the swan song

News came yesterday that Nobuhiro Watsuki got arrested for child pornography possession. i was pretty shattered. Perhaps all the future generations from now on will dismiss Rurouni Kenshin as "the manga drawn by that paedophile" and it will not be valued anymore, which i think is absolutely tragic.

More tragic perhaps is that I couldn't help but imagine myself being called upon in the wee hours of the morning for an emergency assessment if Watsuki sensei attempts suicide in custody(they commonly do) and what I will end up saying to him---"Hello sensei, I am your shrink. i grew up reading your Rurouni Kenshin and it really shaped my life and brought me to where I am now. Sadly I can't think of anything that can fix you. All I can do is to keep you alive for prison no matter how much you want to die. In all honesty, your shit has nothing to do with me. I just don't want to end up going to the coroners for you when you get your easy way out. I will now ask Romeo the Phillipino nurse to sit with you for suicide watch. He's not much of a talker given his Japanese isn't great, but he's much bigger than you so don't even think about doing anything silly.  Hopefully after the weekend some other shrink will take over and you won't be my business any more. "

Now this is all rather defeating (and racist too), and perhaps affirms the point that mangas are mangas, and at the end of day they do nothing to make us mere mortals better people--readers or artist alike--but still I am grieving. I am getting old and weary not to say I have felt old and weary for years now. I see life as an ocean of suffering that knows no bounds and over time my pool of ideals continue to diminish, which makes the sudden shattering of another all the more heart wrenching.

I have expected the Kenshin story to end somewhat badly, but not like this. The first few chapters of the new Hokkaido arc were bland to say the least. maybe I would have coped with Watsuki-sensei going down in mediocrity, and accept that he will eventually ruin his once upon a time brilliant imaginary world by being too weighed down by his need to please an audience and earn a living when his creativity dried up. but, no, nothing dramatic and scandalous like this.

I guess I am also scared that our modern times have become so infantile in its division of good and bad, and so fixated on shaming, that Kenshin will get discarded like a baby along with the bathwater. If this becomes the case, the values from the beautiful story which shaped my life and provided me with such comfort during my loveless adolescent years will be one day doubted and dismissed even by myself. I fear that if I do not record some of these down, one day their emotional weight within me will also puff away without a trace...

i remember for many years even after my adolescence, despite my avoidance of the ever renewing phone technology, I would go to great length to set up Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu as my ringtone on every single new phone i acquire, just so during the years of miserable and frightening work calls, there was something comforting I could hold onto.

i remember despite my lack of alcohol dehydrogenase I would still reach for a drink or two when I remember Master Hiko's words - you watch the cherry blossoms in spring, you gaze the starry night sky in summer, you admire the full moon in autumn, and you greet the first snow in winter. Such sceneries! how can your sake not be tasty when your are in the midst of them! If you still dislike your alcohol, there must be something really wrong with you.
the context of nearby death and suffering in which he said it, just makes you ponder his words again and again.

i am touched when I look back to Kenshin and Master Hiko's final battle, many years later as a shrink, and be amazed all the more at its masterful development -- that this tells nothing but an old old story of the tragic Oedipal drama -- but told with such fineness, warmth and goodness from one's heart that the inherent elements of tragedy were not lost, but it so convincingly turned it around with atonement, acceptance and individuation. The son has killed his father, but the father was also rescued by the son, without his conscious knowledge. The father tells the son to value his own life and follow his own instincts in critical moments- they intend good and not harm!--and that was when the son's own journey of change truly began.



this is getting long... i will grieve some more and write part II bit later in the week... T_T

In the web

It has been a while since I wrote anything. In the meantime another one of my very disturbed patients did some high lethality self damage, and I happened to be the lucky one who saw her last. I sank into a frightening depression in the midst of yet another blame game and could find motivation for hardly anything. But then, sertraline did some wonders (and I highly recommend) and I survived the misery of work without taking too many mental health days, and said no to some job offers, and planned an overseas wedding and honeymoon itinerary and booked all the hotels during this awful period of time.

So, maybe looking back, it wasn't so bad at all, but it took immense effort to maintain that level of psychosocial functioning, with daily doubts whether i will manage to pull through the home stretch of my training, or flee the shrinkage as a wreck, knowing I will never have the guts to return. Perhaps the fact that i worked in the same post for the last 6 months as when I did as a first year and remembering things to be much more under control back then made it all the more defeating, or maybe, the realisation that control of the uncontrollable is but a delusion but your fellow clinicians use such defence day in and day out so their narcissistic selves don't disintegrate and they can continue doing the good work of saving the world... further added a sense of helplessness.

Or maybe, just when I was at a more tender age and know less of the world. I could comfortably adopt a more black and white view and a clear line could be set between the normal and the pathological, that could keep my psyche at bay from the mad and the bad and the sad that I see everyday. Maybe paying some proper attention to the male psychotic patients and their long suffering, very supportive but invariably transgressive mothers just made everything not so simply neurochemical. Or maybe the gradual realisation that my own mother was prominently Cluster B who did not tick all the criteria boxes only because she was bound by her cultural norms, and contained by a dependent endorsing husband, made me feel as if walking on the edge of a cliff--a slip of the foot at any minute could send me tumbling down into some pervasive pathology of my own.

so, here i am, frightened of my near misses, intermittently losing sight of the various forces that steadied my wobbly gait all these years, divine or otherwise. maybe there is yet hope, that I can untangle some more deep seated anxiety and hysteria, before moving forward, hopefully less of a wreck than before.

Back to my pet topic...

There was a scene at the end of la la land when Emma Stone fantasized about an alternative life where things worked out perfectly with Ryan Gosling. i was dubious whether that scene was about a longing for lost love at all, in fact--wasn't it a bit mean that she did not even think for one second about his failed attempt at cooking a roast with her storming out of the flat etc and try in her mind at least to make that part perfect too? so end of the day, it was only a fantasy about her need for being perfectly treated. I guess she ended up becoming a famous star so she was allowed to be a bit more narcissistic than the average population... Gosh I am harsh... XD

Despite all that, it was a touching scene that viscerally moved many, including myself. Speaking from my shrinkage I can only say our infantile fantasies of being perfectly loved have its universality and permanence, and as adults we don't just grow out of them. if we don't accept and give them expression but think we are so much better than all these and try to annihilate them somehow, they probably get all the stronger and seep out in other more unpleasant ways than the appreciation of a somewhat regressed movie ending.

In relation to infantile fantasies, there has been some very heated debates in the chinese psychology circles lately about filial piety, but one common point of agreement that got mentioned again and again---
If you are in denial of the problems between you and your parents, and repressed your anger about their lack of love and failed attempt at care, your negative feelings don't dissipate into the ether but are bond to seep out in one way or another in the other parts of your relationship realm, and most commonly, your own children will end up take the direct blows and suffer...

i think i will come back my pet topic of all times - the parable of the unforgiving servant. over the years I've been wondering more and more that maybe our modern minds are no longer equipped to process this story properly. We tend to oscillate between the following two extremes that would completely fail the point：
1. given how much we value self-efficacy in this day and age, how many of us are really ready to accept the complete cancelling of our debts without generating a sense of rage at the helpless position we are made to be in？or maybe we think a truly merciful Almighty would have done this much more tactfully without hurting our feelings: how about planting a sack of gold outside the palace on the street corner so we can accidentally pick it up and be thankful of our good luck and our capacity at the end of the day to pay it all back？or surely the big boss can hire us into some palace position and pay us extremely well so we could pay back that massive debt with ease. Now that would be really merciful, and more often than not, a lot of us are indeed deluded that whatever privileged heavenly work we did or continued to do, surely will be enough to earn us back to grace.

