It's okay not to be okay

I'm not gonna ignore the fact that my previous post was two years ago and no I haven't forgotten about this blog. This blog has always been on my mind and technically, I have written many posts (It's just that they're all in my head instead :)).

As a token of apology, I will make this post super personal and share what I think has to be the most important experience in my entire 22 years of existence. I was actually quite hesitant to blog about this, but I feel like I need to so that I can finally have closure and maybe someone out there can benefit from reading this. So people, let me take you back to 2018.

I started my second year of law school with one law drilled into my head. The law is called Parkinson's law (no, not the disease) which states that work expands to fill the time you've allocated to complete it. In simpler words, the amount of time needed to complete something depends on how long you give yourself. This probably explains why doing an assignment the night before the deadline is possible (not that I recommend it of course). I wanted to level-up in my second year and decided that I could do this by reaching a state of efficiency where I didn't have time to laze off on Instagram or youtube and use every second of the day productively. To reach such a state of efficiency, I made sure that I was busy enough by committing myself to four other things outside of law school:

1) Executive council of UKEC (The umbrella body for all Malaysian student societies in the UK)

2) Captain of the Malaysian & Singaporean netball team for my uni

3) Public relationship representative for my uni's Malaysian and Singaporean society

4) Working part-time as an online mentor

I'm not trying to write up my resume here and I'm sure some of you may have had more demanding responsibilities but I just want you to understand the pace that I was going at in second year. To begin with, anyone who has ever been a part of UKEC will understand that the position alone takes a lot of time and commitment. At times, it feels like you have a full-time job. The crux of my work with UKEC was quality control which meant that all of the content that had been produced by our other offices had to receive the green light from myself or by the other executives in the Secretariat office before they can be sent, uploaded or  published. Because of this, I had to make sure I was available around the clock to avoid delaying any postings or publications. To add to this, they made me the floor manager of their first annual event of the year. G R E A T. Although juggling my commitments with UKEC alongside law school was tough, it was useful as it felt like a crash course which would prepare me for a professional career. Okay, before this becomes an advertising spiel to promote UKEC, let's move on to the next thing on the list- netball.

The first time I moderated a panel session. One of the many opportunities UKEC gave me.

One of the main changes that I wanted as captain was to make our trainings more frequent and convenient because as a team sport, the chemistry between players is paramount. To make this happen, I went back to uni two weeks earlier than my friends so that I could have a better chance at booking our uni's indoor court. Just to make things more interesting, this was also when I caught the mumps which made the sides of my face swell so eating and talking was painful to the point that I ended up losing weight. Imagine me all alone in a dark house struggling to eat soup. That was basically how the start of my second year was like. Being captain at uni made me truly understand the weight of being captain and a leader in general to the point that I don't look at people in a position of leadership the same. Beyond the fame and glory of the title are conflicts, sacrifices, decisions, and dilemmas which although are tough, are often battles a leader fights alone and sometimes are hidden for the sake of team morale. An important maxim that really helped me is the one my A-level history teacher wrote on the whiteboard during one of our classes; Miles' law. Miles stated that; 'where you stand depends on where you sit'. This means that your outlook on life (where you stand) is largely influenced by your position in society or a given organisation (where you sit). It is easy to criticise our leaders or people in a position of authority. And the reason why it is so easy is because often we do not know what they have to face. Just to make sure this wisdom is conveyed, I will give a hypothetical example. Imagine waiting for a bus which then came 15 minutes late. The most common response would be to feel angry of the driver and criticise his 'tardiness'. Unknown to us, the driver's wife had passed away so the driver who was accused of being 'tardy' was actually the driver's friend who had agreed to replace him. So in this hypothetical situation, it was easy for the passengers to criticise as they were unaware of what was actually going on due to their position as passengers instead of being those acquainted to the driver. I had applied this to my experience with netball and it had helped me a great deal in going through the ordeals of being captain. I'll stop here without going into the details of my other responsibilities so I don't sound like I'm ranting (which is completely not my intention). 

Probably my favourite win of all time and the moment when we turned from being underdogs to officially being the #1 Malaysian netball team in the UK in less than a year. My right hand was bleeding in this picture but it's a good thing you can't see it.

