“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds”
Laurell K. Hamilton
Some feelings are like old friends. Depression is like that for me. Sometimes I try hard to not remember it; not remind myself of the darkness, the loneliness… but that’s a huge struggle.
Depression is not feeling sad.
It is frustrating when people abuse the word depression. Depression happens when something cuts you deeply from within for so long that you stop seeing the light, you stop feeling hope, you stop laughing out loud from your heart, and you forget your smile. You forget how you looked, you felt, what you wanted, how you loved, and spoke and most importantly, you forget how you lived.
Your memory gets foggy, extinct, and dark. Even when you try to recollect, all you see is darkness, and when you force yourself more to recollect, suddenly you start feeling claustrophobic as if all the walls are closing in on you in this dark room, and you are all alone. I panic. Yes, this is exactly how I feel.
As they say, depression is living in a body that fights to survive, with a mind that tries to give up.
My arms start searching for another to hold, someone to say hey I’m here, someone to hug me tight. Suddenly, I open my eyes and I find myself in the middle of a gathering of people, laughing, having fun, and asking, ‘Hey Kavitha! What are you suddenly thinking about?’ Then I fake a smile. I am good at that now. Faking happiness! I shut myself down from exposing my emotions to people, keeping my problems to myself.
I just play loud music on my headphones so that I stop hearing the loud silence in my mind. I keep my listening activated to ensure that my mind doesn’t wander towards darkness so that I don’t end up in a room full of dark memories. It is this dark room from which I struggle to retrieve myself but when I do try to come out, it suddenly feels as if the room is closing in on me. You don’t understand depression until you can’t stand your own presence in an empty room. Since this is exhausting, I keep talking to people. Keep me engaged. It’s a huge effort to breathe every moment, to cross every day un-hurt.
I wanted to talk about it for ages now, I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell, and I wanted to shout about it. But all I could do was whisper “I’m fine” or “I’m OK” or “I’m good”.
We should speak of how we feel, I hope we speak soon and seek the help we need. Because only we know how we feel, it is not possible for the rest to understand us. It is different to imagine a room Vs. walking through it. Being inside it. Feeling it. Initially, it feels like I don’t want to be here, but what scares me is getting comfortable in it and engulfing me in it. I have lost myself in the darkness for years in the past. I don’t want to get engulfed in that terrible, loneliness again. Evil loneliness, where you forget your existence, forget emotions, forget ambitions, and all you do is live like a pre-programmed robot.
The loneliness feels like itching your own wound, destroying yourself. On the outside, you look the same, smiling and pretending it’s so much work to put up that show but inside it’s a different story. You start to hate yourself. You are so lonely, that, even if you are with someone you love, you won’t be fully present at that moment.
People assume that they know what’s going on with other people, but they don’t. You never know what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Everyone’s fighting a battle that you can’t see.
We all have blind spots, and you know it’s you. It feels like something’s wrong with you, it’s also exhausting and helpless. A void, when existence takes so much energy, you want to sink into the hole of nothing when no one talks to you and don’t have to smile or talk or be. Or just invalidate our feelings. Anyway, it’s familiar, we’ve been here before, get out of it but the getting out part becomes the room that you remember, but aren’t in. That’s what gets scary.
For instance, how much ever I love the moon, looking at the night sky feels like a giant black hole swindling towards me, while I love the sunrise or sunset, gazing at the sky feels as if I am space walking without a harness, getting lost and lost far into it, similarly, my love for the ocean is unending, and yet when I stare at it, or even look at an image, it feels as if a huge tornado from within the ocean is going to swirl me inside it.
Being in a life where depression swirls, it’s a sharp pain and an overwhelming numbness. Even in this room of depression, the only hope of redemption is through love.
Every child deserves unhurt, un-dwindling, un-scarred pure love and so does every adult. The only difference is the adults may learn self-love or masking as a way out.
What did I choose? Both. I struggle for Self-Love while I beautifully wear my mask. Because being loved takes work too. Many times, I don’t have it in me to be loved by anyone right now. Life has always been a tightrope and I wish for it to be a featherbed for a moment. When I could just breathe out, I feel, like I had been holding my breath forever. I must breathe; I want and need to. Just breathe.
And this is how depression feels to me.
This is just one of many ways that people with mental health issues feel or undergo. Mental health issues are not only depression, but it’s also a vast spectrum like ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, and eating disorders are a few to list. Many times, we miss our children, young women, married women, mothers, queer and Dalits who undergo lifelong oppression. Even men and especially those who recognize the toxic parenting that they underwent in their childhood and trying to come out of that trauma. Mental health issue needs to be acknowledged, treated, and healed.
We need love, care and people who empathize with us and in case if we don’t have those acquaintances then we should ensure that we choose the right people in our lives and keep them close to us. A warm hug to all those who need it. Happy Healing.
About the author:
Kavitha Pandian
Kavitha Pandian is working in an IT company in the USA as a practice manager. She runs many initiatives including the Save Tamilnadu Farmer, Our Village Our Responsibility, and Adopt a Village and extends financial support and scholarship to underprivileged children for education, and betterment of rural life and has supported the people of Tamil Nadu during major natural disasters including Gaja and Covid. She has received many awards including ‘The Women Achievers Award’ by FeTNA, USA, in 2022. She also was felicitated by the District Collector, Virudhunagar during the 75th Independence Day celebrations, 2022, for her work towards infrastructure.
