My psychiatrist keeps prescribing one drug after another, combinations of them for my string of ailments. My therapist tells me that it is us who controls our mind, that we shouldn’t let our negative thoughts control us. My father keeps reminding me that I should meditate; pranayam, he says, awakens our cells and clears our mind. My colleagues tell me to talk to them when I am feeling down, to just tell them anything and that they’ll listen. My wonderful husband does everything in his power to make me feel better. But what they don’t understand is how much it hurts. That there is no reason behind it, just crippling pain that makes me wanna scream at the top of my lungs in hope that the pain would escape through my mouth and I’ll be able to breathe again. But I don’t scream, in case those around me will think that I am crazy. Maybe I really am, crazy. I feel myself losing my mind every fleeting second. The pain is taking over me cell by cell. I cry in silent, hoping the pain would melt into tears and flow out of me. They ask me the reason behind it all. Why are you depressed? Why do you want to die? There has to be a reason, they tell me. Why? I wish I knew. Maybe it was the broken marriage of my parents, that tormented me all my younger years. Maybe it was being sexually abused at an age as young as six. Maybe it is all the failures I’ve gathered all my life. Maybe it is all of them. But I feel it is more than that. I can’t pinpoint to a time in life that it started. But I know that the pain is more than all of it put together. What’s worse is the hollowness that takes over when the pain subsides. There’s something I want to ask everyone I meet, how do you cope? How do you survive this burning hell that is life? Tell me your secret. What do I do? I ask my doctor. What do I do? I ask my therapist. What do I do? I ask my husband. But none of them seems to know. I am asking anybody who is listening, what do I do to sever this pain? What do I do to build a will to survive? What do I do?
