Amend- A Letter To Loved Ones

By Shelly Debbarma

Hello.

It has been a few years now since that time when most of you saw me wither away into who-knows-what, collapse in on myself and then disappear. But I am always aware that I never said a proper thankyou for the space you let me have, for allowing me (as if I let you have a choice) to disconnect while somehow managing to keep tabs on me. In a way, I am apologising (what use is that apology when this is a permanent feature of mine shall be discussed at length some other day) for being an absent friend and for going completely underground every other month, for some way or the other refraining from confessing what is broiling in my mind, for failing to let my close ones feel included or help me out. I suppose what I am trying to get at is letting you a little (believe me, you do not want to know the whole of it or me) into the loop of what went ‘wrong’ with my head that time. I do not promise this is going to be a coherent ride or a non-narcissist piece but here it goes-

To get to what I mean to say, I need to start with ‘Between the world and me’. This was the book I read before I fled back home before the lockdown impositions were to take effect. Before black lives matter, before the year unfolded as it did. I picked it up because Denzel Washington recommends it in ‘Equaliser 2’. Because I liked the title. There was something about the title. I had seen it before, of course but I mistook it for a work of fiction and I couldn’t be bothered to keep up with contemporary releases on fiction any longer. Anyway, I digress. From the very start, I- I was taken in. It gave me what I wanted, what I sought, what I needed but didn’t know that I needed. Breaking open my pandora’s box (i.e. my recurrent major depressive disorder) to acquaintances was the initiation of my healing process some three or two-and-a -half years ago? It was easier for me to talk or open up about anorexia to others a year later than it was regarding the august ’16 trauma. Maybe getting the trauma out in the open helped pave the way for anorexia ousting. And I did not have anorexia because of the usual reasons for its occurrence. I had it because of my anger with myself, because I felt undeserving of everyone’s love and care, because of my worthlessness, because what I could only think of when I saw food (apart from the anger and the worthlessness) was that billions who rightfully deserve love and food and care and a good life were not getting it while I squandered everything away disrespectfully. This may seem an (over)exaggeration but depression works in mysterious ways.

What can I say about the august ’16 trauma*? It may be, or is, juvenile of me, behind a wall of safety and security of a relatively powerful family, to term that period a time of trauma when scores more were directly impacted. But trauma it was, and that it was a trauma dawned on me late last year. Me, who is adept at ascribing apt words to feelings and experiences and what-not, only got around to it after an interim of four years. Even then when I walked the world with all the anger and the pain without confronting or venting it, I knew that- no, I was conscious and sensitive to my own biased feelings when such a time arose. And no matter how hard I tried to put perspectives and sides on the balance, I failed and ended up livid at myself even more. A time of communal divides, bursts of ‘latent communal ethnicism’ in limelight. To call it ethnicism seems amiss, is calling it latent, mutual, communal mistrust and dislike any better? I should choose not to answer such questions, I made the choice to let it all go, let such incomprehensible matters rest aeons ago. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been this me in existence (metaphorical, literal, take it any way you like). I would be lying if I ascribe this reason as to why I descended into the abyss of depression; after all, (I have not disclosed this to almost all of you) I have had bouts of depression since I was thirteen. However, this reason was a potent catalyst in this worst and clinically certified one. ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ helped, yes but it is so very hard to open up the heart to humankind’s injustices or humankind being human, to start the charity at home. So, in it all stayed and in it festered. No wonder, I loathed myself to the very core. And I do not use ‘loath’ lightly or state a hyperbole. I mean every single word I am writing, in the same vein as their dictionary meanings suggest. The Creature in ‘Penny Dreadful’ knows what I mean-

// The malignance has grown, you see, from the outside in. And this shattered visage merely reflects the abomination that is my heart. //

And he goes on to say-

// Oh, my creator, why- why did you not make me of steel and stone? Why did you allow me to feel? //

