Living With GAD – Generalized Anxiety Disorder!

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Yeah, that’s what they call it!

Well, I had to first acknowledge the glitch and then accept that the highly driven me is not just restricted to being driven, it’s more than that.

Hi, I am a fully functional grown woman at 30, and welcome to my life with 16 symptoms of anxiety and depression, collectively. And as much as I write this for you to read, I write it more for myself to make sure I vent it out and I’m not losing my mind. The idea of ending this life seems more familiar or rather high on value lately (about 3 months) than my history of being excessively controlling of my life.

But then, it’s a battle to remind me every day, woman, you got a lot of Netflix series to watch before you go. So, keep telling yourself,

“What do we say to the god of death?”

“Not Today”

-Game of Thrones.

I cannot even begin to put in words, how much it took out of me to accept that there is a problem mentally that I have to address in me because I have lived my life in so much drive that it was nearly impossible for me to buy that my drive is slowly killing me. I need to slow down and breathe. I have been running, running so fast, away… away from everything and everyone. The feeling of not wanting to talk to anyone, not be around humans, was something I always believed is a part of me.

I completely ignored the fact that I come from a past of being a social bug, when did this feeling crawl into me of staying away from everyone? It happened without realization, and over the years, slowly hollowing me from inside while I was busy thinking I am growing up and that’s how growing up feels like.

No, it doesn’t.

This is what isolation feels like, and you can’t be in love with isolation, it’s not healthy. But, to be fair, I love it right now. The fewer people I have around me, the more I appreciate it. However, I am trying to fix myself one day at a time. Sometimes I want to shut myself inside a room and not come out for days and somewhere inside I also want to run away and take a solo trip, just to see if I am still that decade-old crazy me who would just do things at her whims and fancy. Maybe not, or am I? I’ll know in time!

The last few months have been a roller coaster ride in my life of breaking stereotypes, going against my parents (which to be honest I always believed would only happen in a different lifetime, regardless of how temperamental I am/was/would be), addressing my mental health, psychiatric help, learning ukulele, Insomnia, appetite loss, dangerous levels of caffeine, writing my diary, overdosing on sleeping pills, loss of oxygen or say feeling choked, paranoia, high fluctuation suicidal tendencies, mood calming pills, reasonless crying, aggressively standing up for myself and losing my mind in the process, smashing the patriarchy, meeting an accident, panic attacks, avoiding the infectiously strong will to end it all, learning to be okay with giving second chances to life and myself… Ahh, I can go on and I still wouldn’t have listed it all.

A normal day in my life looks like waking up to puking, or crying which I do not know the reason for and it is very difficult for me to explain it to someone who doesn’t know how GAD works. The brain is just wired to make you feel like you want to cry like there is nothing left in life to live for, and that feeling is hard to fight, each day. But, I’m trying, and medically my psychiatrist has started with CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which honestly is sometimes helpful and sometimes it seems like it’s burdening me to perform well – when I absolutely do not wish to.

No matter how many things I list, I know I would miss out on many. Nevertheless, I will try to write it all down in the following posts. So, if you are one of me somewhere out there, hang in there. I know exactly what you are going through.

I am listening!

X End X

The Mirror Side! (6)

The downhill of an eidetic memory!

Have you ever felt a strange contraction in your mental muscles when you’re in a situation and you intend do to something and you end up doing something else completely because of some god forsaken reason?

In my case, it mostly will be only because of my eidetic memory that restricts most of my current actions depending upon what happened in the past (basically my idea of letting an incidence go is highly mothballed, I’m a major pain in the ass that way) I just do not let it go and its not like it doesn’t take a toll on me, it does but well what’s some sleepless nights over self-worth. It’s not intentional, this is just my make, i’m manufactured this way, guilty as charged. But practically speaking I cannot be held guilty for putting myself first, don’t we all… we do! ( And please don’t start with this whole – I put my family first etc.- in your head for god sake,- I’m not putting the obvious people in the same basket like others) I mean otherwise.

So, I have an eidetic memory with massive toppings of a PhD in how to never forget things. One I never forget and second it’s like a videotape that I can play in my head and watch it a million times if I want. Sometimes it’s an amazing feeling to recollect things and feel it all again but there are times it feels like an alien hand syndrome, you are the one choking yourself against your will. In moments of vulnerability, it will be at its spike to remind you of everything you want to forget desperately.

