Depression

By Chitra Chidambaram

It's not just sadness or melancholy, it's a form of cancer. Cancer of the mind.

Initially, one continues life with a fake smile but later it cannot even be faked. Melancholy sets in, gets into our very depths and the world labels the person as having some kind of depression, which indeed he does have.

Yes, he not only has it, he even suffers because of it. A suffering so terrible that he is aware of being choked to death but unable to ask for help or seek it from his loved ones.

His loved ones? Oh, he doesn't even love his own self for he has travelled too far away to even know that he exists somewhere. He cannot find himself and loses life's way.

How does he appear to others? His appearance may change, yet his close ones are too involved in their busy everyday lives to even notice or perhaps they themselves are in a mildly depressed state of being and unable to offer help.

Fear is the only thing present with him at all times. Sleep also flees far, far away from him. His depressing thoughts continue to weigh on him night and day, refusing to go away.

'This too shall pass', they all say but it doesn't for a very long time (time, as it appears to him) and then the breakdown happens.

Death is not a choice, it is the only way for him. He has to embrace it. His mind is consumed by thoughts of death and how he can hug it.

It seems easy to hang his fear by a noose or cut the veins of fear from his wrist and let it flow out or push it from some high-rise or wherever. Death seems almost painless to him.

He tries and finally succeeds in ejecting his sick/painful/hurting/wounded mind by hurting his pulsating, breathing body till every breath is sucked outa him.

Life, thankfully, cannot hurt him anymore.

His deep sleep of death seems to be telling life, “I killed you. Now, you can be at peace."

By Chitra Chidambaram