I had an engrossong conversation last night with someone with whom I haven’t talked even once despite following each other on almost every social media platforms. We reflected on depression, loneliness, despair, anxiety, hopelessness. Something that I have been going through from the last one month, something she’s been going through from a very long time. It’s funny how you confide in people who know how it feels to be in that situation, in those desolate dark corners where you sit crouched with your face locked between your knees desperately waiting for someone to lend a hand. A hand that can heal things in a jiffy but a hand that never comes your way. But you still linger in hope and expectation until everything withers off and there is nothing left. Not even that silver lining through which warm rays of sunshine careens its way through utter obscurity.

There are millions of people out there who share the same footing as you. While some are strong, they fight their inner and outer demons with determination, others who are debilitated and fragile conform to the redundancy of ill-fate and forlorness. Then there comes those who embrace all of it with no remorse or shame. Those who have treaded the boundary of no-return. Those who want to end it all because they are incorrigible, incurable, irrecoverable.

Getting back to the conversation, she mentioned how life was simple back in school and we were happy with what we had. There was nothing to worry about because everything was provided for. I concurred with what she said. If we had this conversation a month back, I would have told her that every phase of life comes with it’s own set of charm and challenges, but after experiencing throes of despondence and desperation, my perspective has changed drastically. It seems that growing up sucks and everything related to it is superficial and temporary. Everyone out there wants to break you, hurt you, afflict emotional abuse at every instance they could have. I told her how it feels like a kick in your guts which comes out of nowhere without informing and WHAM! you get devoured by puberty and everyone and everything around you refashions itself to suit a more validation-seeking environment.

Then our colloquy sauntered towards the topic of depression. I told her how depression creeps onto us and shrouds us into this bleak and sad reality of life that makes us vulnerable to our deepest of emotions. Somebody who is going through it will have those emotions amplified and blown out of proportion making it harder to function. How it sucks to be an emotional wreck dealing with things alone with no one to guide, no one to listen to, no one to give inputs. We are left out on our own in a completely cimmerian environment. To fend for ourselves and find our ways.

‘It’s like I’ve hit rock bottom. Can’t see no way out. It’s true that writing helps me to understand how I’m feeling but the brain storming required is pushing me into this labyrinth of depression. I am running away from writing.” she added and very rightly so. Because even when we pent out all those things through writing, you inch closer to the precipice, terrified to topple down that abyss.

From there we started analysing the pattern of it. How it works? How it bashes you? Talking about her own life experiences, she said ” Yes. Infact in my case, it’s like a pattern. I’m self sufficient and happy for a few days and then suddenly one day something happens. Something insignificant like a friend not picking up my call. And it triggers me. Every little thing starts to trigger my mood and days become unproductive and smiling starts taking effort. I don’t even know how normal feels like.”

And I could relate to every word she said. But these patterns vary from people to people. I am well acquainted with it because I go through this every single day. There are highs where I feel accomplished, cheerful and complete and then there are lows which cradles me in it’s lap of pessimism, where I feel worthless, unwanted, cheated, lonely and what not? These highs and lows come unexpectedly and lasts for unwarranted time. The highs make you overtly social and optimistic while the lows grips you and make you nauseous through bouts of existential crisis and self-loath.i have lost touch with normalcy from the last one month. And I am getting used to this ordeal. That is scary. That made me commune with her mishaps in life.

Tacking on this, she said “It makes you overthink. You start meta analysing every little thing you do. Self doubt accompanies. I try to push my boundaries. But all I am left with is tiredness. It hurts to see myself like this. Somewhere between feeling everything at once and being numb.
Anxiety attacks corrode your insides.
It hurts to see yourself do the things you once loved but they don’t make you happy anymore.”

Yes. All of it comes with the baggage of losing touch with things we once loved but now even that fails to lift your mood. I have stopped taking pictures of sunsets, of blue skies, of anything that catches my eyes. I have stopped binge-watching movies on Netflix. I don’t enjoy my favourite dishes which I once use to cherish like a true glutton. I don’t want to interact with family members. I have grown more reticent than before. The only little solace that I find is behind the four walls of my room. I lock myself up and switch off the lights and quietly slip my headphones on with music to accompany me. But even that has started to fade away. It’s like a black hole that is sucking in everything and anything as it grows bigger in size.

