Measles of the spirit
- Admin
- Oct 15, 2016
- 4 min read
My tryst with depression and how Sylvia Plath’s Bell jar saved me from asylum.
There was a war waging inside me and I had no idea back then for how long I could sustain the pain and keep up the charade of being the 'strongest girl you will ever come across', when stretching a minuscule fraction of a smile across my face equaled to an almost herculean gesture.
It was an endless tunnel of darkness that I had been flung into and I was afraid I was not capable of coming out of it alive, at least not without the scar induced by that chicken pox of the soul. It seemed sometimes that I did not even understand the person I have become, I cannot define my actions much less predict them.
I was tired of being optimistic and believing in something I knew I had no right to anymore. I was tired of crying myself to sleep, and aimlessly searching in the dark, for an answer whose question I neither knew nor had the courage anymore to devise.
I didn’t have the strength to get up each morning. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to be excited about, unlike before. There were days when I didn't want to get up and partake in social routines and see the world with all its made-up glories. I didn't want to see people pretending to be having a ball with their lives and it got worse to see genuine happiness. Yes, those mean reds made me bitter and cynical. I just wanted to be cocooned in my bed, dreaming of things that couldn't be and visiting the countries of myths. I didn't ever want to wake up. But I was made bereft of my only solace. My dreams metamorphosed into the zygote of my nightmares. It was tragedy! It became virtually impossible for me to sleep. What's unsettling is that the crux of all my subconscious rantings was (inevitably) the denied future.
My ideas baffled me. I couldn’t believe this is what had become of me. I looked into the mirror and tried to find the bright young girl who dreamed of travel, magic and above all, love. The reflection never had an answer. It blamed me instead for killing what could have been the most wondrous future all in the vain attempt of capturing a mirage.
They say you need to live with the darkness to appreciate the light. Sadly it works both ways. Only when you have felt true happiness can you begin to understand the tragic death of it in your life.
It’s mighty unfair how some people never get the brunt of their unthoughtful and selfish actions which literally kill another's soul.
I feared that I will never be able to be "okay" again. Everything I valued, everything I measured highest had been snatched away from me and the mere chance of recuperating it in the future seemed like a very bleak possibility.
I had tried everything, from fake plastering smiles to my face to psychological exercises, substance abuse to what not. Nothing seemed to help. I was afraid, nothing would.
What really happened was that I lost everything on the pretext of gaining something that incidentally was farce, a charade. Like everyone else in this world, I now had a demon too. A demon of my own conscience. There has not been one day that I haven't cursed the stars for that unfateful encounter.
It was not depression I was going through. It was almost a thorough measles of the spirit that had rendered life incapable in my system, feeding off my fear and self-defined limitations. I felt fraught with a sordid paralysis of my hope to live.
The road seemed dreary and dank.
Yes, I had been a victim of a fallacy, like so many before me. How was my pain any different from their's? Maybe it wasn't. But then we can't really measure pain and distinguish one from another. The heart feels what almost all hearts feel.
Blood in my mouth and poison in my heart, is that how it would end? Or will it be the beginning of another story etched in the stars that survived the suffering of the delirious heart, an equivalent of what I was feeling right now.
A fateful encounter with Sylvia Plath’s Bell jar helped me overcome this stark darkness. The autobiography eerily related to the haplessness and paranoia that I was experiencing and it gave me a direct glimpse of the probable future of my plans.
Failed Expectations often produce a despondency that is analogous to a crippling mumps of the psyche that leads to hopelessness and eventual depression. I didn’t want to be subjected to the same fate as her(Plath) and amidst the mental mayhem, I realized that only I had the power over my thoughts and none but me could fight these demons off.
The dark pain still exists as a receding gray but it has no power to hurt anymore.
Comments