I always overdo thing. I overthink things. I overfill my schedule. And overwork my body. Frankly, turning thirty to me isn't all that big a deal. She says that now, after having written for a whole month about leaving her twenties, you say. It's true though, I don't dread the 30s, neither will I mourn the loss of my 20s. I am writing this series to get back into the habit of writing that i have sadly given up and also to bid a good farewell, an ode maybe to the years that sculpted the woman I am today. And I love who I am today, so what I'm doing is just a small token of gratitude for all these past ten years and a warning to the 30s to top this, which I am sure it is going to.
Let's see, so far I have written about love, about men, about poems, about food, about travel, about my resolutions, about fear, about faith and God, about friendships, about yoga and about gratitude, about fate, about waiting and patience, about indolence and a belief in destiny, about my food and my fashion and a million other things since I am so fond of randomly talking about stuff along the way. I actually wish I had a couple more days to write about my twenties, because there is so much to say, but even if i were to write for a month more, I don't think i would be able to do justice to all that I want to cover. But the one topic I do want to cover and it's funny that I haven't tackled it yet, is Depression. As always I hate talking about the tough things and try to procrastinate as much as possible, and I guess that is what I did with this topic. Also maybe, I had so much going on the last two weeks that I was often writing these posts without thinking too much about it, and I really wanted to sit down and think about this one. But well, I am again today writing in a very ad-hoc manner, but I guess that is just the way I write. In fact, in the past when I have tried to plan a post and write about a certain aspect or topic, I have often abandoned the effort and left that version in drafts and go on to write about something totally different. I didn't think I would write about this topic today, but I feel like it, so I am going to put out whatever comes through.
For the longest time I was of the belief that if you had the basic minimum necessities of livelihood met, and then some more, you would be happy. I had a great hob, I loved working with my team, financially I had never been better off, i was physically also very proud of my body and had a healthy yoga practice, I had a gorgeous house and was finally living alone and the keeping the house how I wanted to, friends and family that I loved and that loved me back ferociously. In spite of all this, a deep gnawing feeling was eating me away. I was two, very obviously, different selves during that phase : I was chirpy and bubbly when I was at work and with friends, but the minute I was alone, I was lost and directionless. A certain power would overtake me, a deep sense of consciously feeling that I wasn't feeling anything. Such a random sentence that is, but that i what I felt. And I would search a lot for the small joys, a feeling of contentment and try and figure out what could possibly be missing in me and in my life for me to feel so incomplete. And often I was left without an answer. I would wake up in the middle of night feeling like in the next minute I was going to lose everything, I would have immense anxiety about the next day and would dread it, I would not want to wake up at all in fact.
On those days, what kept me going was my yoga practice - it is the only reason I woke up every day at 6am and still made it to the 7 am class. Usually at the end of a yoga class I am raring to go, I get dressed and head out of the studio and carpe diem. But during that time, I wanted for class to never end, so I could stay in the asanas that comforted me or stay in the bliss of Shavasana. But time waits for no one and the five minute shavasana had to end and I had to roll over and get up and get going. How I managed to get any work done is a miracle. In fact i think I was the most productive then, I was in this zone of just doing and not thinking because if I sat to think or had nothing to do, a fear would engulf me and I would be in tears immediately.
I didn't know why I was feeling like this - and I also tried to guilt myself into feeling pathetic about thinking the way I was thinking. Because look at all that God had blessed me with, how dare i feel this way when there were people dying in civil wars and kids being murdered or starving to death and women being raped. But the guilt about the way I felt only made it worse. At any point in time, all I wanted to do is run, I wanted to leave my body and run - i didn't want to be me, I didn't want to be anyone. I tried confronting myself about it a millions times, but I would just feel so wretched that I would have no strength to stand even. Many a time, I have sat down where I was standing or stood instead of walking and just stopped so I could get a hold of myself and take a few deep breaths and reach a safer place - which was often the comforts of my house, where I could be naked and cry if I wanted to, and just sit and not move at all. I felt like i had a cloud inside of me, I could not feel my body, I couldn't feel any emotion, I could not feel any sunshine pass through. In the last post I spoke about how my mind stopped talking to myself and that is exactly what I meant, I didn't know what was happening, and when I tried understanding this, I felt complete silence and that scared me even more.
