Ureshii

Would you know true happiness if it were staring right at you in the face? If it manifests itself as bubbles and sparkles all around you, accompanied by the sensation of walking on air?

Would it be true happiness if it were temporary, like a fleeting petal that later on falls to the ground, eventually covered in dirt and grimes?

Is it felt as a sense of fulfillment, a sense of achievement?

Or is it the assurance that there will always be something - or someone - to fall back to, when everything else fails?

Current Music: Apologize - Kris Allen (cover)

On that Intangibly Thin Ice

One example of the things that have been bothering me since we started our Introduction to Psychiatry, is how the range of normality can be all too microscopic.

Too happy, you're labelled as a manic. Too depressed, they'll be diagnosing you as having major depressive disorder. Too crazy, you're deemed psychotic (God Forbid!) and you'll be strapped tightly and will be on your merry way to the nearest psychiatric ward, free of charge. Not crazy enough, and they'll give you "neurosis" or some other disorders.
Because we are human beings, generally speaking, our emotions and moods fluctuate. Fluctuate too much, we'll get cyclothymia. Swing too far into both of the extremes, that's bipolar. Zero emotions? Blunting or flattening of mood.

Roughly two years ago, I'd admit without a second thought that I absolutely adore Psychology. Ask me now, and I'm not sure if I can say that I like Psychiatry with much fervour anymore.

Maybe it's because I simply prefer learning the theories in the pre-clinical years than the practical aspect we're made to perform starting our third year in med school.

Maybe it's the fear of seeing psychiatric patients in the flesh and standing within their reach. Maybe it's the tons of different criteria to remember for different disorders and diseases. Maybe it's how things may, at times, appear to be far too subjective for one to derive proper diagnoses and conclusions. Maybe it's the discomfort of knowing that the lecturers in the department might be picking up some personal quirks and finding them rather suggestive of certain disorders, and then arranging some psychiatric help before one could become aware much less protest against.

...Or, maybe, it's the utter devastation of knowing that there is some probability of falling headfirst into the dark and endless chasm of instability, knowing how close one is to the edge, what with a myriad of unhealthy and possibly disturbing notions already toying with one's mind and bent on crushing one's self-control.

Current Music: Battlefield - Jordin Sparks

Lost

They always say never to take things for granted.

There is something so unforgivable when one is unable to correct a pattern that one has found to be utterly incongruous, utterly destructive to one's own being.

Here's the typical cycle; Owing to the oh-too-persuasive nature of marketing, we are tempted only too easily to own what may not be anywhere in our list of necessary items to purchase. Since - to some selected people - money is not too much of an issue, or that the item itself overshadows whatever doubts that we might have at first, we go ahead, denying the little voice in our head that reminds us that there is no turning back, and we happily go home with our newly purchased thing.

So at first our enthusiasm level towards it runs high. We gaze lovingly at it, we utilise it during each opportunity that comes by, we truly appreciate and treasure it for what it is.

Then the turning point comes right at us.

We start taking it easy. We become swayed in that we turn twice to look at newer things that, in essence, is similar to one already in our possession, although the former is more advanced. I guess it's akin to infidelity. Still, we start to yearn for the new.

As we continue our daily lives, there would be days when things go wrong in all sorts of ways. And when we least expected it, in a split second, a minor slip up leads to a disastrous consequence.

We turn and words fail us when the truth has hit us hard.

Desperate for things to return to how they once were, we try to resuscitate the poor belonging, hoping against hope, praying for that sliver of hope to shine through, for it to survive. Maybe a promise of never ever discarding it crosses our hearts. And regret tears away our conscience, our placid air.

It tries to break away from the web of death, but it's a little too late - no matter how we see it, it's already as good as gone.

...But we hold on to our self-control, our faith. Because God has great plans, and He Knows all. He has decided that it was time for it to leave you. Whether He will replace it with a better candidate, that remains to be proven.

He always has His reasons, and we always have our excuses. We are in a constant need to remember Him, and that He continuously tries our faith in Him. It is, after all, His Right upon us.

Farewell, mon cher. Thou hast served us well, and I could only offer you my utmost apologies for being such an ignoramus.

Current Music: mind as Judgment (TV Ver.) - Faylan

P/s: *insert appropriate background music* I'm in despair! The tendency to assume things has left me in despair! *cringe*

P/p/s: *longing gaze at HTC* *sigh*