2. we are in complete denial of our debts, pretend we are innocent as a dove, and are more or less imbeciles when it comes to responsibilities and deny our own roles in any of these, as clearly, if we never meant them, none of these entail any grave consequences. Going one step further, when our feelings about the important figures in our lives get too complex and ambivalent, we would be quick to be in denial of their debts too. Surely they are innocent as doves, and imbeciles too. and grave consequences of their actions just simply don't exist. This actually mimicks forgiveness, and we often end up calling it forgiveness, as this is probably the best we could do with human efforts.

I think for the modern mind, it is extremely difficult to ever take the position of--
I don't deny I was responsible and I have accumulated such debts, but I also accepts the helpless position and acknowledge that I do not have the self-efficacy to ever pay it back.
And that goes to any of my fellow servants on the street.
But having said that, that unforgiving servant, from that many thousand years ago, ran into as much problem with this as we do, hence the somewhat explosive unexplainable behaviour that manifested.

Now because it is all so difficult, we compulsively fake it. We think we can make the call to deny another person's debts to have existed in the first place, or, we jump into declarations of forgiveness all too quickly. We pretend our mind has ultimate control over our feelings and fool ourselves into thinking that if we tell ourselves and others long and hard enough that we have forgiven from a logical and reasoned perspective, we have indeed forgiven from the depth of our hearts, while more likely, we just repressed it, and then sooner or later, someone else suffers. And then, more denial, and more faking it till we make it, and also the quickness to jump and condemn anyone who hasn't used denial as a defence mechanism like we did.

But we are never going to make it---
...and really, at the end of the day, aren't all these also claiming to be able to pay back debts when you couldn't, and aren't all these throat grabbing of your fellow servants too?

Psalm 51

Recently something very frustrating and hurtful happened at work (just as I was getting better). In many ways I felt like I have become a time bomb of some kind that no one wants, for matters really not of my own doing. well in short for good or bad I have probably completely switched from a flight response back into a fight response. or maybe I just realised,for the benefit of my daily survival in a toxic world, if i don't get my shits together, only more shit will be heaped onto me.

in this current climate I somehow managed to flip back to Psalm 51. It spoke to me first a couple of years ago after I have just been through court and imagined that to be the end of my trauma (which is now looking like the first of very many). Despite my liking of it I guess there has always been a tinge of anger that went along with it--Hey surely I didn't commit adultery! and no I didn't murder anyone either! Why do I need a psalm from someone who so gravely sinned to speak to me?

I guess the fear of responsibility is forever hanging, and persistently learned, as the clasp around my neck from those who need me as a scapegoat tighten, or, even if it is not yet tightening, there are plenty around me who, consciously or not, not fail to add in reminders.  Well I guess this is nothing new. For a few decades I have been the scapegoat for my mother's various pathology and unhappiness and only in very recent times she realised she has lost her grip, while I just fear once she becomes ill in health in some kind of way, all my efforts will be in vain.

reading of verse 16-17 of the psalm still stir something in me (and not just a little)--
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.

given my problematic maternal attachment, I do have a feeling though that the current feelings these verses evoked are perhaps much more grief at how much I have been despised and resentment for having to survive and thrive(or at least pretend to be) in this toxic world rather than anything else...

but perhaps, just perhaps, coming back to this psalm means a move forward to the realisation - that at the end of the day, contrary to worldly beliefs, when tragedy hit whose grave sin was it or who really brought about the brokenness, really doesn't matter in the face that no one is actually despised?

Now, head knowledge apart, this is still very hard to swallow. and I guess in the context of my lingering perhaps relapsing(but hopefully not) GI symptoms, the swallowing bit is maybe a bit more than a mere metaphor.

I dreamt about Hilary the other night...

I dreamt about Hilary the other night. She asked me what went wrong and what could she have done better. I tried to explain to her outcomes of things in life do not depend on efforts alone and us born and bred in the modern era do need to acknowledge and admit that luck often plays a big role. In her disappointment though I don't think anything I said really registered. Now the Hilary dream was likely all about me and nothing about American politics and I can just head to my supervisors next week for an interpretation, but I guess I still feel sad for Hilary -- not on grand scales whether or not she was the only hope to halt world war no. 3 or served as the finest example that feminism still has a long road in face of male superiority etc etc etc... I think I rather feel sad about her just as a person -- one who so persistently and single-mindedly invested immense effort in her aspiration of becoming America's first female president, who went very far on this costly road, even if for self-gratification purpose alone, and then in a dramatic turn of events,  had her dreams cut short like that. Everything else aside, that in itself, is very, very, sad. 

My understanding about politics is nothing beyond crude and am sure many may have talked about this in much more sophisticated terms, but I really think president election often serves nothing more than the purpose for many regressed adults to find mothers. Given that childbearing is regarded as a basic right and that prerequisites are minimal and people more often than not fare poorly in bringing up children, flawed early developments are many and secure care and nurture are scarce... and I mean... very flawed... and very scarce.

we perhaps all like to think as we humans evolve in the modern cultures, that our heads have become superior enough to have acquired the power to dictate our emotions. The fact remains however, that voting for most has nothing to do with the head and everything to do with the heart. Those of us who have adequate neuroticism to sense that despite our best efforts our heads and hearts are somewhat out of sync, often are 1.idealistic 2. cope by avoidance rather than take imperfect human responsibilities and acknowledge that as we remain human, our decisions and actions are inherently flawed regardless.

Mad evangelical friends who were openly deluded and ecstatically praised Trump's victory as awesome and God's will done aside, social media is also not short of people who endeavour to take control by predicting all kinds of disasters they could see coming but could do nothing about and how much they were the lonesome sane voices ignored in the current madness, perhaps in the hope that when disasters hit in the future they could take some solace in telling people I-told-you-so-hence-am-better-than-you? Now that's pretty regressed too. why not just admit that you are scared and more the acopic with the hard work of living in the face of unpredictability in a hostile uncertain future, just like the rest of us?

When Masha first sang Akatsuki I read the translated lyrics and felt very touched and hailed it as a great song. I even put it down as my whatsapp tagline... but... I think I then managed to forget about it. my memory consolidation have been indeed getting worse over recent years... but here it is... translated from its Chinese translation... and at least for me, it has not lost its buzz.

Akatsuki (Dawn)

Nobody's life can be smooth sailing
Sometimes things hit you hard and you would even resent God

I believe, if it is you
No matter what kind of grief or pain
You will have the strength to carry on
Even if the flame inside you is about to burn out

A dream not realised, feeling powerless, looking up the night sky
Who said the darker the sky, the brighter the stars?

Surely it's alright if I try to be cool--
"Failure" is out of fear not daring to reach what you want
If the stars tonight are too bright for you
You can definitely fight on

It's okay if you laugh at me, but please listen
No matter how weak you are
You are still able to support another
Because there will be always someone who needs you
Because that person is right here

You are definitely not powerless

The sun is rising again
To me who is surviving another day
Looks like it couldn't care less
Another day starts



PS. My functional overlay has much improved since a couple of months ago. Remembering a time when I was warmed back to human connections, but back then for one reason or another,failed to internalise such experience, was really helpful.

