Trigger Warning: The following article contains references to depression and suicide. This content may not be suitable for some readers.
Those days, I looked forward to the warm comfort of sleep rather than the cold splashes of reality. The closest I came to feeling awake was when I fell asleep. It made me forget about everything else that was going on in my life. It made me forget about how tired I was.
I was tired of living. I was tired of pretending. I was tired of struggling.
All I wanted was an escape.
The struggles just kept growing as the days passed by. It kept piling up. And it kept piling up. The days became indistinguishable.
And I wept. I wept every day while trying to sleep.
I would twist and turn at night, trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t deal with the demons in my head, screwing with my sanity. At night, I would go in front of a mirror and just hate the reflection staring back at me. No matter how hard I worked, or how hard I boasted, I felt like I never amounted to anything properly. All I was was a huge bucket of wasted potential. When the first rays of the morning hit my bed, through the parted curtains, the hell would resume, reminding me over and over again, how useless I was. How futile my dreams were and how I was in a freefall.
The words would just repeat over and over in my ears. I was untidy. I was and am still searching for what religion means to me. I slept in and preferred to stay up at night. I was a procrastinator unless it was something I really cared about.
My parents were all abroad during this time. I was stuck in India, hence I had to go to a relative’s place. At first, it wasn’t that bad. But then, it just grew into something else.
I was the antichrist in their house. I was always scolded 24x7. Before going there, I had tons of self-love. But when someone criticizes you and mocks you over and over again, you gradually begin to believe them and I lost it. I lost all the love and trust I had in myself.
To this day, I have no idea whether or not I’ll really love myself the same way I used to.
The devilish whispers replay themselves in my head. I’ve slowly grown to ignore them. All I wanted was someone who would appreciate me for who I was. Well, I still don’t know if there is anyone who appreciates me for myself in my immediate family. Everyone wants me to be someone else. Eventually, I learned to pretend. But I don’t anymore. It’s so fake. Why act like something or someone you don't even care about?
I was bored and fed up, being cooped up in the house for so long with no one else to talk to. I started watching movies to cope up with it. For those two hours or so, everything felt so beautiful. I could just forget about my tears and drown in the laughs of the actors.
But then, when the movie ended, I realised that this was nothing but a huge act. I had to return to my normal life. Why did their lives have so much fun, while my life was stuck in a rut like this, became my constant question.
I used to write. I still do. I like to fancy myself as a writer. It only took a few taps of my keyboard for my protagonist to be happy. For him or her to get an understanding lover. For them to go on the most magical of journeys together. I created all the emotions that were in my story, without really being in control of my own emotions.
It became an escape. I became happy doing it. I began to feel complete.
Most people who have read my stories say that I write well. But I'm not sure. The people who I really wished would read my stories never did. They weren’t willing to peek through the windows to my soul whereas random strangers on the internet would do so. Maybe the only thing I really wanted was to feel acknowledged because I had always felt like a letdown, ever since my twelfth grade.
Every day, during the initial months of the lockdown and corona, I felt like I was nothing more than the digits scrawled onto my CBSE mark list and that quickly morphed into my entrance rank. I began to hate myself more and more.
Everyone around me rarely saw the person in me. They just saw the marks I got. A single piece of paper determined my life, damn.
People started talking about how much of a failure I was in their eyes. They judged me without knowing me. I didn’t fit in. I felt like a square peg, trying to fit into a round hole. If the hole is large enough, I fit in. Else, I don’t.
I still haven’t found my square hole yet. I’ve been trying my best to. But no. I find myself getting lost more and more in the complexities of life. The harder I try to understand people, the more complex they become.
My situation worsened. Friends who I knew were all going to better places. I too could have done the same. But maybe because of how bad my mental state was, I couldn’t do my entrance exams properly. I began to genuinely doubt whether or not I had what it took to even go near my dreams.
All I wished for was for this chapter of my life to get closed. Desperately. While everyone else was posting about their happy times on Instagram and all other social media platforms, here I was. Stuck in a depressive rut. Maybe just finishing it all off, seemed the more attractive option at a point in time.
The colors seemed dull. Whenever someone laughed it seemed to hurt my soul. Whenever I saw any friend of mine having fun online, my heart got wrecked even more. And well, life just seemed not worth it.
Now that I’m finally out of that cycle, I realise that it was all a test. Maybe I was exposed to something like this, to make me understand that life isn’t as smooth sailing as I thought it was?
I have trouble trusting myself or believing in myself now. I have trouble believing I’ll make it big as I’ve always dreamt as a child. But maybe success in life is really about struggling and rowing past all these waves of troubles life throws at you?
I used to be sad that I couldn’t meet people with who I could connect wholly in school. When college started, I found many awesome people to let myself loose around. The sort of people I really wish I had more memories with offline.
But now I have different problems. I don't know who to trust and believe in anymore. I know a lot of people, connected with them online. But are we really close? Maybe it’s because I have been confined to a house for so long, without any social interaction, but it has become impossible to determine the true nature of people through texts and calls.
Every day, I see the people around me happy. I put on a mask and be happy as well. Because that’s what life has taught me.
And sometimes, I don’t even have the energy to flap my arms around. I just keep drowning, and my eyes close, resigned to whatever is happening.
But it's alright. I know deep down that it will all get better one day. There are a few people around me now, slowly teaching me to love myself again. Even if I’m a bit messy. Even if I’m not perfect. People whom I can call at 1 AM and text randomly while freaking out. I love all of you guys. The seniors I’ve annoyed late at night. The seniors who’ve successfully calmed me down when I was a wreck. And obviously, some wonderful friends and misfits like me in my batch as well.
You guys have made me want to see what life has in store for me now. Even if I might go through tough times once in a while, I now know there’s a brighter side out there.
A side filled with people and things that will make me want to live even more. I’m still growing as a person and slowly breaking out of my schoolboy shell. But without all the wonderful things that have been happening in college, that probably wouldn’t have been possible.
I really thought not getting the college I dreamt was bad. But now I’m stuck here. In a place that wasn’t even there in the backup plans of my backup plan. The college life I dreamt of, is nowhere even remotely close by. It’s all inserted into a screen, reduced to Google meets and zoom calls.
I meet people I talk to online in real life, and I don’t know what to talk about. It’s so weird. So many cool people I know from different classes I want to spend time with, but I can’t. At times, the loneliness hits hard. So hard that I don’t know how to even describe it.
Sometimes, it’s crippling. Makes me want to just quit college and everything else I’m a part of and go on a spiritual soul search. Never before has giving everything up and going on a journey to find myself looked so appealing. Because honestly, I’m drowning and that seems like the only thing that could help me.
But then there are a few gems. The sort of gems who I just blabber on and on to both in real life and online. Being with those people, really makes me think that in the end, it will all work out. Maybe I’ll find my square hole soon enough. A little while ago, I couldn’t even think of one person to open up to properly. Now it’s grown to a few. Hopefully, these few will increase into tons, and sooner or later, I’ll finally have a place I can be completely happy in.
We thought this would be a great place to talk about Fortitude, a mental health initiative by the students of Model Engineering College. Fortitude aims to build a dependable on-campus student network to provide information and help regarding mental health issues. MECians can now also avail counselling sessions from Ms. Anju Lekshmi S, a Psychological Consultant and Social Worker designated by the college.
To sign up for the same, please fill the form in the link attached. If you wish to know more details, feel free to shoot us an e-mail at reachtheofficialfortitude@gmail.com or DM us on Instagram @theofficialfortitude.
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