Andy

My days begin with reluctance. Meals skipped or done in haste, like a paper crumpled and shoved into a hole to fill the gap. My sleep is messy but I want it, it's a cocoon of retreat that embraces me each night as I slip into nothingness, grateful for the respite. My eyes are tired from crying too much for reasons that evade me. I still try to find meaning, try to justify each meltdowns and breakdowns as they visit like a cloud of locust ravaging the field before harvest, leaving in it wake a disaster. A white sky full of clouds, an impending storm, a rain postponed. I get up and get about like clockwork, not sure of where I am or where I'm going or if I'm even moving at all. I try to scribble in ugly sobs and broken lines, half-born foreign words uttered in urgence, yet delivered prematurely or too late. I struggle to pick me up, or what is left of me after every random blow to my self esteem. I feel old and still not hardened enough, my walls riddled with trous that I can't see through as the night remains enshrouded in fog. I take my meds, glare at the blue sky, shake my shoulders trying to bring my head out of the water. I flail, I stare blankly and I walk in circles. There is no beginning or end to this journey. I have nowhere to go and I return to my own mindscape battered bleeding discouraged. I climb back into my bed until my eyes sink into the deep and carries me to the berceau of my dawn. It's a continuity that seems static despite all the drama and tension. I want a break.

Before i forget to write about the good things in france, to be a student again, to sit in the library and feel good about studying, to loiter around the corridors and sneak glances at the prof inside the classroom who hasn't collected their things off the table yet, to struggle with "homework" and remind yourself it's okay to make mistakes, to have teachers look at you with the message written all over their face which say, ah she's a good student, to feel hungry during class and wait for the lecture to end. I feel so happy. So lucky. So young again. I want to do so much. Give back 

It's strange, I don't write journal but I've been using this space almost in the same vein. Someone reached out to me today because they too have been diagnosed with bipolar, and after a long time again I let myself think back to that time I usually avoid thinking, my black period, my most depressive and -dal period. It still scares me and maybe that's why I don't remember much from that time, nothing more than a few scattered detials here and there, four months had never felt longer. I feel like I haven't talked baout it enough, in therapy or with friends or with my parents. Each for a reason of course, in therapy i was too fragile at first and then it became a thing of the past so I glossed over it. With friends, I didn't want to bore them or scare them away or feel like I was glorifying my own survival journey. To my parents because I witnessed them breaking when I first talked to them about it, so I wanted to spare them the other murkier details. I told them once, in brief stints, and I left it at that. But the story still resides in me, clawing. Will I find a way to share it with someone some day? Idk. But i find myself going back to it sometimes and like Shaani Mootoo's story, I grow a garden of cereus blooms over it.

At least here, in silent conspiracy, i can let my mind wander, unfurl like a creeper deep within the undergrowth, breathing upon ancient mother earth like a creature long forgotten, left in the humid shadows of roots and fallen leaves. Here, violence can reign supreme again, at the crack of dawn blood can stream through the rivers, battering the sound of absence with the pitter patter of rain, as the droplets fall, touches the water then disappears. I can let my hands grow cold as I watch the sky change colours, the clouds float by, the birds cry, and in the distance the towers lit up instead of starlight. Let the the tick tock of the clock on the desk punctuate my existence in a brittle expression of nothing important. 

I am tired of people talking about their diseases. Talking about it a bit too much. Pinned on their shirts like a badge of honor. To flash the symbol of a survivor. I don't know why it bothers me so much. I guess it's envy. I hold them in contempt because they are capable of sharing their issues aloud while I'm not. I dislike them because I'm jealous of the help they get from others, the words of comfort, the pats of sympathy. I think their issues are not enough and then I hate myself for thinking like that, for invalidating their pain, for treating them like scammers. I hate how my mind follows in the footsteps of people I look down upon myself, people who judge others traumas nad discriminate them as if pain has degrees and it is only valid if it is worse enough in my eyes. I resent myself for comparing my pain to others and then feel angry when by my own judgement my pain falls short from that of others. If I don't think my pain is enough, how can I share it, if I feel their pain isn't enough why do they get to share it when I don't. But what I can't make myself understand is that pain is pain. It has no degrees. If it hurts, it hurts. No more and no less.

Time flies so quickly. September already. It's been more than two weeks that I'm here in France again. Seems like yesterday I was in Mumbai, sitting in my corner watching tv series. Even here I'm doing that. It's my only escape left. I try to cook well, eat well, do well but there's not much to do. Worst thing is i have ly therapy session but nothing much to talk about. Other than saying im scared. Like wow. What a great tragic thing to talk about. 

Suuper sleepy today, unable to finish writing the book review, so strange, never felt this sleepy in the evening... anyway gap certi done.

I woke up reluctantly but as the morning passed, I thought of goals to achieve in the day, with enthusiasm. Then one small thing happens, and here I'm sitting nad crying again. The fight in me all gone out, washed away in the flood of self pity and self hatred. My hair keeps falling, despite taking meds to stop it, in spite of oiling it and treating it with care. It's thinning faster than the moon waning in the sky, as though my pipe dreams are getting further away. I can't look at the good things because these bad things pull me down in the dumps. What a conundrum, to be sane, it seems the best thing, and yet you come to realise after sometime the price you will pay will cost you a lot of that sanity just gained. Just stop bothering me life. Just let me be. It feels like a cat and a mouse game, life is playing with me, clutching me in one of its claws and then letting me go momentarily, only to snatch me up again. Depression? Funny joke. There's no escaping this hell. 

Rocking. Hush, it will be okay. You'll be fine. 

Will I ever have a stable life? Without these back and forth mood shifts. But this time I'm not sure naymore. It was me. My fault. I messed up the timing of meds, and it's been so more than a month, it's my fault probably that I'm swinging like a pendulum again. But i cant tell this to the doc, what would he think, such a stupid thing to do. Knowing it could harm me, still wanting to mess with the timings. Why did i do that? Why do i? I'm like an alcoholic. Striving to follow routine, take meds regularly and then suddenly caving. Whether it's by itself or due to my interruption, what doesn't change is this going back to square one, beginning everything from zero all over again. I hate myself.