Americanized

Hi there, it’s been a while.

Leap years have always been something special to me. But somehow the last leap year threw a curveball at me. 2020 was the year, the world came crashing down. Covid happened. Covid-19 took over 2020 in the same way, how I, being a December 1992 (also a leap year) baby relate way more to the 1993 kids.

So 2020 did something unexpected. For the first time in my whole life – 2020 as a leap year, did not bring in joy. But instead, it led me to a path of self discovery.

Between 2020 and 2024 – I learned so much about myself. My deepest and darkest sides and desires. I was brought face to face with all my weaknesses. And heck, I did not know I had so many.

Or maybe I had just internalized all of them for far too long, that they had become part of my personality and I didn’t know I could exist outside of them.

So for the first 27 years of my life, I co-existed with my mental illness. And here we go with yet another “I’m mentally ill” story. Gen Z is all about embracing their mental health struggles right? I don’t say this to sound trendy. But I’ve been quite vocal about my journey over the past several years. But maybe it’s the American way of life – but I became hyper aware of all of my issues. And for the first time I was able to label my issues which helped me understand a lot deeper what my mental illness was all about.

That’s the thing with America, they have so many labels. There’s a label for everyone. I remember when labels where just names they gave us at birth. But now everyone needs to know what my gender, sexual orientation, political orientation, place of birth, education level, generation, past and present mental illnesses are.

And when I moved to America in 2016 (another leap year), I was introduced to all of these labels. And I unfolded what each of them meant to me. I understood myself a little bit more with every new label I came across.

I was “diagnosed” with anxiety first. Then bipolar. Maybe borderline personality? Complex PTSD? I most definitely had a mood disorder. I would react to the ebbs and flows of the real world a lot more differently than an average person. So I always felt “different”. I didn’t know if I was “crazy” different. But I was different.

And then Covid-19 happened. And internet happened. And capitalism happened that stripped all the young people of reasonable resources to live. And somehow, it was a HUGE equalizer. I know it affected me dramatically, but I saw even so-called “normal” people getting affected dramatically.

And now I almost started “belonging”. There were so many resources I came across. Books, articles, blogs, Reddit forums, psychiatrists, medication, therapists, lifestyle changes, chat bots. You name it, I’ve tried it.

And a little by little, my mental health got a little bit better. And I don’t think everything is solved right now. But I know that I have the ability to solve whatever hasn’t been. It’s been a huge fish out of water experience so far, but this fish has learned how to breath air without gills now.

Amber Heard energy

With all the ongoing commotion about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, there’s a renewed attention on what is most likely the manifestation of Borderline Personality (BPD) and/or Histrionic Personality disorder in Amber Heard. Being someone with traits of BPD I can both see parts of myself in her and also feel somewhat glad that I didn’t let my mental illness go that far.

It’s hard to make a case for the decisions one may make when under a psychotic BPD episode. While I can empathize with Amber Heard, I do think she partook in a toxic relationship and I don’t think her reactions were un-triggered. From how I see it, I do believe there’s some truth to what she has been expressing, but she has overdramatized other events to such an extent, she’s the woman who cried wolf now. The perception of what Amber Heard is, has become so tainted, it becomes progressively harder to believe anything she speaks.

The fact is, it’s evident that she is spiraling. And she did spiral while she was with Johnny Depp. I think she went too far in the past and got away with it and it’s all coming back at her to “hit her in the face” as the memes will always remind you.

Is Amber Heard a bad person because she let her mental illness get the best of her? I think she has just been able to get away with a lot because of her beauty and sympathy the common populace had accrued towards female #MeToo survivors. She probably lacked the right therapeutic and psychiatric resources as well. I’ve been on this journey to discover myself for the last two years and it has been incredibly hard to find the right set of therapists and psychiatrists.

I do strongly believe I have high correlation with traits of BPD, but I have now thrice been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder instead. Maybe I have both. But in the psychiatrist community it seems that doctors are more likely to diagnose you with illnesses that have known medications. BPD is a relatively new disorder and there isn’t adequate research on the topic to be able to treat patients effectively.

One thing I can empathize with Amber is … The feeling of being completely wronged by someone you thought should have been there for you. The feeling of betrayal that keeps resurfacing, pricking me like a bunch of needles every time. I think she does feel wronged and all of this is revenge for feeling that way.

