I suffer from depression and IT'S OK!

I don’t want your sympathy; I also don’t need you to understand the reason why? Don’t try to, because I don’t understand myself. 

All I need is for you to be there, understand this is what it is and don’t tell me it’s nothing. 

There’s been a lump in my throat and a heavy heart in the last few days. It grows and I find it difficult to breathe or swallow when I hear people say “Wish he’d spoken to someone…” “But he had everything, he was so successful…” “Why did you do this Sushant?...” “Hope you’re in a happier place now…”

After a painful sleepless night, I’m going to attempt removing a part of the lump in my throat and put it down on paper. I’ve started feeling the world is becoming a difficult place to live in, but I will reason with myself every day. 

Even as I write, I’m scared and feel vulnerable about exposing myself on social media cause now people will know, my relatives will know, my parents will not be spared embarrassing questions, I’ll start getting messages asking if I’m alright. – Yes, I am, thank you. The reason I’m writing this is…

If there’s only one person out there who finds solace in knowing that I also go through what you go through, less or more, I don’t care about the 100 others who’ll scoff or feel this post is unrequired. 

If there’s one person who feels, they need to reach out to somebody, I’ll not mind putting myself or my parents through judgment. 

I don’t claim to be an expert, in knowing what you’re going through, cause there’s no set formula. I or anyone else will probably never know, how difficult and painful what you’re going through is, but I’d like to share something that helped me a little.  

8 years ago, I was diagnosed with depression and bordering bipolar disorder.

After spending years crying on bathroom floors, being locked up, finding solace in alcohol and pills, being on the brink of committing suicide many times, just not being able to breathe because of the heavy immovable rock on my chest and my own vomit suffocating me, feeling low for unexplainable reasons,  I can now finally put a face to my demon. 

Way back when this started my then partner, didn’t understand and often accused me of attention seeking. He also thought, if I was to succeed in one of my freak attempts, that would put him in grave danger. So instead of seeing me through he decided to walk away from it. Today, I understand that it can be very difficult being around people like us.  

Having said that, I’m grateful that I have friends, who break my door down if they haven’t heard from me in over 4 days. Who’ve extracted me from the dent in my sofa, created by days of no movement. Who clean up after me, every single time. Thank you, only cause you are there, I’m here. 

After many long years of battling with something I don’t fully understand even today, I’ve realized – no, it doesn’t go away, you can’t conquer it, you can only learn to deal with it. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. It’s a roulette. 

For years I grappled with: 

What is wrong with me, why can’t I just be normal? 

Nothing is wrong with me. It’s not me necessarily. Depression can be triggered due to genetics, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, an illness, a relationship spiralling downward, violence, sexual abuse, the moon or something as inane as change in weather.
Your genetic makeup influences how sensitive you are to stressful life events. When genetics, biology, and stressful life situations come together, it may result in depression– Know what you’re up against, it’s not you, my love! 

I was scared of being called a pyscho.                                 We all are, yes the so called normal ones too, who face no such mood irregularities. It’s a spectrum and we all fit in somewhere- along either ends or in the middle. But we’re all in there together!

After not being able to understand what was pulling me towards

wanting to destroy myself and everything around, I decided to seek professional help. It was not easy and needed an external push. Only you know what works best for you, but here I’m sharing that it worked for me. 

I’m also sharing all the reasons why I didn’t seek help initially, why I push friends away, even today. 

Why even today sometimes I feel shame, naked, vulnerable, judged and so sure that the world will never be a better place for me. 

Why seek help, I’m fine, it’ll go away:

We push everyone away, so hard and so far, that it becomes difficult for them to hear our silent cries. In such a situation an unbiased opinion from someone you’re paying to listen to you (as crude as it sounds) works in strange mysterious ways - just like the chemical imbalance. Yes, it may go away, but if it doesn’t, there’s no shame in therapy, look at it as just another stranger you’re talking to. 

“Why do you need to go to a therapist, tum pagal thodi na ho! Talk to me, aisa kya hai, hum hain na?!”

Pagal na ho jaon that’s why I’m going to a therapist. You may seek solace in one friend, and if it helps great, but if you find yourself stuck in a sad loop for days, weeks and most importantly without being able to understand WHY, then please seek help. 

Identifying a reason will help you address it, but for months if you “don’t know why” then you may not know by yourself – get up please…please just get up.

I’ve tried everything and it’s not helping.                         Earlier I used to lash out at my therapist, saying it’s been so many years and nothing is helping, not even therapy. But the fact, that I was alive lashing out at her, was proof that something was working, even if very slowly and only sublimely. 

It’s not for me, I can’t talk to a stranger.
It can get very difficult to find the right match. Someone that your heart and brain accept. Sometimes you meet someone at a bar or a friend’s house and you immediately hit it off and sometimes you move away after polite pleasantries. That’s what this is like!
I was first diagnosed when I was in college, I had to go through many therapists who didn’t match, who didn’t feel right, or make me feel better. I was giving up on the process till I found the right one and have stuck with her for many years now. 

