Let me say something insensitive today: I like this pandemic.
Years ago I got dehydrated in my hostel room and there was no way to intimate anyone of it. I could not find volunteers willing to lend me their ears and kindness. My breakdown, called attention-seeking and internalized thus- was not defended by “that is a human trying to express/live the best they can in this situation” as a pushup challenge did yesterday.
I would force myself to go to a class full of people who seemed to be functioning well, to compete with them on the same metric with a mind mangled and broken. I have lost count of how many terraces and washrooms I have cried in. I can count on my fingers how many I collapsed in. I have noticed, that my mind-body only got taken seriously when they had a breakdown and even in that got called weak!
It looked like nothing could change, the system of attendance, the way of attendance, or the monitoring of results, to accommodate a differently functioning mind-body. Not one online yoga, cheap online course, conversation forum being advertised, not one reassuring ‘easy banana bread’, ‘dress up’ challenge, not a crowd standing to cheer me on surviving another day in this system either.
I was told to exercise. It helps, they said. Join a class. Let me tell you how many thresholds a depressed-anxious mind crosses before it takes its body to a yoga class.
- Getting out of bed
- Getting into pants
- Taking self outside your nest
- Reaching a class
- Paying for something you aren’t sure of
- Sitting between yet another group of people who seem more capable than you at doing this
- Moving an underfed mind-body with energy that it doesn’t have
EVERYDAY in addition to eating, drinking water, and even bathing.
It has hardly been 2 months since the normal mind-bodies have had to deal with issues that make it hard for them to leave their rooms and I already have started doing yoga, thanks to the free guidance and support, well enough to do headstands, taking classes that were earlier impossible to impart in rural India, on mindfulness and am doing therapy from Amravati while taking care of my mother. I wonder how many years less than 11 it would have taken to diagnose and start helping mumma in the current system.
It took a pandemic to get the world to treat mental health disabilities with respect, for the world to make way for aching body-minds, turn unsolicited advice into usable tutorials, helplines, and encouraging challenges. So pardon my insensitivity, but I like this fucking pandemic.