Depression is not glamorous
Reader shares her experience of fighting depression
Lying on the couch, living on coffee and chocolates that date back to the year - you still don’t want to think about. It brings back memories of how the crowd erupted and smeared your face with cake, and bought you presents, for it was your birthday. It’s been two years. Tomorrow is again your big day. You’re sure the only thing erupting this time would be your mother’s call trying to make up for the loss. The loss you created. Cutting all the strings that held you to the people that you called yours, you’ve entangled yourself in a pool of things that were for others to handle.
You repeatedly scroll for new messages but all you see is advertisements from various salons. It reminds you of the time, you did your hair on Saturday nights, nice and crisp, and it strikes you, it was before you drowned five thousand feet into heartbreak.
Now, if everything you’ve read, in your perspective seems depressing, I think you would want to stop. Because I would say it once, then twice, then as many times that it takes for you to believe that your idea of depression is deceptive, it’s glamorous. Not having ever been under depression, I’d be lying, but putting aside all hypocrisy, it isn’t a definable state of mind. You can’t put it in a box, in words, in songs.
Depression wakes up to a bright sky, hoping the sun won’t shine. Depression doesn’t kick in and sleep for longer; it kicks out all blankets, puts on disguises to hide hopelessness and goes about the day. Depression hates caffeine and music. Depression doesn’t talk itself out loud. It lives insides, bangs and screams in silence. Depression cannot cry. It has run out of everything that can flow. Depression bites its tongue and whimpers at every sound that escapes the mouth. Depression is monosyllabic. Depression has unanswerable questions. Depression cannot tell itself apart, it loses parts of it in crowds. It can’t even spell itself; it is usually around a group of people, preparing to introduce themselves as ‘fine’.
— The reader is an Indian student based in Sharjah
