Notes From The Newly Diagnosed – Depressed & Anxious

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression.

The simplest way to say it is the only way. Like ripping off a bandage. That is how I have powered through life, head-on, shedding dead weight. Powerful. Fearless. Strong. And I feel like none of those things anymore. It might have been caused by the double dose of COVID I had in a short span of time Or the coronavirus may just have been the last straw on a very stubborn camel’s back. But now, a tab titled ‘Mental health’ sits within my medical file.

I spent the next few months after my diagnosis, getting tested, chasing down medical test numbers, and trying to make sense of different people’s advice and recommendations. Mercifully, I didn’t battle too much gaslighting since both romantic and professional spaces lost interest in me some time ago. It feels like a relief, which tells you just how predatory and toxic both these worlds have been for me.

The Unsafe Space Of Mental Illness

I have resisted this for a long time. I have not felt like I had the luxury to be sick. Illness has felt like a luxury, imagine that. And the physical, I’ve been in a tearing hurry to do battle and conquer it. The mental, I have known, is such an unknown, scary realm, I’ve been fake-praying (because what else can an atheist do?) I never have to think about it.

I have enough and more examples of truly horrible humanity embodying what our world calls mental illness. Just like feminism, since mental health became a fashionable buzzword, it has been highjacked and capitalised by the most nefarious agenda possible. My experiences of abuse were dismissed as “He must just be depressed.” Lying, cheating, ghosting have been excused with “It’s just anxiety”. Vicious instances of unwarranted violence have been labelled ‘Sounds like bipolar, you should be nice to them or you’re the horrible person’.

And my own ways to live, of being tidy and organised, have been ridiculed as OCD, a condition that somehow doesn’t enjoy the same fashionable popularity as the aforementioned. Everyone that has robbed me of a relationship, a job, a slot on stage, a chance and basic dignity claims to be depressed, anxious, bipolar or have ADHD. I am struggling so much with the idea that now I am one of them. Ugh, I would rather be dead than be categorised with those who have only been monsters in my life.

The diagnosis feels worse than a death knell. There is no escaping this with words. I’ve also been losing words. So I have to accept the words that I’ve been diagnosed with. Depressed. Anxious.

Support Looks Like Someone Else

So very luckily for me, the fact that I’ve been struggling to get a job or a fulfilling relationship means that I had the room to disappear for a few days after my diagnosis. I just holed away in a shell, didn’t get out of my house, slept a lot, and let myself ramble a lot. I took solace in the thought that I did not blog, intoxicate myself, lash out or otherwise vomit my turmoil out into the world when I was not in the right frame of mind.

It took me over two weeks to be able to speak to people about it. And by that time, I felt able to figure out who I wanted to talk to.

I realised that support doesn’t look the way we imagine and perhaps that’s because we don’t really think about what we want. Such a hurry we are in to cancel, to attack, to rage against things not being ‘right’ without any reflection of what exactly is right for us. The few people I spoke to expressed their reservations about the way I’m choosing to approach treatment & healing. But maybe because I had sat with these reservations myself, given myself time to take each step and also the option to stop anytime, I didn’t feel burdened by their opinions. And eventually, every single one of them asked me,

“How can I support you?”

I didn’t have the answer but to each of them, I was able to say “I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out.” And that was enough. I am realising that this question carries powerful healing itself. It is free of saviour complexes, of control dramas, of condescension, of gaslighting, of consent violations. It only says one thing and that is – I want to support you and I’m willing to let you decide how that happens.

On Words and Coping

“I’m not sure how people cope.”

The pandemic proved that I had not been living. I had been running from one coping strategy to the next. Happiness is not having a permanent backup plan. Self-esteem is not staying constantly weaponised. The diagnosis showed me in doctors’ prescriptions and many test results how tired I was of coping. Not living takes its own toll, you know.

I read this essay by Leo Gopal on HeroPress. It’s what gave me the impetus to publish this post that has lain strewn across many Drafts for a year now. It also helped me articulate what being mentally ill feels like.