At the start of second year in 2018, I had set out a goal to have completed revision of my studies by March 2019 so that I could send my attempts at past year questions to my lecturers, ample of time before my Summer exams in late May/June. However, the commitments that I had, started to become really intense over time to a point where I found myself trying to do my homework during UKEC meetings (disgraceful I know) and used up my weekdays just for the commitments that I had instead of studying. I was being pulled in so many different directions to the point that I had to pin the texts messages people gave me so that they wouldn't get lost in the sea of messages that I was getting. Because of how hectic things were, for the first time ever, I missed a tutorial (Background: I NEVER MISS MY TUTORIALS). I had rescheduled but somehow had misunderstood the email and ended up waiting at the wrong time. I remember how awful I felt on my walk back. I was mentally drained and before I knew it, I fell asleep as soon as I reached home. (Note to self: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Be selective and learn to say no)

By January 2019, I came to realise that I would not be able to reach my goal of sending practice essays to my lecturers and this gave birth to this anxiety of not being able to do well in my Summer exams. However, as I was still too preoccupied with all of the commitments that I had, this worry was kept at the back of my mind. By late March however, when all of these commitments had come to an end, I finally had what I didn't before; time. This was actually dangerous because I had time to think about the worry that I had. I started to blame myself for missing my goal and the hate that I had for myself grew as I also started to dwell about how I was not able to give 100% to each of the responsibility that I had as I was too busy. Mind you, this was merely my personal assessment of myself. In reality, nobody said anything to make me feel this way. The problem was that I didn't do as well as I wanted so I automatically felt that other people felt the same. My days were filled with toxic thoughts of how I was a 'failure' and mulling over the 'mistakes' that I have made. I would replay the situation in my head and think about how I could have done better which made the disappointment that I had towards myself intensify. In general, reflecting on our past actions and learning from them is good, but my case was different. I had reached a level of obsession with being perfect, which as we know, does not exist. 

With the excos of my uni's Malaysian and Singaporean society before we stepped down. Honestly couldn't have asked for a better team and still sorry till this day for not being better.

Despite being mentally unstable, I decided that I did not want to make any more mistakes so instead of actively addressing the problem that I had, I went to all of my classes and tutorials although 5 minutes before I was sat on my bedroom floor crying silently. I was very fragile at this point and when people talked to me in class, I was constantly worried that they would see the tear stains on my glasses. I had reached rock bottom. A year before, I was that girl who thought suicide was something so distant and unthinkable, like unicorns. However, little did I know that only a year after I would be so near of having such suicidal thoughts myself. Sadly, the only thing that stopped me from entertaining those thoughts was this belief that if I ended my life, I would never go to heaven- something which is taught in Islam. Despite being mentally volatile, I was able to compute that it would be better to live a temporary life as a failure rather than having to go through eternal doom in hell. 

My last event with UKEC.

I had planned an Easter trip to France the year before (when everything was going well) but given the situation that I was in, I was seriously thinking of not going. In the end, I did go but with hopes that it would give me some kind of break. It did. Travelling to a different country gave me no headspace to think about my 'failures'. It gave me a break from the suffocating thoughts that I had and this was when I slowly started to heal. It wasn't much but this was definitely a big and important step that led to my recovery. A couple of weeks before my exams, I came to this realisation that I was already at the lowest point in my life and ironically because of this, I could go nowhere but up. This gave me hope. It made me realise how every effort that I make towards preparing for my exams from that point onwards would have nothing but good results. LLB law is not the kind of course where you can just cram at the last minute. You need a clear mind to read complex academic articles or statutes. Fully aware of this, I decided to focus on my non-law unit to salvage my results; Mandarin. I love learning languages and I figured that I had a shot at doing well, and hopefully well enough to help bring up my average results for the year. I went all out. I did everything that I could think of. Language app? Every morning. Youtube videos? Watched all that I could find. Counted in Mandarin while I showered? Every day. I did all of this till there wasn't a Chinese character in our textbooks that I couldn't read. I was determined to score 100 in my test and nothing was going to get in my way (I think it's pretty obvious that even at this point, I was still not in my right mind).

They say a picture can tell a thousand words but I think it can also conceal a thousand words as this picture was taken on my trip to France when I was still pretty unstable.

We had three hours to finish both of our reading and writing exams for Mandarin. I did the reading part first and as I answered the paper I knew that I would score well. However, as soon as I started the writing paper, I started to freak out when I reached this part where I had to translate an English sentence to Mandarin. I couldn't remember how to write a character for the sentence (It's one thing to be able to identify a Chinese character (through reading) and a whole other to be able to conjure it out of thin air (through writing)). The most rational thing to do would be to move on and proceed with the paper especially since it was only a 2 mark question. However, I was not my rational self and I had this pressure of scoring 100 coupled with the desire to live up to the expectations that my teacher had of me as one of her best students. This was when I experienced my first 'panic attack'. Using the word 'panic attack' to describe what I went through means a lot because I get annoyed when people misuse words such as when someone uses the word 'OCD', a mental illness, to describe someone who is relatively tidy and gives more attention to details.

Someone was playing a beautiful song on a violin which made being at the Louvre simply enchanting.