I personally find it so hard to suppress those feelings of betrayal from people who I genuinely thought were supposed to be my family. It makes me almost paranoid to not trust anyone again. Living with traits of BPD means you’re kind of always alone, trying to fight and hustle your way for survival. You really desperately feel like relying on someone but are constantly dismayed and disappointed by people you thought you could trust. You also end up trusting people who repeat the same toxic patterns you grew up with as a child.

Part of me does feel like taking revenge on everyone who wronged me. And yet the other part just wants to grieve the loss of something that never was. The real anger isn’t towards any person. It’s just on the universe, that chose to introduce me with such broken people who brought out the worst insecurities in me. I wish I had some healthy stable relationships that I could fall back on. But I find myself unable to establish those because of how my brain behaves.

Last couple of months have been about my journey for self discovery, pretty much alone. I realized that as long as I’m alone, my BPD doesn’t get triggered so much. If I don’t attach myself to any person, no person holds the power to hurt or disappoint me. Somewhere I still hold out hope that the people who wronged me would realize the error in their ways. But if those people had the capacity to self reflect to that level, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

I still haven’t been able to make peace with people that I feel wronged by, but here’s to hoping I don’t spiral hard the way Amber Heard did.

Holding me Forward

I wanted to come up with a catchy blog title and I’ve settled with this. The inspiration behind it? Yup you’re right. It’s a casual Wednesday afternoon and I happened to ask myself the question – what’s holding me back?

I got done with my PhD, moved to a new city, doing my first real job. And yet life is not as hunky dory as I would like it to be? So you’re telling me that problems will always exist in my life? They don’t magically go away?

2022 so far looks kind of meh. Not too shabby, but the effects of the last couple of years are clearly showing. I have elevated blood pressure. I have degraded kidney function from taking bipolar meds. I still have meltdowns from what I believe is my borderline personality disorder. I still do not know how to fix my brain. I can’t focus on my job. I have a lot of projects hanging incomplete and I cannot summon the motivation to complete them. I have no friends in this new city and I don’t have the energy to go out there and make new ones. I’m on burnout number 71514 of my life.

For once I do think I’m in the position to fix this situation, but I’m not entirely sure how to. I want to revamp my life. Get rid of my old habits. Get my dopamine addiction problem in control. I want a sense of stability but not from someone else. From within me. For once I just want to feel comfortable in my own skin and derive happiness from my confident, secure self. Every single relationship problem I have had has been largely rooted in me being so completely unsure of myself and my identity. So I need to fix this for myself and for the people in my life. Go on a journey of self discovery.

It’s so strange that I can spend so much time alone without really spending any quality time with myself. I just jump from one distraction to another. Engage in passive activities like watching TikToks and YouTube videos all day long. I’m not so sure if I’m trying to emulate social interactions through that, cause I do largely live alone and I also work from home. And potentially my brain needs 2-3 hours of virtual interaction for every 1 hour of one-on-one interaction that I might be missing out on.

I do think that my brain lacks dopamine in general and so it very easily jumps from one addictive activity to another. Smoking, alcohol, caffeine, binge eating, being on the internet, gaming, shopping … You name it, I do it all. Maybe there’s a void I’m trying to fill. Or maybe I have it all, my brain just needs some rewiring.

Sometimes I think I have a weird cocktail of mental health issues. BPD, ADHD, Bipolar, Burnout, Stress, Anxiety, Complex PTSD. The only think I’m sure of is, something is wrong and out of balance right now. Maybe surviving a global pandemic also plays a big part in this. I’ve tried both therapy and pills, and let me say, those aren’t the toughest pills to swallow.

The toughest pill to swallow is the thought, that … At the end of the day, only the fittest will survive. Only, historically, in this world, fittest has referred to physical fitness. For once I think mental fitness might be the biggest obstacle in my survival. And I don’t feel okay with this thought. Today, right in this moment, I’m not the most mentally strong or stable person I know. Though, I don’t blame myself entirely for my mental instability.

I was raised around mental instability of the highest order. In fact my father believed that the only way to toughen up us children was to emulate how bad the world was outside, inside our home. The funny part is, the outside world isn’t even remotely as bad as how my home life was, growing up. It took a lot of mental strength to survive the first 18 years of my life. Over the last few years, I’ve been going easy on myself. I’ve let my mind be weak. And the people around me have been far more understanding than my own parents ever have been.

