Confessions of a Guilty Depressive

Before I begin, here are some disclaimers:

• This post is from my personal, individual perspective, and just that. It does not intend to apply itself as a principal or a larger truth to any other person who suffers from similar mental health issues.
• I do not, nor do I claim to, understand my suffering or my own depression in any way, so this is speculative at best and once again, personal reflection. If you feel offended or marginalized or affected in any way by what I think about my experience with my mental health issues, that is not something I can control or change. But I hope you do not do so.
• I invite those of you who are just dying to finish reading and jump on to the comment section to give me 'advice' about how I should rely on my willpower, meditation, hard work and all these magical cures for instant 'getting-better-dom', to not. I don't need your help. And I can pay for therapy.
• I now invite those of you who are only reading to compare my suffering with their own for some impish, narcissistic pleasure so they can leave patronizing comments about how life is hard for everyone and how they got through much more and much worse, to also not. I don't need to know how much easier my life is and what a privileged woman I am. It's not and I am. I know all of this and it doesn't help.
• Once again, it's been my personal experience with depression et al that it has brought along a sense of guilt, a version of shame, that I have not been able to shake off. If you have not experienced it, good. If you think I am indulging my mental health issues too much, fine. If you think this is all in my head and no one thinks this way, yes, I know, and it doesn't make any difference to me, because I live in my head, you don't.
• And one more thing. If, even after choosing to click on the title which brought you here and whilst reading it, you start to feel a sense of false empowerment and condescension toward me and my ilk (the depressed and the mentally ill), allow me to figuratively escort you out. Your presence here is not required. You can go far away from here and think to yourself that everyone you meet is depressed so what else is new. This is probably true, because, and this is a studied claim, that more people today are aware of and experience mental health issues because of the life they live, and no amount of high-horse-y judgement will change that. You may also think that by using the term 'depression' frivolously, people have made the term lose its meaning. That may be so, but so is the case with every word that becomes part of a global vernacular; every word that brings some sense of solace or acknowledgment is overused and that is fine too. Basically, I don’t give a flying fuck about how you feel about depression in general and my personal hell in particular so instead of spending another ten minutes of your life here denying me mine, why don’t you mosey on along and listen to some evening jazz free on YouTube. Here, I’ll help you. you.https://youtu.be/pSBipZ2Wmy. Enjoy.

Let's jump in.

So, the thing is, I’ve been battling with mental health issues almost constantly since after the passing of my amma in January 2013. I’m sure I’ve said this before but in the same month, my then-boyfriend of over a year broke up with me because I was too emotionally unstable and he didn’t want to handle it. A month later, my nanaji passed away. The same day, my father had an accident with a motorcycle, and during his recovery at the hospital, it was discovered that he had had two heart attacks and his kidney function was on the low. I took a deferral from my studies in Dublin and came back to Dilli, to do something I guess. I wasn’t much help, really, and that’s probably the first time that I felt guilty about only feeling sad.

I told myself and others that I had come back because I could help around the house or at least be of moral support, but I don't think I was either. The deep-set sadness of losing amma, then a relationship, then nanaji, then learning of papa's accident, then having to leave Dublin because I wasn't doing well there with all that was going on was riding my brain like a surfer at high tide. I essentially just wanted to come back to familiarity, to a home. So, I did. And I was next to useless at home. I immediately started working and that work involved travel, so I started doing that too.

Later that year, we decided to sell our ancestral and only home in Darya Ganj and move elsewhere. My brother and I moved out first, and that bit helped. I was working more regularly and at better places, earning well and keeping well. I also had friends around me and some people I could talk to and find some perspective with. All that, I suppose, created a semblance of normalcy around me and I started feeling healthy again. I was also camping a lot, trekking a lot, running a lot and keeping fit a lot those days and the regular adrenaline rushes helped. But by the time our parents moved in with us in 2014 and we cleared out of Darya Ganj, I had started feeling something akin to unrest. I was also in another relationship that turned out to be extremely unhealthy and unlikely, but I did spend close to three years believing the opposite, so that didn't help things one bit.

I remember feeling guilty for not living in Darya Ganj any more. I felt guilty, too, for not showing my father how much I loved him before he passed on. By the time this final death happened in my family, I was deep into the realms of severe depression. In 2015, after my father's passing, there was a brief manic phase when I enrolled and aced the CELTA course and was invited for a job at British Council. That little bit of success gave me a false sense of success and again, normalcy and I led myself into believing that things would be good soon. But, in 2016, we had to move under duress, from Pandara Road to Noida, into a house that was not constructed yet. That's a story for another day.

I can recall the afternoon of January 1, 2016 - I stood roadside, crying and talking loudly with Matteo, my brother from another mother, about how Delhi didn't have one therapist worth my money. I had, in that one day and in the throes of desperate despair, booked three different appointments with three different shrinks in Delhi. I just wanted some answers and I was getting desperate. I was ready to spend some money, time and energy if it meant finding someone who could make me whole again. So off I went on my quest for the best - out of the three wise men, one was a hack, so I fled. The other was so expensive that I canceled. The last one was in Lajpat Nagar, and his office was in the basement. He kept me waiting for 15 minutes while he finished eating even though I was on time for my booked session; then he watched me weep through my story and finally told me he wanted to do some past life regression shit and some other equally sham procedures and demanded that I pay him more since I had overstayed. I called him a greedy fucker and left. Anyway.

