“My ‘normal’ takes a little more work”
By Invitation
Shaheen Bhatt
A screenwriter on ignoring, battling and eventually accepting her tryst with depression.
When I woke up last week, I didn’t feel quite normal. I felt it almost as soon as I opened my eyes. I wanted to get out of bed, but I found myself unable to move. As the minutes wore on and I lay motionless in bed, I began to notice a dark, heavy feeling that inexplicably had not been there the night before. I felt weighed down and empty all at once. Sad and somehow devoid of all emotion.
Negative, toxic thoughts began to flood my mind like poison and they eventually, over the course of the day, distorted everything good in my life — to the extent that I could no longer see any good or even believe it existed.
Like always, I scanned my mind for a reason, a trigger, anything that could explain why I was feeling this way. I found nothing. Life was, for all purposes, good — even great. But here I was, feeling like my whole world was coming crashing down and I had nowhere to go to stop myself from being crushed beneath it. This time, this feeling lasted a week.
The first time I felt it, I was a couple of months away from my 13th birthday. ‘This can’t be normal’, I remember thinking. I’d recently put on a lot of weight and the kids in my class had begun making fun of me.
I attributed the feeling to the fact that I didn’t like being made fun of and a logical solution emerged — lose the weight, lose the feeling. Over the next three months, I dangerously, but diligently, ate close to nothing and unsurprisingly, by the time my 13th birthday rolled around, I had lost all the weight and no one was making fun of me anymore. But, want to know a little secret? That feeling, that dark, niggling, unpleasant feeling stayed firmly put. That’s where my journey with depression began. I now have about 7-10 episodes a year, each ranging between 3-10 days.
There also began a cycle of selfinflicted punishment, in the hope that fixing my external world would eventually help fix my internal one. It’s an idea I’m still struggling to unlearn.
For those who haven’t experienced depression first hand, the idea is difficult to grasp.
There is a tendency to confuse depression with sadness. Sadness is a normal human emotion: we have all felt sad and we will all feel sad again. Feelings of sadness are usually triggered by an upsetting event or problem. Once the problem has resolved itself or the event has passed, we usually feel better and the negative emotion passes. Depression is entirely different; it needs no trigger and sadness is just one of its many symptoms. Stephen Fry once said, “Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is — like the weather.” Everyone with depression experiences it differently; we all suffer in different ways. The one thing that I’ve found remains constant, however, is the feeling that you’re entirely alone. Depression is absolute in its isolation. It forces upon you a blackness and loneliness which ironically, without help, you are usually powerless to escape.
For me, it has brought with it a whole host of issues. Along with bouts of crippling sadness, I also live with insomnia, anxiety, and occasional panic attacks. My insomnia kicked in when I was 16 years old and no matter how hard I tried or how tired I was, I could never sleep. To this day, going 36 hours without even a wink is not unusual for me. As my symptoms persisted and I took to rarely leaving my bedroom, my family noticed that something was very wrong. They realised that when I didn’t move, it wasn’t because I was being a sullen, lazy teenager, it was because I couldn’t move.
Coming to this understanding was hardest on my mother, who had to watch me lock myself away for years without knowing why. While being depressed is difficult, loving someone who is depressed isn’t easy either. It calls for immense patience, kindness and understanding.
As soon as the penny dropped and my mother realised what was going on, she found me a therapist and ensured I learned how to help myself. We should all be so lucky.
Last week, while in the throes of a depressive episode, I decided to post about it on Instagram.
It wasn’t an announcement or a confession, because I have never hidden this facet of my personality — but I recognised that talking about it was a responsibility I had to myself.
We spend hours showcasing frivolous, often inaccurate details of our lives but somehow never talk about the things that matter: who we are and how we feel. When you deny your own depression, you deny everyone’s depression and you perpetuate the belief that it’s something that needs concealing. You perpetuate the shame and suffering of all those who live with it.
As a teenager, I believed something was wrong with me. I was ashamed of my inability to be joyful and ‘positive’ while other people could. Life had afforded me endless opportunity and luxury and I felt like I was being ungrateful by being sad. I, like countless others, bought into the myth that being depressed was a luxury. Today, I feel ashamed of ever being ashamed. It took me years to learn that the way I felt stood independent of my circumstances. I couldn’t help the way I was feeling and I still can’t. The only thing I can do is cultivate an awareness of my condition in myself and those around me, and use the tools available to me to help keep myself balanced.
I no longer believe that there’s something wrong with me. All our lives, we confine and box ourselves into other people’s definitions of ‘normal’. We all have our own perception of what ‘normal’ is, and what is ‘normal’ for me might not be for someone else. The truth of my life just happens to be that my ‘normal’ takes a little more work, care and the occasional sedative.
