healingisdifficultbutillbeok

[healingisdifficultbutillbeok]

In Honor of Mental Health (+ Illness) Awareness Week

Anshuman Singhal

12th May 2017

Austin, TX

Hello everybody! Monday, the 8th of May - began 2017’s Mental Health (+ Illness) Awareness Week. This is very exciting for me, as I am able to delve into a topic so dear to my own heart, and those of the loved ones I surround myself with.

*

I first heard the term “depression” when I was a child, as I was told that a very dear family friend of mine was “depressed.” I was unable to fathom what this could possibly mean, but my mind formed the general image of a man sitting alone in his bedroom, atop his bed, cooped up in silence as the windows were shut and the blinds drawn, staring blankly ahead at the darkness before him. I could not understand at the time why anyone would be drawn towards this lifestyle during the day, when the sun’s rays were begging to be let in through the shutters he had so violently closed, and the curtains which he had shut all too forcefully that they were nearly snatched from the railing they hung by. Perhaps he was jealous of the curtains, as they spent everyday hanging freely from a noose up above, never once questioned for doing so -- a feat he was unable to succeed in accomplishing.

I now think of him, learning and experiencing what I have in the past couple of years,  as such:

I think of him sitting in his bedroom  room, paralyzed by and in the darkness; his eyes perhaps playing tricks on him within this darkness, his eyes glued to the wall in front of him, mapping out the screaming within his head like a fit of doodles, like an Etch A Sketch’s rapid, seizure-like motions, like a composer madly orchestrating a symphony only he could hear and understand, for which no notes upon a musical staff could do any justice in bringing to life, let alone translating.

Despite the screaming in his head, he sat alone in his bedroom, boarded and boxed up like a mouse within a dark hole in the wall, sitting in complete silence in his self-imposed exile. His depression was perhaps like a sneaky Tom cat lurking just outside his bedroom - on his dining room table, where a thesis three weeks overdue lay scattered; in his refrigerator, where the milk was two days past expiry; and the preserved, ever-fermenting dill pickles he’d made himself on a whim  in March of 2004  well over one year past their hastily Googled “use by” date.

This was all inside of his home. Inside of a house and purchased and furnished according to his pleasing, his one sense of space within a world he so readily and inexplicably shut out, that he could rightfully call his own.

The world outside of his home was even more alarming still. Political, social, and economic turmoil. Injustice in the workplace. Gender inequality and lack of parity in the workplace. Racism, sexism, senseless violence. A looney in the White House, who makes the clown of today look severely, alarmingly mentally ill.  

And yet...we do nothing of this. We allow “psychiatrists” and “experts” who are perhaps not all there themselves to verify that no, no - the misogynistic, inexplicably misguided clown heading our nation is not, in fact mentally ill. We are expected to digest the contents of false medical reports, incomprehensibly illogical news reports by credible media outlets that search simply for a grain of truth in a sack of lies, spoonfed to us like mouthfuls of uncooked rice -- indigestible, and painful to swallow, to process, to excrecate.

We are so quick to blame, point fingers at names on bottles and anything we use to throttle our emotions, but what for? What's missing here? We blame and receive blame mindlessly, without ever setting aside the ego and asking "why?" "Why are you depressed?" "What can I do to help you?" We are so quick to shove booklets and programs and groups and addresses to clinics, but what's a common theme here? Someone hearing our voices. Someone making an effort to listen to and decipher the unspoken, yet widely known language of depression. It's not a myth, a folklore, a lost city of Roanoke. It's a reality. Until we stop dismissing it as a phase, as unnecessary worrying, moodiness or laziness and discuss it for what it is - a health condition plaguing millions around the nation, let alone the continent and Earth - it will never be understood. Simply because you never took the effort or the time to shove your ego and your help and your hurtful advice, and listen. There are some of us who are brave enough to embrace the idea of a healthy mental state by honing our mental illnesses and accepting them as a reality, and those of us fortunate enough to shell out hundreds of dollars to therapists and psychiatrists and hospitals, but what for? To have an ear to listen to us. They listen to us.