Functional overlay

Well... so I've had debilitating indigestion and somewhat unspecified GI malaise for the past 2 months and eating has become a very tiresome feat. This has been in particular detrimental as for many years I have been using food and carbonated drinks as my main coping strategies and now I have lost my (probably only) effective coping mechanism. A scope this week however revealed nothing sinister but mild gastritis, the sigh of relief was small as the disproportionate unwellness experienced in relation to pathology found is rather certainly indicative of functional overlay. and guess what, at work I talk to people with functional overlay and gently explain about functional overlays while acknowledging their genuine distresses etc etc etc. yah...

though I suspect no outsider really cares whether I end up functionally overlaying or not with my psychosocial stressors or the hardness of living life overall, I still find my persisting distress with eating these days very very... defeating. The fact that my very pathological mother developed rather elusive and debilitating upper GI symptoms on the eve of my graduation from med school, and accused all practitioners and investigations of incompetence in understanding her ailment and spilled her dark moods about a sick stomach wherever she can. Looking back the whole matter had a hysterical flavour to it. moreover, her symptoms persisted throughout my medical career and even to this day she continued to assume her sick role and successfully made everyone cater for her debilitating eating habits.

I feel defeated, and embarrassed, and angry that it looks like I am heading down the same path as her, and probably deep down I am just as hysterical as her while loathing how much I suffered under her hysteria all my life, and despite all my professional knowledge about functional overlays and insight and awareness that as I try hard to individuate away from my mother there will be another part of me screaming hard to pledge loyalty to her, the knowledge and insight could not save me from becoming so functional myself...

so... I've been dragging my feet a bit at work despite working again with my somewhat idolised supervisor of many years. These days I am curious about nothing and no one, and even checking facebook makes me irritable as I could not bear to see all these people enjoying food I could no longer carefreely eat. The part of my brain in charge of my imaginary friends---for very strange reasons---worked way better in the past couple of weeks than during the last five years of my shrink training added together... but when I lack the energy for curiosity... am even less curious about my imaginary friends and find them hard work too... I wonder too if I would feel better if I am ignorant of functional overlays and can just project and blame everyone else for my elusive malaise...and nowadays when I pray... I open my mouth and could not say anything or think anything---
I just wail.
but, maybe, just maybe, the wailing is in fact something.

PS. On a much lighter note this is so beautiful I need to watch this on the big screen. Lets hope they do it for the Jap film festival this year.
No. 9 starting at 18:00 is on replay at the moment.

when games more primitive than Pokemon Go are needed...

 So... I found Clinical Theology incredibly profound... and total hitting home on many fronts, and hence... very difficult to read. T_T never been really into phone games... but downloaded a few tower/city/farm building games in the past fortnight so I could read a few pages and then play games just to restore my sense of control... XD

last week it was 50% Clinical Theology and 50% control freak games, this week is 100% control freak games and no Clinical Theology... -_-|||| yah...

anyways... keeping a record of some of my favourite bits... T_T

The neurotic Christian, who is defending against his own dread by a reaction pattern which leans over backwards against despair into forced keenness, and against unacknowledged doubt into forced faith, thus relying on the cutting-off of his "bad-side", neither admitting nor healing it, is ultimately bound to be just as merciless towards the overtly afflicted who come his way.

To take flight from the inner threats intensifies their power over the psyche. The constant nagging fear of the uprush of inner feelings of annihilation keeps the ego constantly on the move. The mechanisms of defence are employed to keep on top of the situation. Even the Christian faith, which rightly understood would enable a man to turn and stand fast against this onslaught, is oftener used to give a man strength for his flight from reality. More commonly, the effect is either to intensify the introversion or swing violently away from introversion into the 'distractions of great undertakings', what Pascal calls the libido dominandi; or seek forgetfulness in sensuality, perhaps in debauchery, trying to leave his reflective self-consciousness behind him. But all this defiance is manifestly despair over his weakness.

The physician of souls must not be taken in by the commonest of all religious defences, the active attempt not to despair. The common statements "i am trying not to lose hope", "trying to trust God", "trying to have faith" are more likely to be evidences of hidden despair than of hope, of dread of non-being than of confidence in the new being.

The soul, reacting logically to its personal past, feels that God's eyes should see what the mother's eyes evidently saw, unattractiveness, worthlessness, the badness of its "being there" at all. God's eyes, it is felt, ought to express the same disappointment, the basic disgust that the mother's did. God ought not to offer acceptance and intimacy to a thing that a mother rejected and was ashamed of. "Let my shame go where it doth deserve.""My own mother, who knew what I was like, found me unlovable. You, God, must be mistaken. If you could see what the internalised eyes of my own mother are still looking at, You too would turn away in disgust." But the discrimination is one which the soul has not the wit to make. The adult cannot readily leap back to the correct insight about its infancy, or on to a new situation created by God's redemptive act. The truth is a contrast between the then and the now. "What my mother's sick or soured contemptuous looks seared into my soul, that I became." If the eyes of a holy Love can look upon this wretchedness and really see it, and in spite of what it sees, go on looking in kindliness and welcome, that, too, will evoke its own appropriate response.

The more godly or religious the parent seemed to be, or the more entrenched in an obsessional, inflexible sense of the rightness of all she does, the more difficult it is for the child to break out of her primary devaluation or annihilation of its being, to a new valuation, even in adult life, and even if God Himself be the person to offer it.

The great obstacle to spiritual progress, as St Theresa of Avila noted it, is a lack of the will to love in response to the love of God. Why this reluctance, if not because of the projection on to God of the distrust engendered by the original fall and by the terrible mother who seemed to have caused it? The love of God is felt to be, like hers, a demand that the child shall adopt all the correct attitudes of dependence and trust, as if nothing had ever happened. Preaching for conversion may rely heavily on longing and urgent appeals for decision. The preacher may need, and feed upon the response he seeks to evoke. He gives the impression that God shares his impatient hunger for the committed souls of men. This technique, of course, is calculated to sweep those who are for the most part hysterical personalities over minor schizoid obstacles into decision. But it drives the schizoid person deeper into his paradox.

This impasse can be broken only with the help of someone else who is able to overcome the defensive isolation without arousing further defensive withdrawal, and permit commitment without arousing commitment-anxiety. It is the task of the psychiatric and pastoral care to attempt this. Interpretation of these symptomatic feelings, when it is given by one who has overcome a similar sense of cut-offness in himself, or who has accepted it creatively, or has been accepted in spite of its continuance, is a service which invariably diminishes the sense of severance from common humanity.

more superego-y ranting

I hardly ever flip back to my old blogs (most likely from avoidance of embarrassment just in case i once upon a time used to be immature and hopeful and lively) and not surprisingly, ended up feeling like "oh did I once upon a time write such shit? " when I revisited.

such shit, however, esp in recent years, are often good sensible superego-y shit. the problem remained that I probably only intellectualised the good stuff and they never emotionally sank in.
well only if they managed to emotionally sink in back then... i would have moved forward and be at a better place by now.

or maybe not... just wishful thinking.

there have been quite a bit in the tabloid news of mothers killing their children lately. one story in particular made me quite shaken. The brief bits and pieces about said woman in the tabloid were diagnostic enough of bpd. and though my own mother may superficially be ordinary low key Asian in many ways, and thank God, never had the privilege of constitutional rights of bearing arms, the desire and determination in crushing my spirits and annihilating me existentially as a person, esp in my uni and intern and residency years, were perhaps much the same.

it has taken me many years to finally come to admittance that my mother is very clearly cluster b,(and had enough intelligence and conservative cultural background and a colluding husband to be able to fly under the radar and justify her actions to many), in the midst of all my guilt about being socially offensive and psychologically external locus of control and spiritually unforgiving and culturally incapable of filial piety and perhaps unfit to be a chinese human being now that i have publicly said really bad things about my parents...

guilt aside... i don't think i have really escaped her slaughterhouse yet, or maybe i will never make it. That very suppressed part of me which still desperately crave the very rare but very genuine moments she would approve and regard me as "my amazing, sweet, kind, beautiful, intelligent girl" (quoting very bpd Mrs Christy Sheats), will hold me there.
 and that is unsettling enough.

