have the same experience
as other people out there, but I know that there’s somebody out there who can
somehow relate.
Am I happy? I can’t really tell…but I’m also not very sad. Well,
if you think one of the outlet of sadness is crying, then perhaps I’m sad. If
you think some happiness involves crying, perhaps I am as well. But you know
what? Maybe I’m just somewhere in between. I felt calm, and that’s it.
I’ve watched this movie last night called “Stuck In Love.”
Many times it made me cry. It made me cry in moments that it made me realize
that hey, I know this feeling. I understand this feeling. I’ve been there
before! It’s like the movie is telling me, in subtext, that, “Hey! You were in love!” And the part that hurts
the most is the word, “were.” Which seems like that’s the end of it, and that
will never happen again. That past tense made me feel like I spoiled it. I
spoiled the feeling of being ‘in-love.’ I
spoiled ‘love.’
Two years ago, I nervously opened my email from a
psychologist who told me what’s wrong with me. And there it is, at the end of
her report she said I have depression and anxiety disorder.
Months before that, I went to this psychiatrist with bulging
eyes, hair on my face and hood up to hide it. The hardest thing to carry is my
chest. It felt like it’s all filled up, so heavy, like it’s going to explode
anytime. I came to her because I want to kill myself. That wanting to cause
physical pain to the extent of killing myself is so serious that I thought if I
don’t get any help, I’ll end up in the spirit prison soon… and the grave. She
gave me anti-depressants, with side-effects that made me salivate more than I normally
do. Then weeks of taking it made me feel numb. Some people asked me, “How are
you?” then I will respond with, “I don’t know.” Because really, I don’t really
know what I feel. I don’t even feel anything. I felt like a floating red balloon
with no direction, relying only on the heavier gasses to take me anywhere.
I stopped. I stopped taking anti-depressants after months of
taking it because first, I thought I don’t need it anymore, and second, my
doctor was out of town when I came back for follow up. I never came back. I
thought I’m healed. Then the symptoms came back.
I believe that it’s not really just 5 Stages of Grief, it’s
now 7 according to some. Because with my 2015’s year of hiking and hiking and
hiking, then turning back to music, is actually the stage of Reconstruction and Working Through. It’s
in between the Depression and Acceptance. Within 5 months I climbed 5
mountains. Some people think that it’s cool, and some think it’s ridiculous.
For me, it’s a therapy. Besides, who wouldn’t like the calm and beauty of
mountains? They say it has therapeutic effects and I believe that… until I got
sick.
I was so distraught when my Hypokalemic Paralysis came back.
It’s even coupled with Hyponatremia. With my last year’s attack, I was also
taken to the hospital because I thought I was going to die. Which is actually what
I was hoping for. That was the time I was diagnosed for the first time. However,
I was really sure that it happened to me before. People around me just didn’t
take it seriously.
After the attack this year I was so angry because it will
delay our next plan to climb. My family even thought I shouldn’t climb mountains
anymore. Then comes my rebellious heart. Friends told me not to hastily climb
mountains. They said maybe I can do that sometimes, but no longer always. Good
thing that before this ever happened, I became a fangirl.
Being a fangirl is awesome. My ukulele came just at the
right moment. Because I can no longer climb mountains always, I came back to my music. I accepted that my ‘uke’ is the
best instrument in the world and I can play any types of music with it, yes,
even rock. And what else? I finally had the courage to have drum lessons. Ever
since a little kid, I dreamed of becoming a drummer. Being a fangirl made me
brave enough to go to that studio and started learning. Thanks to Glaiza Galura.
She told us that “Dreams never end.” And I was working through.
All those years of depression, made me feel like I’m no
longer capable of falling in love. But you know what, I was only able to tell
this to myself, and other people, when I was already reconstructing my life. Telling
someone that I’m no longer capable of falling in love is like accepting that a floating
red balloon is going up and will eventually pop, forgetting that it wasn’t yet filled
with helium.
I only accepted the fact that a floating red balloon can go nowhere
or somewhere. I also accepted that a floating red balloon will eventually pop. What
I haven’t accepted is the actual truth that, even if you’re filled with air,
you can still go somewhere, or go straight up.
While the credits are rolling, of ‘Stuck In Love,’ I was
trying to suppress sobbing because everyone’s asleep. But I can’t help it. At
that moment I told myself, “Yes, I’m ready to fall in love. I’m ready to be
hurt again.” I have hope and I’m willing to take the risk. Love is such a
wonderful feeling that I want to experience it all over again, along with that
negative baggage. The pain.
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