So I have inadvertently embraced my mental illness. And maybe a little too much. Let me be clear. One should recognize their mental illnesses. But I think right now, I have lost sight of how to exist outside of this mental illness. I’ve tried to find the answer in so many ways. And maybe I’m getting a little closer to the ultimate truth, but I still find it hard to separate me from my mental illness.

There are a lot of things I want to proactively do but I can’t get myself to. I want to start a podcast. I want to do standup comedy. I want to feel healthy and fit and good about my body. I want to be good at my job, someone people actively seek out and eagerly want to collaborate with. I want to be “living my best life” as the kids say these days. So what’s holding me back? Why can’t I do it?

I suppose there are some bad habits that I need to break, one at a time. And somewhere I need to believe that the life I envision for myself is indeed achievable. I need to build some positive reinforcements for myself. My brain’s reward system is completely dysfunctional right now. What a shame considering I work on deep neural networks but I can’t even figure out the workings inside my own brain.

So far, I have always been motivated by negative reinforcements. Unless I have undue pressure to absolutely perform or get fired, I can’t get myself to bother about anything. I’m extremely fear driven. The way I make choices is by asking myself, “what do I not want?”. I’m so tired of this pattern of relying on the negation of things. In the ideal world, it needs to be a combination of both negative and positive feedback. So what’s the opposite of “holding me back”? It’s not “pushing me forward”. It’s holding me forward. Like Simba.

Here’s to holding me forward from here on.

Pete Davidson energy

I started a new alt blog recently where I’ve decided to write mostly chirpy or quirky blog posts that I would post on this forum. And I happened to write one about Pete Davidson. You see, I had this really big interview for Google. I had to give coding tests. And I was hoping so hard that I’d get questions that were up my ally. I’m no programmer. I don’t even have a computer science degree. So the odds of me doing well in this were low. So I had thought to myself. Who is that one person who constantly scores out of his league? And that brings us to the King of Staten Island himself, Pete Davidson. Pete-currently dating Kim Kardashian-previously engaged to Ariana Grande-SNL regular-Davidson.

So I decided to ask the universe to give me some Pete Davidson energy, and the universe complied. To do the exact opposite and I completely screwed those interviews and I got rejected from Google. So clearly, I wasn’t able to claim that aspect of Pete Davidson energy. But here’s the funny part. I do have his energy.

So Pete Davidson is known to suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD. Now, a recent cascade of events in my life pushed my mental illness to an extreme. I lost all control over my mind. And it was enough to worry me into seeking multiple psychiatric as well as therapy appointments. And I did officially get diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, but I also qualified for a BPD study. Turns out a lot of people with BPD can get misdiagnosed with Bipolar, and a lot of people also have both co-existing at once. All I can say with certainty is that I have *at least* one of them and could potentially have both. So hey, I do have Pete Davidson energy!

Maybe the reason that energy didn’t work out for my Google interview was because I hadn’t progressed far enough along my BPD/Bipolar journey. I am currently taking mood stabilizers and paying out of pocket for therapy, so this better work out for me. Maybe over time I can develop a personality that’s oh so charming and funny and infectious that I can metaphorically date a Kim Kardashian?

How to be an asshole and get away with it

This blog is going to be about a special breed of assholes. Those who let their mental illness completely take over and drive everyone around them insane and potentially make them mentally ill as well.

We all know such assholes in our lives. I am one such asshole as well. But this one’s not about me. This one’s about the person whose mental illness made me the way I am. Let’s call this person B. It’s the same B that forms my middle name annoyingly enough. Which makes me doubly hate my name.

B comes from a line of warriors. They have high intellect, they are highly strategic. But most importantly they have a bad temper. And they are control freaks. And they pride themselves for having these attributes. It’s what made warriors successful apparently. So what happens when you don’t have any real enemies to fight on the battlefield? You start fighting with every single person in your life. Including yourself. At every single venue you can think of.

Perhaps the warrior class asked their wives to have children to join their armies. Or to have them succeed the “throne”. But what happens when there are no kingdoms any more? What purpose do the warrior children serve now? The warrior children can’t be trained for combat. There’s no real fights to fight. So instead they are trained for psychological warfare of the worst kind.

B has control issues. He has to be in control of the kingdom. What’s his kingdom you may ask? His family. His workplace. His immediate surroundings wherever he goes. B has to control every aspect of everyone’s lives. How does he achieve this control? By taking advantage of children and his wife who isn’t financially independent or emotionally strong enough to fight the archaic patriarchal society she grew up in. I used to think her strength lies in putting up with a man like B. But it’s not a strength. It’s Stockholm syndrome.