I don't think I spoke to anyone about it. I can't remember calling a friend asking them to listen to me, or sharing how I was feeling with my friends in Singapore or India and asking for help. The few people who knew I was "down" would suggest "doing" something active, go on a hike or trek, go watch a movie or eat out, get out of the house, but I just didn't feel like it. If I did go someplace, I would be happy about it when I was getting ready. But on the way there or upon reaching there, I would suddenly want to escape. And I have.
One evening, I dressed up and wore my pretty new shoes and dress and called a cab and went to a party a friend was hosting and reached the venue, got out of the cab, entered the apartment complex, climbed up and called my friend to let me into the building, and when he came out, I suddenly didn't feel good, but I continued to walk behind him after greeting him and when we reached his place, he opened the door to his house and I heard the sounds of a roaring party - and I wanted to run, and i froze, he looked at me and asked me what happened, I told him I couldn't walk in and I didn't want to come to the party anymore, he looked at me and asked me if I was sure and if I really badly didn't want to walk in, then when I said yes, he shrugged his shoulders and said ok and walked in leaving me standing there. I turned back and called the elevator to go back down. At that point I wanted to vanish, to turn in to dust and to cease to exist. I don't think I could wait until I was in the cab to start crying, I broke down as soon as I stepped out of the building and all the way home and then through the night.
I don't think my friends, those who knew I was not myself, understood the gravity of the matter. Everyone has good days and bad days. Everyone has happy days and sad days, everyone has up days and down days, but i for two years had only sad, bad, and down days. And they thought this was something I could snap out of it I wanted to and that I was not making enough of an effort or that I was indulging myself with this drama because i like being this way. I wish I could have told them to exchange places with me for only a day to feel the helplessness and the silence I was feeling.
I dreaded talking to my parents especially my mother, for she can know from the sound of my voice if i had slept well or not, or if I was tired or happy or sad. She just knew and I was so scared that she would know that I haven't slept in many days and that I lay awake in bed thinking what is the point of life and the point of existing like this. I would usually cover my mouth every time a whimper was about to come through or mute the microphone and screech and when that sound was out of my body, I would un-mute and speak back, hoping she hadn't noticed that I was not saying anything for 2 seconds. Thankfully she did not, or maybe if she had had, I would have coped with it a little better knowing that someone in the world cares. There were nights, I would start walking back home from work and walk on endlessly, be in front of my house and turn back and walk to the opposite end for another twenty minutes before finally being exhausted and making my way home nevertheless. Yoga and the comforts or the security of my home, are the two things that kept me safe - without them I might have done something drastic to myself.
One day at work, I felt as though I was going to get hit by a huge surge of that unknowing weird feeling of having a deep pit in my stomach as I was writing an innocuous email. And so just in time, I got up and ran to the washroom, locked myself in a cubicle and sobbed and heaved for air in between and sobbed a little bit more with that additional breath and then stopped again. I must have been there for a good thirty minutes. I got out, washed my face, walked to the barista, got myself a coffee, looked up the phone number of the employee assistance program and dialled them. I had my coffee in hand by then and I calmed myself down and rehearsed my lines so I don't break down when someone picks up the phone. But when the lady came online on the other end, my voice quivered and i stammered and almost cried. I remember sitting down and telling myself to tell her what I had rehearsed and i did. Eventually they connected me to a therapist. I went to therapy for a bit which resulted in much needed release about things I didn't know I was still holding onto. And I realised how badly I needed to say these things, and have my therapist ask me the right questions, those prompts, that re-assurance where they are not judging me or feel the need to solve my issues or push me to "cheer up" and see the bright side of things. Just having this person listen to what I was saying and just sitting with me while i went through these emotions, I would cry and then laugh and then sob immediately after and be quiet all of a sudden and then after a couple of minutes break down again. I was like a mad woman. Those sessions helped and after a bit, I was strong enough to cope with the daily chores of living - of waking up, of eating, of bathing, of dressing up - I was slowly able to do these without being interrupted every five minutes by my own self breaking down.