*

I had my first anxiety attack in October of 2015, immediately after a phone call with my dear cousin-in-law(?).

*

For those who are unaware, in late-January of 2016, I made the decision to cancel my plans of beginning the my second semester of my sophomore (second year) as a student at The University of Texas at Austin. I withdrew from the university, figuratively and literally, and returned to my family’s home in El Paso, Texas. It was a strange and unsettling time for us all, for my friends and family around me who had seen me acting normally, and completely abnormally just days and hours before.

*

Today, I am beyond ecstatic to say that I have wrapped up my sophomore (second year) at the University of Texas at Austin a year later than expected, but when does anything ever go as we plan it out to be?

[healingisdifficultbutillbeok]

Sometimes my anxiety gets the best of me

Sometimes when it all seems too much,

I hold my trembling left hand with my right,

hold it firmly,

hold it tight,

and assure it everything will be alright.

Even if it feels as if my fingernails may grow out 

and claw the skin on my hands to shreds

even if it feels as if my bones may escape from my flesh and dance all around 

the remnants of my hands 

I keep holding on.

Sometimes when it all seems too much,

I want nothing more than for someone else to hold my hand.

to kiss the back of my hand softly, 

to put my forefinger to my tear-stained lips, 

and assure it that first and foremost,

 all will be okay.

When that someone else 

is no one else, 

when they vanish off into thin air,

a ghost of the promises from the past and the memories to be made in the 

future,

I remind myself that I am whole.

I have two hands

two arms

and

two legs 

and

two feet

to wrap around myself, 

curl around myself,

brush against myself and my delicate skin, 

and tell myself that I won't fall apart,

not today, not tomorrow,

and that

I, myself

can hold myself together

even if I feel 

I cannot.

[healingisdifficultbutillbeok]

3: Hostage/Imposter

Surprise! I’m back.

I was being held hostage for a while there, but I’ve just escaped...Or maybe I’m still in the act of escaping...I dunno...But what I do know, is that I’ve cut loose of the Stockholm syndrome I once had, and am actively running away from my captor.

Shall I explain?

For a while there, I’d become attracted to my depression and anxiety, and the patterns I’d developed, or lack thereof, while surrounded by the two, under their intoxicating influence. It became easy to stay in the rut I’d dug myself into to teeter totter back and forth, to climb left and right in shy attempts to escape the ditch I was in, but fully commit myself from freeing myself from it. It was easy being where I was. It felt safe. I trusted it, I trusted myself, despite not trusting myself at all. Sure, it was cold. Sure, it was difficult watching things from down below, but I liked ogling at the view I had up above me. No matter my many attempts to climb back up from the ditch, the sand I was running up against was soft and smooth, in a gritty way that only sand is, and despite the burn it’d present me with every waking moment of the sun’s rise, I knew soon that the night would be met with ice cold packs of respite.

Taking the plunge to fight against the plunge I’d taken to fall down below was immensely difficult. What motivation did I have to do it? What motivation could I muster up within myself to do it? The motivation I had was plenty, but the motivation I myself could muster up was deplete. Why should I try and climb out of somewhere where I’ve felt cocooned - safe from the world and it’s many influences - for so long? Was I in-turn turning myself into a victim of the few influences I latched onto? Was my mindless mind not the most influential of them all? Could I not see that the hole I had dug myself into was created by me, by my mind, and that I could scramble up out of it as easily as I had welled myself into it?

So then...why...was I so shy of getting back up on my feet, dusting myself off of the gritty sand, coaxing me to believe it was smooth, and that it’s silky slip was enough to slide me out of it’s burrowed hole, rather than keep me hostage in its depths for so long.

As self-destructive as it was so stay down there for so long, to play into the patterns I’d created to rise up and fall down time and time again, as much as it ate me alive to stay down somewhere where I had not a drop of water or a grain of food...it was easier than getting up and trying to conquer something that had defeated me so many times before. I grew to love my captivity, grew to love my being taken for hostage, and for a while, I fell in love with the depression and anxiety that held me hostage in their misty daze for months too long.