“People, mostly those who do not have depression, think of depression as a severe sadness; it is not sadness. Sadness can be felt. Depression is more of a vacuous endurance of life; each moment folding aimlessly into the next. Sadness would be a relief in comparison.”

Leo Gopal

That is why mental illness is so exhausting. In the last year, I’ve been brought down by waves of realisation of how much of my living was coping. Not the kind of waves that my “I’m a great swimmer” self smiles at. The kind that throw you over and over and gravity becomes a strange dream.

Once I tried explaining it to my family.

“It’s like moving a cart along a road. Except my road is sloping downhill. I am still capable of moving forward but I have to work harder than many others to keep it from backsliding. And sometimes that gets very tiring. I know that doesn’t make sense geographically or geometrically but that’s the best I can do to explain right now.”

And that was a lot of words. Words stopped being my coping mechanism. I’m just learning to find my way about them as once-known now-strangers.

Former Blogger, Currently Depressed

I didn’t blog for months after. It’s the longest I’ve been away from the blog, even counting travel, lack of connectivity or decent gadgets. I’ve always made plans, scheduled posts and ensured the stream of my life is moving. So what happened? Did I get bored? That would be a strange thing to say after blogging for 19 years. But then spouses who have been married longer do get divorced. No, I have been unwell, possibly for a very long time. Enduring COVID-19 two times within two months may have been the last straw. A lot of lingering issues that may have gone unnoticed suddenly became real stumbling blocks in functioning. And I’m still regaining my balance.

For the first time in my life, I’ve actively asked for help. This has been the hardest thing to do because it means letting my ego subsist on the thought that I am superwoman and can do it all alone. Thankfully for me (and I am grateful for this), every person I have spoken to, from medical professionals to friends and family has been supportive.

None of the people who support me have so much as suggested that I stop blogging. It isn’t even like I consciously planned it. But one of the things I had to immediately halt was to stop worrying because stress was weighing me down so heavily that I was unable to function. It was an eye-opener about how much of my life involves worrying, how many of my cherished moments are fraught with worry, and how deeply my hobbies are coping mechanisms. It is making me rethink who I have believed myself to be.

If everything that defines me is built from worry, anxiety, stress and fear, is that even a person, let alone a person I like? Blogging was one of those things. I have after all been a blogger longer than I have been a resident of any one place or member of any one community or employee of any one organisation or defined by any one relationship. So, in putting aside everything that functioned because I worried, blogging also stopped.

Do I worry less now? No. But I’m sitting with the idea that it’s possible to be a person, to be a ME with less worry. Maybe being slower doesn’t mean being less. Maybe hesitation doesn’t diminish me. Maybe choosing not to go ahead because it’s too much effort is okay. Maybe it’s even okay to not go ahead right now.

These are ideas I have been considering. They are terrifying. I have thrived in a culture of right now, fastest, smartest, most. But I can’t go on that way. And in the weeks I’ve had, feeling supported, I find these ideas are liberating too. To not have to worry because someone else will hold up the world while I sleep.

Strange Visitors And An Alien In My Brain

Kindness. Gentleness. These are new visitors to my life. I don’t know if I give off a vibe of needing consideration. Or if I’m attracting a different sort of energy into my life. Or if I’m just too far gone to notice the wounds that human brutality keeps inflicting. A lot of people have been calling me kind of late. I haven’t actually changed.

Well, that’s something I would argue about with myself, if I could bring myself to make that effort. I’ve felt like an alien being inside my own head. The vacuous endurance of life. How simultaneously tedious and unfamiliar. Yet, I believe I’ve masked so successfully my whole life, people wouldn’t really be able to tell I’m ill if I didn’t tell them myself. Ah, my superwoman ego is still around. Maybe I haven’t changed all that much. Hence, proved.

With that, I sleep. Sleep is a new welcome visitor to my life too.