For some of us, depression and other mental health conditions are episodic, which means that the symptoms come and go. Medications might be able to help manage symptoms, but the disorder may take a long time to go into suspension. Symptoms can also come back later on. 

Over the years, I’ve become irregular with my sessions and end up seeing my therapist only in SOS situations. Many therapists don’t take you back. Find the one that understands that it’s ok to keep falling off the radar. It’s going to be bloody hard but find the right one! If we can go through the process for a job, a partner, then we can do it for ourselves – it won’t be easy, I promise you that. 

Depression can be deep seeded so while, you may seek temporary help and feel better, please understand that regular sessions over years helps you get to the root of the problem and address it. Quick fixes only help in the then and now.

Please realize, it doesn’t go away. You only learn to deal with it better, then much better, then even better. You've had the courage to ask for help, celebrate being brave!

I also realized that while many are familiar with the term depression, not many understand it. Many times, after a suicide we get to hear things like: 

Wish he/she had reached out to somebody. 

That’s very rarely possible. Only if you’re aware at a very

early stage that you’re slipping you can reach out to friends.

But once it’s overtaken you, there’s no way you can lift your head off the floor, forget reaching out to anyone! 

Awareness that you’re standing on the edge, and you need to reach out and hold someone’s hand, comes with a lot of therapy and working on yourself.
And the process of going into therapy or seeking help is stained with the shame of being perceived as mad, an attention seeker or just being weak. – Catch 22! But fuck, It’s ok – go into therapy, do it for yourself and you don’t have to tell anyone. 

He/She had cut off from everyone, it was bound to happen.           Yes, we cut off from people, because our senses of rejection are heightened. the chemical imbalance in our head makes us disinterested in everything, feel so ugly, unwanted like a burden, that ending it all seems like the happiest, easiest thing to do. I got tired of crying over the same things with my friends. I could almost sense a “oh no! here she goes again” theme playing. So, I decided to distant myself from them. I sort professional help, cause I knew ‘here I go again, but I need to fix this, only then can I be someone, who I would be comfortable being around. Only then, will I not feel like a burden’. It wasn’t easy, but with a little help I did it and so can you. 

For those of you who feel helpless sometimes and don’t know what to do when we shut ourselves out, keep trying is all I can say, don’t give up on us.
How can you know if we’re slipping? Sometimes, and like I said there’s no set formula, but sometimes there’s feelings of sadness, helplessness, worthlessness, or emptiness, overeating or loss of appetite, insomnia or sleeping too much, restlessness, irritability, a feeling of impending doom or danger, lack of energy, distancing yourself from others, feeling numbness or lacking empathy, extreme mood swings, thoughts of hurting yourself or others, being unable to carry out day-to-day activities , hearing voices in your head, alcohol or drug misuse, an inability to concentrate. 

Me and some of my friends I’ve spoken to have ticked most of the above boxes. Sometimes, some friends ask me to fuck off, saying I’m overreacting and they are not depressed. I retreat, but I’ll always be looking out for you. 

Cause I’d rather be paranoid than see you spiral to a point of no return.  

Hornbill - it's all about loving your family.

Amidst all that’s happening in the world there are stories which make you believe that goodness still prevails and the sharp edges of the world can be molded by the moistness of love.  

A close friend who is a passionate birder, over gin and tonic, once shared a beautiful story, which left me mushy in the vacuum of my cerebral.

I learnt from him, a story about compassion between two different species which led to saving lives.

A male Malabar Grey Hornbill died when it was hit by a vehicle in the Puliyilappara region in Athirappilly. Now if this was a part of an Ekta Kapoor series, we all know, there’s not much to worry about, cause the Hornbill will be reborn in another part of the country, he will avenge his death, then find his kids and live happily ever after with their mother.

But this particular Hornbill had no such luck.

Hornbills build their nest in tree cavities or rock crevasses that are sealed shut except for a narrow, vertical slit. After the female has made herself comfortable in a good nesting site the male brings lumps of soil moistened with his saliva and sometimes augmented with droppings, chewed wood, bark and other detritus. Together they build a wall of mud: he from the outside and she from the inside. The soil is applied with the side of the mouth. Once the wall is complete, the female is sealed inside the nest with only a small hole to the outside through which to get food and communicate.

The slit is about a half inch wide: wide enough to pass food through but narrow enough to seal out potential predators.

The male Hornbill constantly makes feeding trips to and fro, carrying geckos, seeds, insects, frogs, slugs, berries and occasionally snakes in it his bill, to provide enough nourishment to the female all through her incubation period which could last from 25 to 45 days. The males of some large forest species swallow fruits and regurgitate them one at a time to feed the female.

This feeding trip can increase up to 70 times a day, when the chicks are born.

During their time in the nesting, the female and her young are totally dependent on the male for food. If something happens to him, or he doesn’t return, the female doesn’t break out. Initially believing that he’s in hiding due to a looming danger, she stays put to protect her little ones.

Eventually without nourishment for days, she and the chicks are now too weak to break the mud wall and often the whole family perishes.

                              

Now imagine what happened when the Male Malabar Grey Hornbill was hit by the car while finding food for his birdlings?

Read the moving story here on - Mathrubhumi news