I’m a good person

Trigger Warning: suicide, depression, anxiety, and strong language

“I’m a good person, that’s my thing/ My nickname is Mother Theresa Luther King”

May 7, 2019. I was crying going home, but the driver hadn’t noticed it. I wiped my tears and sucked all of my feelings up so my parents wouldn’t notice a whiff of my emotion.

I went straight to my room, pumped up a random playlist, and continued crying there. The crying took hours, and Netflix couldn’t save me.

Crying was exhausting, right, and I cried myself to sleep. I knew it would be harder for me to sleep and find stillness that night, but I tried. I closed my eyes and heard voices inside my head: it’s my own voice, uttering statements that pierced me. It was repetitive and disturbing because the voice changed from my own, to something familiar, to some mangled voice, words disfiguring themselves. It was repetitive and disturbing. I tossed and turned, tossed and turned until I checked the time and it was 1 AM. I needed distraction so as a Catholic man that I am, I prayed. But the voice just wouldn’t go away.

Then the scary thing happened: palpitations and hyperventilation. These went on until 3 am. Three hours of anxiety attack.

I woke up at 8 am. My work was at 7:30 am, so I called in sick. I told my mom it’s migraine. I don’t have migraine. To make it more convincing, the next hour I told my Mom it was insomnia.

I thought afternoon walking in nature can help. I reached 2.21 kilometers from house. When it’s .21 kilometer away, my panic attack already manifested and the voice reappeared, but I had the capacity to suck these thoughts up and looked at the greens. While walking, the numbness started in my ankles, slowly rising to my legs, then to my torso and my head. I was hyperventilating again, like catching asthma, except I am certain I do not have one. I breathed hard, sought for the nearest place to sit and relaxed. There I found a kiosk along the road. I pinched and massaged myself, longing for any place in my body which isn’t numb. Pulling my hair soothed it, along with chants I verbalized: You are okay. This is okay. You were in desolate situations before and you pulled in your A-game. You shouldn’t spiral down.

When the dusk set in, it was best to go home and pretend it never happened.

The next day I showed up for work, told my officemate why I was absent. I never had anybody to talk to personally, so he had no choice but to eat it up for lunch along with our siomai. While talking to him, he had this vibe of wanting to give the best words for me, but his eyes reeked with confusion. And I understand. It’s never often that we hear someone say, “Hey, you know why I didn’t show up? There were voices in my head and I had anxiety attacks and I sure thought I am going to die.”

It’s not that I thought officemate was naïve and all that, because judging by the conversations we have had, we’re woke as fuck. He listened well and tried to maintain eye contact despite the bleak descriptions. Instead of acting like a mental health professional, he distracted me and said maybe I should own a puppy. I said, I’m a cat person. He said, there you go.

We went back to our stations and I deleted all my social media accounts, thinking that by clearing these all away, I’d focus more on myself. It’s the first step to slowly disappear from the world.

I finished serving time, so I walked to the terminal, and I reached the busy intersection. I stood there staring at the cars and large vehicles. I was smirking that moment, and looking at it now, it felt like I was in a grunge gig, enjoying the road situation as a musical performance. Grohl’s beat was the car horns, Novoselic’s bass the sudden breaks, and Kurt-fucking-Cobain’s riffs and rasps the engines revving and tires against the cement, pulling out a monumental nirvana: “I’m so happy because today/ I’ve found my friends/ They’re in my head… YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH/ I like it, I’m not gonna crack.”

ATTENTION Nirvana fans: Their YouTube Channel just released a 1991 live version of Lithium four months ago, but I prefer this iconic performance. Check it out! 🤘🏻🎸🎧😊

During that time, I found a last week’s memory of two motorcycles hitting each other in front of me. I thought, it should be me. I should be in the position of the guy who was hit by another motorcycle. I thought what it’s like to be dead.

I imagined myself getting run over by a truck or a bus. Any large vehicle should shatter me, and if not, any fast car would do. I would like to die by suicide and transfer the blame to the driver so it would look like a vehicular accident. Then the Advocate Self occurred: it was a bad idea to die and put the responsibility to another person. If I die, I shouldn’t be involving drivers painstakingly eking out a living on highways.