B loved to exercise control over his children when they were growing up. He abused them verbally and physically over and over again over the smallest issues. Ripped them of developing any kind of self esteem. He verbally abused his wife over the slightest mistake she’d make. He did it in front of his children so openly, it was as if he didn’t want his wife to earn even her own children’s respect. When his wife fell ill for a bit he forbade her from stepping out of the house altogether unless it was in the extreme vicinity of her house. He put her on a house arrest.

And about the positives? Well there were none. B does not possess the ability to express positive emotions. B is always stoic.

When B can’t get his way, he throws temper tantrums. Everyone around him is supposed to understand. Including his once infant children. When B would dissociate, it was just an alternate reality for him. But it was the only reality everyone else in that household knew.

B made it very clear how annoyed he was with his children. He once told his daughter how she would make him come back late from work because she was a nuisance to deal with. He told his minor daughter to get admitted into a mental health facility for her outbursts. He went 10 months without speaking a word to her because of a minor argument, while staying under the same roof.

B is well respected and revered. He’s the oldest son of his clan. He is highly educated. He manages a lot of people. Because of his accomplishments, B thinks even further that he can do no wrong. B loves to make his opinions apparent. B’s opinions are always going to be criticism. Which makes one wonder, if it’s legitimate criticism then at least a few times he would agree with your actions? But he never does. For someone who expects everyone else to agree to him, he is the most disagreeable person in the room.

B likes to think he’s successful at life. He “raised” two children who grew up independent and successful. He is successful at his job. He has all the wealth in the world. He has a wife that blindly supports him no matter what.

His children on the other hand are scarred. They are fumbling. And they try their best not to point out their father’s flaws to him. His wife, to gain his approval, always tries to assuage his over bloated ego. She chooses her husband over her children because her husband needs the parenting more. B’s wife is his mouthpiece for whoever B feels like “staying in touch” with. B’s wife has no opinions of her own at this point so she simply parrots B’s opinions to whoever she has been ordered to speak to on that day.

B’s daughter who is herself highly educated, grew up seeing this extremely misogynist atmosphere and struggles to create an identity of hers that doesn’t make her comply to the misogyny.

And so one may think now. How did B get away with all of the facade for so many years? It’s simple. He had power and position and authority. He used it to exercise control. His children had no choice but to oblige. What happened if they didn’t oblige? They’d get beaten up, threatened. They would get the silent treatment. They’d have to apologize for the simplest actions. B used fear to control everyone around him. He pushed everyone to think primally. Brainwashing 101.

There were only two ways to deal with it. His children could either join the cult. Or they could find a way to escape.

Once his children escaped the cult their cult leader didn’t find any reason to stay in touch with them. But he would harp on his wife and goad her into asking them all the questions he wanted to ask them. Maybe somewhere he knew they wouldn’t take it well, so he made his wife do the dirty work. And she has spent way too much time in the cult now so she doesn’t question it any more.

This is the story of how a lot of families dysfunction. And maybe this story isn’t unique, but B’s daughter did grow up to find herself in rather unique situations. And she later found out that these conditions weren’t normal. This wasn’t how normal families were supposed to function. And after learning about it, she felt that her whole life had been a lie. She had basically grown up in a cult. And had got brainwashed into doing every single thing she did up to early adulthood.

But once she had somewhat escaped the reigns of the cult, she just felt lost. She didn’t know what her sense of self was. She spent the next 10 years stumbling and fumbling, trying to gauge what her true identity was. She realized it was easy to latch on to the personalities of her immediate peers. This made her likeable and also gave her a definite type of life to emulate.

B’s son on the other hand rebelled as soon as he escaped the shackles of his control. He found out every way to defy every rule around him. He couldn’t follow rules any more. He had had enough.

B apparently became a lot calmer after his children left home. He finally had a cult with his only loyal cult member. He could exercise all the control he wanted with her. B gets to get away with being an asshole.

But speaking of assholes with mental illnesses, I cannot get away with being one. And maybe, it’s for my best that I don’t get away with being one. I can’t do what B did to the people around him. And I hope I haven’t done anything close to the extent of what he has done cause I would never be able to forgive myself for that.

I am the first person to tell you I have abandonment issues. But I think. Sometimes (not always) it’s warranted. Maybe it is best to abandon a toxic person.