I replied “It corrodes your insides. Withers your self-confidence, self-worth and turns you into a mere existing zombie waking up everyday in a hopeful self but slowly realising nothing changed. It just another day of existing through pain and struggle and obstacles. You confide in things that are harmful. You make yourself vulnerable to weakness. You lose your charm, your flair for things that brings you joy. It causes annihilation of your spirit and tugs you even down”

“It feels like I’m not doing enough, or that everything is conspiring against my happiness. Like you were happy at noon and then the sadness came back unwarranted, uninformed at night. Like you’re hurt exponentially by small triggers. When productivity is hard to come by and you push yourself to get today done but there’s so many more todays to go. And you expect so much out of yourself but you’ll never get that GRE score. When the happiest things make you happy but not peaceful. This drifting thing that we’ve named life isn’t working anymore. This cognitive discipline that I deploy in life is only shutting myself into a real cage.” she responded.

What is peace? What entails to be peaceful? Is peace and happiness the two sides of the same coin? Or peace and happiness exist in different planes? The lack of peace initiates insomnia, nightnares and restlessness while dearth in happiness makes you antsy and borderline suicidal. One cannot exist without the other.

Reacting to what she said, I enumerated “And its like you can’t eliminate those triggers. It is always there. Omnipresent. Glaring in your eyes and seizing its opportunity to afflict pain. Pain that will make you want to scream but you can’t because there is nowhere to scream. If you scream, people will label you mentally senile, if you don’t, they’ll tell you not to be sad. As if it was thar easy. As if it was so lucrative for us to simply force us to smile. The whole concept of life seems to be crumbing in front of our eyes and we stand there throwing hands in despair trying everything at our disposal to keep that intact.”

People have a very flawed and contorted view of depression and those suffering from it. For them, it’s an act to attract attention or it is simply a figament of our imagination. For them they treat it with the same sensitivity as any other petty disease but in the process, they overlook the gravity of it.

“You’re disappointed in the whole concept of living. I’m looking at life through a forward button, making a calendar year out of hope. I guess that’s what you do when you’re lonely. When the present is lonely,
you hold onto the future, even the one that may never arrive.” she continued voicing out her views.

Ask us what’s the meaning of future and you won’t get a straightforward answer. Because future is something that we’re not sure about. Like any normal individual, we do have a brief idea of what we want it to look like but that is accompanied by diffident, hesitance and ever-loomimg doubts.

“You tend to create a utopian version of future. A future where everything seems to be according to our whims. A future where everything is perfect in its entirety. Entirety where you don’t feel lonely in a room full of well-wishers. Well-wishers that’ll function in a way that facilitates our confidence and will for life. The future that is very much possible but quite difficult to achieve (or we are made to believe so by our present conundrums) that we think its futile to even lift our fingers in that direction because somewhere down all these loneliness and pain makes us wary that we infact cannot do anything to change our situation and we are destinied to pull through like this.” I replied.

Anchoring to this, she added “The present is so suffocating. I don’t know if there’s a way out but I’m not going to searching. There’s no lead.
But giving up seems like no option.
This life is a shipwreck. Or this life is everything after the ship wrecked.
May be that’s why it so often feels like drowning when I’m only gasping for air. Or love.”

We ponder upon giving up. We get labelled as cowards. We are reprimanded about those who love us, those who invested in us, those who look up to us, those who exist because of us. But what’s the point of that? Once you cease to exist, nothing even matters. There is an endless void that doesn’t even subsist because you need consciousness to experience that. But when there is none, how does it affect your thinking capability.

“Giving up seems to be an unparalleled alternative and no option at the same time. We feel if we give up and sit there waiting for the inevitable, perhaps then things will fall in places but then there is this uncharted emotion which tells us that if we give up, we’re cowards, a poltroon who wants to flee rather than fight. But is something worth fighting for? What is something worth scrimmaging for? What is? What for? For dysfunctional us or abberant life we lead? Or just for the sake of others? We knock doors looking for someone to save us. We snoop every corner to find love. Even when we know we are drowning, we are hopeful that somebody will lend their hands swathed in affection that can prolong our fate. But all we get is someone kicking us down even deeper to the pits of loneliness.” I retorted.

Our discourse made me ponder on a lot of things. Primarily, the complexity of life and how something insignificant can change everything before you can even react. The very essence of someone, somebody enduring the exact same surge and turmoil of emotions can soothe you to some extent because it provides you with a feeling of belongingness. A feeling that you’re not alone in this.

I don’t know whether I’ll be able to fight this thing or step into the boundary of no return. Time will tell that. However, It breaks me everytime to think that I was somebody’s savior once and today I desperately need a savior of my own.

Time changes.