Frank Lake's intro in his Clinical Theology is very comforting at such times--

“The thickness of the repressive layer which covers up our threatening inner negativities is diminished by physical, mental, and emotional ill-health, an also by spiritual disobedience in those who have been well garrisoned in heart and mind by the Holy Spirit against the enemy within. But, as Freud showed, the return of the unconscious into consciousness is a function of abundant health as well as of ill-health. The abundantly healthy personality presses up against the barriers and limitations imposed by unconscious fears and expectations of defeat. Encountering resistances, it attacks them and drives them into the open. We must expect that that fullness of the Holy Spirit and the fullness of life within the Body of Christ will force the alien elements of despair, distrust, anxiety, rage, envy, lust and the like, which are each man's deposit from the intolerable passivities of infancy, to declare themselves before they are cast out。”

and i am so thankful, as i revisit the same again and again, of the years of noble and wonderful superegos i have collected over time, which i had leaned on to survive, and mercifully replaced parts of a superego that was merely a cluster b mother's devaluation ---

Masha---
"trust" does not equate "understanding". i personally believe, when I trust someone else, the responsibility entirely rests with me. It is I who wanted to trust you--you carry no responsibility. To me there is no such thing as "being betrayed", because I myself wanted and was willing to trust another person. When one starts to think one understands another, the thoughts of "being betrayed" would often arise. The presumption of "I understand you" is often the most frightening, whether it be between friends, colleagues, bf/gf, or family members...

King Baldwin---

When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.

---and hopefully, hopefully, as time goes by, not mere intellectualisation of words above only.

Time to watch Masha again~~

In the recent drama (that had really bad ratings T_T) Masha played this very unhappy ex-musician now-shrink working in palliative care and by chance helping an angry stuttering young girl to discover her musical talent, and somewhat overcoming his own demons and rekindling his own spark for life along the way blah blah...

lots of elements in there hit home though I have really been procrastinating watching the drama... -_- I think I finally realised after many years that the part of me that has been drawn to Masha is largely my superego. LOL when I am in an absolute shithouse I don't like to hear him preach at all... eg. all those life is really tough and circumstances are very difficult but live your life diligently and survive and thrive as a neurotic crap...

this probably explained why I gleefully celebrated the fact that he got married and proved himself not gay. XD there are many genuinely heartbroken fans out there who attributed earthquakes and other natural disasters in the past year as consequences of his marriage (psychologically very vivid and profound...@.@)
so......
sorry Masha... T_T
but now that I am interested to watch the series... at least I know my superego is slowly being restored lol.

this is immensely touching but it did take me a while to realise that it is not a Japanese song and Masha didn't compose the music at all... -_-|||| LOL I know...



so, I have been curious enough to take on an exercise in finding out that if Masha is for my superego... which stars really appeal to my id.... or once upon a time, used to do the job?
difficult question... maybe Lee Junki? I used to be so heartbroken when he had elevated bmi and a chubby face in his late 20s... but now he's getting on in years too with diminishing facial collagen anyway and I just care much less... T_T
well exercise ongoing...

last but not least... Masha being told off. this is probably still projection... but totally hits home. XD

Weltschmerz

Well Germans are very wise and intellectual and have very nuanced words such as this to accurately depict emotional states...
alternatively I could have titled it 这种屎一样的人生生无可恋(which really is doubly offensive coming from a Christian shrink -_-|||)---------- I still need some face and German sounds way smarter.

I have been feeling first very paralysed and then very very mad about some recent developments in that very long and ridiculous saga. in fact I have given up praying that inappropriate prayer years before when it first happened... after many years, I have given up hope that there is a chance I would be mercifully chucked into the sea as it is not going to happen and I will be made to endure through all this, as the saga goes on... and on... and on.

I guess I will talk a bit more about my imaginary friend instead of myself then, so that the narrative doesn't cut so deep close to home and there can conveniently be a bit more projection to facilitate the release of negative emotions. My imaginary friend has threatened to leave me for years given my dwindling investment in this imaginary relationship and frequent unscrupulous endeavours to recharge emotional energy from him for purposes elsewhere. I don't know how much it had to do with shrink training, or the never ending paralysing saga, or much more likely my own worsening acopia by the year with this toxic world in the context of various predisposed vulnerabilities. Things remain tenuous somehow despite my attempts amending things this year by going PT... T_T I have been contemplating whether it really means as one grows old and has more important priorities in life to attend to maybe its just not appropriate to want to play with one's imaginary friend anymore...

The other day I made an incidental discovery that there has once been a biography written about my imaginary friend...in English... @.@ Not translated, but written by a white dude in the early 80s. feeling surreal and somewhat still in disbelief... I now have this very book in my hand -- accessed from a library 15mins away when there are only 6 copies in worldwide library collections... more @.@

I think I am more than a little envious of the white prof who clearly loved my imaginary friend much more than me, to be able to research so extensively and put together so much facts and translated all the poetry, while attending to his various professorial posts, and while the whole of China was preoccupied with cultural revolution... God knows how he managed to get past that mad persecutory government and access all those obscure records to complete this book!
Seriously, it was academic work but every single page was exuding love... and I am touched. T_T

In short, white people are awesome. T_T (that still sounds racist and not quite right doesn't it? -_-) It has been a very enjoyable and invigorating exercise working through the English translations and trying to work out which poems they are in Chinese... and picking out prof's own personal interpretations in them all...

Although the more I read, the more uneasy I become of the fact that my imaginary friend no longer serves as a hero who steps off a manga book, and that more and more of his experiences and struggles start to echo mine... which is frightening.

Prof found this obscure record that all his Chinese biographers omitted - in a casebook about contemporary administrative law, which recorded  his mismanagement of a case when he was a provincial police commissioner, via a file audit by higher powers -- two people called a guy out of his home and kicked him to death. one principal malefactor did most of the damage, but the accomplice reported he did not take part in the assault but tried to dissuade the principal malefactor from violence. Eye witness accounts confirmed this but the dead guy's wife protested the finding and refused to sign the proceedings so the accomplice was kept in prison for more than 60 days while the dispute was going on, and the accomplice despaired and took his own life. Higher powers decided that the accomplice was unjustly incarcerated which resulted in his suicide. Officials involved, incl. imaginary friend, were dismissed from office.
So there was a suicide, there was some higher powers, there was a file audit, there was a root cause analysis, and blamed was attributed and punishment dished out. legal systems in my home country are not very humane and extremely far from perfect even today save hundreds of years ago, I can only say WTF that while there were all kinds of other horrible shit going on, such a matter was pounced upon and then recorded as an example of mismanagement.

Behind it all, my imaginary friend, who was only 21 at the time, took his responsibility, documented records as they were, and probably relied too much on his own belief that he did nothing wrong in an unfortunate case as such and didn't try to explain away his involvement, and had too much pride to bluff through things, or involve his very influential father and uncles to sweet talk the higher powers and dust the records away.

Out of curiosity I read through some of the other cases in that volume of the casebook, his case was listed amongst numerous other overtly dodgy conducts by overtly dodgy officials -- torturing prisoners to death, keeping innocent people imprisoned till real criminals caught, and coercing witnesses to make false statements... etc etc etc.

from this lovely article - “We are all three days away from being tabloid news. And most of us are on day two.” along a similar vine, my imaginary friend got named and shamed on some official tabloid news, with records that would survive for hundreds of years.
That casebook was actually published during his lifetime, perhaps 1-2 years before his death.
By that time he has already left politics and all administrative posts for years and wandered around, away from his family too, in the capacity of a wealthy vagabond.
I really wonder how he felt about it. He probably felt he's never going to get away from it all.

