I almost didn’t survive the last 3 months. I am hardly doing a good job of surviving now. Life feels like a long thriller movie where the writer forgot to end the climax & I got stuck on the top, in a car chase with no breaks! anxious, panicky, mindlessly telling myself that it’ll be okay, praying for help to arrive, the problem to magically solve itself. I read a lot of war novels because my mind feels at home in the barracks with, dust in my lungs, loud noises in my head, an ache in my body, but still mindlessly following orders, going on living, hoping, even laughing sometimes. Singing.
I was hanging on this peak of anxiety for so long that I began to forget normalcy, about relief from pain, which is so much worse to bear once you have tasted peace. My ears are always up, alert to trigger words doctor money family hates why a dog can make my heart race very fast. My gun is always loaded & I am pointing in a general direction while hoping the enemy doesn’t show up.
In place of relief, laughter comes & songs. If feels consolatory, I won’t lie, but it is solidly there nonetheless. When mummy got sick in Andaman & all of us started wilting, talking less, falling sick, the blue sunsets kept existing. My chest never stopped hurting, but every once in a while, mummy would fake sanity, and write on a puke bag “I am fine, Are you okay?” & pass it to me. I met my mother’s doctor in a state of hopelessness & dismay. It took all my strength to get through the meeting. Later I would break down on a roadside or on the stairs of his hospital & M would take me home. There would be a garden, distraction, good coffee & a hug. It felt like stumbling into a forest with deer & birds while looking for another war zone. One time, a colleague hugged me through my crying. Another, I laughed till I choked while playing Uno. I found my favorite pair of jeans & wore them every day. Goldie broke his bones. When I got sicker, I lost weight, & the jeans won’t fit anymore. I attended work meetings and in anxiety wrote I am tired I am tired I am tired in my diary 682 times. I flew I kite and drank good scotch after. I read, got a tattoo & made a friend. BabyR learned to dance. We saw a school of tiny humans, scared, dripping snoot, dance their practiced steps while parents peered with glee, their bodies involuntarily half-doing the steps they had seen so many times before. The tiny dresses started to come undone on the stage & they continued to dance with energy & practiced joy, stopping once in a while to tend to an itch. A tiny human stopped mid-dance-step to remind her friend what to do with her hand. Another, noticing her mother in the crowd, stopped and walked off. I smiled so much my cheeks hurt. Dreams were the worst, I didn’t think I would survive them. But after a particularly bad one, I woke up trashing in the bed, mummy came to my room, held her hand at my chest & apologized because she knew she had been in the dream. She knew she had done something dreadful. She didn’t say “but…just a dream”, she genuinely apologized for my hurt & I smiled in the middle of my war.
To cope, I watched Hannah Gatsby’s Nanette over & over. She kept telling me to focus on the part of the story I wanted to grow from. It isn’t easy. There are too many moving parts. There’s too much to hate & there’s so much that makes me smile. And there is the trying; trying to learn to exist on these extremes without stretching myself so thin that my spirit breaks. I am protecting my spirit.
I waited to write this, I tried to not feed my victim complex, or fake positivity for I have noticed it is appreciated faster, and I battled anger. It took me 3 months, heavy medication, relentless support & innumerable hugs to get to today, when the noise in my brain subdued enough to allow a change in focus. And if you do grow from the part of the story you focus on, mine’s going to be: she kept getting through it till the jeans fit again & sometimes her cheeks hurt from smiling.