Anya

Have you ever thought of assuming a completely new identity because you hate every aspect of what you are currently? In Sanskrit, Anya means “another”. And I need a new identity. So I’m going to go ahead and name this alter ego Anya.

I recently went for a Borderline Personality study (more on that later). And I was asked some questions about identity disturbance. Do I even know who I am? If you ask me this question now, my answer is – I know what I desperately do not want to be. Unfortunately I am every bit of what I do not want to be right now.

I have forever struggled with figuring out what my true identity is. And with that I’ve gone through rhythms and flows and tried new experiences. And with every new experience and every new friend I make, I’m a completely different person. I am both too many things and nothing at all at once.

I’ve been researching more about Borderline Personality Disorder recently and I am realizing that identity disturbance is a big aspect of it.

For me this identity disturbance has taken so many forms. One of the reasons I feel good having an alternate internet persona is because it allows me to have a safe space to be whatever I want. I could be funny, nerdy, intelligent, self righteous, convivial, companionate, whenever I want, to whatever extent. It’s completely on me how I define my personality in this space. But it’s temporary. I have a lot of temporary identities. The only permanent identity I have is that of chaos. Maybe that’s a reason why I find it hard to blog as often lately. It’s very hard for me to be an alter ego right now.

My brain is chaotic. It sometimes gets triggered and goes really really far to extremes. It’s very hard to get myself out of that zone. I’d trade anything in my life to not have to go through that. So hiding behind a screen and having an alternate persona is so much more easier. I could be calm, collected, wise, confident almost-30 y/o woman who has her life somewhat sorted online.

In person, I’m some of that some times. But I’m so much more and so many aspects of my personality are actually quite negative. And lately I’ve been struggling. But I’m also trying to be more honest and upfront about my emotions. I’m putting out my ugly side in front of others (most times unwillingly). I’m putting my mental illness out for everyone to watch. And I hope people will not get scared but reach out and help me. The last thing I want is to push more people away.

Unfortunately right now my support system isn’t as great. And I’m currently trying to face some of my issues with my family (including friends I consider family) which I have suppressed for far too long. So for now, I need someone to have my back. And if the past is any indication, my alts are good at having my back. Does it mean I don’t need support from anyone else? No.

But before anyone else can help me I need to have my own back.

Hypothetical Realities

Today I took a trip down memory lane which happened to be the first blog I ever wrote. A blog that I started in 2011. So exactly about 10 years ago!

That blog was about this fantastical version for my real life. I had nick-named every single one of my college friends. I would write about small day to day events that would happen in my college life. I had shared the link to that blog with only my closest friends. Just reading those blogs again, made me feel like my 18 year old self was still thriving. I loved reading about her enthusiasm, her nativity. She still had a sense of loss, a sense of loneliness, but she had somehow managed to embrace it.

18 year old me was the star of her own movie. Everyone else was a character in the story.

Thinking back, I think 18 year old me was blissfully unaware of all the trauma. Today, I think most of the trauma remains the same. Yet, I deal with it so differently today! I would be way more open about my feelings back then. Now, I simply bottle them up.

Today after a long time, I found the courage to open myself up. I opened the faucet and the emotions can’t stop flowing out now. All this time I have been trying to shut my 20-24 year old self out. But I’m done trying to run away from my raw emotions. All this while I took my heart and kept it buried deep underground so that no one could hurt me.

A little after I stopped writing my first blog and started writing my second blog, which was the predecessor to this blog, I swiftly switched from being the main character to the side character in my own story.

I stopped doing things. Things started happening to me. I’d describe those things in vivid detail. It’s been that way for a while now, and most of my blogs have been events, usually sad or stressful, that have been happening to me. I haven’t been in control of the story line.

I think, it’s time to switch back control. For the first time … In probably my whole life. I’m in control of the narrative. If I can’t do this at 29, then I don’t know when.

I have been thinking about somehow killing 1 day at a time from the rest of 2021. I was so ready to be done with this year. But I can’t passively get by the year any more. I’m reclaiming the control.

Potent

Today, I spent a lot of time searching for if some combinations of painkillers and sleeping aids are potent or not. Not because I want them to be potent. But I just cannot sleep and I also cannot shut my brain up. I have immense mental pain. I think no combination of medication can make it stop. But I really don’t want to accidentally hurt myself.

If I hurt myself, it needs to be intentional, you know what I mean?

Some days are worse than others, right? But then what about days that just feel like the worst of them all? Like it just cannot possibly, imaginably get worse than this?