Shaheen Bhatt
A screenwriter on ignoring, battling and eventually accepting her tryst with depression.
When I woke up last week, I didn’t feel quite normal. I felt it almost as soon as I opened my eyes. I wanted to get out of bed, but I found myself unable to move. As the minutes wore on and I lay motionless in bed, I began to notice a dark, heavy feeling that inexplicably had not been there the night before. I felt weighed down and empty all at once. Sad and somehow devoid of all emotion.
Negative, toxic thoughts began to flood my mind like poison and they eventually, over the course of the day, distorted everything good in my life — to the extent that I could no longer see any good or even believe it existed.
Like always, I scanned my mind for a reason, a trigger, anything that could explain why I was feeling this way. I found nothing. Life was, for all purposes, good — even great. But here I was, feeling like my whole world was coming crashing down and I had nowhere to go to stop myself from being crushed beneath it. This time, this feeling lasted a week.
The first time I felt it, I was a couple of months away from my 13th birthday. ‘This can’t be normal’, I remember thinking. I’d recently put on a lot of weight and the kids in my class had begun making fun of me.
I attributed the feeling to the fact that I didn’t like being made fun of and a logical solution emerged — lose the weight, lose the feeling. Over the next three months, I dangerously, but diligently, ate close to nothing and unsurprisingly, by the time my 13th birthday rolled around, I had lost all the weight and no one was making fun of me anymore. But, want to know a little secret? That feeling, that dark, niggling, unpleasant feeling stayed firmly put. That’s where my journey with depression began. I now have about 7-10 episodes a year, each ranging between 3-10 days.
There also began a cycle of selfinflicted punishment, in the hope that fixing my external world would eventually help fix my internal one. It’s an idea I’m still struggling to unlearn.
For those who haven’t experienced depression first hand, the idea is difficult to grasp.
There is a tendency to confuse depression with sadness. Sadness is a normal human emotion: we have all felt sad and we will all feel sad again. Feelings of sadness are usually triggered by an upsetting event or problem. Once the problem has resolved itself or the event has passed, we usually feel better and the negative emotion passes. Depression is entirely different; it needs no trigger and sadness is just one of its many symptoms. Stephen Fry once said, “Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is — like the weather.” Everyone with depression experiences it differently; we all suffer in different ways. The one thing that I’ve found remains constant, however, is the feeling that you’re entirely alone. Depression is absolute in its isolation. It forces upon you a blackness and loneliness which ironically, without help, you are usually powerless to escape.
For me, it has brought with it a whole host of issues. Along with bouts of crippling sadness, I also live with insomnia, anxiety, and occasional panic attacks. My insomnia kicked in when I was 16 years old and no matter how hard I tried or how tired I was, I could never sleep. To this day, going 36 hours without even a wink is not unusual for me. As my symptoms persisted and I took to rarely leaving my bedroom, my family noticed that something was very wrong. They realised that when I didn’t move, it wasn’t because I was being a sullen, lazy teenager, it was because I couldn’t move.
Coming to this understanding was hardest on my mother, who had to watch me lock myself away for years without knowing why. While being depressed is difficult, loving someone who is depressed isn’t easy either. It calls for immense patience, kindness and understanding.
As soon as the penny dropped and my mother realised what was going on, she found me a therapist and ensured I learned how to help myself. We should all be so lucky.
Last week, while in the throes of a depressive episode, I decided to post about it on Instagram.
It wasn’t an announcement or a confession, because I have never hidden this facet of my personality — but I recognised that talking about it was a responsibility I had to myself.
We spend hours showcasing frivolous, often inaccurate details of our lives but somehow never talk about the things that matter: who we are and how we feel. When you deny your own depression, you deny everyone’s depression and you perpetuate the belief that it’s something that needs concealing. You perpetuate the shame and suffering of all those who live with it.
As a teenager, I believed something was wrong with me. I was ashamed of my inability to be joyful and ‘positive’ while other people could. Life had afforded me endless opportunity and luxury and I felt like I was being ungrateful by being sad. I, like countless others, bought into the myth that being depressed was a luxury. Today, I feel ashamed of ever being ashamed. It took me years to learn that the way I felt stood independent of my circumstances. I couldn’t help the way I was feeling and I still can’t. The only thing I can do is cultivate an awareness of my condition in myself and those around me, and use the tools available to me to help keep myself balanced.
I no longer believe that there’s something wrong with me. All our lives, we confine and box ourselves into other people’s definitions of ‘normal’. We all have our own perception of what ‘normal’ is, and what is ‘normal’ for me might not be for someone else. The truth of my life just happens to be that my ‘normal’ takes a little more work, care and the occasional sedative.