There is way too much projection going on. think I am just going to have a good cry about it. T_T

well, my imaginary friend is still my friend for now, thanks to super awesome white asian studies

prof.

and that serves adequately as a reason why life is less shit and 生有可恋 for now too.

the Agur club

I went totally brain dead for a few weeks prior to the end of my last job. wasn't proud about the decline in spiritual life either -- to the point that even reading Mockingbird articles has became difficult. :SSSSS rather than blaming it on external factors I think I really need to have a good think about how to look after myself better in a toxic world. Such things unfortunately are often more easily said than done, and I am probably clueless how to even make a start.

http://www.mbird.com/2016/02/forgive-yourself-or-die-trying/
Sentiments from this terribly sad story i could identify with in many ways. :S It interestingly reminded me of another old friend. Whenever Agur from proverbs 30 opens his mouth I can usually hear myself talking:

Proverbs 30:7-9

 “Two things I ask of you, Lord;
    do not refuse me before I die:
 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
    give me neither poverty nor riches,
    but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
    and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
    and so dishonor the name of my God.

there is a well known Proverbs 31 Ministry with a somewhat feminist undertone that pops up now an then in my newsfeed. not only I find Proverbs 31 rather grandiose...lately the more I looked at it in its entirety... the more i think it is reflective of all kinds of unresolved Oedipus complex issues... XD (well... interested parties are long dead and likely won't be offended by me saying that I hope...)

alternatively i can be more politically correct and say that people's callings are just very different...XD and if ever God permits... i hope to be able to start a Proverbs 30 ministry one day and help like minded neurotics to survive and thrive in this toxic grandiose world...

Therefore after this many years... I am still envious of very non-grandiose Agur... whoever he was... who opened his prayer grumbling about how worn out he was, and admitted so frankly of his generalised acopia, who wanted things to be neither good or bad but falling into a very narrow range of his neurotic thresholds...
and approached God with no guilt and shame in his fulminant neuroticism.

as God was likely abdundant and unrestrained in His blessings of both riches and poverty, poor Agur probably never managed to stay low-key middle class as he so wished.
But that's okay, he and his neurotic ranting made it to Proverbs, and that to me, speaks of much grace, especially in difficult times.

I wish you happiness

My sense of agency in 2015 has hit a new low despite having a bit more luck than many more others in the process of getting through training. after all the realisation that what I have perceived to be the most enjoyable and rewarding of subspecialities prob still means 20% of proper work and 80% of politics - aka. the never-ending soothing of giant babies here and there (who are not patients, and who shamelessly take on roles of functional and respectable professional adults) who consciously and subconsciously try in all ways possible to make you their mother and hold you responsible for whatever junk that really should be their own... :$$$$$$

I've become increasing frustrated with the fact that unless I have periods of prolonged bed rest (LOL) I am not able to retrieve my imaginary friends and enjoy their company. Maybe its really just time to admit and come to terms that I can't be a functional and respectable professional adult after all, at least not in that capacity.

Until a few days ago I did not realise Miyuki Miyabe wrote a new short story, delightfully linking Peter's Funeral Procession and Solomon's Perjury together.
I cried at the point when Sugimura-san somewhat oddly but kindly said to Ryoko Fujino:
I wish you happiness.

It brought back fond memories of something else from Sugimura-san:

But you will find happiness. Though relentlessly pursued by people, or things, and you hid yourself under the table screaming, sooner or later, you will have to crawl out from there.
Once you are out, the world is still here.

real life crawling out with unfavourable developmental trajectory, sadly is not just a table... but a series of many tables...

I still think about Sugimura-san now and then... he who is so wise about worldly poisons and remained so kind to this world, who spoke these above words so warmly and tenderly...
simply just wouldn't let himself go...
or his loved ones.

I think i am more than a bit envious of aunty Miyuki, being equally capitivated by her at the same time. One who is so in tune with all kinds of subtle human poisons and does not call them by any other whitewashed names...
and manages to be successful and thriving with such terrible knowledge.

so... 2016... i think i will keep crawling, and do my best to fight off professional giant babies groping along the way, without acting out and calling giant babies giant babies in their faces.
and have a really good think about -- if I dislike giant babies so much, who would not have any capacities to change themselves--
what part I need to do myself to break free from that kind and live my own life.

what is comforting though, aunty Miyuki is still writing Sugimura stories, and Sugimura-san too is still living, learning, evolving.

so I wish you happiness too, Sugimura-san.

Judge Dee at work

The patient

I did not know this patient for long, but there used to be a time he was well versed, witty, and warm and engaging. He loved his books, and loved talking about his books, and, though knowing his end was near, still had future oriented plans and looked forward to going home from the hospital so he could have a read of his Robert van Gulik collections again.
He saw my eyes lit up at the mention of that name, and he was surprised I knew about old-school Judge Dee and could rattle off all the story plots on top of my head. I managed to be good enough to a lovely dying elderly gentleman and not get negatively ocpd about the details (that I read them in
Chinese and the Chinese translations were partly re-written by the translators which made them awesome and the English originals were otherwise odd and shallow in their emotionality and to me merely a white man's oriental fantasies blah blah blah... -_-|||||)
Under the guise of psychiatry appointments we had some good conversation about the goodness of Judge Dee common to both the east and west, fantasies or not.
and then i remembered many things myself.

The plum blossoms

Judge Dee and his crew have been around for many years and were more family than family to me, and Judge Dee the eternal wise paternal figure. The fact that he acquired three wives just for a blissful table of mahjong was always something more to giggle about but never affected my respect for him.
Though something soured in this imaginary relationship in recent years, when I became old enough and shrinky enough, and realised what he did to Mrs Kuo the pharmacist's wife in the Chinese Nail Murder.
I think I was fond of the fact how he finally encountered a woman matching him in wit and sophistication, and the mutual chemistry in the air when they were both capable of quick set shifting in conversation topics - from poetic descriptions of plum blossoms to demises of female prisoners then to the feasibility of killing by driving nails into people's nostrils .
and then he acted out, in the name of justice, and emotionally blackmailed her to jump the cliff to her end.
despite the fact that I do really empathize how deep he was in his loneliness, trapped in the rough distant town of Pei-chow. There were many things his blissful mahjong table couldn't deliver, and all made worse by the sudden loss of Sergeant Hoong who had been his fixed point in a changing age ever since he was a child...
I think he killed a part of himself, with her.
I don't know if the fact that I cannot forgive a book character has taken my pathological imaginary friendships to a whole new level, but maybe, just maybe, I was in fact more angry with myself who for many years believed that though painful he really did the right and noble thing in a position of authority and there was no other way out...
I myself may have reached a time in life when I will soon be acquiring and acting in much more authority than what I have now, and I am just dreading, dreading that despite my best efforts not to join the league of some of my very embarrassing ex-bosses, I may not be able to avoid becoming Judge Dee, in a time vulnerable and hard pressed on every side, acting out under a noble guise and making some very very grave mistakes.
and maybe that will be even harder to swallow than a very unfair coroners report, despite of the worst part of it being over, again knocked me out hard and made my bones very dry.
...and made me fearful that whilst carrying such poison to work and having to pretend all is okay... I will act out sooner or later. 


