It's been two years now - two years of resettlement, of growth, of being at the same place again, and yet fighting back every time. Two years of coming to terms with what had happened. It treated me severely, and yet it is the seriousness with which I took and the importance and aura I built around it that was my ultimate undoing. It's been two years since I came out of depression, perhaps only partially so; and I continue to lead a relatively calmer life, and this while asking myself - how much worse can it get anyway?
Some of my friends use the word 'depression' quite loosely and I'm sure it is a difficult task for anyone to say when exactly it is that they need help, and when things are beyond their own control. Looking back, I can think of a situation where one should know that help is needed. I'd say that a situation where the sadness is affecting one's social behaviour should be the trigger point. For example, I remember being extremely sad on my nineteenth birthday. My friends had put in a lot of effort to put together a small surprise for me, and yet I remember being self-destructive and upset. Another pointer would be the loss of rationality. This is obviously harder to figure out because to detect a loss of rationality itself needs a certain degree of rationality.
I don't know how I slipped into depression. I remember behaving increasingly irrationally because I was having troubles with my friends. This was also perhaps the only time that I was evicted from the class due to a severe discipline issue. I had lost interest in life, and I didn't see the point in continuing with life. I rationalised it saying that the net present value of all my expected future happiness was less than the sadness I was experiencing at that time. I had become violent and explosive, and more so with myself than with others.
My interaction with my friends was the facet that was most severely affected. I wanted them to pay attention to my condition, and at several times I violently demanded it. Yet, at other moments I wished to be left alone, and I was equally violent in demanding my solitude. I'm sure it was an impossible tightrope for them; and one that God has been kind enough to show to me later on.
This went on for a couple of months, and began to thaw only when I sought professional help. The medication helped me take a distanced view from my emotions by making me feel unnaturally happy. Over the next few months, I began to feel more related, I also regained my rationality and began to think in a more balanced fashion. I wouldn't say that the violent tendencies went away, but they became more sporadic. On the treacherous path of recovery, I soon found myself engulfed by politicking over student societies, and that was another setback that I had to deal with. Of course, my thinking still hadn't matured to enable me to deal with those responsibly, but I look back at it as a learning experience.
I never understood the magnitude of unfairness I had heaped on those who loved me until I was put through the same by two of my friends. On the other side of this irrationality, I found every effort futile. We build walls of irrationality, and then we combine it with impatience and hence create a deadly mixture. It would always be helpful to just be kind to those who love you, and try your best to prevent them hurt. Because me hurting myself hurt them too, and I would have stopped had I cared about how they felt.
The depression did take away a significant lot from me. I lost my best friend at that time - firstly because I felt he caused/exacerbated my descent into depression; and secondly because my mind conditioned itself to hating him, and this was part of the recovery plan. Hating him became such an integral part of me, because I needed that support to climb back up. As I then discovered, true hatred (like I had for me) can only come after true love. My hatred for him fueled me and enabled me to do all that I did in the next one year.
I also suffered severe reputational damage. I'm sure I didn't behave in the best way in those winter months of early 2011. While some people formed a strong opinion about me, very few knew what was going on behind the scenes. I remember one day when I bunked class and caused bodily harm to myself, and yet I turned up in the afternoon for one of the society events that I had organised. My life was spinning out of control then, and I feel let down by people who formed an ill-informed opinion about me then.
Thankfully, all of that is well past. I have probably been put through far worse by the other people I have loved immensely, and yet I do not react like that. There is no more blood, or fire. I am able to internalise the pain and not have it pour out violently. The depression did make me a much better person, and it taught me so, so much. I also taught myself one thing - to never fear. One of the good things I did back then was to never fear - fear the repercussions of my actions, fear authority, fear what people would say about me, or fear the future. I never want to live my life in fear of anything. To fear is the worst I could do to myself.
