I am supposed to write and send a draft research article by Monday. The one workshop for which I was rejected, then later accepted. Yet. I am here writing an article for another call whose deadline is mid-Oct so that I can redeem my image. Well, what happened is, I shrivelled up in front of an actual opportunity and dug up an artefact of a mistake from college times and converted it into a mistake to train my anxiety-riddled brain into thinking I need to solve it by making up for it, by doing an enormous amount of work for which I am not trained but breaking my back. Then I got disillusioned by it. So I veered towards my job's work. And I started doing it unnecessarily. I don't know why? I just kept doing it until I perfected it, then I took some time to pat myself on the back. Then I broke my back. I ate dinner alone. Came back to bed. Had a quick random unnecessary meltdown. Then I turned the lights on and came to my table and started writing but then drifted away into random bits and pieces of the internet. First, the gruelling depths of the drive folders of my work. Then, looking for jobs. Then, searching random people. And random history. Then eventually went back to sleep at around 2:45 AM.
2 October, 23:11
Everything is bad. Bad job. Bad family. Bad lifetime. Bad community. Bad society. Bad country. I don't want to reach out to anyone. I have no place to go. And, please don't suggest solutions like just going out. And today I feel so tired. Yes. Just physically tired as hell. But I'm struggling to fall asleep because everything hurts. Why is living so difficult? Being human and living should feel natural. For me, it feels like an external burden. Placed on my back. I am under it. Usually, in such extremely strenuous moments where everything, everyone feels constrained and everything, everywhere feels poisoned, I hide under my blankets in my cot and crouch over my phone under my blanket and let my body go and write in my blog.
This tiny space under the blanket, with just the faint light of my phone screen, it's like the one quiet sanctuary I’ve managed to claim for myself. When the whole world outside feels poisoned and overwhelming, pulling the blanket over my head and letting my body go heavy is a way of creating a tiny, safe universe where no one can reach me, see me, conceive of me, or demand anything from me.
Writing here in my blog in this dark, quiet cocoon makes complete sense to my physical body. It’s a place where I don't have to carry the weight or hold up an appearance… I can just let the words fall out of me exactly as they are, without filtering or fixing anything for anyone else. Just letting the words flow out while I crouch under the warmth of my blanket feels like the only valid way to exist tonight.
It's in my feet when I go out. The weight of society. It's constantly in my mind, with the anxiety, the fear, the rumination, the MDD, the sadness. It's in various parts of my body.
The demand of constantly having to manage and filter myself around other people has caused a physical exhaustion to be embedded in my body, so when I am moving through each day, I have to constantly drag it.
And, putting those thoughts into words gives me a temporary sense of relief, like setting the heavy pack down for a minute. Because in such desperate situations, that's all one is ever looking for. A quick stop. A pause. Please wait for a minute, I can't handle it. So at the same time, it also feels like I am documenting a weight that never actually goes away because I know it's not gonna go away and will be right there when I remove myself from under the blankets.
Do I feel like I am writing to understand myself better, or am I writing as a witness... just documenting the truth of how heavy it is so it isn't erased?
Some days I do try to write to understand myself better or at least pretend to understand. Psychoanalyse myself a bit. But, this undiagnosed-hole-in-my-chest depression coupled with heavy dissociation-depersonalisation and MDD has sometimes made me a passerby in my own life, a witness, a documenter, an observer of the truth(?) of how bad this is, how banally pathetic it is. So vain is this void.
3 October, 11:43
[Right after I read "How to Do Absolutely Nothing" by Barbara Kingsolver, I wrote this...]
How to Enter the Morning
How to Enter the Morning
Hide in the cot under the blanket, or don't
but: Do not expect the dark to stay.
Don't keep the hollow detachment you'd wear
anyplace anyone would perceive you.
Don't take your tiny sanctuary.
Take your heavy feet if you have to,
but not the relief, and no
distance to watch yourself from afar.
Don't ask the sterile light
to be anything but torture.
The dragging body, ok
but not the pause,
the cocoon, the ghost,
leave it all.
Find out
what's
heavy.
