I can’t possibly talk about my past experience with depression without heaving a sigh of relief that it’s over. It’s challenging to talk about it without feeling its darkness hovering over me. But as these dark clouds have lifted, so has my hatred of it.
Depression was a part of me from standard 10 and continued for almost 6 years. My take on that- it was the horrible! It was painful! My whole body ached with disappointment! Here’s the thing, physical ailment, no matter how horrible, is visible and usually has a certain time bracket to heal whereas mental ailment is neither visible nor one can know the time it takes to heal. The reason of so many suicides due to mental illness is that people have no idea of the time it will take to heal, they become so miserable that they can’t see any hint of light in the near future. The only reason I am writing about this is because I have recovered and I can see the light.
I suffered from depression at an age when even the idea of mental health was remote to us coupled with a bunch of kids trying to figure out what has happened to me.
But now, I try to look beyond that misery and I realized it was not all bad. Yes the process was excruciating but when I finally recovered, I gained additional sensibilities.
Initially I resigned myself to aim for things that every common privileged man aims for- science in school, engineering in college, software engineering as career and if I still have some patience left, an MBA degree and a corporate life after that. I honestly never asked what I wanted and even if I had asked myself that, I wouldn’t have got a solid answer because at the end of the day, we all are mere kids trying to decide upon a career to which we probably have to stick for the next 20–30 years.
But after depression teaching me what made me miserable and what didn’t, I eliminated those career prospects that bring pain and went for those which might be tough at times, but I magically have the strength to submit to its beauty. And this is how I dropped out of my engineering college and went for English Literature. Perhaps everyone doesn’t get that second chance in life that I got.
I know it was a good decision because within a semester I recovered from depression. One who has been failing at everything she pretty much does, suddenly for the first time in her life, stood first in her semester exams. It was no less than magic!
Gradually I became attentive to my needs, I asked questions like what I want, what my heart approves of, in terms of career or love prospects and because of a degree of misery still subsiding somewhere deep in my heart, I still got the answers.
In a study about midlife-crisis, 44% in their 20s reported a midlife crisis, 49% of those in their 30s and 53% of those in their 40s.Most people begin to reinvent their lives in their mid-thirties or forties. I got this taken care of early in life and it manifested in a life better than I could have dreamed of!
In my years of engineering, I developed an immense amount of fear for almost everything. I am still working on it. However more challenging was the obvious by-product of depression- Generalized Anxiety disorder. In simple words, it’s just heightened anxiety. The symptoms manifest differently, some have panic attacks, some have bruxism, or headache, some experience shortness of breath, heart palpitations and the worst of all, a burning knot in the chest sitting at the pit of lungs (this is the best I can describe it). I always loathed this burning knot until one day I realized that apart from making me uncomfortable, it has another function. When I think of or do something against my wishes, this burning knot goes up in flames and when I think or do something that my heart approves of, it stays calm. It’s basically like a security alert thing, if something enters your ecosystem that is not good for you, the alarm goes off else it stays calm. It still hurts but I still love the immediate response system it creates in my body.
Additionally, it has a reminder system which makes me take a break in the entire hustle-bustle of life and reflect on what should be and what shouldn’t be. Every day I stop, shut down my activities and brain, sit, meditate, reflect on the reason why I am meditating (recently I unveiled in an epiphany that my only purpose is to b happy) and how I should conduct my life. With the added bonus of meditation and from reading a number of articles, I discovered that our breath is controlled by our emotions, so why not turn it around and use our breath to control our emotions, mood etc. So whenever I feel rushed, I just stop and take deep long breaths, enough to throw it back on track.
Today I have successfully recovered from my depression and my anxiety is almost gone and I am ecstatic of the way my life turned out. In fact I am happy! And when I say happy, I don’t mean the temporary thing that once in a while visits you. I am happy because I created that happiness in my mind to fill the void that misery left behind. Depression and anxiety paved the way of my life which I love today!