To be honest, these pills have not yet taken back my self-confidence. It was never easy. I still lash out. This professional help may take a year, I do not know. They may be small steps. Up to me, my brain chemistry, and our atmosphere. The difference though is I’m less afraid and I know better now. I’m settling for that.

My friends showed concern and told me I should consider going to therapy. It sounded romantic, but I thought it was scary to be dependent on it too. So I didn’t.

Instead, I traveled for a week. I loved visiting old churches, but I ended the days in my hotel room, never amounting to anything.

I turned down some writing offers.

I refused to be seen on malls, public places.

I took time off on the community project where I was the project leader.

It was hard to look at the mirror.

I wasn’t getting any better.

Hours of anxiety attacks were already sad enough, but I was contemplating suicide for two months, and those months seemed stretched for years of hatred, nothingness, inefficiency at work, abandonment, and fear. All of my confidence and will to live were taken from me, and it’s a mystery where I left them.

These times I would remember lines from a song: There’s always some reason/ To feel not good enough/ And it’s hard, at the end of the day.

Who felt that? ✋🥺

I had read a lot of books on positive psychology, watched mental health-related speeches from Ted Talks, and talked to people I trust. I’m slowly collecting courage to confront my inner demons.

I decided to go to therapy. I went there so conscious of people watching me waiting for my turn. All of them were heartbroken too.

My therapist greeted me like I’m an old friend. Asked me questions to lead me into saying these words: Doc, I am hard to manage. I have always wanted to die. I don’t think I belong in this world. I should go to hell. Doc, I have not been able to love myself.

Slide #35

I am medicated with one tablet of escitalopram (antidepressant) and one tablet of quetiapine (antipsychotic) each day. I am diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety disorder.

Now, I am speaking with hundreds of students, but my parents did not know all of these. So if anybody in the gym would mention this to my mom, I swear to blog I’m going to gut you 🔪. Kidding.

As a Scorpio I tend to have a hard exterior. I hated to look weak in front of my doctor, but she said nobody walks on her clinic weak. The fact that I am honestly recognizing a part of me that is likely set aside by prejudices is a sign of strength.

My mental health condition was not a surprise. I am a product of ultra-competitive youth, of defeat. The douchebaggery of our state affairs. Of being too much, or not enough. Of losing some after gaining some. I am a product of numbing myself. Of rejections after rejections. Of cyberbullying. I am a victim of my young age. Betrayals. Of former work environments oppressive to me. Of sexual abuses. My world is not friendly to me.

To be honest, these pills have not yet taken back my self-confidence. It was never easy. I still lash out. This professional help may take a year, I do not know. They may be small steps. Up to me, my brain chemistry, and our atmosphere. The difference though is I’m less afraid and I know better now. I’m settling for that.

But *ting* good news: I am living in the world where we are more understanding on mental health. I have friends to support me and try to understand my demands or silences. I have the privilege to have my sanity checked by a competent therapist.

Bad news: Stigma is still existing, and not everyone who lives with these illnesses are lucky to have these. Mental health is supposed to be afforded by everyone.

Third part (edited) of the speech The situation is a lot more nuanced than that: A meditation on mental health through Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It was delivered at an NSTP class of Notre Dame of Marbel University on August 24, 2019.

NOTE: Pal, I apologize for the long delay of my essay. These past few days it’s harder to go back to my file and relive the experiences before my eyes. Hope you understand. And if you are a mighty, depressive, suicidal, anxious person like me, please know that there is help. If you are from Mindanao, you can turn to the Facebook page of the Mindanao Youth for Mental Health (MYMH) and Aqilah. Other mental health orgs in the country include Youth for Mental Health Coalition; Healing Minds PH; Silakbo PH; #MentalHealthPH; Tayo; Tayo Project; TALA: Mental Wellness; Arooga Health; and Play it Forward (focused on children’s post-disaster mental health). Looking for the nearest locations of mental health facilities and services in the Philippines? Here’s Mental Health AWHEREness.

I’ll be back for the speech’s last part on how to manage your mental health. Meanwhile, you may also want to read my piece’s first part where I identified some mental ilnesses and the second part where I discussed the mental health stigma. Tell a friend…

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