The golden bell

Judge Dee was the father but Tao Gan was my special friend，though I really couldn't understand why he was so special. He was already middle-aged by the first time he appeared, a dry and hunched man, always looked a bit down and out, anxious and pessimistic in nature, many years ago had a wife who ran away from him so a bit of a woman-hater, who tried to be smart but could never outwit Judge Dee...
End of the day, I think Tao Gan reminded me a lot of myself, and validated the part of me that has always been a bit of an anxious loser, who not very decently loved all kinds of depraved goss from the magistrate files and derived so much happiness from them. There was a time he giggled for a whole night by the candlelight reading some perverted scholar's love poems to his step-mother--and the pervert wrote a lot too so there was plenty to enjoy--
I think I can imagine myself doing that, totally.

There was something i really liked about Murder in Canton, the last story in the canon. There wasn't only the tragedy of Chiao Tai's death, and all these wonderful exciting stuff at last coming to an end, but i think it ingeniously ended on a very hopeful note.
It had nothing to do with happiness and satisfaction in the traditional Eastern value sense - with Judge Dee being acknowledged by the empress rising to power and avoiding a fall from imperial favour, or a new son being born out of his blissful mahjong table, or whatever remaining of his crew all getting well deserved promotions...
It ended with Tao Gan, by then approaching his 7th decade in life, and always finding more enjoyment in his solitary and not-very decent hobbies, who was still recovering from the aftermath of a very difficult case, and grieving the loss of his good friend Chiao Tai---
walked up to blind Miss Lan-lee's attic and inviting her to go with him to the capital.
her cricket the Golden Bell chirped, and gave him a fright.

it was such a nice ending, with all its imperfections and traditional dissatisfaction.
So bright and warm and hopeful that i could hardly open my eyes, I would not have wanted Judge Dee to have ended in any other way.
and then I realised, not only me, but the author, and the translators...
no matter how very uncool they have made this guy out to be, they all totally loved Tao Gan too.


The Final Words

My patient knew he was going to die very soon, when the team that has cared for him for many years did not offer him another follow-up. He was walking out the hospital...abandoned, shocked, listless and unkempt when I called and reminded him about his psychiatry appointment.
So he walked back to see me, in his emotional stupor. 
We didn't end up talking much, apart from me calmly reassuring him that I had little to offer in the face of him dying (which perhaps was even worse than non-reassurance) but just in case he wanted to talk about it? He was too overwhelmed to speak the whole time but made great efforts to gesture with his hands reassuring me that he was in fact okay.

End of the day, I knew there was very very little of anything there was left to say, or there was still appropriate to say for that matter.
So what came out was simply, feebly, non-psychiatric:

"Thank you for talking to me about Judge Dee."

BMI envy, Jesus as my supervisor, and no explicit disclaimers in Bibles

Fat City, What can stop Obesity?

My friend Sally posted this on her facebook and I liked it. She is one of those very few people around against whom I have BMI envy. (LOL) The initial liking of her article certainly made me feel very far away from gluttony or stress (or both)- related BMI issues myself too.

though the fact that there were countless days i found it so hard living a human life and only eating comforted but my BMI didn't get elevated (not yet!) as a consequence gave me quite a bit of survivor guilt after reading the whole thing. there are inherent differences between asian and caucasian metabolisms, just as there are inherent differences between male and female hormonal driven needs, and I am always somewhat disdainful towards those who have no insight and sympathy for their more unlucky counterparts. I certainly don't agree with the author's (thank God she is caucasian and not asian!)call to boycott comfort eating on a societal scale with the hope of punishing the obese. Just imagine a pastor in the form of an Asian uncle thin as a stick with a cholesterol reading of 7.4 and who eats a bowl of laksa and five fried chicken wings a day himself without seeing any problem with that now preaching about the newly discovered sin of obesity to his congregation... (画面太美我不敢看……）

at the end of day i am all supportive of easily accessible measures to satisfy people's infantile needs and am frustrated that our very fallen world not only does not offer more of those but is always threatening to take away existing options (eg. hospital wide smoke ban which includes its mental health precinct). as a matter of fact whether we believe in evolution or not infantile needs don't really evolve and if they can't satisfied in one way they seep out in other much more inappropriate forms of manifestation. and my views are but myopic and self-interest driven--anything that can help to keep people out of madhouses (or seeking out CAT team for TLC like drinking poison to quench one's thirst) is a blessing to this world... As the article very appropriately pointed out... "behavioural therapy" will make everyone feel better except the patient himself and hence measures up very, very, very poorly against the much condemned chips and coke.

one of the things I couldn't really get over these days is how rude Jesus actually was to his disciples. If he has been my supervisor I would have filed a formal complaint to the college a long time ago--
Dimissive impatient attitude dealing with underlings' learning needs-- Matt 17:17
Inconsistent and impulsive situation-based performance feedback which lacked objectivity -- Matt 16: 17-19 vs 23
Adverse outcome incident (+/-) Riskman for task failure without adequate prior training-- Matt 14:29

something else bothered me even longer -- despite God knowing the many mad men or women ahead in time will end up chopping off their hands and feet and gouging out their eyeballs in utter madness after reading Matt 18:8-9, He still wanted those words recorded in the Bible in all sincerity.

This is just my personal view but I think in the Christian circle there is a widespread and deep seated myth that if you do Christianity long enough and hard enough and passionate enough you will find the act of faith replacing all other earthly measures in the purpose of infantile needs gratification -- in more appropriate language perhaps "God will satisfy all the desires of your heart".

But whatever name you give it, it probably still wouldn't be a very gratifying experience on a human level.
Despite Jesus so tenderly speak of His Father looking after the sparrows in the air and the hair on your heads and the fact that humans are worth much more than sparrows (we probably all felt rather warm and fuzzy and reassured reading that bit with our own infantile human expectations set up somewhat)---
Matt 18:8-9 has been written in all sincerity and passed on... without any explicit warning that it cannot be taken too literally. No attempt has been made to cater for all its audience especially the most vulnerable.
It did not address the needs of the mad and sad and cognitively challenged at all.

If we resolve to get rid of or demonize primitive satisfactions whether it be junk food, selfies, or Candy Crush, or maybe even Candy Crush of the spiritual kind too, this world will scream all the more to be looked after and soothed like babies in all matters of importance and non-importance so that responsibilities fall onto someone else and never ourselves - medical procedures, super investments, workplace supervision, allergy information sheet, manufacturers of non-edible stuff needing to alert the general public in excessively overt ways that non-edible stuff are indeed, not for eating...

on the contrary most of the time if not all, God does not rephrase things or write very explicit disclaimers in Bibles and reduce His people to infants.
and at the same time, just like the very thick headed disciples, our own moments of lucidity and maturity are too few and far in between...
so where is the assurance of God when the desires of our hearts are nothing but infantile?

I am perplexed. Eye ball gouging especially still gets me from time to time. I still want to work this one out.

Masha you are married~~~~>.<~~~~~

as i have patiently waited for years (and repeatedly mentioned so in this blog too lol)... this day has finally come.

(i think i should be feeling very heartbroken too but i am not feeling very heartbroken at the moment... ) :$$$$

after some self analysing (lol more) i realised maybe the fact that my favourite star/inspiration/role model has proven himself not gay (and capable of openly commiting to a long term heterosexual relationship too lol) is more important that anything else... T_T

the fact that all those years he cracked dirty jokes in midnight radio shows and talked about watching little movies because he really meant them (lol) and not because he was so anxious about something else that he had to use dirty jokes to defend/masquerade himself... i am finding it very touching... *sniffles* x 10

such positive experience of authenticity is probably more of an antidote for my lack of fundamental trust in human beings than many other things... (为什么我的道德观价值观听上去好像总有点不大对……-_-||||）
very relieved i haven't picked a wrong role model many years ago... *giggle*

so... I am again feeling more hopeful about life because of you Masha~ *sniffle some more*
growing old for a ocpd neurotic does not mean growing more pathological and timid and apathetic. it may indeed not be so bad a thing after all... ^_^

---now go forth and be happy and breed little Mashas--- XD

KYOTO

so....
Fukuyama Ryoma...