There would be days when I made so much progress in freeing myself - climbing up, up, up, calculated and cool in my efforts - and then one slip-up that brought me back down, sliding rapidly down in an instant, erasing the tracks of the progress I’d made in days and nights where I went against the grain of it all, fighting for my own sake. How could my week’s worth of progress be diminished in an hour? How could so much happen to me in a day, whether it be for my recovery or otherwise, and yet nothing happen for weeks on end?

I became tired. Tired of feeling tired. Aching to feel again...feel...anything but the constant tiredness I was in…

Tired of letting dirty tea cups and water glasses pile up for weeks, and then cradling them all up in my arms to wash them all, lovingly, kindly, bathing them in hot soapy water, toweling them dry, and putting them in for a nap in the cupboard, where they’d be used again and again with the same cyclical methodology. You’d think that I’d know better, but you see, the way my mind works, I almost

Imposter

I don’t want to keep going on, writing line after line because I think you can start to see it. I know you can. You can, can’t you? Can you see the imposter in me?

[healingisdifficultbutillbeok]

some people have real problems

I want to impress upon those reading this series of blog posts that no rhyme or reason will be followed, no form of meter or rhythm, nor any attempts to maintain a stringent type of prose. Paying homage to the minds-of-their-own that depression, anxiety, and addiction seem to possess, I want mental illnesses to be given their due respect through unfiltered, unadulterated musings. These words are straight from the fingertips controlled by a curvy, cooky mind, to your screens. Thus, what I present to you, as a reader and follower of this blog, is an honest and unabridged foray into my struggles as a depressed, anxiety ridden young man, and the subsequent alcoholism-turned addiction that followed to cope with the unbearability of the constricting grip wrapped around me, harbinging my every thought, spoken word, and course of action.

I do not wish for those reading this series to hold any expectations in terms of the quality of the written content I put out. My perfectionist nature and incessant need to be in control of every facet of my life have left me during the course of this past year -- I no longer cultivate an approach laden with neuroticism when trying to plan and map out every aspect of my life, nor am I pedantic in trying to find answers to every query that runs through my mind. It’s a letting go, a giving in of sorts, but in no way is it a surrender to the illnesses that have taken the lives of so many, whether it be advertently or inadvertently.

There are days when I beat myself up for not having the desire to get out of bed, do the things I love, and feel the sunlight’s warm embrace caress my body.

Sylvia Plath famously wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled The Bell Jar, published shortly before her last suicide attempt -- she succeeded in her attempts, after famously killing herself off by putting her head into an oven at the tender age of 30. The novel provides a raw, thoroughly disturbing look into her case, which - if you read up on it is by no doubts in the territory of being extreme - but throughout the course of her life, her many attempts at escaping the thoughts running through her head were met with a lack of compassion, or perhaps a lack of desire to truly to step into the murky waters that fueled her ever-deprecating sense of self, coursing through her body, and understand the depths of her mental illnesses and their effects on her body.

As part of a new program I’ve begun to aid in combatting the crippling effects that depression, anxiety, and subsequent addiction have on my body, I’ve gathered much insight on how such illnesses can spiral one’s life completely out of control when overlooked, or met with a lack of compassion or understanding.

A lot of what I’ve seen so far, in completing just one day of the program, is that the stigmatized, insensitive culture surrounding mental illness is incredibly detrimental. You cannot just throw us into a corner, hose us down with ice cold water, stuff medicines down our throats, and shut us away into a looney bin. Perhaps even worse still, you cannot disregard our illnesses as “nerves,” fits of craziness, or something to be brushed under the carpets, because the toxic dust will come back and haunt you. It will catch up to you and cause you to choke when you least expect it, when you’re flying so dreamily high on the magical carpet of life. I don’t want you to choke and die, lose your balance, and fall flat onto your face. Nor do I want you to crash into someone else, perhaps one who’s woven into the fabric of yours through marriage, paternity, maternity, law, or emotional investment.