5 October, 14:45
I wish to write. But, I am unable to. Was. Now, technically, I am writing. After attending three meetings and doing some work. I am writing. My tears are at the bay of my eyes. It's like when you have one of those soft plastic water bottles in your hand, the cap is off, and you are trying not to hold the bottle too tight or else the water just jumps to ooze out. That's how my tears feel. The weekend was great. My aunt was there and surprisingly her mood was... good. Then, she left while my sister and I were out on Friday evening. Friday was a holiday. We started our outing by stuffing our faces with as much food as possible. Then, some buying of stuff to re-clutter home. I got two dresses to wear at home, of course. We came back, my aunt was gone. Apparently, she was to go with uncle to meet her son, who lives and works in a different city, on Sunday. My mother asked me and my sister to clean the house for tomorrow and set it right. Saturday was the annual death anniversary of my father's biological mother who, as far as I know, died when he was 18 or something. I faintly remember another detail that he had an elder sister who also died with her but anyway. So, my father's step-brother [from my grandfather's second wife, that is, my father's step-mother] and his wife came over. There was a customary essential ritualistic lunch prepared. We all had that, they left, we slept, my father went to the office. It was my off Saturday and his on; he took the first half as leave. The evening also went by with lots of talking between the mother and two daughters. About the day, about what my sister and I did the day before. About aunt. About the step-brother uncle and his wife. About the food. About money. About savings. About electricity bills and solar energy. About the clothes I got yesterday and some other stuff. About many, many other things.
17:20
5 October, 14:45
I wish to write. But, I am unable to. Was. Now, technically, I am writing. After attending three meetings and doing some work. I am writing. My tears are at the bay of my eyes. It's like when you have one of those soft plastic water bottles in your hand, the cap is off, and you are trying not to hold the bottle too tight or else the water just jumps to ooze out. That's how my tears feel. The weekend was great. My aunt was there and surprisingly her mood was... good. Then, she left while my sister and I were out on Friday evening. Friday was a holiday. We started our outing by stuffing our faces with as much food as possible. Then, some buying of stuff to re-clutter home. I got two dresses to wear at home, of course. We came back, my aunt was gone. Apparently, she was to go with uncle to meet her son, who lives and works in a different city, on Sunday. My mother asked me and my sister to clean the house for tomorrow and set it right. Saturday was the annual death anniversary of my father's biological mother who, as far as I know, died when he was 18 or something. I faintly remember another detail that he had an elder sister who also died with her but anyway. So, my father's step-brother [from my grandfather's second wife, that is, my father's step-mother] and his wife came over. There was a customary essential ritualistic lunch prepared. We all had that, they left, we slept, my father went to the office. It was my off Saturday and his on; he took the first half as leave. The evening also went by with lots of talking between the mother and two daughters. About the day, about what my sister and I did the day before. About aunt. About the step-brother uncle and his wife. About the food. About money. About savings. About electricity bills and solar energy. About the clothes I got yesterday and some other stuff. About many, many other things.
17:20
I had to break away to have lunch and then continue working and take some rest. Anyway. Now, I am back to writing. So. Saturday comes to an end. And, then! Sunday morning. Sunday was fixed because my sister's friend was supposed to come to our home and we were to go shopping and she was also going to try out some clothes at our home for her upcoming trip. All plans for breakfast and lunch were being made accordingly. My sister and I made our breakfast and my mother made hers and our father's. We were all helping each other, I was also drinking my tea and eating biscuits in between cutting vegetables for us. While talking. Before starting the preparation, we were talking all about decluttering and some hoarding habits of our father. It did come to me as well that I was, in a way, a hoarder too even though I don't own stuff much, I am not letting go of things that are old and rusty like this janky laptop. Then, I was waiting for mine to be done. My sister's breakfast was ready and my mother was eating hers. Right before we started eating, my sister made a funny comment: no, we are not going to have any more discussions while we eat because the amount of discussion we had in the past two days and that morning was more than enough for us as a family. Haha. I explained it to my mother as she couldn't hear it the first time. So, I was supposed to go turn off the gas and get mine on a plate. My mother informed us she would be going on a trip towards the year-end. My sister gave a certain kind of smile while my mother was explaining the details to us. My mother picked up on that. She asked, guessing, whether my sister also had plans. My sister cautiously(?) started giving out her details. Then, I think they had a negotiation-sort of discussion, like back and forth. My mother asked if my sister could go after my mother came back. My sister said by the time my mother came back, the new year would be too close and the celebratory travel period with cheap prices would be over. My sister asked if my mother could delay hers a bit or prepone it. My mother would be going with a big group of an assortment of people. And, they are actually delaying it because there is some festival in November. Otherwise, they would have gone in November. I remember myself listening to it attentively, keeping my head down, stuffing my mouth with my breakfast. Then, it ended. And we all ate and went away to our corners and cots quietly. I didn't realise the weight the discussion was gathering. After a while, I went to my sister's room to inquire when her friend would be arriving. She was organising her room and arranging her trinkets and paraphernalia. She asked almost crudely, what did I want? That's when I started feeling the weight but couldn't realise it just yet. So, I ended up asking quite innocently, what's wrong, I just want to know what you are up to? And, she said, can't you see, I am cleaning my room. Yes, it dawned upon me. Something was wrong. So, I did what I do best. I came back to my room and started spiraling and MDDing and dissociating. Another strand to this situation for me that coloured my thoughts and anxiety was my job.