I have married (pretty loyally) the idea of revamping my mind over the years in a way that I intentionally forget what hurts or makes me vulnerable. My relationship with vulnerability hasn’t been that amazing, I hate the idea of believing that I could or will ever again feel it (again – because I have been there in my early adult life and it was scarring and of course a brilliant transformation point, but scarring). I was raised with way too much preaching of self-worth, and it runs through my veins now. I don’t feel a person is valued unless they value themselves, if I don’t hold my place high, you will not either. If I allow a certain emotion to seep in through a leaking spot, I left open, it will be put to misuse (and it has been, but I’ll give myself that I was just starting to grow up).

It has been almost a decade since then, and I have grown up to understand if I want something, I will want it on a simple term of acceptance. Acceptance of who I am, how I am and how there is no need for anyone to tell me how to live my life (unless asked). It’s significant to value the faith instilled in you by someone, the handing over of their weakest points, the very tough decision over permitting authority over some rarely sparked emotions, the irresponsible and maddening passion released without a blueprint of intimacy for once, the basic and the most obvious things – words!

The earlier it is understood that as much as language is beautiful, it is wrenching as well, the better. For a person of my mental ability who hardly ever gets impressed or agrees easily to anything, the agreement part means quite a lot. Agreement in language, in thoughts, in standing by words, in bringing the force of nature down when intimate, in being on loggerheads all the time but still knowing where to stop… there has to be an agreement that is respected and maintained.

And if not, I will always know my way to the door!

The ‘4:20 Somewhere’ Rarity!

See… I’ll tell you the difference
You are a straight white line
You’re a single snort away from poofing.
While I run in the circles made of infinity
I’m a never ending rarity
No number of pots will ever be enough
To build what’s broken.
I took the morphine with me
When I left from that door,
Your ‘4:20 Somewhere’ rots in my closet

The Mirror Side! (4)

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven…

There is a very sketchy difference in want and need, and this I have learnt over the years I have practically chosen to be delusional about my inhibitions. That, believe you me, are quite out in the open, and never, literally never in control.

I mean it works on very basic rules, my need for green vegetables can be fulfilled literally by any vendor out there, I get the right veggies, I’ll make my salad. But the sauce, the one that I absolutely love the taste of, no, not any walking brand can just replace my existing one, you cannot match the taste, and if I can’t find it around, I’ll make an effort to find it, I will! I am cheeky that way.

But suppose I don’t, and I am okay with whatever I get, I probably never liked that sauce enough, or it was replaceable, either way, the sauce will find its way to a different shelf in a kitchen where it belongs. While I will keep replacing the sauce, one after another, then another, then another… so on. Sad, very adjusting, but sad, coz adjusting!

See, I have always felt life itself is so small that if I spent it worrying about filtering everything, I would have wasted too many moments by the time I reach my pyre (or electrocution, whatever is environment friendly). My life has juggled between a very extreme set of parents, one ridiculously melodramatic mother who cried when Bambi’s mother died, and the other – my father, who was last moved, when 9/11 happened, that’s what it takes to move him.

So yes, I am the extracted perfume version of them both! Which I like by the way. Also, on that note, have you watched the movie, perfume, it’s amazing. What’s ironic is that, even while I’m a mixed breed, I’m a mixed breed of extremists, just imagine (Imagine, I’ll wait). It’s insane how I’d choose to be a want, over being a need, I mean I need my doormat, but I want my study lamp – You see the difference? I know you do. And in all the moments I have felt my space is being compromised, I have walked away, and left behind destruction that tends to seep in with time, never immediately. And believe you me, I never intend it, I don’t. I would rather opt for eating raw tomatoes (which I hate btw to death) than want someone to face that. Because I have seen it once, and it gets ugly.

Not that it doesn’t for me, it does but I have aced the art of ignorance towards anything overpowering. I’m a human driven by extreme emotions, if I was a graph on a Richter scale, I’d never touch a low, my mental earthquakes could tear the earth’s core. Well that’s what I am made of, extreme highs, definitely hard to handle, even harder to let go. And I’m not bragging, I am only stating theories derived out of years of incidences.