It all comes down to a lack of understanding. A lack of empathy. A lack of desire to understand. What we find “different,” we are quick to categorize as something undesirable. I believe this is rooted in a script so stringently written and followed by society. If we, as a human populus make up a society, can we not rewrite the script, and change it? Are we not allowed to make our own scripts and follow them? Can’t we all be scriptwriters of our own lives, rather than leaving it all to divine intervention?

I have been fortunate enough to be raised by parents who are incredibly understanding, willing to go to any lengths to ensure my betterment. I am immensely grateful of all this, and not one day goes by when I am unaware of the intense privilege that follows me every step of the way of the healing process.

The amount of love, support, and confiding revelations I’ve received have shown me just how blessed I am, to be a product of a generation that is beginning to understand the debilitating effects of mental illness. Yet, it is so common in various cultures to shut-down any issues relating to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, addiction, schizophrenia, personality disorders...the list goes on.

“He/she/they’re just stressed,” “it’s just nerves,” “it’s no big deal.” While it may not be a big deal to you as an outsider, to the person dealing with the issues within their head, it may quite seriously be a matter of life or death. Not just to the person weighed down by mental illness, but in some of the most extreme cases...to those surrounding them.

An argument I’ve seen time and time as of late, in light of the recent gun-violence within the USA is: “Guns don’t kill people! People do! Those people are messed up! They need help!”

If these people need help, why don’t we help them before it comes to the point where it takes not only their lives, but the lives of innocent people surrounding them? Why do allow the inanimate object of the gun, the knife, the assault rifle to take the blame? Why don’t we blame ourselves for not taking the plunge and doing anything to help the other, for the sake of their well-being and others? When we do finally feel remorse, or even the slightest bit of self-blame, is when the personal has fallen so deep down into their own spiral that their lives are desolate, ruined, or at it’s worst, put to an end by their own two hands, or by the steely, mirroring cuffed hands of the law.

Why don’t we attempt to nip the problem at the bud, and take a shift towards raising awareness on mental illness, warning signs of a person’s decline into mental illness(es), and what to do when these signs are present?

At times it can be embarrassing to step in, to put in your two words of well wishes when you’re at a loss of words of how to show solidarity and support to others affected by mental illness(es). I get that. I totally do.

I’d rather you feel embarrassed, knowing that you’ve done your part by whichever means you see fit, rather than feel remorse when it’s too late for me, for a loved one, for a peer, or for an innocent life taken as a consequence of lack of outreach, lack of stepping with your bare feet into territory that’s muddy and uneven.  

Take this, and read it however you wish. Read it in my voice, in the voice of someone you know with mental illness, or someone who’s life has been taken by it:

In a way, it's a strange pseudo-savior complex. I don't want you to feel ashamed or guilty when you look over my dead body and realize you did nothing to prevent this, as your tears fall down your quivering face, onto mine, cold and lifeless, with a queer smile permanently encrusted into my drying, once-rosy lips.

[healingisdifficultbutillbeok]

Healing is Difficult, But I’ll Be OK.

While the sweet, sweet lullabies that came with the opportunity to go to bed after an incredibly tiresome day were loudly playing through my head, my addiction was louder still. I put to sleep the idea of laying in bed, tucking it into the covers, warm and safe where it could hide from the monsters my addiction evoked. Instead, out of the covers and under the bed, arose an awakening of the monstrous voices in my head, coaxing me to search the cupboards of the empty apartment I couldn't call my own, desperate to feel my claws around a bottle smooth and shiny, full of its liquid poison, but not for long. My craving for the poison surged through my veins. My first sip: a grimace and a rebuttal and a spit back into the sink. My second sip: a desperate gulp, shoved brutally down my throat, swallowed reluctantly, the sting toxic, intoxicatingly hypnotizing. The third sip, a giving in to the poisonous night that was soon to come as a result of the poison I willing poured down my unwilling throat. The result: my body shaking angrily to my stubborn nature, my mind a soaring mess, a train on full speed, threatening to fall from the tracks, when all it wanted to do was come to a rest.

