“Every once in a while, in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairytale.”
#160929#
At midnight of 29 September 2016, I posted my monthsary drawing along with the above quote on Instagram. I just spent some time a few hours earlier on that night doing this drawing. While I was decorating the tree with my colourful markers, I found myself mindlessly talking to Taenggu under my breath. I can’t remember what exactly I was talking about back then, but I know I had many things to tell her.
The next morning after I woke up, I posted another photo of a tree along with a quote which I found meaningful. I guess it was an intuition, a signal from heaven, that it was time for me to really do something about my relationships with Taenggu and other artiste friends whom I seemed connected with so I expressed my thoughts in the following caption.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BK65ZTujnXE/?taken-by=invariantceleste
It had been puzzling me for a long time why I had been hearing some negative accusing voices which I never understood what exactly they were referring to. I guess there simply had been too much unspoken words between us that caused so many misunderstandings to build up. I had been waiting and wondering why no one had reached out to me yet even though they seemed to have many questions or wrong ideas about me. Why didn’t they just come and ask me directly? But after seeing this quote, it gave me an idea that probably instead of waiting, I could reach out to them first.
The quote says:
“Tell me and I’ll forget; Show me and I may remember; Involve me and I’ll understand.”
It was so true. I heard voices everyday, but I would simply forget what they said after awhile because I didn’t understand what they were saying anyway. But if Taenggu or other artistes showed me something which I could see or hear (e.g. videos, photos etc), then I would be like “Ahh, so that was what the voices actually meant…” And if they tried to involve and interact with me, then that would be the best solution. It could clear all my uncertainties and I could definitely understand much, much better.
Similarly, if I changed my perspective and put myself in their shoes, probably that was how they felt towards me too. So from that day onwards, I began to try involving Taenggu and other artiste friends whom I felt closer with in my situations. Even though I didn’t have a definite plan on how to reach out to them, I guess the universe had been guiding me along. That was also the period when I had a mild relapse of schizophrenia (means hearing more loud, repetitive, persistent voices which made me lose sleep). I tried to write explicitly what the voices had been telling me in my head and the kinds of strange ideas I had on Twitter, hoping Taenggu could understand better what I was going through and how schizophrenia was like. About a week later, I also set up my third instagram account @lovestorieswithtaenggu where I started to tell my stories specifically with Taenggu. Without her contact number and any other ways of contacting her directly, this was probably the best way I could do to start reaching out to her to tell her my side of the story and express myself more personally to her.
That was when I started to identify myself as Namu (means tree in Korean). Like a tree, I began to reach out my branches to other people so that more people could understand me. Since then, things have gotten much better than before: my mental health, emotional balance, relationship with Taenggu. Because I learned how to relieve my emotions, release my thoughts and express my feelings in the form of writing and drawing. Setting up this website was the next best thing I did to improve our relationship a step further. Now, I feel both my inner and outer world could understand me much better and is more considerate towards me. I am more at peace with myself now. 🙂
Flower for the month:
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