Saitou san and Okita san (and all the rest of Shinsengumi)....

and Abe no Seimei sama...

I am coming!!!! Wait for me~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :D

 

glimpse of hope

I gave my training coordinator a call to ask about my blocked email account (and job next year too) and she sounded pleased that I called her. "i thought you were going to say you really liked (insert name of certain other prestigious mental health service) and not planning to come back! " with me shaking my head like a regressed kid on the other end of the phone.
Then she told me I can doing part time next year.
So my delusions of abandonment were actually delusional. lol
and I got told I was wanted and also that I got exactly what I wanted in the same breath. Don't think such moments happen very often in life at all.

If i am so persistently not excited about becoming a boss i might as well slow things down. after all I am not going to live forever, and there are certain other things i probably want to get out of the way more urgently than getting my papers. it certainly seemed that after many years of toil there is now finally hope of freedom(with new fantasies of my training coordinator smiling down serenely like a buddha lol).

i made a resolution last month to at least write a little bit of chinese everyday so it wouldn't be so painful like earlier in the year trying to get the rusty engine running again. after all, I really don't know if my decades long fixation on chinese writing is the ultimate passive aggressive gesture towards my parents for plucking me out of the security of home and completely ignoring the trauma of it and wanting me to be thankful regardless, just as i really don't know if me being a Christian is also the ultimate passive aggressive gesture towards parents too - me needing a bigger greater and more powerful god to trump all those shitty little gods they worship *shock horror did i really say that* (and as I just I fantasized about buddha smiles rather than halos this is really ambivalent feeling stuff lol more)

well rudeness and insults aside it probably just means atheism was never an option lol, and there is enough grace to cover this very passive aggressive person who never seems to be able to leave her poor parents alone, and the writing continues too... at times in little hard squeezed irrelevant bits for now but at least it is a start that can hopefully prepare me for the extra time and space next year. (the hard squeezed bits now have a new spot: 豆瓣)

and hopefully it would also mean i can learn take a bit more responsibility for not only my time, health, finances and dADLs (lol) but what i want, what i think i want, what if i don't end up achieving what i want, and what if even when I achieve what i want it is not that great and making me worse off... and all the rest of it.

Out of Africa

so i have been even less happy with life when i was told by boss last week that i needed to do a big presentation next month in front of all the bosses in a service completely strange to me. :$$$$ I am no good at presentations even on familiar grounds (and even when the audience is only 2-3 people) and just thinking about what's going to happen in that packed room with unfamiliar bosses was enough to make me hyperventilate.

not to say a big part of the presentation is going to be on the controversy of Exit international. :$$$$$ i must confess i don't really have a strong sense of social justice... i feel very honoured and happy when smart friends invite me to join their vigorous intellectual ethical debates... but my own views often go no more than the universal basic understanding that the more you ban people from doing something the more people would want it so what is the point...
anyways i am having a week off and tried to look up stuff on Exit International and felt very poisoned in many ways...
maybe i just need to chill and have some valium. :(

hence the procrastination and denial start and I went back to read old mangas. I first read Tokyo Love Story when I was 15 and then watched the more famous TV adaption some years later and over time the two somewhat different storylines merged a bit, until recently via someone else's reviews I suddenly realised what was really going on...

Rika Akana... the altruistic gregarious smiling goddess loved by everyone in the series, was actually a fulminant borderline in the manga.
reading back i managed to spot even the parasuicidal gestures...lol  there was this bit when she had an argument with Kanji and ran out in a thunderstorm and purposefully clipped her hair with a metal clip showing everyone she wanted lightening to strike her because Kanji was not being nice... -_-|||| (this is textbook stuff!!!)
...and the reason why Kanji went out with her in the first place, and why she was somewhat accepted into their little friendship circle since high school, had a lot to do with their high school borderline friend who suicided at the age of 17.
when I first read it I completely failed to see the relevance of the dead friend and mentally skipped chunks of people's flashbacks about events from high school (probably found it really boring too)...
and now they finally make sense... *sniff*

Fumi Saimon is a brilliant storyteller and has a philosophy degree but probably hadn't studied much psychology by the time she came up with borderline Rika:
and because of that she never had a condemning tone about Rika and her impulsive unjustified actions. she attributed her BPD to her desire for authenticity and freedom, 2ndary to her early upbringing in the primitive carefree vibrant environment of Africa.
Now moving on to the TV series, instead of primitive Africa, Rika came from America.
So borderlines are from Africa and goddesses are from America.
...
....
......this is so racist even racist me cringed.

so, back to the manga, i ended up crying almost non-stop when I got to the last volume.
playboy Mikami:
Overall my life is a success: I became a doctor, I am popular with girls, and now I have a beautiful fiancee, but only one thing lacking...
I have had no happy childhood.
successful people often want perfect success, but there is no way to change past misfortunes.
I want to give my son perfect happiness, only in this way my success will be complete.
He can play by the river until the sun goes down. and when he is hungry, he comes home, his parents would have made him a warm dinner, smiling as they welcome him back...
哭成狗……

Satomi as a teenager arguing with the rest of the class after the borderline girl committed suicide and left a note on the class blackboard saying "I hate all of you."
-What she told us by her death, i think, is just that we cannot buckle under such unjustified violence.
-Is suicide a form of violence against those who are left behind?
-I think it is, and such an angry suicide note is an act of cowardice.
-How can you say such terrible things about a friend who passed away?
at which point the majority of the class became indignant about Satomi's attitude and left the room but only Satomi, Mikami and Kanji stayed. Each of them were affected by the borderline suicide more than anyone else:
Mikami had a one night stand with the borderline girl not long ago-
Borderline girl tried to ask Kanji out just days before she died and got turned down by Kanji who said he liked Satomi--
Satomi's family ran a love hotel and she saw the borderline girl walking out with a man a week before she died and the girl accused her of reporting it to the teachers while she didn't-
Mikami tried to console Satomi:
-These people are just indulging in their sentimentality - "the noble me who is really considerate about my friend". Everybody used to hate her, didn't they?
I really don't think we can take dead people's last words too seriously. In crime shows we often hear the criminals saying before they die "i did it"... but if I am the criminal I will definitely say "I didn't do it".
Humans are all fallen. Who knows how true people's words are before they die?
and Satomi continued... crying:
-I thought she died hating me, but I am not going to admit defeat.
With people who really dislike me, who dislike me to the point that they wanted to go and die...
I am not going to run away. I am going to accept it.
继续哭成狗……

and Rika Akana meeting Kanji for one last time in Ehime, when Kanji told her about their high school borderline classmate who died and how much she reminded him of her:
What a joke. I am just Rika Akana. I am not going to be like anyone else.
and I am not dead yet. I want to live and live and live well.
I want to live and definitely not waste my life.
这次哭成polar bear没救了……

So... Tokyo Love Story is actually Tokyo Borderline Fairytale, good antidote for people, shrinks or not, who are troubled by the fact that others had in some ways, wanted to make them responsible for their own demise. There is a very borderline girl in the story who upsetted many people along the way with her borderliney actions, but in the end with an amazing twist of fate, graciously turned around, took responsibility for her own actions, left things as they were, and salvaged a few people haunted by the memories of a past borderline suicide, by their more positive experiences with her.