Things were not well. They still are not. The end of September meant the end of a six-month contract and a new contract. A new contract meant an increment. And, the worst part was not that there was no increment, the worst part was that on the first day of October [Thursday], right after we all logged in in good faith, we received a team-wide email, that appraisal is still in progress and they are extending the contracts for everyone on the basis of the existing salaries, which will be revised as per the appraisals from November, and for the month of October 2026, we will continue to receive our current salaries, and there will be no change to the existing salary for this month. Before October 1st, I was puking and spiraling. My mother would ask me the status. But, I think, on October 1st, Thursday, my aunt was still there. So, she didn't. Maybe it slipped her mind. But, she continued not to. Over the long weekend from Friday to Sunday. So... That really sent me on a trip, my insides were boiling and melting and I was constantly spinning and fumbling. It made me angry and I felt helpless and that made me angrier. I had bouts of crying like I used to before.
Back to Sunday afternoon. I came back to my room and started spiraling and MDDing and dissociating. In between, my mother came to my room to inquire about whether we were going to go or not. I told her that my sister did not say anything. And the mother was genuinely and innocently confused. I spent most of the afternoon and evening either spiraling while in bed or just frantically applying for jobs in the most random places, which made me puke. And, working on a project for one of the courses which has been looming over me. And, the anxiety of presenting it. Oh. Then, I spent some time watching some trashy show. Her friend did not come. She did not go. We did not go. None of us spoke. And that's how the weekend ended. I went to bed with this ball of anxiety within me. I kept thinking what would happen two months later. Who would go? And, when? Will I go? Will I ever leave this job? This room? This house? This city? This country? Like, ever? Who should have the right to go? My mother...? Whose life and labour revolve around the wellbeing of the house and this group trip to a religious pilgrimage that she goes on is her break, her vacation? Or, my sister? Who has worked hard and earned money and deserves to go on a solo trip, take the long break she gets from work and use it? What will happen two months later is the question that has started eating my boiled and melted insides. All I wished as I went to sleep was that this eating would just consume me entirely and I would disappear and not exist at all to go through that time period.
And, I woke up this morning. The confused awkwardness was there. But... days still go on. They are cruel that way. They will pass by and these two months will pass by and the time will come. Sometimes, I think I worry a lot about these things. But I know my family. So, the worrying is justified. It just makes me sick. I keep thinking in a loop. Can I leave? Ever? What if I can't? Currently, I am frantic about leaving this job before they send the new contract or else, I am officially a doormat. I want to leave, really. But, many parts of me make excuses and look for shorter, quicker ways that delay my leaving for... what? I don't know.
When I started writing this again, I made tea with my mother in between, after she asked me if I would like some. We discussed dinner. She appeared to me to be in a confused and softly irritated state in the back of her mind. There's a part of me that wants her to go. I am trying not to cry. So hard. But, my eyes well up and the stone in my throat just gets bigger and I don't know what to do. I wish things were inherently different. Inherently different because even if they changed, the things that made this worse and how much worse they made it would still remain. The imprints of the destruction would forever stain our minds.
Otherwise, I want everything to come down to an absolute and abrupt end. Because I don't know for how long, and in what condition, I can keep going. Somebody? Can anyone put an end to this misery?
~ Oizys.
When I started writing this again, I made tea with my mother in between, after she asked me if I would like some. We discussed dinner. She appeared to me to be in a confused and softly irritated state in the back of her mind. There's a part of me that wants her to go. I am trying not to cry. So hard. But, my eyes well up and the stone in my throat just gets bigger and I don't know what to do. I wish things were inherently different. Inherently different because even if they changed, the things that made this worse and how much worse they made it would still remain. The imprints of the destruction would forever stain our minds.
Otherwise, I want everything to come down to an absolute and abrupt end. Because I don't know for how long, and in what condition, I can keep going. Somebody? Can anyone put an end to this misery?
~ Oizys.