My cure for depression

Phase Number 1- 

I cried. I slept for days, weeks, months, years. I made bad life choices. I hurt the people around me with whatever words I knew. I wallowed in the pain. I shut down. I stopped meeting my friends. I forgot my past happiness and stopped thinking about the future. I developed severe icecream, chocolate and Maggie addiction. From icecream for breakfast to two days old Maggie from the fridge. To eating chocolate while pooping to vomiting the tubs of icecream. I swapped every part of my hopeful soul for an empty shell of an old skeleton that felt like it was burried in the ground for a decade. 

Honestly saying, from one survivor to another, that first phase of post suicide attempt was brutally exhausting. You not only fight with your own heart, you fight with all the souls around you. 

I thought I was depressed pre-suicide attempt. 

But no, the lack of trust I experienced after my attempt was heart breaking. It is soul shattering to feel a threat worse than dying.Meaning, It was easier to keep me locked away than to just talk to me. 

Phase Number-2 

I started to look for outside support. Alas! I did not get it. But what I got was friends who did not give a flying fuck about my ever dieing wish to die. They helped me lock my pain. They let me just exist without any purpose for a long time. 

I started copying the coping mechanisms I saw in movies. I started getting drunk. I watched too much porn, masturbated my vagina away. Did binge watching without absorbing anything. I was not present in any moment at all. 

Yes I was always there for my friends. But I did not let anyone in. If someone asked, I was always just okay enough to pass that one particular minute. 

Yes, I started from passing every single minute. 

My morning started with the smoke of a cigarette and ended with waft of alcohol. There was chaos in slow motion. There was laughter with sad eyes. There were all the lies I could come up with. And there was a tinge of guilt. The guilt of not even knowing what I was missing. Just seeing people truly happy and wondering if I will ever feel it again.

Attention! My friends did allow me to lock my pain. But they also kept me safe. They trusted me enough. They knew that I will open up someday. They knew that day was not near. But they just gave me a safe space to destroy myself in care. They kept a check on me and broke my streak of negative thoughts once in a while, never overstepping. 

Even they knew that they did not know enough about me to give me an unsolicited advice. 

Phase Number 3- 

By this step, I had lost almost every single opportunity to take the easy way in life. Did not score good in 12th boards. Did not get into Delhi University, or complete my preparation for CLAT, flunked the simplest degree of Bsc in Cinema. 

Did not choose theatre, or psychology or any other career. 

It felt like I had already failed in life without even trying. It felt like the setting on my treadmill was set at too fast and I was about to loose my balance and hit my head and fall. 

It felt like no-one could help me, guide me or support me. 

And then, one fine night. I started thinking. 

I didn't need help. I just needed to know that the depression was not the problem anymore. 

The lack of new healthier habits was. 

So, I started again. Tried multiple types of schedules and time-tables. Did exercising one day, dancing another. Singing in some evenings and just crying in some dawn settings. Failing again and again. 

This was not the first time I had tried to pick myself since the number 1 phase. But till now I had failed so many times. That I had a very strong hope that I will figure out the right combinations this time. 

So, I failed more. And when I realised that I have a general understanding of what makes me want to wake up the next day, what makes me sleep cozier, what makes me eat, and what makes me get out of the house. 

I started to exchange the bad habits with new ones. Not all bad habits left my side. But multiple good ones definitely shined. 

And then the anonymous game began. 

No-one helped. No-one supported. And.i could not ever ask for help. 

So I just hid in the crowd, blended in with the hardworking kind. And just kept on adding more good habits even when my bad ones weren't ready to leave me. 

Everything in the hope, that one fortunate day. My mind won't ask for a cigarette. I won't sleep to hide my pain. And there won't be any unsaid feelings. 

I don't think depression ever leaves you. 

You just start thriving and one day you realise that depression is your normal sadness. And you can live with it and still be amazingly happy and content most of the time. 

It has been 9 years since my suicide attempt, and 11 since my depression. 

And the cure is. To know that you are not alone.

And that every kind of cure is an acceptable cure.

O