I
No one has ever taught me to put myself first. Growing up, I always saw my mother put the largest piece of fish on my sister’s plate, then the second-largest on mine, then the third-largest on my father’s and she would beam with satisfaction and joy as she served herself with the smallest piece of fish. They say that human beings of my kind, I mean, people who grew up with emotional abandonment and its resultant depression are often people-pleasers, and I can never make them understand that the reason I always put the largest piece of fish on my roommate’s plate is not because doing that makes them think highly of me, makes them love me, but because that’s what I have been taught at home, to find satisfaction in other’s joy. It bewilders me, pains me to think of the fact that I have grown to be so mentally unstable. Every phase of my life brings about new challenges. Let me rephrase that. Being an ambitious woman, I have never feared challenges. I am in fact very fond of them in a way. I started to financially support my family when I was 21, with my scholarship money and sporadic dance tuitions. I left home at 23 because there was nothing that could withhold me. My father who never respected me or my opinion until I started to earn, my mother who loved my father enough to support him in everything that he did, and not speak a word if he did anything wrong. How could I blame her? She could never even stand up for herself, when she was beaten, when she was tortured. And then all I had was my sister, who is also depressed like me. Her depression makes sense. Her down’s syndrome and cognitive inabilities make her uncompetitive and distressed as all her peers pass her by in the race of life. There is nothing anyone can do about it. There is nothing I can do about it no matter how terrible it makes me feel.
II
I knew that challenges were going
to be abundant and how, but I never imagined about the emotional challenges
that I would have to face, the twisted difficulties, the dead-end confusions of
relationships. I have never been taught to love on the surface. You might say
that what I mean is that I don’t know how to draw boundaries. That’s probably not
the truth. When I say that I do not love superficially, what I mean is that in
any relationship, I like to explore the depths of the feelings keeping the
circumferences intact. And yet, every-time my feelings have brought me to
ruins. Struggling with so much of mental health issues, I feel nothing short of
an insane, crazy person today. Love has given me nothing but horrible anxiety,
severe depression, memory loss, lack of sleep, hot flushes every now and then,
dizziness, drowsiness, unhealthy eating habits. And yet, there is this tiny
part of me that never stops hoping, that remains maverick, tells me that no
matter what may come my way, I wouldn’t let the cruel world change me into a
person who never feels anything. No matter what catastrophe downs upon me, this
tiny part will never let me refute to selfish quests, to turn a deaf ear to all
those people, strangers, who suffer out there, and for whom my heart has always
bled, my eyes have always wept. Because that tiny part is what makes up my
core, the truest and the rawest form of me, something that I was born with, all
the other parts are just acquired from experiences- the good and the bad.
III
“Those who don’t belong any
specific place can’t, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and
return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a
true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realize
that it wasn’t a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition
of exile.” (In Altre Parole, Jhumpa Lahiri, 2015)
At times, I sit to evaluate the
losses and gains of life. I look up, in the hope that the one I am looking up
to notices me, hears me, or at least exists beyond the figment of my
imagination and ask him, hopelessly, why he decided that I deserved all this
pain when I didn’t even ask for any of this. I stopped asking for friends when
all I got through school were people who piqued on my abandonment depression. I
stopped asking for anyone to love me after the college senior decided to leave
me, someone she once called ‘family’. The world tramples on people like me in
the race of life. The world tramples on people who grew up not knowing how to
feel safe confiding in the people they call family. To find love outside home is
a dangerous exercise. I understood this when I was 19. Ever since, I have never
let anyone access the core of my being, that was soft, caring, loving and
accepting of one and all. I have loved people only when they have loved me. I
have only let myself be vulnerable when I knew that the person in question is
trustworthy. But little did I know that trustworthy people change too. People
change. All the time. They become what suits them better, what makes them more
successful, worthy, lovable. What serves their interests. And nothing is more
important than that.
IV
At this point of life when I
honestly feel like I am dying, when the pain is just immensely unbearable and
confounding, the person causing it is just gone. I trusted the person with my
life. I thought that the person would always think about my best interests like
I did for them. Now that I am almost on the verge of death, only two things go
on in circles in my mind. First that the person that I trusted so much and
loved with all of my heart isn’t here by my side when I need them, they can go
on their life like they did before I existed, they can go on uninterrupted,
they can go love the people they love, I just mean nothing. All of this hurt,
no matter who caused it, is mine at the end of the day. Its mine to deal with,
it’s mine to bear and nobody cares to put their hand out when I need it. I am as
good as dead. (I do not know if this is jealousy or just humane. I have never
wanted to cause pain to anyone, and yet, always wallowed in pain myself. When
did I give out so much bad karma that it’s boomeranging on me now? It’s
confounding and I feel a part of me being condescending on myself for it, maybe
rightly so.) And the second, my father’s words resonate in my head. ‘You have a
lot of responsibilities.’ I have the responsibility of my aging parents; I have
the responsibility of my sister who I have taken legal guardianship of. What a
pitiful thing to say this is, but, how privileged and lucky are those people
who can end their lives in peace. How peaceful it must feel to cut off all the
ties from worldly maya.
The world is not made for people
like me. I am better off dead. I should die.
Comments
Post a Comment