and I feel salvaged too by you, lovely Rika Akana.
and you really didn't have to look as good as this. *hearts*

The runaway job

i am two weeks into my new job and already not liking what i am seeing. I still like the work itself more than any other subspecialities of this field... but this is a mere 20-30% of my week, and i really don't know if that's really enough to sustain me.

apart from a big boss who doesn't really seem to trust his colleague of at least two decades and gets me involved in uncomfortable (and very unnecessary) conversations, i look at the psychology team and feel very speechless almost every single day. one prominent member has already made multiple strange personal/professional comments and the other day she dropped another bomb as she was telling me about a pt: i think pall care is just slow euthanasia.
?!@_@...
?!@_@...x10
i kept quiet and moved the conversation on from her passionate stance for unknown reason. it was however enough for the fleeting acronym of "aphra" to flash across my head.
这算是鬼话还是人话？你这个样子还要teach人家psychology????
but maybe my professional suspicions are also just be projections of my own discomfort with people who fail to even put up a temporary facade professionally and instead make their personal views and feelings spilling everywhere even in front of strangers.

end of the day i am not void of empathy for my new boss or psychology colleagues. To be good at this work we cannot simply shut things out and be blunted, and the level of sensitivity we need to maintain makes us vunlerable to all kinds of poisons in life. 生老病死 happen around everyone and hit everyone hard and affect us in all sorts of ways. and if we are finding our own lives and related poisonous thoughts and feelings difficult to manage, what do we do? we go on to poison ourselves? or others? or both?

I am not privy into my boss's personal life but i have heard gossips of tragedy and sadness. i can still take pride in myself these days for keeping a psychotic borderline at chronic high suicide risk on cto seeking admission out of hospital for community mx despite my past bad experiences (and then go home and worry and not have an appetite for days) but where will i be when i get to boss's age?

i will probably be far worse off in clinical practice and personal life. i may already be dead from consequences of all this chronic sugar and carbonated drink craving and erratic binge eating and non-eating.

so i am kind of relieved to think i did all the background work so i can go back to my old workplace and 95% certain i will want to go back after 6 months. what really bothers me however is the fact that everyday I still drive past my home away from home for the past 9 years...
...and despite my dislike of the new, i don't feel homesick about the old or miss it very much at all.  囧

Maybe I just need a runaway job, like people who have runaway accounts and can take off at any time, so that when I am unwell and unfit for work i can admit i am unwell and unfit for work and get away and do something else.  For now i am starting to think at least having a space away from every psychological mindedness related stuff is probably what I need at this point in time. chinese ppl overall are not very psychologically minded. when there is a good traditional chinese story that is not psychologically minded but still decent and makes sense it is worth gold. (the Bible on the other hand is very psychologically minded... i remember reading stories of certain biblical heros when i was younger and always thought these people get a bit funny at times, and nowadays a lot of the funniness have very reasonable psychological explanations and make perfect sense... )
but I will leave the Bible alone for once.lol



i finished watching a romantic period drama this week (with no significant biopsychosocial stressors to decompensate me and make me turn to more violent bloodthirsty alternatives... XD) and really liked it. It has its brainless bits, and is not psychologically minded at all (kept on asking to myself how can person A interact with person B with such ease and not project feelings of past issues with person C onto person B etc etc etc... 囧）

but it was a sweet good story with good looking people that after watching once i want to watch it again. *giggle* both male and female leads were older than me and still looked stunning (yes I am at the age now that i do mind these things -_-|||) Wallace Huo has been around for a while but I was never really into him. think i found him too good looking and not really my type... lol there were also gossips around re: him into activities that were a little more tangible and transactional than watching little movies (if you get what i am getting at... XD)

but i find him so professional in his work it's almost touching. he's such a convincing romantic lead and so stable in his performances in almost every drama with different actresses there are hardly ever any half-hearted sloppy scenes. (remembering masha and his facial spasms when he just needed to look a bit "interested" in a female lead who has a more commanding air than him...-_-|||)

so when professionalism is a little short in supply in real life at the moment, this realisation is somewhat inspirational. and as politically incorrect as i have always been, if stars have enough likeable attributes, i don't find transactional lifestyles in the privacy of ones' own homes very bothering at all.

The annual report on rejoicing (4)

Me, TeddyBär in the house, and beautiful days

when I first started this annual report I had no idea where it was heading... at most I probably wanted to rant about how frustrating life in the real world has been... after all, I have reached a point with work (even when nothing adverse happened recently to decompensate me) that now and then after seeing a patient despite knowing i have done all the right things i would still be so miserable and not wanting to eat for days(and i am still endeavouring to pretend everything is normal and will somehow head in the right direction...-_-||||)

i have tried to do what I can to salvage my chinese writing site but after various attempts it remains unsalvageable. I am getting close to the point of saying LET THE PAST DIE just like uncle Soames did (of course we don't mean it, but at least our efforts in trying are commendable lol)

The other day I read about the German polar bear imitators. I found it all kinds of cuteness overload and wouldn't mind at all posing next to one myself. *giggle*
I don't know if people who befriended me all feel in a similar way... that I always seem to have such a TeddyBär hanging around me. not quite a normal soft toy, it's kind of furry, subjectively cute(or not), but somewhat intrusive and hard to comprehend, with ludicrous fake fangs and claws.
and because of TeddyBär, I am not that engaged with the real world.

I then recalled one deep buried fond memory. 10 years ago around this time of the year my friends grouped together and drew a manga book for my 21st present with a storyline of me being a superhero time travelling amongst all my favourite stories...
None of them were drawing people, neither were they TeddyBär lovers like me (at least not my type of TeddyBär lol) .
Yet everyone made an effort to draw, and not only tolerated but played with my TeddyBär in the process.

(the cover of my very personal manga book...)
It's been 10 years. Though I never grew out of various TeddyBär issues, many of these friends stuck around and had numerous hot pots with me in the past decade.

and I realised I am finally a 10/10 because of that, 10 years later.
Gomenasai mina-san.

I think I really need to learn the skills of breaking down all kinds of conscious/subconscious self throat-grabbing behaviour, which are ultimately the joy killers.
What would have stopped me hitting a 10/10 in the past may have a lot to do with my critical internal mother, who kept on berating me that TeddyBär playing is 不务正业, and unless i could focus whole heartedly on the real world I was not going to get anywhere or even if i get somewhere, one day I will be found out and made to pay the price...
and then the self throat-grabbing starts... even with the manga book by friends, I don't think I have allowed myself to be too happy about that--
in my mind that would be using my real friends as means to an end, as well as somewhat implying that TeddyBär was more important than the actual company of real friends, and that would be not quite right...
and before very long the throat-grabbing beliefs turned into not only my internal mother but my friends and even God all berating me for needing a TeddyBär to get on with life.
and I then enjoy neither TeddyBär nor friends nor work nor God... -_-|||||

It is as if saying auntie in the photo was hanging around TeddyBär too much and uncle thought she didn't love him anymore and got angry and bashed auntie up when they got home which would be very ridiculous.
(if uncle and auntie are actually like that they both need to come to see me...lol more)

So, I am all mushy and sentimental now.
I really thank God for that time when my friends and my TeddyBär played with each other.
and the many beautiful days since then.
and the many more yet to come.

With Masha and his TeddyBär (again!) I end my annual report on rejoicing (or my inability to do so).
and the very sporadic insight about self throat-grabbing, is probably going to be only the start of a long process...
May my steps continue to be guided.