I’m at the playground near my house right now, letting time go by as I just swing away at a steady rhythm. Today is the first day I am alone since coming to Melbourne and I’m trying my best to learn and teach myself that being alone is not the same as being ‘lonely’.

But it’s a struggle. My old anxieties of being alone without friends to hang out with are coming back right now.

Maybe I just took it for granted that I was always around people until now. But it is true that I did always struggle with being alone. I’d like to say that it is because of my extremely extroverted personality, and so I get majority of my energy from being around people. And it got worse as I developed my depression and anxiety.

But as I had to try my best with my anxiety, I had to go through the journey of being able to cope when I am by myself during last year. In slang, you’d say I have “FOMO”, or ‘fear of missing out’. It is exactly that.

I was close to having a panic attack a couple of days ago. I caught up with my dear friend over dinner, and she allowed me to let out a lot of things that have happened to me in the past two months. Although it was a relief in a way, it brought up bad emotions and then the anxiety was in near-full mode. I wasn’t confident in making my way home alone in the dark. I’m not usually like that though.

I have always had to be aware of putting myself in situations where I am alone. I always had to keep a watchful eye on my current emotional states. Can you see my potential uneasiness and discomfort in the moments then? How I had to be careful when planning outings. Would I be alone? For how long? Where will I be going? Will there readily be people around? Do I know how to get there? Will there be friends for me to rely on JUST IN CASE something happens?

Swinging on the swing right now is nice though. I came out at a time when the day started cooling down so there’s a nice breeze right now, with the sun hidden behind the clouds. There are quite a few families around, all with dogs. The dogs are adorable. There’s a border collie that jumps higher than humans to catch its ball in the air. There’s another border collie that won’t stop following its friend around, which it met for the first time. It’s such a laidback environment here and I am quite loving being a part of it. Although, I may be looking quite out of place right now- 22 year old randomly sitting on the swing and typing on an iPad.

I just felt like writing my thoughts out right now because I felt quite empty for some reason. And I felt like sharing it. At least this is one of my techniques of learning how to be alone. Isn’t it?

Oh, and I had the worst nightmares in a row last night. Multiple independent situations of nightmares. I saw my own blood in one of them. In another, I was being hunted by these evil authorities. In another, I clearly remember, in my dream my dad returned. I watched a Netflix episode of a show a couple of days ago where a dad returns to his long-lost son to return him into his arms. Maybe my deeper pits of my heart got triggered seeing that scene, because my dad tried to do exactly that in my dream. And holy, how hard I cried. It was as if I have never cried this hard in my life. EVER. It was that tragic, this situation. How dare he come into my life again and ask to have me back? Those who know my childhood story will understand why this may be such a sensitive thing for me.

Yeah so I just felt unexplainably empty and lifeless today…… I remember having to force myself to wake up in the middle of my dreams so I could stop dreaming more.

At least now I am on my way to have dinner with my dear friends. That will be an incredible booster to my mood. That will surely escape me out of my numbness and detachment from my surroundings….. 🙂