I can’t say I am doing worse than I used to because there are obviously many better days as of late. But somehow the darker days have become harder to cope with. I have been trying my best lately; I’ve managed to get out of bed, feed myself and throw myself into the world outside as if I am any other person. But the moment I am out there, my heart begins to sink slowly into an abyss of misery, and the “I can’t”s keep echoing off thousands of invisible walls. Most of the time, I manage to lock the doors on these echoes and muffle the voices, and get about the day-to-day. But the emotional exhaustion I feel at the end of such days are paralyzing in itself. Fake it until you make it, right? Well, nobody talks about how much energy faking actually requires!
But, some days are just worse. Which is why I am supposed to write down things on better days as much as on bad days; because bad days are always gonna come back, no matter how hard you board up your doors and windows. And the truth is that you can’t really do anything about it. I could put the self-perception theory into practice and force myself to feel better. Basically, I can grin at technically everyone and everything and try to deceive myself into feeling better. But if it is one of days gone to the black dog, the chances are that no matter what I do I will still feel like I am falling apart deep inside. On days like these, I use the almighty science of distraction. If I can’t deal with my emotions, let me just ignore them and let my subconscious mind figure them out for me for today. Let’s not focus on the repressed trauma and other emotions the almighty lord of distraction has helped me create, which will take another few years in therapy to untangle. Let’s just get through the day for today.
In my long list of distractions, listening to music is probably the only harmless one. Hence, it is my go-to. It’s not too distracting that I can’t focus on things that I have to get done; but it’s distracting enough that my brain can’t bring up how horrible a person I am every split second. I have come to realize that when things are really dark inside my head, metal music helps. Metal is usually so loud and there’s a lot going on that I stop hearing all the other voices in my head. My go-to is symphonic metal, Nightwish to be specific. But when I need to kill more monsters dwelling in my head than usual, I turn to Amon Amarth or some headbanger playlist on Spotify. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what I listen to as long as it can silence the voices in my head. Then there are other days when rage or volume can’t help tame the monsters. On these days, the monsters need to be tamed and lulled with lies of happily-ever-afters and other hopeful naivetes. For those days, there’s the cheesiest pop songs; cue Taylor Swift to Shake It off. I am currently obsessed with Senorita by Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes, it has this promise that everything’s going to be fine, I don’t know how or why. Then there’s the indie stuff that I inhale on the okayish days. I am in love with the When Chai Met Toast and Prateek Kuhad these days. Their music makes you feel like you are soaring with the wind, and feel at- peace with yourself.
But I have a few songs that can bring me back from the brim of an abyss into a moonless night. I guess it works for me the same way counting down techniques work for people who are having meltdowns. I have three songs that I tend to listen to when I am depressed. These three songs came to my life in different, difficult times and I grasped on to them.
Somewhere in 2014, when certain life events gutted and pulled out all my skeletons and years of suppressed trauma, I thought it would never stop hurting so much. It was around this time a friend of mine introduced me to Nightwish. He gave me the Imaginaerum album, which I ended up listening to on the way home most evenings. These bus rides home consisted of me staring out the window and tears falling down my face as I struggled to not sob and hide my face from the other passengers. It was on one of these rides that I heard Taikatalvi, not for the first time, but this time it managed to stop my tears. The world outside the window was dark and comforting, the music was magical and even though the lyrics were in a language that I did not understand, it surrounded me like a warm blanket. The song sounding like a lullaby must have something to do with the way it comforted me and made me feel safe. To this day, when I feel down I go back and listen to Taikatalvi and its mysticism transports me to a different world. The whole album of Imaginaerum has a special place in my heart and manages to lift my spirits, even though most of its lyrics are pretty dark. In recent years, I listen to Nightwish when I want to silence the noise in my head, and their music is so powerful that my brain mutes its whining and listens along.
The second song is, again, not something I heard for the first time when it talked to me. It was sometime in late 2018, when my bouts of depression were beginning to find outlets of self-harm, I lay on our bed, emotionally exhausted to the level of numbness, my mind disconnected from my body as it struggled to grasp onto something, anything. My phone was playing a Spotify playlist and it was all noise in the background until I heard Papon’s voice singing Moh Moh Ke Dhaage. I have always been a fan of Indian movie songs and found comfort in them as they always manage to transport me to some fantasy or another. But this particular evening, when I heard this song, it was the singer’s voice that reached out and pulled me from my limbo. It sounded as if every word he sang had an emotion buried in it. I remember the mist surrounding me falling off like it was a veil made of cloth, and my senses focusing on these emotions this voice was trying to convey to me. The song reminded me how humans are capable of wonderful things and I remember feeling this urge to learn this beautiful secret that he seems to know and I don’t. I went on to listen to all of Papon’s songs and he instantly became one of my favourite singers. I still listen to Moh Moh Ke Daage when I need to be comforted and reminded that the world is not too bad a place. Even though the song still manages to comfort me, I am yet to feel what I felt that evening again. Maybe I have made a shrine for the song in my heart that even the song in its original form cannot compare to.
The third song is my anthem these days. Even though I had heard Senaka Batagoda’s Api Kawuruda sometime back, I didn’t come across his recent work until lockdown last year. I love pretty much all of his music, and have listened to them almost every day since I discovered them and even more than once on some days. His unique voice can lull you back comfort, and his lyrics remind you that we are all in this together. My favourite song from his work kept changing from mood to mood but Nidi Nathi Raya Pura has grabbed “the favourite” title as of now, and is the song I turn on when I feel utterly depressed and close to tears. It happened one late night when I was curled on the sofa, exhausted from fighting my thoughts. I was watching his music videos on Youtube and when Nidi Nathi Raya Pura came on, it managed to shut off my thoughts and make me feel like I was floating on a cloud. The moment it ended, I listened to it again. It has been on repeat ever since. When I listen to it, I find myself not feeling as sad, and the weight in my heart slowly dissolves as I get lost in his voice and the lyrics. It has the effect of a meditation session to me, and every time it ends I wish it was longer.
In the past few days, Black Gives Way to Blue by Alice in Chains too somehow has managed to soothe me. Maybe it’s the acceptance in it, or maybe it’s that tinge of hope it carries in the phrase “black gives way to blue”. Then there’s Senorita and it’s cheesiness, and then there’s Saman Lenin’s Amude and it’s hilarious lyrics. So far, even the nature of my distractions is filled with weird af complexities. Quite similar to, I should say, all the issues I am trying to avoid by distracting myself. But, as bad it may sound, these distractions push me through the day. And on some days, that is all that matters, pushing through and crawling out on the other side.