And finally I think, when I went to London and Italy in 2016, I felt a little bit of my old self revive. Especially after Italy, I could look up at the sky or far out in the ocean and feel a sense of i'm ok, I can do this, or show my face to the sun and smile in it's warmth. I believe that a lot of my love for italy comes from the fact that i started to heal then. But when I came back to Singapore, I slowly saw myself slip into that old pattern again of life seeming meaningless. I should have known then that Singapore was not nourishing my soul. In fact, December of 2015 i did not even go home, I chose to stay in Singapore, because I did not have a home to go to, my parents were in the process of moving cities, and were going through a huge transition themselves and I didn't join them - maybe in hindsight I should have, for their sake and mine.
Instead I stayed on in Singapore, made myself some dinner, poured myself a glass of wine and watched some movie and celebrated the new year by myself. It might have been the stupidest thing to have done. But at that point it is all i wanted to do, I could not get myself to doll up and go out and feel lonely amongst 50,000 people, I would rather feel lonely at home where if the sudden bout of sadness hit be I could hit the bed and hide under my blanket and hope for it to go away. I don't think I ever contemplated suicide with an active need to harm myself or end my life - but I still wanted it to be over, I didn't want to go on at all. I loved weekends, I would wake up and just lay in bed, then wake up and make some tea and then come back and lay in bed. My house back then had these huge ceiling to floor windows and white curtains and the bed was facing these windows, and i would open them and watch the curtains flutter away in the wind and lie there, expressionless and watch the clock hands change from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4pm. And then finally will myself to get up again and make myself an evening cup of tea. I would put something random together for lunch and dinner when I felt like, if I didn't feel like anything, I would drink a hot glass of milk, which has always been and will always be something that has comforted me the most after a hot cup of chai.
I don't know what else to write, except that I don't feel like that anymore. I don't know what changed, I did not do anything consciously to make it go away. Or maybe I did, I changed roles in my company, I moved houses to a more lively part of town, I started going to Bali a lot more and felt more happy, I forgave myself for my past a little bit, I told myself when I woke up with fright at night to go back to sleep and that I can deal with what I'm feeling the next morning, instead of sitting up in bed at night and crying. I reconnected with some old friends, I went to India a bit more and connected with my roots. In fact the picture at the beginning of this post is from a trip to Jim Corbett, a national park in north India and I, along with a very close friend drove from Delhi, it took us 6 hours and we chatted and kept silent and chatted and kept silent, watched the views go by, the fields, the forests, the small villages and the rural towns, we stopped for chai and ate paranthas for breakfast and sang songs. That was like medicine to my grieving soul. I picked up painting as a hobby. I walked through the same streets I used to walk by slowly feeling a little better. I baked not out of sadness but out of love and happiness. I fell in love again.
Sometimes I wonder if the failure of a particular relationship was the cause of that entire duration, but maybe it was only the trigger to what I was feeling deep down even before this person walked in and walked out of my life. Because when I thought about him I did not feel particularly deeply sad after a while, I was upset but that was not the reason for the immense amounts of suffering I was going through, so him alone was definitely not the reason. A lot of my friends thought that I was only heartbroken and hence needed the usual "let's cheer her up post this breakup" tactic. There's an ad campaign about Depression, which says "dobara poocho" which means, "ask again". And I think it's beautiful. How many of us ask "how are you?" with an actual intention to know and to care about the answer. The indifference and the offhandedness I have encountered by some of my closest friends through this phase of mine has hurt me of course, but it has also made me a lot more empathetic to what others might be feeling and maybe understanding them or just being with them while they process what they are feeling and having them know that I am here if they need help or need a heart that will listen without judging or the need to solve problems.
Depression is not something you can will away, it is not something that you can tackle by listing down all that you should be grateful for in life. Because even in those terrible months i never lost sight of the things I am grateful for, in fact if anything, being grateful helped me get through those years. But that by itself is not something that will heal you. I wish I knew what healed me so I could share it, other than the stuff I have already listed and use that to my advantage if this darkness attacks me again. In another therapy session I attended, this lovely lady, asked me to speak to myself, by imagining myself to be this 5 year old child full of the fears I am feeling. I was to talk to her like I would talk to a child who is scared and needs comforting. It was difficult initially because we are so used to not treating ourselves with any kind of kindness, at least I am not. I couldn't muster the courage to comfort this child, this part of me that was so scared. The therapist kept prompting me and eventually i could speak to this other being. It might sound quite bizarre but it did help and it was also interesting to see the immense amounts of resistance i had towards treating myself with care. Eventually in another therapy session I realised that I really do not want to be in Singapore and be in the job I was doing and breaking out of that was my only path to happiness. So I set myself a timeline along with my therapist and decided to stick to that timeline. And I almost did not stick to it, which is when life took the turn it did and forced me to take time off anyway.