The thing I remember most after we moved in at Noida, however, was waking up at 4 am, weeping hysterically and my mother hearing my cries and coming to console me. Why was I crying? I was just sad. Soon after, I started taking regular medication and going to a therapist and working on myself.

I felt guilty about being the only one with that intensity of a reaction. Everyone in my family was suffering. Including my cats. They had lost as much of a home as we had and they couldn't complain nor cry. My mother was 61 then, and was dealing with both the housework and the finances. We weren't doing badly but buying a house still takes it out of you if you are a family of salaried employees. My brother, my little chubster, my model of success and resilience who was going to get married later that year, was handling all the construction work and the workers. He was in discussions and in the markets. He was doing it all, and working. And, both of them were, I am certain, going through some or other sort of grief or sadness of their own, having lost just as much as I had. And I felt so intensely guilty for being the only one not being able to handle it and instead, making it a whole thing where I needed to be given attention, treatment and extra sensitive atmosphere to heal. I didn't aid in anyone else's healing but every one aided in mine. Realising that made me feel worse.

2017 was a blur, and nothing noteworthy occurred, apart from my last relationship crumbling. I thought I was going to be OK. I was OK. Till I wasn't. Some time after cleaning myself up and picking myself off the ground, I took a vow of celibacy, not realising that for someone who was already struggling with mood swings of an extreme nature, cutting off from any new social contact was probably going to be counter-intuitive. Later that year, I decided to embark upon the final step in my teaching qualification, the Delta, partly because of the pressure from my line manager and partly because I was trying to fool myself into submission and excellence, equal parts guilty for not having anything else to look forward to and lonely. It was a complex binary of emotions to toggle between and invariably, I got lost. I chose to attend the orientation course in Dublin, thinking that the revisit might rekindle something in me and bring me back from the brink of whatever it was that I was looking at.

Dublin was a perfect two weeks. I was not emotional at all, and I performed at the top of my group. Unsurprisingly, the moment I landed in Delhi, that all changed. I nosedived into unhappiness so fast, I couldn't come up for air. And that's when I started to relapse. I should mention that at this time, I had been off my meds for close to a year. I had stopped taking them (on my own, after stopping therapy and moving to a more informal 'counseling' session format with a guidance coach based in California) and had convinced myself of my complete and inclusive recovery. Which, as informed individuals will tell you, is not how depression works. Anyhow, there was a buttload of guilt that hit me, and this time it was strange because it was coming from me about myself. I felt guilty for having spent my last year's savings on the OC in Dublin and then coming back to completely lose faith in myself and my abilities. I was upset, miserable and getting fatter. I stopped doing any form of physical activity and couldn't be bothered to eat right.

And after a long, difficult, confusing year, one sleepless night sealed the truth for me. Taking Delta studies as my excuse, I had asked to have only weekend classes at work so I could study Monday-Friday. That didn't happen, but what did happen was that I grew more and more impatient with having nothing to do and starting lashing out. I could see myself getting worse even as I descended into manic behavior. And I didn't stop. I spent month after month, sitting at home all day, getting stoned from 11 am, not meeting anyone, talking to anyone or doing anything at all, and waiting for the evening so I could get stoned again and drift away for another night. One day, my mom told me to travel to the hills again because that used to make me happy before. The day before I was to leave, I had a bad episode and ended up fighting over nothing with my mother, my brother and of course dragging my beloved new sister into it. There was no harm done and nothing that couldn't be taken back was said, but I still felt guilty.

I felt guilty for putting my brother and his new wife through the shit that floats around in my head. I felt really awful for being a mean spirit that lurks in corners of our beautiful, cat-filled house and spoils moments that are nothing but love for a family of innocent people. I felt horrible thinking about how my brother, the youngest out of all of us, has to deal with my mother's erratic nature and a new married life, and the stresses of business and home-ownership and on top of that, deal with the absolutely insensitive emotional drama that I dump on him every so often. That day, sitting on the recliner with him, as he tried to concentrate on his FIFA match and on me blubbering through my words, my topmost emotion was not of sadness, loss, anger or disillusion. It was guilt. I apologized to him for putting him through that and he waved it off because he is that kind of a guy, but I left the room wracked with that feeling. The feeling of being unforgiven.

The next day, I left for McLeodganj. It's a familiar trashcan. I loved meeting my friends, I hated everything else about that open garbage bin with hills as their backdrop. But it was fine. I went to do some office work there, and I did do all of it. I wrote a little, smoked a little and had great food. And then, I packed my bags, texted my family that I will see them in the evening the next day because I was to go straight to work from the junction in Delhi, and made my way to the bus stand at McLeod. I had booked my seat, as usual, in the final row, on the left-hand window side. It doesn't recline a lot and the seats in the last row don't have the semi-sleeper footrest but I (and this is a post-depression development) cannot function with people around me at close quarters. I feel many things and none of them are good, and so I have taken to avoiding any place where I might have to stand or sit close to people for any measurable duration. So, we pulled out of the bus stand and it seemed like I would have a nice, cosy night on the bus and wake up refreshed and ready to teach the next day.

