I did good today. I woke up before noon, ate within an hour of waking up instead of guzzling down coffee, finished some decent amount of work, and cooked an entire meal.
So every woman does it, right? Balancing office tasks and domestic chores. Raising children, looking after husbands, attending to the needs of the inlaws...
But sometimes, even getting out of bed seems like an impossible thing to do when you have depression numbness. You are trapped in a neverending cycle of sleepless nights and tired mornings. You can't sleep at night because your world comes crashing down every night as the world pauses for reset, and then you can't function during the day because of lack of sleep and because the normal functioning daytime world is too much for your exhausted brain to handle.
I have been in depression for a long time. And I pushed through it for years, because we don't pay attention to mental-health crisis until we are neck-deep in that, do we?
You don't really need to have experienced major trauma to be depressed, you know. It could be years of living in a very ordinary family who just lives from paycheck to paycheck. It could be years of logging in and logging out from Monday to Friday. It could be years of just waiting for the weekend and then wasting it by doing nothing because you are exhausted after a tiring week.
Depression hits different to different people. For me, it began years ago when I lost my grandfather in 1997-98. Until I was in school and college with friends, it didn't matter much. I managed because I was with people who made me feel safe and complete. Even when I started working, it seemed manageable. But when I got married, I drifted away from my friends. There were inlaws that needed to be pleased, bills and debts that needed to be paid, relations that needed to be maintained.
You keep giving away pieces of yourself to people and places without even checking if there's enough left for you. More often than not, those who give themselves to others, are rarely reciprocated. You keep going at the same speed when it all started. And when you realise you can't do it anymore, you realise you are all alone, mentally exhausted, and emotionally numb.
I have had, and still have days where sleep comes at dawn. Nights are spent on overthinking and missing my father, whom I lost recently. There are days when I feel too overwhelmed to do something as simple as getting out of my bed. I can't find even the simplest motivation to eat or do the chores. The unclean kitchen upsets me and the mental exhaustion makes it impossible for me to even do the dishes.
I did good today. I woke up before noon, ate within an hour of waking up instead of guzzling down coffee, finished some decent amount of work, and cooked an entire meal. Not only that, I cleaned the kitchen as I was cooking, had a bath, and even sat down to write about it.
And now, as I am trying to conclude this post, I am repeatedly deleting words because there are tears in my eyes. Because after days, I did good today.
