Dark, dark nights! # Healing Diaries
“Hearts are breakable,” Isabelle said.
The other day, I had an epiphany, but we will come to it later.
I thought I had experienced life in all its facets till the earth shattered around me. Come 5th May ’21, and my entire family was diagnosed with Covid. After a few frantic days, my dad passed away.
It was then I realized how much I had NOT experienced life. They say life drags you down to your knees but in my case to say that would be an understatement. Life dragged me, but by my hair this time- it dragged me around, it flung me into the air, and then threw me down with a shattering bang. I can say it with the deepest, the most absolute feeling of truth, with my hands on my heart that it killed me without killing me… and how? Coming to that… After the initial shock wore off, a deep gloom descended on me. Unlike anything I had experienced EVER. A normally “assumed to be happy, carefree” ( I am not but I can at least pretend) person, I couldn’t for the life of me come to terms with what was happening. And the grief then gradually changed into something else totally. Layer by layer, bent on destroying me, it opened every can of worms I had managed to keep under wraps for so long, for all these years. My anxiety was its PEAK now. Every little mistake, flaw, wrong decisions, career or life, the vulnerability of an entire lifetime was highlighted back to me by the harshest mirror till I felt I could not bear it anymore. I experienced extreme bouts of self-judgement. Sometimes, the anxiety made me feel like I was having a heart attack. Sometimes I would sweat in the middle of a perfectly cool night for hours. Somehow, the original grief got buried under the weight of these new problems. Then the guilt of not being able to even grieve properly! And then the grief would return, in full swing.
One day, it dawned on me- this couldn’t go on. I would perish. I would die. It could not go on. What was life trying to teach me?
That’s when I started to stop fighting. I began to quieten and listen. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and might be the hardest thing I will ever do… Perhaps this was life asking me to delve within. Or perhaps this was just trauma playing tricks. I don’t know. But one thing is clear- I have to heal myself.
What would be the outcome of this journey? I have no way of knowing.
Every morning when I wake up, I have no way of knowing how the day will turn out. Some days I manage better, some days I barely manage. At best I can call it managing. Not healing. YET. But I have hope. Tons of it. What are we without hope anyway?
And now to the epiphany. People like me, struggling with their issues, mental, emotional and physical keep looking for answers- the miracle cure. The internet is full of them. Each of them promising a miracle and beauty that’s on the other side. But most such articles come from people who have MADE IT to the other side. They are healed. I am not. And if any one person out there reads this today, and realizes that they have a real-time companion in this journey, it might help them grasp something of themselves, get some hints, share some tips… If they wanted to hear it from someone who IS battling it, now, here, today, as we speak.
You can expect articles from me here sometimes, if there is anything to write about on this personal journey of mine… any baby steps that I take in the right direction, any nugget of wisdom that comes to me in those odd hours of the night, any dark joke that comes to mind… any iota of self-acceptance and self-love that I learn on this path…any way to direct the immense, deep love I have for my dad and that has now no place to go and makes me choke with the weight of it — I will share whatever I can.
Till then, know that you have company, that you are not alone. Hands to your heart, repeat after me — We will heal at our own pace, one day at a time.
