Change is coming.

The past week has been insane.

A friend committed suicide. One emergency meeting. One wake. One realisation that it makes no sense to be raising awareness of depression and the need to overcome stigmas to seek help in the public the message is not even being conveyed in my own community. One talk to students to share with them my heartbeat for this. One meeting with Singapore General Hospital, Singhealth, my publisher about launching my next book, A Taste of Rainbow next February and plans to bring the message of postive self-esteem to students, back to back with another meeting I had coordinated between students and my school regarding improving mental health support among students. One meeting with someone who will doing up the new website for Kitesong and A Taste of Rainbow to raise awareness of these causes. There were many emails to write, many Big People to convince, many hearts to convict to stand with me on this cause- we have to do something. One test on Geriatrics. One phonecall from the Insititute of Mental Health expressing their interest in my next book. Many, many, many emails. Maybe fifty, over the past few days.

Absolutely crazy week.

Like all my other friends, I was grieved. We were traumatised. Every day, one person in Singaporean commits suicide. I just never thought one of them would be someone I knew in such close proximity. I couldn’t sit back, and hence rallied all my batchmates and juniors together to help make our communities safer places to be in. There is something which can be improved in our system. We cannot change the system, but there other things which we can change.

We mustn’t lose people this way anymore. I’m doing this partly for you, K. Why did you leave us this way.

And it amazed me, just a little, to find out that all this happened this week, which is also World Mental Health Awareness week. There is something worthwhile to be done.

But I’m tired. So I’m going to slink away by myself to a quiet place with my brown imaginary horse and sit by a quiet imaginary stream to read a good book by Malcolm Gladwell and thank God for the chance to be a part of Change.

We can change things if we believe we can.

That is something I truly believe in.