Depression

It hit me out of nowhere in 2015. 

I wish I could add in a simile to explain its unpredictable nature. I wish saying," it hits you like a ramming vehicle in the blindspot of your car's mirrors" or "its hit you like a thunderbolt" could capture the abruptness and the gravitas of the matter. But it doesn't.

Just like being diagnosed with it doesn't capture its essence from an outside perspective. They'll say you should have seen it coming, the move/the break-up/ the change of work/city/environment/fields/months/days/minutes/seconds should have been a blatant indicator. At the risk of sounding just too dense, it's not.

They'll say you have it better than him/her/it/them. They'll say it's temporary. With each passing breathe escaping their vocals, they will make it so diminutive and guilt you into feeling miserable, for being ungrateful for your existence, lifestyle, materials and stature and privilege. 

They'll provide hollow unsolicited advice like "feel better" , "be happy" , "don't be sad", "don't be a loser/ wuss", " mingle/ excercise/eat/ breathe/sleep more", "take a vacation" and condition you into believing that what you suffer from is nothing but a made up story, a first-world-problem, if you will.

And just like that, they'll abandon you "She's too weird man, always weeping", "he acting pricey and not responding to my texts/calls", "how long is she going to be a partypooper?", " I've tried, he doesn't want to be helped, so to hell with him!"

Wrapped in sheen, shine and monochrome and packaged with a label of self-care, they will market things to soak your hair, skin, fingers and toes in blatantly displaying that 

your crisis is stemming from your physical flaws.

In the end, it'll be as it was before. You. Alone. Solitary. Until you see that the key lies in you. That only you can turn "you against you" to " you for yourself". Whether you have a companion, a drug, a help, or a device...in the end, your war is against yourself and you're your only teammate.

And in the aftermath, there will be no victory calls, no celebrations. There will be no medals and scars to show, no numbers to gloat off of. But there will be a victor, a survivor, a story to tell, a lesson to share. A story that will perhaps help those in the same darkness that once engulfed you. A story that will make u feel that every new battle you face is easier to take on after this feat. So fight it with all your heart, with all your might. Because no one else can or will fight this for you. 

Work-Haul

PS: Wrote this back in 2019 and finally unearthed it from a pile of random musings. Here you go.

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Everyday I long for the clock to strike five,

I'd get to go home and bid work goodbye.

But I glance at the time and it's only half past ten,

"Oh well", I sigh "the day has just begun".

So I immerse myself in the abysmal world of toil,

Until thoughts of being overlooked start to make my blood boil.

And I read and read but nothing makes sense,

Until I start to wonder, "am I that dense?"

I gulp down a bottle full of water,

In hopes of me being able to author,

Documents and Reports with technical verbiage,

Funny how I got myself stuck into drafting this garbage!

My mind gets flooded with thoughts of being a misfit,

And then I harp on endlessly about wanting to quit!

Tell me, does it make one dead-beat,

for not having the desire to compete,

In a race to reach nowhere,

Where being contentious is a flair.

Where snobbishness is acceptable for experts

And the world gives you a hard time for being an introvert

Where the vertex is an appraisal

And an offense is a reprisal

So I tell myself to show some valor

The world cannot punish you for candor

Until I notice people starting to walk away

It's almost five, maybe another day

Where my heart sings

The rays of sunshine seeping in 

through that tiny gap in the curtain

The little birdy by my window sill

And the secrets of the world that it spills

The bananas that I organize by shape

My little reading nook and its rustic blanket cape

Sharavati, akruti, aksinya, and vedyayi

Our morning gapshup as I sip my chai

The *line-in* lady creaking through the chinese speaker 

Those hundred cranies where I set my tea cup

Being astounded by your binge watching talent

Or when you relocate spider nests with moves so gallant

Our daily rundown of *What's for lunch, breakfast, and dinner*  

And discussing how the overcast makes everything grimmer

Our make shift dynamic work out zones and moods

Followed by feasting to a wonderful spread of your homemade food

This constant feeling of overwhelming gratitude 

And your tolerance to my ever changing attitude

My room, my books, 

my art, my terrace

my desk, my memories, 

my shelves, my space

I will yearn for it incessantly, I will miss it all

But it's you, my darlings.. that I will miss most of all.

Traces

I had a dream, a vivid one. I am standing by my brown almirah back home, the one with all my notes, books, keepsakes, 22 years of memories.  

As always, I start going through the pile and pick up books to browse. To an outsider, my actions look random. It's like watching a kid trying out candy from a Christmas assortments' box, I certainly must not know what I'm going to get, right? 

Wrong. Because I have a plan. I start with kindergarten calendars (this was our schools version of a planner for every child), making my way up through the grades. Then moving onto junior college, degree college, and grad school. Only this time's different. I've an unwavering focus, like a woman on a mission. I only sort through my school pile.

And you know, I can find traces of you in everything I open. 

There's our script for some teacher's day play, not too shabby for a bunch of 12 yr olds. There's our imaginary school with house colors, black, white, grey and gold, and us both taking stabs at creating unconventional uniforms. The usual FLAMES and other cringe stuff. There are stories or essays and both of us competiting at "who can write more BS, faster?", an imaginary game we played but never admitted to, with only two dumbass contestants.

There's our rendition of what we wanted our imaginary boyfriends to look and dress like, all three of them with the same spiked hair because of limited drawing abilities. Guidelines for emcee-ing random language days, pretty confident the teachers were inventing these just to see us embarrass ourselves.

There are your corrections to my spelling and horrid handwriting. Then your quintessential J in signature, the one with the smile face, in a sign. You beeming with joy at creating a signature and thinking it looks so fly, and us looking at you with incredulous expressions.

There's an assortment of sheets that looks like a child hand bound it, immediately recognize it as our scrap book. It still smells of some horrible glue, not joker gum or fevicol, but some really horrible glue. It has these categories and our attempt at scrap booking for those categories. There's also a sayings book, one quote a day type.

Ah, I finally find those slam books. Three. We each had three slams books, talk about extra. And every book has you and vidu, either on the front or back cover. You both have also taken over any blank sheets available to write essays about us and wild declarations, this sheet is reserved by Nirali/ Vidula. I know you'll find the same on yours. Our never ending pride for NirViKsha shining through. 

Reading through all those, it feels like it was just yesterday all this happened. It feels like just yesterday we sat down during recess, swapped tiffins per the deal we made, your sandwich dhokla to vidu, vidu's methi paratha to me, my biskoot roti to you. Our moms will be happy today, clean plate club. As we eat, we work on some incredibly stupid idea - another hypothetical school where there would be dance period and no white shorts because who wants a blood stained skirt. Or we'll think of starting another imaginary club like scrap booking that we'll give up midway on. The quiting doesn't bother us, we're too invested in trying as many things as possible. We feel strong. We feel invincible. Even the gibberish physics lectures or torturous algebra periods can't stop this feeling. Because we have each other. And that's enough. 

For now, that's where I want to be. 

The alarm rings and I'm mad, mad at being jolted into the rude reality. I run my fingers angrily through my hair and today, they smell of the scrap book glue.