By Radhika Maira Tabrez
Last year in August,
one of my long cherished dreams came true. My debut novel was
released. And it
came with a lot more blessings than I could have asked for. Dream launch events
attended by celebrities, promising reviews that a debut author would sell her
soul for, invites to various literary and book club events. As can be imagined,
I was on cloud nine.
And
then, barely two months after that beautiful journey started, without any
apparent trigger or at least not a big enough one, I found myself back there
again. In the same dark abyss, I have come to know only too well.
The next few months
after that were like being on a roller coaster ride. I had already signed up
for events, talks, guest lectures. Flights had been booked. Commitments had
been made. I had no time to power down and restore my sense of balance.
Fortunately, my husband was aware of my condition. He did his best to be the
scaffolding I very much needed. But on days, still, my foundations would be too
weak to keep standing even with all the support. Sleeping for twenty hours
straight, eating disorders, hysteria and catatonia once again became the things
that defined my days. Thankfully none of that showed up on the perfectly-timed
and well-shot event pictures and media coverage. But no matter where I traveled
for my book launches, no matter how many fabulous people I met, no matter how
many wonderful messages I received from readers who loved the book, and even an
award of a lifetime couldn’t keep that darkness at bay for long. It kept
resurfacing, like on a schedule of its own.
A few months later I
had a miscarriage, and that’s when all hell broke loose. I hurtled down the
abyss, way further down that I had been in the recent past. Perhaps my
depression could have been the reason for the miscarriage. I would never know.
All I know is climbing out of it over the last few months is one of the hardest
things I have done in a while.
This anguish isn’t new
though. It has been the pattern of my life for over twenty years now. When I
felt the first stings of this affliction, depression wasn’t a word one could
use in reference to a teenager and going to a psychiatrist was a taboo for a
middle-class family like mine. Even for my rather liberal father, it was a
bitter pill to swallow, I can imagine. But when his daughter decided to slice
her wrists one fine day, I guess I didn’t leave him much choice. A very rushed
and almost cursory meeting with a psychiatrist in a government hospital
followed, which, as I can surmise in retrospect, did more damage than good. He
was condescending and dismissive. The only good that came out of that
experience was my firm understanding that if I were to win over this darkness,
I would have to do it on my own. So I steeled up. Became even more reserved
than I already was or rather stuck to only the friends who I was sure would be
able to understand. Read up, extensively. Which, as you can imagine, wasn’t
easy in a pre-Google world. School libraries (the only ones I had access to)
back then didn’t quite bother to stock up on this subject because like I said
earlier, teenagers weren’t supposed to get depressed. Any such children were
just attention-seeking trouble makers, was the common consensus.
Anyway, with reading
and researching came the first whiff of relief. That it is not something I do,
as I had always been told. It is something that happens to me. And I cannot
control getting afflicted with it any more than I can control getting bit by a
mosquito in the malaria season. Even with the best of the precautions, it would
happen. And I would have to deal with it, in my own ways which I would
constantly keep experimenting with and improvising on.
That has been the last
twenty years of my life.
Why am I talking about
it now? Because this is a new step I am trying as a part of my constantly
evolving strategy of dealing with my depression. Accepting it. Owning it up
publicly. Not that I have ever been ashamed of doing that before. But I never
did speak about it so openly. Because in my experience, it is rare to come
across people who really cares about your condition or even make an effort to
understand it. And I don’t blame them.
This
particular darkness is a shade of black which one can comprehend only if they
have felt it inside. If they haven’t, it is like explaining the colors of the
rainbow to a dog. Even with the best of the compassion on their part, their
spectrum of understanding just doesn’t cover it.
I am talking about it
now because another woman, an actress apparently at the peak of her career
committed suicide a few days ago. And as always, the same hackneyed,
ill-informed and insensitive chatter has started on social media. According to
some people she had so much going for her, a cheating husband notwithstanding.
She was beautiful and successful. A small little domestic issue making her take
her own life means that she was ‘weak’. She should have tried to be stronger. Was
she depressed? Then she should have tried to just snap out of it. So many
people are dealing with so much more than that. Why couldn’t she?
What as always these
people fail to understand is – it’s not that simple. No one ‘wants’ to die.
Suicide is not a sport one enjoys engaging in, the way some people make it
sound like in reference to Bidisha Bezbaruah and many victims before her. It
takes far more courage than anything one has ever done in their life; and so
calling them weak is as disconnected as one can be from reality. And depression
isn’t something one can just snap out of at will. More often than not, it’s
like the quicksand that pulls you in even faster if you try to wriggle your way
out of it.
People who seem like
they ‘have it all together’ but who suddenly collapse one day, on seemingly the
smallest of triggers are suffering with what has now come to be called as
‘High-functioning depression’. It goes by many names – Dysthymia, Persistent Depressive
Disorder or maybe some other terms too. The terminology isn’t what I am
focusing on here. The more important thing is that its victims are far more
difficult to spot, because of what seems to be a rather unruffled facade of its
victims.
I’ve decided to talk
about it now because I have to. Because I need other people like me to know
that they aren’t alone. And if they want someone to talk to, someone who may
not be able to help them much because she herself is struggling to find the
answers, she will at least lend a compassionate patient ear.
And sometimes that is
all one needs.
PS
– In order to create some awareness and maybe also as an act of closure for me,
I would be writing in detail about this particular kind of depression in my
next post.