Such is the nature of my addiction: one I never thought I would call my own. But yet, here it is, creeping up behind me as I type, its arms desperately trying to wrap themselves around my neck, trying to squeeze the life out of my nimble body. But what if that’s what I want? What if I wanted the voices through my head to stop? What if I wanted to put an end to the thoughts searing through my brain, frying it to a bitter, crumbling crisp? A crisp that was black to the core, unrelentingly acrid, burnt and tainted, that watched itself go up in flames.

“ I just wanted...to put an end to them...you know? What if the solution to ending them is ending...myself?”

For a while, this black, incredibly fragile, and bitter persona became who I was. The freedom that came with going to university in a city far from my hometown set free a bounty of opportunities, not only for my success, but for a downward spiral of sorts, as well. The downward spiral had to be stopped, or at least coped with. How? Liquid poison. Chardonnay, champagne, rum...I liked vodka the best. How this happened, I know not, but soon this whirlwind of a spiral took my life by storm and sprung all that I had known and loved into various directions, and as much as I tried to grasp onto the many prospects my life had, I couldn’t fit them all into my fragile, constantly-grasping hands.

My sophomore year of college transformed me - a once cheery, colorful lad - cloaked in robes of black and charcoal grey. To pinpoint how it all began would be unfruitful, but the seeds of the rotting fruit that grew were rooted in this: mental illness, namely depression and anxiety. Was it because I was unhappy with my major? Unable to cope with the stresses brought forth by attending college on my own, away from home? Did I feel lonely despite being surrounded by so many loving friends, roommates, peers, and professors? Or was the heart of the issue something much deeper, something that even I could not pinpoint exactly, that looking at it all now, seven months later, it’s barely beginning to take form in my head?

I think: that it’s a combination of all of the above. What if I told you that everything was fine, absolutely, positively fine, until one Friday night when I discovered that my iPhone charger was broken by it’s cord? Sounds like a silly reason to be blackened to a lifeless crisp, right?

I distinctly remember my first anxiety attack during the first week of October 2015, one of many to come. It was Friday night, and I was on the phone with my cousin’s husband, chatting away about my joyous time thus far during the course of the Fall semester. After hearing the pleas of beeps from my iPhone, begging me to plug it into the wall to charge, I walked over from the kitchen to my bedroom. Upon my bedroom I saw my iPhone charger, lying lifeless - it’s cord twisted and broken. I was shocked -- how could this be? I always take such good care of my valuables! Immediately, I ended the call with my cousin’s husband, and stared in horror at my lifeless charger. Triggered by such a minor dilemma, my first anxiety attack took full swing. My heart started to beat rapidly, threatening to escape from my explosive chest, my throat swelling up and closing, trying to keep me from leaving chunks of my heart vomited all over my comforter. I felt dizzy and uneasy, and utterly helpless. I called my mother, and in a fit of tears and frustration, let out a half-semester’s worth of pent-up stress and worries, one that resulted in a frenzy of hazy revelations and manic thoughts, such that my mother took the next flight out to Austin to come and be with my for the following week, taking time off of work just to see her frazzled son.

What was then triggered by a mere snap of a charger’s cord, became something much bigger. It was as if my sanity and sense of a conscience was a shimmering, silvery iPhone - it’s cord a broken thing - a lifeline fighting to support its dying hardware. A string of “geniuses” were met, each with solutions to my rapidly accelerating rate of anxiety attacks and gradually darker, depressive thoughts. The solutions the therapists offered me seemed to dance around the bigger issues plaguing my head: “why is this happening to me?” “What is wrong with me?” “I am so blessed, so fortunate, so loved and supported. Why am I feeling so low, so dark, so cynical and helpless?” “Why am I lashing out at some of my best friends?” “Why am I poisoning my body to the point of senselessness? What is sensible -- where is the sense in any of this nonsense?”