I recently was reading Beethoven’s letter (again, in the book – Love Letters of Great Men) to his immortal beloved in the times when she was leaving the city (the story behind it is quite beautiful) and I’m again dammed with a feeling, I am born in the wrong era! Legit!

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven 

(PART-4) (END).

In Sickness, In Health, & In Pandemic

What if we thought of it as the childhood abstinence?

Or like we know our sacred space, the one we save for the most sacred of an instance?

Cease from travel, from healing, touch or talk

Cease from the known, learning anew even a mere walk

On the orders from the unknown, less liked, the pseudo optimists

Even if so, it has to be alright!

Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is.

Make a call, sing, write, read, or even maybe pray,

Be selfish, touch only yourself, for life’s sake, please stay

And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart

Understand that I and you will be here, in one way or the other, not apart

We have done things to the planet, both terrifying and beautiful,

The actions have had a reaction, finally, please don’t try to deny

The world doesn’t need your hands, save them for later, sigh!

Maybe your heart, your vibe, your words,

spread your shoots of compassion, invisibly, not your touch

Write your vows for the idea of a better tomorrow

Save your home from the collapse, with your love, my heart

for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,

& maybe in a pandemic, ‘until death do us part’.

Quarantine, or an ambiverts’ paradise!!

In my case, for anything to be permanent, it must be consistent, you’ll know why I said this,

I identify as an ambivert, or that’s what the article from cosmopolitan says about my personality. I am not even surprised, not because I identify as one, but, I’m sure quite a few million other women too would. This is India, darling (world), we are trained like that!

Personality lying in the basket of the continuum is an idea so intensely shuddered away, if my German Shepherd (Tipsy) was alive, she would die again of a complex, and she was damn good at shuddering, no-really, no kidding. But, that’s not what we are here to talk about, we are here to talk about literally anything, because I mean we are in quarantine, it’s not like any of us has much at hand apart from Netflix, and clapping hands at some point in time of the day to feel nice about existing.

Uhhh… I lost my point here… Ya, so I was talking to my very socially active (when I say very, read it as VERY) father about this whole royal rumble of recent health atrocities and realized how much and on how many levels is he misinformed, not ill-informed, but misinformed, yes. I mean he is somebody who would dissect, operate the entire news bit by bit, from the most trusted sources and then come to me with his crux of information, but oh my god, he has confused himself this time so much. And while at it, he put me in the spotlight saying, how I must be enjoying this time-off my usual very busy life between work and home. NO DADDY, I’M NOT!

For that matter it feels like, everything has amplified on its own whim and fancy, my bull in-fact has no horn to be taken anymore. This is not a holiday, work from home is, oh how do I put it, it’s like asking a woman to keep wearing the same LBD, because she rocked it at some evening party. Of-course she rocked it because it was one night, and if you ask her to do it every day, one it will ruin the LBD, second you and her both will get used to it (I mean bored). Did you actually believe that Eiffel Tower was equally enticing to a couple kissing there on a moonlit night & the respected caretaker, oh c’mon?

This is a quarantine (not isolation, or social distancing, for god sake, know the difference) for me as much as it for anyone else out there, it’s not my paradise, I do not enjoy this time, for no reason at all I would choose this over my regular hustling life between work and home and I believe no one out there would want to. This is keeping me with too much of what I am not used to & away from what I love, my work, even when I can do it from my bedroom, that’s not its designated place. A lot of people can’t relate to my demands of working from the designated place, people like bedroom comforts, I don’t, just get around it. Du-uhh, I mean I work on a table, even at home.

I am not good with changes, at work or even otherwise. You change my place of work & boom my productivity will fall faster than a kid who started learning the bicycle without side paddles today. Like they get used to it in a while, I do too, but the damage, the bruises, the hurt it brings with it, lasts long. My head has a fiddling soul of its own, and I’m sure yours too, aren’t we all looking for permanency in different things… that one favorite café, one favorite book, oh that movie, that person, that corner of my bed, those walnut cakes, we all are, at some point in time for something or the other, trying to quarantine our comfort into things permanently.

& like I said for myself when I started, for anything to be permanent it must be consistent!