When will this be over?

I think that it's great I'm awake at this hour. There is peace and quiet and no one to be concerned about at the moment.

Lately, due to the COVID-19 situation, I've had a lot of worries about the wedding and it increasingly became a stressful topic for me. I understand that planning a wedding isn't easy and many couples already find it stressful. Fortunately for me (or so I thought), I actually had more time on my hands, so it was easier for me to appreciate and enjoy each step of the plan. However, that happy moment didn't quite last as the COVID-19 situation worsened. My hope for the dream wedding just slowly died.

I think things need to be viewed in context for people to understand my level of distress.

Earlier in March, I had another fallout with my sibling. We ended off the conversation cutting off ties. It gave me great relief, yet immense pain. We didn't have the best sibling relationship, but we did have good memories together when we were younger. I loved her. And maybe I still do, that's why I still feel the pain. But in essence, my mental health couldn't handle the toxicity of the relationship. After this, I began work. Some anxiety involved -- which is normal -- but it slowly eased out as I became more open with my colleagues about my mental health challenges and how it affected my job prospects. Meanwhile, many wedding prep stuff on the way, some coordination done, some things bought, some things ordered online. Things were sort of peaceful for 3 weeks..... and then the circuit breaker happened. I became jobless (for a month because I work in a non-essential service as a part-timer), and now I'm stuck at home 24/7, constantly facing the stressors that contributed to my mental health state. Ah but thankfully, the biggest stressor is no longer at home.

I had a hunch that things would not go so well for the wedding. In the beginning, right before my fiance and I began planning our wedding, my concerns were very superficial; what kind of hairstyles should we go for, and for myself, I considered whether I should go for some minor cosmetic procedures to temporarily lift my face up and undergo a teeth whitening procedure, and to do that, I had to save up and so on and so forth. I carefully planned when to do these procedures so that things would be perfect for the wedding day. Now all I think about is whether the wedding will even take place in light of the recent global pandemic.

It's very devastating because it really feels like everything that we'd planned had just been for naught. The only analogy I can give to explain how this feels is like getting pregnant, then unfortunately getting a miscarriage, and not having an actual funeral for the unborn/undeveloped child. Oh, and did I mention we also had to cancel our honeymoon trip?

Other personal reasons for my distress include the significance of marriage as a way out of my past and current stressors, a wonderful beginning with my partner of 8 years and ongoing, it has been my dream since day 1 of seeing this man in my life, and I'm the first (and probably the only one in my immediate family) in my immediate and non-immediate family to get married while my fiance's the oldest in his immediate family so it is a very very huge matter -- at least, in the Asian context. And to be honest, I feel resentful to every other couple out there that got married the way they planned it to without a silly pandemic interfering their plans. Did I also mention that with this hell of a full-blown pandemic, we had to keep revising our plans accordingly, and may I remind people that marriage is a very emotional event so with all this revision and uncertainty looming, it is FREAKING STRESSFUL AND PAINFUL AND TIRING, not just from the physical tasks, but emotionally and mentally just... building hope and watch it get torn down and building hope again and watch it tear down again. It's devastating! I'm fucking depressed!

Still, health matters. People say that I should be grateful we're alive. It is better to be safe than sorry. And I don't deny that. Which is why it is so hard! UGH! Whilst I worry for the health of everyone whom I care about attend our wedding on that day, I also care so much about the wedding being special in every single way, spiritually, emotionally AND physically. How can I let go of either of them? There would be dreadful dreadful dreadful regret for the former if anything happens to anyone and the latter because it fell short on our expectations.

Many friends have told us to stay hopeful. And I want to. Thinking logically, seeing that the government enforced the CB bill, intervention is at a pretty serious level and I seriously hope that with this intervention -- which, by the way, stops me from meeting my fiance. we're about to get married in less than 5 months and because we're not yet married and do not live in the same household, we can't meet. ok. another reason to add to my distress -- things would die down and we can carry on with our wedding as originally planned......

But I'm scared to hope... Back to the context, I had a fallout with my sibling. I'm still recovering from depression. I also suffer from anxiety. I still have sleepless nights like now. I don't need another crisis to pull me back into the hole. I just need to stop taking my meds, that's how fragile I feel right now. And the worst part is? I don't even know who to blame except myself. People say you can't control your circumstances, but you can control how you face them. Yeah. I can. I shouldn't have had my expectations that high. Why the fuck do I have them that high anyway? Why? Do I deserve such treatment? Dare I even say I deserve the relationship? Fuck it. I'm the loser, I'm the burden. How dare I think of having a nice wedding?? ... Yeah, these thoughts go on in my mind.

Here's one more thing to add to my distress list: I'm running out of antidepressants and I got to head to my GP to get some more. At this time. When there's CB = peak of COVID-19 situation. And I have a chance to get it by visiting a clinic from someone that's yet to be diagnosed. And then I may get it. And die before I even get married. :,D Wow. I know I do want to die, but that was in the past when the big stressor was still around, but now that I'm trying to move on and want to live, I'm suddenly presented an opportunity to take my life.. amidst this very distressing period.

I also start thinking about things I'd left undone, things I hadn't done well in the present, considerations for how to be better but then being weighed down by evaluations of myself and my capabilities/abilities playing a respective role...... the list goes on................................................

The good, the bad... it's all stressful.
I just want peace and quiet.
Please don't raise your voice at me.
Please don't joke with me.
Please don't talk to me about my future.
Please leave me alone....
But don't ignore me.
Please acknowledge my existence.
Please still love me.
Please be patient and understand me.
Forget it, it's too troublesome.
I don't deserve you.
I should just shut up.
I should just let you think what you want to think of me.
I won't do a good job explaining myself anyway.
Explaining myself would only complicate matters.
It is better I keep to myself.
I'll focus on eliminating my negative thoughts.
I'll focus on eliminating my desires.
I'll focus on just disappearing into the background and stop being a burden to my loved ones.
 

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