What am I fighting for? I ask myself every day. I haven’t always been so melancholic. I have had a blissful childhood and with God’s grace, as they say, everything in and about my family is well. However it’s not always about being physically well, is it? I have wondered, why they do not understand, when a person is suffering from any physical ailment they seek help of a professional, this is considered as a healthy practise but when it comes to mental health, everyone is so quiet about it. They only care about mental health when famous people die due to such, but their own people, someone they know, their mental health may be in tatters, is literally screaming for help and dying in their face, to that they are so ignorant, they don’t even care. This is not personal attack on anyone. It is just me talking about the blues and how to get through.
I have often been told that it is okay to feel sad once in a while. I assist that saying. I have always thought of it as a cycle. Just how one cannot be happy all the time similarly one cannot be sad all the time. It was only a bad day not a bad life. You won’t always wake up in the morning with such a heavy heart. There will be days when you will fall in love again, with yourself, you will be your shelter in storm. Till then don’t lose hope. Hang in tight. I am telling this based on my first hand experience, depression can be cruel and it is not a joke. Never did anyone beg to die. All live and all die. However, as time passes they start to hate the ground they walk on. They start losing hope and their faith on themselves starts trembling. Yet, they continue to ride till they fall off. Some say it is not even worth the ride but I say, don’t regret something that makes you happy even if it is in a sad way. I am starting to learn that when someone says ‘I want to die’ it doesn’t necessarily mean they are a holding a gun to their head or ready to jump from a forty story building’. ‘I want to die’ can be same as ‘look at me. I’m in so much pain. I am failing my classes on purpose, it has been five days since I last showered’. ‘I want to die’ could be the very definition of I do not care about anything anymore, and I need someone to help me’ and of course you’d have to help them because they are tired of life, they are literally a breakdown away from death. At the very least—send them to someone they can trust. Send them to seek help without shunning the idea.
Truth be told you never get over the pain quite literally, you only learn to grow around it, the trick is to fool the brain into thinking it is happy and everything is fine. It is not toxic, it is important to do so otherwise you will be drowning in your sorrow. One can only give you the hand, you have to pull yourself out of this smothering abyss.
By Nabanita Misra
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