I don't know how to end this post. So, here's a song I often sing for myself:
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी ना धूप चुनने ना चाओं
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी किसी और ठीके ना पाऊँ
कैसी तेरी खुदगरक्षी ना धूप चुने ना चाओं
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी किसी और ठीके ना पाऊँ
बन लिया अपना पैगम्बर तर लिया तू सात समुन्दर
फिर भी सूखा मन के अंदर क्यों रह आज्ञा
रे कबीरा मान जा
रे फकीरा मान जा
आजा तुझको पुकारे तेरी परछाइयाँ
रे कबीरा मान जा
रे फकीरा मान जा
कैसा तू है निर्मोही कैसा हरजाइयां
Kabira, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Yeh Jaawani Hain Deewani
On those days, what kept me going was my yoga practice - it is the only reason I woke up every day at 6am and still made it to the 7 am class. Usually at the end of a yoga class I am raring to go, I get dressed and head out of the studio and carpe diem. But during that time, I wanted for class to never end, so I could stay in the asanas that comforted me or stay in the bliss of Shavasana. But time waits for no one and the five minute shavasana had to end and I had to roll over and get up and get going. How I managed to get any work done is a miracle. In fact i think I was the most productive then, I was in this zone of just doing and not thinking because if I sat to think or had nothing to do, a fear would engulf me and I would be in tears immediately.
I didn't know why I was feeling like this - and I also tried to guilt myself into feeling pathetic about thinking the way I was thinking. Because look at all that God had blessed me with, how dare i feel this way when there were people dying in civil wars and kids being murdered or starving to death and women being raped. But the guilt about the way I felt only made it worse. At any point in time, all I wanted to do is run, I wanted to leave my body and run - i didn't want to be me, I didn't want to be anyone. I tried confronting myself about it a millions times, but I would just feel so wretched that I would have no strength to stand even. Many a time, I have sat down where I was standing or stood instead of walking and just stopped so I could get a hold of myself and take a few deep breaths and reach a safer place - which was often the comforts of my house, where I could be naked and cry if I wanted to, and just sit and not move at all. I felt like i had a cloud inside of me, I could not feel my body, I couldn't feel any emotion, I could not feel any sunshine pass through. In the last post I spoke about how my mind stopped talking to myself and that is exactly what I meant, I didn't know what was happening, and when I tried understanding this, I felt complete silence and that scared me even more.
I don't think I spoke to anyone about it. I can't remember calling a friend asking them to listen to me, or sharing how I was feeling with my friends in Singapore or India and asking for help. The few people who knew I was "down" would suggest "doing" something active, go on a hike or trek, go watch a movie or eat out, get out of the house, but I just didn't feel like it. If I did go someplace, I would be happy about it when I was getting ready. But on the way there or upon reaching there, I would suddenly want to escape. And I have.
One evening, I dressed up and wore my pretty new shoes and dress and called a cab and went to a party a friend was hosting and reached the venue, got out of the cab, entered the apartment complex, climbed up and called my friend to let me into the building, and when he came out, I suddenly didn't feel good, but I continued to walk behind him after greeting him and when we reached his place, he opened the door to his house and I heard the sounds of a roaring party - and I wanted to run, and i froze, he looked at me and asked me what happened, I told him I couldn't walk in and I didn't want to come to the party anymore, he looked at me and asked me if I was sure and if I really badly didn't want to walk in, then when I said yes, he shrugged his shoulders and said ok and walked in leaving me standing there. I turned back and called the elevator to go back down. At that point I wanted to vanish, to turn in to dust and to cease to exist. I don't think I could wait until I was in the cab to start crying, I broke down as soon as I stepped out of the building and all the way home and then through the night.