So here I am, in New York City, apparently one of the busiest cities in the world. But I feel like the loneliest person in this city with no friends at all. I struggled so hard to find a job … It’s been almost 2 years worth of struggle. I finally got one. But I have no one to celebrate it with.

It’s Thanksgiving break next week. Everyone has friends and families to plan with. Nope not me.

You might wonder, surely I have a part to play in this? I can assure you I do. I can assure you that I’m not a good friend. And I push people away most of the time. And my mind is broken, sometimes beyond repair. And on days I find courage to get through the day. But today, I just can’t. Today, I accept defeat.

Sometimes, I find it hard to be alone with my thoughts. But right now, my thoughts are consuming me. They’re swallowing me up. It’s a full fledged Shakespearean drama up there. I somehow can’t make it stop. It’s poignant. This is beyond hard. It’s a juggernaut.

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by emotions, it literally gave you a panic attack? That’s me. At this very moment.

So what the heck happened. How did I end up here? Whatever happened to the girl who was full of hope? Who wanted to find the silver lining in every story. Who tried so hard to convince herself that there’s a good ending to everything?

I lost her somewhere. Ever since I came to the US, about five years ago, I’ve been losing her. And even though I still somewhat like what I am now, I know I’m still who I was five years ago as well. That part of me has just been hidden. I pushed it down, so it would stop hurting me.

But now, I feel the pain, I feel her crawling back up. And somehow I don’t even feel the same sense of hope I did with her back then. Somehow I have managed to combine the worst of both worlds. My past and present. Another impossible task achieved by me.

If the type of posts I make is any indication, it feels like my 20s has been a freefall, mental health wise. I’ll be genuinely surprised if these posts get more positive in the time to come. But if they do. I just want to tell my future self, thanks for making it through this horrible time.

Depression, my friend

When I came to the US, I had set out to challenge every ounce of my existence. I wanted to disprove what I had become – at that point, someone ever so scared of the real world. Extremely afraid to fail. Certain I’d be a disappointment. Ever so hungry for any form of validation – the validation that I never felt I got from places I had trusted I would. I was afraid to take risks. There was a voice inside me which always pushed me towards those paths not-taken anyway, but not because I thought I was special or felt ambitious. Nope, that wasn’t it. It was always because I never thought I belonged to the regular crowd. I never thought I would be accepted into the so called “normal” world.

What was this “normal” world? I still don’t know, but I know my world wasn’t normal to begin with. Surely, something was amiss if the only time when I felt happy was in my own company?

I was so scared to face the world, scared of being critically judged by the people around me. Always ready to assume that I meant nothing to anyone around me. The only way I could have got any validation was to prove myself in a way no-one else could take credit for. For the longest time, I could prove myself. And then, when I couldn’t prove myself, I met a friend. A friend called Depression.

Depression was the kid that I grew up around but never really met growing up. Depression was always sitting in the corner, watching everything unfold in front of its eyes. It followed me when I’d go for my solo walks, but wouldn’t bother to talk to me. Until a point when I stopped going out for walks. I locked myself up in a room in my parents’ house. They never really bothered to ask me what was up with me and I had stopped communicating with my friends. And that’s when Depression first thought of befriending me.

You see, until that point in time, I had always had at least one friend. Myself. It sounds absurd but, I always had words of hope and encouragement to say to myself. It didn’t matter if no one else was around, I always knew what I needed to say to cheer myself up. I could write a blog-post. I would write notes to myself. In retrospect, yeah that was my coping mechanism. But when Depression entered into my life, I had stopped being my own friend.

So Depression came to fill that void. Whenever I saw Anxiety, Depression asked me to look away. It took me away to a safe spot, inside my head. It tried to ward off everything and everyone who tried to hurt me, by simply blocking them away. And then sometimes, I would hurt myself, and Depression made me feel okay.

My first experience with a lockdown was not Covid-19. In fact, Depression convinced me to go on a lockdown for several months, about 5 years ago. Now that we have an actual lockdown, it reminds me so much of what I had felt 5 years ago. Because my situation was not so different back then. I was trying to graduate from college back then. Uncertain about what I’d do after graduating. And now, I’m trying to get done with my PhD. Again, uncertain about my graduation plans.

But between that time and now, I met myself again. Depression was again on the sidelines. I always felt horrible when I thought about how Depression had made me feel. Why did it make me suffer so much? Why couldn’t I just feel and think like a normal person? Why did I have to feel so scared of everything around me?