The bus was operated by a private agency and it started stopping after every 15-20 minutes to pick up more passengers. At the time I had boarded, there were maybe 15 people in total, in a 39-seater. I was in a claustrophobic heaven. By the time the bus was done stopping, every single one of the seats was filled and there was luggage all around me. First, a French couple came and occupied the seats on the far right and immediately spilled over all the seat space they could find, their limbs entangled and sprawled in every direction. I was uneasy but safe. But after a while, when their snores and snogs began gaining momentum, I moved to the seat in front of me, which was also vacant. I settled in nicely, happy to have the leg-rests. Soon, a group of college kids boarded, mostly girls, and I was in their seats. While I'm sure I didn't treat them with warmth, I also didn't say anything untoward or even talk too much to them. I was just very upset with the conductor of the bus who kept stopping and taking on more people. By the way, none of this was anyone's fault or in any way wrong. This was just me becoming more and more agitated because of what was going on with me, internally.

I felt guilty for being a mean bitch to those kids who were probably returning from a quick trip in the hills and had a lot to be happy about. And even though I know that I didn't say anything to them directly, I still created an atmosphere of hostility and negativity around them for no fault of their own; for no fault of anyone, really. I've been told many times, in jest and en serio, that I have a resting bitchface. I feel like that night in the bus, with those college kids, I must've had my worst resting bitchface on and I feel so badly about that, especially when I sincerely espouse (when my mental faculties allow me to) this excellently stated social truth by Anais Nin:

I hope those kids didn't pay any mind to the mean old fatty who seemed unhappy at the world and just carried on being the young, carefree (hopefully) friends that they seemed to be and if any are reading this by some uncanny chance, I'm so sorry, guys. I wish I could buy you ice-cream.

Things escalated when we stopped for a late dinner. I didn't eat anything, in keeping with my light eating and drinking policy on an overnight bus. So I bought a sandwich and fed it to the dogs I spotted nearby. People laughed. But when I got back to my seat, I found a rather large man sprawled in the seat next to me. My defenses went up so fast my head spun. The bus started up again and my whole body was tingling with unease from this intrusion. I couldn't breathe and I felt an anger rising in my stomach. After about a half hour of rotting inside, I thought I could ask that man, whose left arm was so big it left no space for my right shoulder to go anywhere, so I had to sit hunched over in the remaining space of my seat, to move one seat over, so that he'd be next to the sleeping French couple and one seat away from me, but if that had happened, I would have never come to the crucial realization about my mental health that I did because of what happened next. Another stranger, a harmless looking man but a man nonetheless, took the last seat that was keeping me from screaming and put the final nail in the coffin of my restful night. I apologize for the intensely hackneyed metaphor but I need to move on and finish this story.

I spent the rest of the 6.5 hours of my journey, all through Chandigarh and what not, sitting with different degree of discomfort, getting progressively agitated, (and I'm not making this up or exaggerating this) and thinking about who of my loved ones will react in what way if I were to kill myself. My fantasy, if I can call it that, was so vivid and so personal, that I thought about how much time it would take for people to move on, and what kind of personal space some of my family and close friends would need to mourn me. I thought about what people would say and to whom, if the topic of my death (suicide) ever came up.

You know, for someone who claims to have all the answers, I also have a comparable amount of follow-up questions and remarks. Which basically means that there is a lot of dialogue going on in my mind at any given moment. Or, to be fair, it used to be like that.

The morning that dawned upon that bus ride took me straight home, even though my original plan was to go straight into work and do some lesson planning. I called my mom en route and told her that I'd had a rough night and needed to rest, eat and shower before heading to work, but the moment I walked into my room, the first thing I did, almost instinctively, was to look for my old(-ish) pill box and take out the entire stock of anti-depressants, serotonin supplements and anti-anxiety meds that I had last bought but never taken. I popped all three, and while I wouldn't advise this to anyone, they immediately turned me around to a bright, clear feeling of 'rightness'. And 'okayness'. I ate, slept and showered, just as I had said I would and was almost sprightly by the time I was going into work. This is the end of my story and here are some final things I still feel guilty about:

• Missing out on friends' important events because I can't bring myself to participate in the merriment.
• Feeling entitled to understanding because I live with mental health issues and other, presumably, don't.
• Making people feel forgotten because I've not kept in touch.
• Leaving people, loved ones, behind because I couldn't salvage that bond.
• Leaving people behind after asking for their help only when I needed it.
• Never stopping to take a breath, take a beat and just take it easy with all this...all this.
• Feeling guilty for making myself feel guilty for something that I have no control over, and remaining stuck in this perpetual, cyclical motion of blame and redemption.

Say what you will, it's never dull inside my head.