I don't think my friends, those who knew I was not myself, understood the gravity of the matter. Everyone has good days and bad days. Everyone has happy days and sad days, everyone has up days and down days, but i for two years had only sad, bad, and down days. And they thought this was something I could snap out of it I wanted to and that I was not making enough of an effort or that I was indulging myself with this drama because i like being this way. I wish I could have told them to exchange places with me for only a day to feel the helplessness and the silence I was feeling.
I dreaded talking to my parents especially my mother, for she can know from the sound of my voice if i had slept well or not, or if I was tired or happy or sad. She just knew and I was so scared that she would know that I haven't slept in many days and that I lay awake in bed thinking what is the point of life and the point of existing like this. I would usually cover my mouth every time a whimper was about to come through or mute the microphone and screech and when that sound was out of my body, I would un-mute and speak back, hoping she hadn't noticed that I was not saying anything for 2 seconds. Thankfully she did not, or maybe if she had had, I would have coped with it a little better knowing that someone in the world cares. There were nights, I would start walking back home from work and walk on endlessly, be in front of my house and turn back and walk to the opposite end for another twenty minutes before finally being exhausted and making my way home nevertheless. Yoga and the comforts or the security of my home, are the two things that kept me safe - without them I might have done something drastic to myself.
One day at work, I felt as though I was going to get hit by a huge surge of that unknowing weird feeling of having a deep pit in my stomach as I was writing an innocuous email. And so just in time, I got up and ran to the washroom, locked myself in a cubicle and sobbed and heaved for air in between and sobbed a little bit more with that additional breath and then stopped again. I must have been there for a good thirty minutes. I got out, washed my face, walked to the barista, got myself a coffee, looked up the phone number of the employee assistance program and dialled them. I had my coffee in hand by then and I calmed myself down and rehearsed my lines so I don't break down when someone picks up the phone. But when the lady came online on the other end, my voice quivered and i stammered and almost cried. I remember sitting down and telling myself to tell her what I had rehearsed and i did. Eventually they connected me to a therapist. I went to therapy for a bit which resulted in much needed release about things I didn't know I was still holding onto. And I realised how badly I needed to say these things, and have my therapist ask me the right questions, those prompts, that re-assurance where they are not judging me or feel the need to solve my issues or push me to "cheer up" and see the bright side of things. Just having this person listen to what I was saying and just sitting with me while i went through these emotions, I would cry and then laugh and then sob immediately after and be quiet all of a sudden and then after a couple of minutes break down again. I was like a mad woman. Those sessions helped and after a bit, I was strong enough to cope with the daily chores of living - of waking up, of eating, of bathing, of dressing up - I was slowly able to do these without being interrupted every five minutes by my own self breaking down.
And finally I think, when I went to London and Italy in 2016, I felt a little bit of my old self revive. Especially after Italy, I could look up at the sky or far out in the ocean and feel a sense of i'm ok, I can do this, or show my face to the sun and smile in it's warmth. I believe that a lot of my love for italy comes from the fact that i started to heal then. But when I came back to Singapore, I slowly saw myself slip into that old pattern again of life seeming meaningless. I should have known then that Singapore was not nourishing my soul. In fact, December of 2015 i did not even go home, I chose to stay in Singapore, because I did not have a home to go to, my parents were in the process of moving cities, and were going through a huge transition themselves and I didn't join them - maybe in hindsight I should have, for their sake and mine.
Instead I stayed on in Singapore, made myself some dinner, poured myself a glass of wine and watched some movie and celebrated the new year by myself. It might have been the stupidest thing to have done. But at that point it is all i wanted to do, I could not get myself to doll up and go out and feel lonely amongst 50,000 people, I would rather feel lonely at home where if the sudden bout of sadness hit be I could hit the bed and hide under my blanket and hope for it to go away. I don't think I ever contemplated suicide with an active need to harm myself or end my life - but I still wanted it to be over, I didn't want to go on at all. I loved weekends, I would wake up and just lay in bed, then wake up and make some tea and then come back and lay in bed. My house back then had these huge ceiling to floor windows and white curtains and the bed was facing these windows, and i would open them and watch the curtains flutter away in the wind and lie there, expressionless and watch the clock hands change from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4pm. And then finally will myself to get up again and make myself an evening cup of tea. I would put something random together for lunch and dinner when I felt like, if I didn't feel like anything, I would drink a hot glass of milk, which has always been and will always be something that has comforted me the most after a hot cup of chai.