I mustered all the courage I could and set out to find that validation for myself in the last 5 years. I think, for the most part, I did succeed, and yet, Depression didn’t leave my side. In fact, it just made its presence even more prominent.

…. something’s amiss here, isn’t it? I had always thought, maybe if I could just prove myself. Get that validation from my surroundings, Depression would go away? But, nope. I just started seeking more validation, the more I succeeded. Success is just the most recent dopamine kick that I have become addicted to. Which means, every single time, I need to get a bigger boost, and I need it to come quicker.

So, validation didn’t solve any of my problems, it just created more. I kept working harder and harder, till the point that I got severely burnt out from being burnt out all the time.

I think it’s obvious why Depression didn’t go away in all this time. Even after all the work I did to succeed, one thing hasn’t changed in the last 5 years. I have stopped being my own friend. I didn’t write to myself as much as I used to. And when I spent time with myself, I wasn’t mentally present. I’ve been a really bad friend to myself (oh and countless others).

I tried so many ways to make Depression go away in the last couple of years. I tried alcohol, food, cigarettes, CBD, exercise, SSRIs and therapy. But I don’t think any of them worked as well as they should have.

To be honest, Depression did to me what I wasn’t doing for myself. It was looking after me. Making sure I got some down time after harrowing days of stress and anxiety. It’s probably counter-intuitive but it’s been a survival instinct. I know there are things that are wrong with my brain that will be hard to alter. It’s like a neural network that has been trained with an extremely biased dataset. It’s going to take a lot to change the experiences around me.

But then I keep hearing from my therapist that I need to be kind to myself. So maybe I need to be friends with the new me. Maybe befriending myself is what I need for Depression to finally bid goodbye.

Masked Convolutions

In November 2019, this world was graced with a corona-virus so powerful, in the next 8 months, it would go on to affect 0.2% of the world’s entire population – to put that in perspective – if we formed a country with Covid-19 confirmed cases, it would be 64th largest country , on the list of 233 (+1) listed countries on wikipedia. The effects of Covid-19 have been unprecedented – pushing the entire world into months of lockdown, which has affected people extremely disproportionately.

One of the biggest lifestyle changes that it brought along with itself is the use of masks which have now become a necessity. So much that I genuinely feel naked when I go out without one. Going out without a mask these days is the pre-2019 era equivalent of going out without pants or going out without a bra on. If you make the mistake of going out without a mask, brace yourself for either judgmental onlookers or activists of free-the-nipple-nose movement. Ah how the turns have tabled!

To be honest, learning to co-exist with covid-19 has been very much like learning to co-exist with my anxiety issues. At first, it appears to be this huge monster that one is absolutely incapable of fighting. You try out tried and tested tricks to make it go away. They fail. You try harder and fight using specialized medicine – you kind of fight back feebly, just enough to keep the monster away for a little bit, but it leaves you absolutely fragile after you somewhat recover and there is no guarantee the monster wont come back.

Unfortunately for me, I’m being attacked both monsters at the same time so yeah, life’s great. I haven’t given up on a cure but at this moment, I think we all need to accept that at least for a few months (or maybe years?) we’re going to have to co-exist with the virus (and that includes the virus in my brain for me).

So how does this co-existence work? Doing things that are small inconveniences but may push back future harm. Like wearing a mask. Staying clean. Staying healthy. I bought a bike recently, so that should hopefully help me get back into shape and lose the 20 odd pounds that I have gained in the last 2 years.

The thing with physical health (and to an extent even mental health) is that it just sneaks up on us. It deteriorates very slowly. To put in perspective – gaining 20 pounds in 2 years is gaining roughly a pound a month, or 0.25 pounds in a week — that’s barely noticeable if you don’t pay enough attention. The same goes for mental health. I realize today, that I went through a lot of crazy in the first 17 years of my life. That’s been a slow but extremely steady build up that has lasted a very long time.

The same goes for covid-19. Viruses have potentially gone through generations of strengthening themselves, before they came up with a recipe that could wipe out a significant fraction of the most advanced race of all time. I guess what I’m trying to say is – no matter how strong I could have been, mentally or physically – the monsters that we’ve been trying to fight have been inflicting a slow but powerful attack. The only way to fight back is to change the way we live at a very fundamental level. The only way out is to adapt and keep adapting steadily.