The questions swirling through my head were soon quelled, or so I thought, as I swirled glass after glass of wine in my quivering hands, ready to grasp any and everything that would put an end to my thoughts. At this point, I began seeing a psychiatrist, after increasingly harrowing episodes as a result of the poison I numbed my unrelenting thoughts with. Lay off the alcohol, try these pills instead. Although skeptical about the intake of medication, I happily swallowed the idea of it, desperate for an end to my increasing episodes of depression and anxiety. All was fine and dandy, up until January 2016.

January 2016...how can I forget such a monumental month in my life? I spent a larger portion of the month with dear kindred in China and India, well re-charged by a break from school, sober during the entirety of the month, excited for the beginning of the Spring semester to begin. I returned to Austin ready to begin, ecstatic to see my friends again after so long, budding with excitement from the outside, wilting within. After a night of drinking to excess, I woke up with crumbling, drying petals, all that was once abloom rotting to a crisp. My mind was a heavy, swirling mess. The voices within my head were angry and incoherent, demonic and cloaked with guilt. I just wanted...to put an end to them...you know? What if a solution to ending them is ending...myself? And so I went, to the third floor of my apartment complex, looking down at the concrete-surrounded swimming pool below. An easy jump, an even easier splat onto the ground. But no. What if I don’t fall hard enough? What if I don’t hit the ground hard enough? I’d be forced to still live with these thoughts. With these tremors, these demons, these worries and voices coursing through my veins and pulsing through my mind. That’s no fun. What is fun? Am I having fun? Have I ever had fun? What is fun? Fun? Fun what is? Life? What is life? Life…..life…..less…..lifeless…..yes, yes. The cure to ending depression and anxiety…...right? Left? No, no. I’m right.

What followed, even I cannot articulate despite experiencing it all first hand. I withdrew from university, returned to my parent’s home, and began a journey of getting better. Of healing. But healing is difficult. Oh, oh so difficult.

Initially, I was overwhelmed by the support I received. The compassion. The cries of “why didn’t you tell me? You know I’m there for you! I’m always here for you.” Such sweet words. And yet, so empty. I was so angry, with myself, with others, with everything. How can this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? What’s wrong with me? Am I thankless? Ungrateful? Spoilt? Unwielding? A brat? A bitch?

“Why is nobody there for me? Why does nobody understand? Why has no one spoken to me in weeks?” These were questions I thrust upon my new psychiatrist and therapist, which I now have an answer to. I answered my own questions myself, seven months later.

It’s a foreign concept. It’s not normal. It’s hush-hush, taboo. It’s an uneasy concept to wrap one’s head around -- the feeding of an addiction and chemical imbalance within the brain that justifies so many irrational actions, so many detrimental thoughts and words, all in the name of numbing the monsters within me. My actions were louder than any words I’d said -- and I became wracked with guilt for the actions that my conscience stared at in disbelieving disapproval.

As much as friends, family, loved ones can try and be there for me and understand, try and empathize, try and hug me in moments where I feel like all my seams are coming undone, no one except me can pick up the thread, and slowly, steadily piece myself together again. It a battle that I have to wage through myself, one that’s uneasy and uncomfortable, but one that I’ve begun to embrace. I’ve embraced the idea of the depression, anxiety, and subsequent addiction that’ve become so akin to my life for the past year or so, and am wholeheartedly working towards showing them the love and respect they deserve by dealing with them unabashedly.

I am beginning to find comfort within the discomfort of this all. Find solace in the muddiness, messiness, and irrationality. Make sense of the senseless ramblings, the up and down thoughts, the lifeless days and spirited nights. It’s quite the challenge - going against the normal script upon which life is based for so many of us - and this challenge has taken a toll on my body, it’s wounds bandaged, but threatening to burst at their seams. Healing is difficult….but I’ll be OK.