The gangrene that had set in ate away at my vitality, vigorously so a year later in the third year of college, and I swung from one extreme to the other like a bloody pendulum- from apathy to bouts of acute awareness and being crushed by the unbearable overburden of thinking and feeling (on anything and everything, of my own life and others’; I took the injustices and unfairness cast on others as a personal affront on their behalf). This self-fuelling vicious cycle sustained itself for ages. But I am not one who can live with anger, either the anger lives or I do. And I came so close, so very close to the point of no return. Do not be alarmed, the thought of taking my own life never occurred to me. Besides, I would not have acted on such thoughts, being the coward that I am (I realise I am going to be igniting controversies on this one). What I mean is that I remember such times in the afternoon golden hour when the lectures would end for the day and I would take the side staircase, the road not much taken, and I would just linger there, stop dead in the tracks, close my eyes and just wish away my existence. After all, with an existentialist mind, coupled with the black dog’s company, I was blinded by the pointlessness of everything, of life itself. To borrow again from Frankenstein’s monster,

// And a futile thing, too. Futile. All futile. //

Where was I? Ah yes, anger. Loathing. Hatred. In its true magnitude. As the summer of ’18 came around, father took me to a psychiatrist under the pretext of a vacation in another city. It was only when we were at the doctor’s doorstep that he told me “Since we are here, let’s get you a check-up”. As if I would have refused if he had told me the truth before we even set out. After spending almost eight months believing that my world view on almost everything only fit in inside the walls of a sanatorium, that I must be institutionalised (I begged and begged for it), a visit to a psychiatrist’s seemed mere. By then, I thought I had come far enough and become numb enough to duly answer what was asked without being swept away, without feeling pity for myself. I cried the first few minutes and then talked about the face of the human world, the state of the human world, asked the rhetorical question of why humanity cannot not be its own impediment and co-exist together and on and on. Maybe it is just what he says to every other patient of his or maybe he genuinely meant it personally but he said to me “We need more people like you. Keep thinking like this. It will be fine.”. Plus, the caricatures made by other patients of him, that hung in his chamber. It all made me feel ok for that time. Not the validation or the acknowledgement but the sheer ousting (tiny chippings at a time) of my Atlas’ Burden.

I have mentioned two books in this piece and I mention them for I read them to un-cloud my unconscious and inherent judgements and biases, to understand perspectives, for the humanism, to see humanity and what it entails- the good and the bad, what it is as it is. Categorising into black and white is easy to be done and live in but I have grown up with an innate tendency to see sides, to peek into the other, to find the blame within me more than in others; and as such, whenever tumultuous times come, I am shred from the inside out. Viewing and believing as ‘us’ and ‘them’ seemingly makes so much sense as the afflicted or the concerned but when the veil that the societal world puts over you are cast aside, by- I don’t know, um, the philosophical outlook you have honed or the humanism that you have read about or the mental illness that renders life meaningless or anything and everything in between- everything is ridiculously humorous. When you can only see that all of it means nothing in the long run, after you have returned to the earth, or how any of it that results in a row is trivial, you can only nod at the sadness of it all and somehow continue existing because life goes on.

I am not saying that I am a better person after it all or that I am above others now; honestly, I shall always remain appalled at my human self. Or that I can now take such times as they come, for what they are, because I still cannot. The last time it was a turn to talk about the much-debated situation in north-east India in one of our development classes, I froze. I was sat there paralysed, in a limbo, with so much to say and nothing to say because all of what I had or have to say is spent in feeling and experiencing it all while others talk it out. I cannot listen to people argue, or hear talks in spiteful tones, or read political news, or engage in worldly conversations, or… I could go on and on. I cannot even listen to songs or some kinds of music, even on the good days. And I cannot do many other things I could do before. But I am doing fine, and it is enough because that fateful year I spent believing that twenty was going to be my last year. Now that I am given or are living in this borrowed time, I am doing just fine and it really is more than enough.

One of the things that helped me weather that time were these words by the twelfth doctor in ‘Doctor Who’-

// Run like hell because you always need to.

Laugh at everything cause it’s always funny.

Never be cruel and never be cowardly

And if you ever are, always make amends. //

This is what I have attempted to do through this piece. Hopefully, it reaches all those who have been affected by my share in your lives and that you accept the apologies and the gratitude.

Sincerely,

Yours truly.

*When I say august ’16 trauma, I mean the direct and indirect trauma that I bore as a result of an ugly communal riot that erupted in my home state. I do not wish to indulge on the details of the matter in this piece.

By Shelly Debbarma