I don't know what else to write, except that I don't feel like that anymore. I don't know what changed, I did not do anything consciously to make it go away. Or maybe I did, I changed roles in my company, I moved houses to a more lively part of town, I started going to Bali a lot more and felt more happy, I forgave myself for my past a little bit, I told myself when I woke up with fright at night to go back to sleep and that I can deal with what I'm feeling the next morning, instead of sitting up in bed at night and crying. I reconnected with some old friends, I went to India a bit more and connected with my roots. In fact the picture at the beginning of this post is from a trip to Jim Corbett, a national park in north India and I, along with a very close friend drove from Delhi, it took us 6 hours and we chatted and kept silent and chatted and kept silent, watched the views go by, the fields, the forests, the small villages and the rural towns, we stopped for chai and ate paranthas for breakfast and sang songs. That was like medicine to my grieving soul. I picked up painting as a hobby. I walked through the same streets I used to walk by slowly feeling a little better. I baked not out of sadness but out of love and happiness. I fell in love again.
Sometimes I wonder if the failure of a particular relationship was the cause of that entire duration, but maybe it was only the trigger to what I was feeling deep down even before this person walked in and walked out of my life. Because when I thought about him I did not feel particularly deeply sad after a while, I was upset but that was not the reason for the immense amounts of suffering I was going through, so him alone was definitely not the reason. A lot of my friends thought that I was only heartbroken and hence needed the usual "let's cheer her up post this breakup" tactic. There's an ad campaign about Depression, which says "dobara poocho" which means, "ask again". And I think it's beautiful. How many of us ask "how are you?" with an actual intention to know and to care about the answer. The indifference and the offhandedness I have encountered by some of my closest friends through this phase of mine has hurt me of course, but it has also made me a lot more empathetic to what others might be feeling and maybe understanding them or just being with them while they process what they are feeling and having them know that I am here if they need help or need a heart that will listen without judging or the need to solve problems.
Depression is not something you can will away, it is not something that you can tackle by listing down all that you should be grateful for in life. Because even in those terrible months i never lost sight of the things I am grateful for, in fact if anything, being grateful helped me get through those years. But that by itself is not something that will heal you. I wish I knew what healed me so I could share it, other than the stuff I have already listed and use that to my advantage if this darkness attacks me again. In another therapy session I attended, this lovely lady, asked me to speak to myself, by imagining myself to be this 5 year old child full of the fears I am feeling. I was to talk to her like I would talk to a child who is scared and needs comforting. It was difficult initially because we are so used to not treating ourselves with any kind of kindness, at least I am not. I couldn't muster the courage to comfort this child, this part of me that was so scared. The therapist kept prompting me and eventually i could speak to this other being. It might sound quite bizarre but it did help and it was also interesting to see the immense amounts of resistance i had towards treating myself with care. Eventually in another therapy session I realised that I really do not want to be in Singapore and be in the job I was doing and breaking out of that was my only path to happiness. So I set myself a timeline along with my therapist and decided to stick to that timeline. And I almost did not stick to it, which is when life took the turn it did and forced me to take time off anyway.
I don't know how to end this post. So, here's a song I often sing for myself:
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी ना धूप चुनने ना चाओं
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी किसी और ठीके ना पाऊँ
कैसी तेरी खुदगरक्षी ना धूप चुने ना चाओं
कैसी तेरी खुदगर्ज़ी किसी और ठीके ना पाऊँ
बन लिया अपना पैगम्बर तर लिया तू सात समुन्दर
फिर भी सूखा मन के अंदर क्यों रह आज्ञा
रे कबीरा मान जा
रे फकीरा मान जा
आजा तुझको पुकारे तेरी परछाइयाँ
रे कबीरा मान जा
रे फकीरा मान जा
कैसा तू है निर्मोही कैसा हरजाइयां
Kabira, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Yeh Jaawani Hain Deewani
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