Hello world! Hello you! I hope everyone who reads this post is physically and mentally healthy :). 

It’s been such a long time since I last made a posting to this blog. In 2011, I made a goal to write at least 24 blog posts but I only wrote five. This year, I hope I will be able to produce at least one post every month.

Furthermore, I want 2012 to be the year of awakening because last year was terrible. You may wonder what went wrong last year. So, I’ll confess it all here. 

According to my iDescribe application on Facebook, I am most described as friendly, cheerful, funny, helpful, and knowledgeable. Those are the characteristics that I portray on daily basis.

Despite my surface appearance, I was in depression throughout 2011. This depression has led me to academic failures. In other words, I failed some subjects which makes me unable to graduate by 2011 and will graduate in mid 2013 instead.

So, what actually happened? 

First of all, there were some external changes which affected my psychological condition. We all know that emotions drive actions. When you are happy, you will be productive and when you aren’t, you will be the opposite. And I was the latter. 

Earlier in 2011, I decided to move into Sun-U Residence, a campus accommodation, from a rented apartment at Palmville Condominium. I was living in Palmville for 2.5 years with my three closest friends from Indonesia. 

We were like a family. We shared our daily life problems, we cleaned up the apartment unit together, we opened our rooms’ doors so that anyone could come by to talk. 

However, we had to move out from the unit because the owner increased the monthly rent and we couldn’t find one empty unit that fits all of us. So, we decided  to end our relationship as housemates and to find our rooms respectively. 

In my new apartment, I have difficulties in adapting with my new housemates. They were nice and friendly yet they were very individualistic. It’s just so different from the previous house culture that tends to be attached to one another. 

Secondly, changes in my parents’ business made them busier than ever, which caused limited communication. Both situations have created feelings of ignored and loneliness. 

At about the same, I have a psychical health issue with initial symptom of irregular period (between rare and excessive) starting in late 2010. I could be depressed instantly. Often times, bad memories from the past were flashing and I felt painful. There were times where I could cry with no or few reasons. 

In order to avoid this negative emotions, I medicated myself with too much tv series and Internet browsing. I also started missing days from school and none of my close friends noticed that because we all took different classes. 

I was isolating myself from the crowd. Most of the time, I didn’t want to meet people despite of feeling lonely. I just wanna sleep or read in my room, so that the bad memories wouldn’t be flashing.

Nothing seemed fun anymore. I was tired most of the time and I wasn’t sleeping well. 

I never really understood what was going on with my own body. I was enduring the constant emotional changes without realizing the major factors affecting my mood swing. With such a bad mood, I found it very difficult to concentrate and to do challenging task like assignments. 

I did all my assignments in semester 2 halfway and gave up. I just ignored everything, which now I can see it is not the right solution. 

Nevertheless, I tried to cope with it and did not consult to any medical doctor until a Counsellor at campus strongly recommended me to do so in October 2011. She explained how important student’s health to the study. 

After visiting a couple times, I was diagnosed by my doctor as having Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I felt my physical condition caused further depression. 

Out of a desire to avoid appearing needy and out of a fear of losing my friends who know me as an optimistic person, I started to filter what I said. In doing so, I did not communicate my feelings clearly, openly or bravely. 

I was questioning what if my friends became down because I honestly told about my problems? Most of my friends told me that I have helped them changing their lives due to my optimism and high spirit.

In 2010, honesty brought me trouble. I lost one good friend of mine because I criticized (in a good manner, of course) that person behavior and suggested that person to change. 

The result? That person left me. I don’t know if she/he felt guilty or he/she hated me so much. 

But it was a traumatic experience. I hate losing friends or even one friend. 

In the end, I chose the safest way: keeping all the problems to myself.

I kept radiating positivism and spending so much time and energy focused on others that I forget to recharge the source of that energy, that is myself. I made matters worse. 

So much of what needed to be said was not said, and bad feelings are bottled up and start to accumulate inside me. 

One night, my friend tweeted about bipolar disorder. I asked her for further information and it seemed like I have some of the symptoms. 

I googled about it and I felt that I was having (major) depression but not bipolar disorder. In one article, it is said that  depression is a common but serious illness. 

After that, I went back to Indonesia in November 2011 and decided to visit a psychiatrist ( without my parents’ consent because they were in Saudi Arabia at the time). 

I was seeing the psychiatrist for two months for “talk therapy” which helped me learn ways to deal with this illness (depression) in my everyday life, and I was taking medicine for depression. 

To be continued . . .