Before you read:

We all have witnessed a situation where our loved ones would have shown signs of being depressed. Neither they are able to describe what goes in their mind nor are we able to understand them properly. Besides our efforts, we feel powerless to help them out. And the barrier is our limited understanding of how a depressed one feels. So here is an effort to make you aware of what your beloved might be going through so that you can support them in breaking the chains of depression.

Only If You Knew

You saw me making the funniest joke. There must have been several times when I was squeezing my watery nose and sweeping tears rolling down my cheeks out of laughing so hard. Did you notice my cutest smile when you randomly asked me to say cheese while clicking my photo? And I know you must have thought that it was the best meal of my day when I had lunch with you. What you couldn’t realize was that it was fake. The time I laughed. The time I smiled cute. At the time I said I was doing well. The time when I pretended to enjoy our meal. The flicker you saw in my eyes. You couldn’t realize that I was faking it all. You couldn’t see it. I couldn’t show you the real me. The real me who is struggling daily. Who is trying to hide her pain. Who doesn’t even want to move from her bed. It is difficult here. It is difficult when I have to smile even though my heart is feeling the burn inside it. My heart aches. I feel miserable. When I look inside, all I see is darkness. There is no light. No hope of light. There were things I used to love. There were activities I used to enjoy. But now it seems the capability of enjoying anything has been deprived of me. Nothing gives me butterflies anymore. Nothing looks appealing. As if I have no purpose in life.

When I close my eyes, I see someone who just looks like me. Someone screaming and crying while burning in high flames. Someone crying out loud. Yelling for help. The kind of help she doesn’t know she needs. Sometimes I come across a person who is sitting in a corner. Sobbing. Shedding tears. Too afraid to look up and face the world. At times I see dreams where I’m drowning in black water, not knowing how to swim. It’s hard to see anything underwater. Hard to breathe. Hard to come to the top. The only thing I feel is my lungs getting filled with water and my heart filling with fear. The terror. I’m drowning in the aftermath of a hurricane. The hurricane I can’t even identify. But it is surely powerful enough to uproot me. Do you know what’s interesting? There is a similarity between us. Me and the water. Water is overflowing and so my feelings are. It is just a matter of fate that water can make its own way around and my emotions are sealed in my mind. They are too feeble to make their way here or there.

There are days when it is hard to survive. All I do is look at nothing. Thinking and rethinking about the scenarios that don’t exist. The scenario I wanted to happen. The things I wanted to achieve. The people I wanted to live with. The life I couldn’t have. The life I wanted so badly. It is as if I’m searching the pieces outside, the pieces I have lost from inside. And you know what makes it worse, the feeling that everyone else has found everything they were fetching for. They have found the meaning of their life. When I look around, people appear to be on the righteous path. On their fittest route. Headed toward the accurate direction. And that feeling of being left behind makes every destructive sensation reach the 7th sky.

It feels like my own thoughts are choking me. Or maybe I’m locked in those thoughts. The cage of my thoughts. And the keys are lost. Maybe they don’t exist. Maybe they melted in the flames I’m burning in. In the fire that is to destroy everything.

Maybe the worst thing is that nobody seems to understand what I feel. It has been so long to be alone. I want to be helped so badly. I have lost the capability to hold things anymore. No, I don’t want everyone walking around me to sympathize with me. I just want only one person to be with me. Someone to look at me with reassuring eyes. The eyes that say it's okay to be like this. Who knows the exact words that I need to hear. Who tells me that one day I will find everything I wanted or maybe I will get something better. I want someone to hold my hands. Understand me. Recognize me.

I have pretended to be happy for so long that now it is impossible to recognize the reflection I see in the mirror. In the middle of my true feelings and pretending to feel the whole opposite set of emotions, I have lost myself. Those eyes and that smile that fools others have started fooling me. I have suppressed sorrow in my heart so deeply that now it is tough to distinguish between what goes inside and what goes on the outer side. It’s tricky to identify myself. Am I the happy one? Am I the depressed one? Who I am? Who the hell I am?

There are days when all I want is to cry. I want to destroy everything and in the process of destroying things I want to get destroyed. I want to let every strike of grief pass through me. I want my lips curl down and my eyes fill with salty water. I want my knees to feel no more power in them and fall to the ground. I want my hands to shake. I want my throat to roar as loud as possible. I want to mourn. The way I should. Mourn on things I couldn’t have. I couldn’t achieve. But maybe the sclera of my eyes is made of rice tissue as they seem to soak every drop of water that should be soaked by my hanky.

It’s not my favorite thing to act around you. I’m not up to any deception. The thing is that I have started pleasing people. Pleasing others even at my own expense. Behaving the way they suppose me to behave. Happy and thrilled. That’s the only choice I have. Because I know describing everything would take much more potential than holding everything inside. I know when I would tell you the things and the thoughts I am going through, you would be shattered. Or worst you would not be shattered. What if you won’t feel anything coming out of my mouth? What if you would say I’m just overreacting? Just overthinking. Just overstretching things. What if you would tell me that it’s not a big deal? What if you would ask me to calm down and stop being dramatic? And that’s the only reason I keep everything to myself. Because I know when I would say life is out of my control, you would tell me that it happens with everyone.

It feels as if my beloved one died and I didn’t get to mourn. I was not allowed. But now it is consuming me, the things I should’ve spilled outside. But I chose to store it. Choose to suppress it deep inside. Now it has begun to take a frightening form. I am afraid of it. Afraid of what it would do to me. I’m wondering where this thing would lead me. Would it allow me to live? Or would it give me a slow death? Only after making me live a life worse than death. Would it take me to a point where I would willingly hug the death bed?

Road accidents are believed to be proficient in taking lives away. But maybe a mere massive contact with some vehicle might save my life. How about if that accident would erase my memory and ease my life? It would give me a better life certainly. I may get to breathe freely again. Or best that I won’t have to breathe anymore. It might make me go through such severe pain that can match the intensity of my inner contemplation. And after that agony, the accident would just leave a body behind.

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