Another round of self-loathing cycle

I have just recently found a more-or-less correct metaphor for my depression a.k.a self-loathing cycle. It's like this: imagine you have lots of pipes in your mind. Each carries a different stream, some are happy stream of thoughts, other are poisonous negative ones. The thing about these pipes are I don't know where the valves or ends are. Sometimes the happy stream of thoughts will just burst on one end, and fill my head with amazing optimistic thoughts. Sometimes other pipes send different streams of thoughts and so on.

There's one pipe, special for self-loathing and low self-esteem that leaks. I think it started leaking when I moved to Jakarta. That place sort of corroded my brain for different reasons. Or maybe it had started to crack long time ago, but I just didn't realise it. Anyway, this particular pipe always leaks. So imagine my mind is like a big bucket. It can be filled with different things. Generally, what's inside the bucket is quite neutral, not amazingly happy but not amazingly sad. Now, this dumb leaking pipe will always let some of its content drip down into my mind bucket, sort of tarnishing it bits by bits. When I'm depressed, the stream of bad thoughts will surge into this one leaky pipe causing the content to fall into the mind bucket in larger quantity. And slowly but sure, my mind is corrupted by these bad thoughts. Sometimes the pipe will burst and I will get dragged down to my own bad thoughts and sometimes, it will take me weeks to recover.

So, basically I'm generally not a happy sort of person. I don't go out in the morning and think to myself how wonderful the world is, for instance. I get frustrated so easily. I get annoyed by people a lot. I'm generally the kind of person that you don't want to meet when you have low confidence in humanity because I will crush what's left of your hope. Although to be fair, I am not evil, as in Hitler-evil for instance. I don't abuse people because I think it's great fun. I abuse myself emotionally but by doing that I realise that I abuse other people who care and love me.

However, there have been times when the pipe where all good thoughts and rainbows and kittens and ponies and leprechauns and mermaids and dolphins swim burst on one end and I'd be ecstatic. My mind bucket would full of these wonderful things and I would be smiling a lot. I'd also be able to enjoy things better.

This is not unique at all and I think this is just how humans operate in general. Some people are happier and more relaxed than others; some are more mellow and anxious. I know that everything in my mind should be manageable although often it doesn't feel like that at all. Often I'd just prefer to curl myself into a tiny ball and cry myself to sleep. Sometimes it makes me feel better. Sometimes it eliminates all good things that I have in life.

I know that hating or blaming myself constantly will not actually solve anything. It's so cliche and easy to say, but in practice when you are drowning in your own hatred for yourself, cliche easy things aren't so cliche and easy anymore. Which is why, it is important to have an emergency drain on your mind bucket. And writing my problems down on something permanent (internet) is my emergency drain. Who knows? Maybe someone will stumble upon this post and think it's helpful so they feel better about themselves, or shit and yet they feel better about themselves. It's really about making choices. 

About anger

Do you ever get angry with the universe and everything? Just plain illogical dumb anger. You can't really explain why you are angry, or you can try and end up sounding like a 5-yo whose ice cream fell to the floor. Just lots of undecipherable noises.

I'm feeling like that now. So angry with so many different things. People are on my top list. I am so angry with people here, and often I'd thought to myself where did we go wrong? Why do most people end up being really ignorant and just dumb?

I'm angry with the situation and condition here. I'm angry seeing stupidity is growing like a plague, eating any intelligence left, leaving people like zombies. They live because they need to consume. Watch Walking Dead for a reference. I think the general population now is no different to the walkers in the series: mindless and greedy (or maybe not greedy, just insatiable, because they are essentially brain dead).

Sometimes when I rant about these kinds of things, some people (i.e. friend) would remind me that I should not get all worked up for no reason and that I needed to learn to accept things better. I guess that's true on some levels. But how far do we need to tolerate things? When do we say enough is enough?

But I guess it's better to get angry than to feel defeated.

About (not) going back home

I have been travelling a lot these past two years, it almost feels like I'm making up the time when I'm not travelling. My decision to change the way I work, from a full-timer to a freelancer, really helps in terms of being super flexible and just not getting depressed with different demands from your employer.

I, sometimes, would feel that the place I visit was so amazing that I didn't want to go back to Indonesia. Or sometimes, I'd feel so out of place, I would be really excited about going back to a place that was more or less could be identified as "home." Obviously, these are all in the past. I've written a rather cheesy post about the new-found home. And this time, I'm having a new sort of feeling: I really don't want to go back.

Now, even thinking about going back to Indonesia gives me physical pain. It's not that I detest Indonesia and its people. I like how everything is crazy and chaotic and organic (unlike in Holland, for instance, where everything is so organized and neat and plastic-y) and how I would have to find my way through the wild puzzle of the hypocritical social life in this country. I had liked that. I'm just tired of it. It drains my energy and pretending is never my strong suit. I also realise that physical distance is necessary if I want to "mend" my broken head (not heart), and after being away from Indonesia for a month now, I know that as much as I love that place, I can't really live there anymore.

Which now leads to "holy-shit-life-sucks" part of the post. Obviously, coming from a third-world country (do they still use this ranking anyway? It's so dumb) to a first-world country means hassle. Just incredible hassle. It's hard for anyone to get the hell out of some shit hole just to get into a different kind of shit hole. It's rather amazing that way.

I guess you got to work hard to get what you really want in life. This time is a safe place with people who understand my language and don't get offended if I have an opinion. This time, it will be for something more permanent and worth every goddamned effort that I can muster.

So, wish me luck.