STARLEY
Life is a funny thing.
When I was at the height of my prime at 19, I enjoyed life thoroughly. I had a lot of friends, and we helped each other out with everything. I attended a fair amount of parties, and refused to chase the red flags that only chased after the girls who were the life of the party. Instead, I dated the boys who made sure the life of the party went home safe. And whenever my mother asked me if I was happy, I could always confidently say that I was.
But things changed after my first love broke up with me, and I cried myself to sleep that night. The next morning, I couldn’t feel any emotion inside me, and I found myself staring at a black dot on the wall.
It was a circle, but after a while, I realised it was closer to a sphere. It wasn’t perfectly coloured either, and faded as it expanded outwards. I couldn’t tear my eyes off this dark sphere, and I spent the entire morning until late evening just fixating on it. I took my dinner with me to bed, and it was the only meal I ate each day for the next week.
It didn’t matter what I did - this black dot refused to budge. I would put some spit on my thumb, then try to rub it off. But it remained. I tried to use my fingernail to scratch it off, but that didn’t work too. I ended up just watching it, and I could’ve sworn that it was growing larger and larger by the minute. It was such a fascinating black dot, and because of it, I lost interest in doing the things I used to enjoy. I lost a lot of sleep, and grew thinner. And one fateful day, my mother peeled me off my bed to bring me to the nearest hospital.
Depression.
That was the label they slapped on me that day. I didn’t understand it at that time. Everyone had these moments, when they were depressed. What did it mean that there was a condition with this name that was as real as any other illness? Were they mistaken? Was this just a thing that visited one of the phases of life, and I just had to learn how to smile to get it over with?
I was curious, so when I was hospitalised, I asked my mother to bring to me many books about Depression as an illness. I wanted to gain knowledge about it, and over the few weeks I spent in my ward, I learnt much.
I learnt that Depression was most likely to strike a person at two particular age brackets in life. Young adulthood, which was the age I was at, and late life. This happened because those were the two age brackets where significant developments in the brain occurred, and any latent damage could have then begun to demonstrate. I wandered my ward and observed the old people there after I closed that chapter, and realised that I had drawn the short end of the stick when I was diagnosed at 19.
It scared me, knowing that there was still a long, winding path with this illness ahead of me.
Because it wasn’t just the textbooks that taught me about Depression. The illness itself was also my teacher. At times, when it visited, I wasn’t sure if it was there. It felt like maybe I had indigestion, or I was suffering from some other physical ailment. And then some times, I knew with some confidence that it was there. Because all the energy had departed from my body, and my mind was running around the same circle. I told myself that I could overcome these episodes.
And then the soul crushing lows would come.
The darkness that would visit during these moments was exactly like a black hole. It sucked all the joy out of me, and even the sadness went with it. All that remained was an emptiness, a never ending wasteland of despair. There was not much I could do during such an episode other than lie in bed, and stare into space. It would turn into a waiting game, and then I would think of my future, and shudder.
I grew desperate. I went to my doctors, and asked them to take this pain away from me. I didn’t want to live with it for several decades, and I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t end things the first chance I got. They sat me down, and with a reassuring pat on my back, told me that it was very possible that I would get better. I took that promise, and slept well that night.
A few more weeks later, I was discharged from the hospital. I returned home with my mother, and she told me that she would take care of me. I knew that she loved me more than she loved herself. Occasionally, I would entertain suicidal thoughts, but I only needed to picture her sorrowful face to chase those thoughts away. I had to live for her.
And as I entered the two year mark since diagnosis, my illness continued to be a constant teacher to me. I took my pills diligently, and waited for the moment when I would be free. But that moment seemed to always remain out of reach. And one day, I freely decided to do more research on what I had, and I came to realise one thing.
That this illness was treatable, but incurable.
The doctors had left that out when I consulted them. Definitely intentionally. But they didn’t lie. They did say I would get better, but they did leave one fact out. I would get better, yes. I was getting closer everyday, yes.
But I was also never reaching the finish line.
Because the finish line did not exist.
I was lying on my stomach in bed, watching YouTube shorts when I was deep in thought about all this. I had watched almost every video out there about ways to make things better, and I thought I would look elsewhere in the shorts section. A few videos played, and a well-known YouTuber filled the screen. She was a therapist, and talked about the many tricks she knew. I’d already heard all of them, and they didn’t work out. Exhausted, I confided into my childhood best friend, Holly, through text. She was there for me since kindergarten, and also there since day one of my diagnosis, until now. I saw that she was in the middle of typing her reply, and I put my phone down.
I didn’t know why I was like this. I knew Depression was incurable, but there was a sliver of hope in me that said I could be set free. But day by day, evidence slapped me in the face that my pursuit was useless. I forced tears back, and received Holly’s reply. She had texted me a link to a YouTube short.
It was a famous preacher, and he was talking about Depression and Anxiety. I listened to what he had to say, and some interest sparked in me.
“If you are suffering from Depression now, know that this is not a permanent thing. For Jesus says in the Word, that He has come that they may have life, and have it to the full!”
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