I described my situation as having a panic attack because I experienced the symptoms. My breathing became irregular and at one point I struggled to breath. Soon after, I felt light headed till I almost fainted. Afterwards, my whole body started shaking to the point that I was afraid that the person sitting next to me would notice. My hands were shaking like crazy and this made writing Chinese characters with their many strokes infinitely harder. However, determined to pull through, I continued to write with my left hand grasping on my right wrist so that it wouldn't shake as much. I was determined to give my all. Unfortunately, when the time was up, I didn't manage to write enough to meet the minimum needed. When our papers were being collected, I felt proud of myself for not giving up but alas, this was only short-lived. I was slowly engulfed with disappointment, thinking that the exam did not reflect my true potential. On my way back home, I called my mum and broke down. My uni has this procedure where we can fill up an 'extenuating circumstance form' for this kind of situation so that the exam board can take it into consideration when assessing our year mark. However, I knew that my overall Mandarin results would turn out okay as I was confident that I did well in my other components so I figured it didn't make sense for me to submit an extenuating circumstance form when I did 'well' in an exam. This was precisely the problem, I knew that I did well, however, not as well as I thought I could and certainly not as well as I wanted. My definition of failure is when I do not meet my own 'subjective' expectations regardless of how 'objectively' well I do something. When I got my results, I did in fact receive a first class but only because I had scored in my other components such as speaking, listening, and reading (a 99 in my reading paper to be exact). If you look at my results, you would notice that something is not right as the marks for my writing exam were SIGNIFICANTLY lower than my other components. I got a 55 for writing. Not something you would expect from a student who her teacher brags about by sending written homework to her  friends in China through WeChat.

South of France and Nice in particular is one of those places that you would want to settle down and retire at.

In the end, I actually didn't do that bad in my second year. In fact, I was actually close to getting a first class for the whole of second year. I don't mean to be that annoying person who says that an exam is hard but then goes on to score an A but for someone who went through her lowest point in life, these results were pretty unexpected. Personally, I feel that the only explanation is God's blessing and kindness. He probably knew that my messed up self would still expect myself to do well despite the situation that I was in. Why didn't I just reach out for help I hear you ask? I actually did plan to talk to one of my lecturers but during that point of the year, she was busy and it didn't take much for me to give up. I often look back and realise that nobody was able to tell what I was going through. Part of the problem was that I knew exactly what I had to say and what I shouldn't say to appear 'fine'. And that was exactly what I did. When my friends asked me how I did after the Mandarin exam, I only said what I 'should'. I said, "yeah it was alright, a bit hard though" and carried on listening to my friends talk about the paper as if I did not almost fall off from my chair from struggling to breathe a few minutes ago. Even my housemates couldn't tell what was going on. I was pretty good at making sure I gave off no hints because deep inside I felt like nobody could fix the problem besides myself. This is because I do this thing where I tend to 'debate' against the merits of the points given by a person. And this also includes the points given by someone who only wants to help me feel better. Imagine what a hard time I gave my mother.  

This whole experience drastically changed my approach to life and my outlook on mental health. I find myself more able to empathise with people and I am better at detecting when people are struggling when I talk to them. Nowadays, when I feel down, I actively make myself feel better instead of merely entertaining the feeling or ignoring it. Because of this, I am thankful for this experience. Just like medicine, it was something bitter which I had to go through to recover from the toxic mentality that I had. If there is only one thing you take away from this post it should be this; there is strength in persevering. People who succeed in life aren't necessarily those who do well in whatever they do, but just being able to not give up when you are (repeatedly) tested is in itself a remarkable feat and a success that I think we as a society should applaud more and value. 

With my best friend, Hana when she visited me in Bristol.

I can't really say how long it took for me to 'completely' heal and become stable but in the beginning of final year, roughly five months after my panic attack, I met my personal tutor in his office and realised that I was still not over it yet. This kind of meeting was the annual stuff that I knew I had to go through so throughout the year I had subconsciously drafted a script in my head of what to say. To my complete shock, when he casually asked "how was second year?", although I started to answer as scripted with a smile on my face, tears started rolling down my cheeks. Crying was definitely NOT on the script. I have too much ego and pride to simply cry in front of people and the ability to admit that I am struggling is a virtue which I do not own. I had no idea where the tears came from and I had a hard time stopping them. In hindsight, I realised that these tears were different, they came from deep inside, a place deeper than where my superficial answers came from. They were from my heart and they were how I genuinely felt.

When we go through a hard time, it is important to remember that bad moments are not forever and that they too shall past.

At the time of writing, in early June 2020, I am in the midst of almost completing my final exams. My experience during my final year at law school is nowhere near my second year and I reckon I would need a separate post for that. Maybe I'll update again after I get my final results in late July? Only time will tell.

                                                                                                      Till I write again, oxo