I Like to Laugh | Shrink Tales

In this one, Ish told me that the fact that i was interacting better with my colleagues was definitely a good sign. It meant that my depression was wearing away. When she said that it was because i was working hard, i felt good. Proud of myself. We also spoke about the stigma attached to mental health. She told me that people sometimes were apprehensive about even sharing the contact details of a therapist because it would raise the question of how they had come to have it in the first place. In that context i felt that it was great that i decided to write about therapy when in Kolkata. Remembered Sri  asking me for the therapist’s number and later saying that i was insane. Yet, it felt good. Maybe not everyone might be able to do that. 

Then we spoke about my eating habits. She asked me when the comments about my body had started. The earliest memory i had of it was when sister Jaseena, the nun who sat at the office of my school asked me jokingly if i was eating all of my sister’s food. Because she was thin and i was fat. This must have been when i was in 3^rd or 4^th standard. 

Mother’s comments about my body. The yelling sessions where she would call me a fat thing that was good for nothing – this during and around puberty. The teachers who made comments on the clothes i wore. Mother who did the same. 

She asked me what i felt when i thought of these instances. I felt indignant. It was not my fault. And it was not fair on their part to speak like that. I never even knew that i was what was called ‘fat’ till these people told me. Like how i didn’t know i was dark complexioned till people started ‘joking’ about it. 

I remembered my then best friend telling me that she chose to walk with me because i was darker than her and therefore less attractive. Somehow the taunts regarding my complexion stopped affecting me by 17. May be because a forty year old man ‘took interest’ in me.  I felt like crying. Some people who are not even close to me got to decide how my life would be later on. Without even realizing it. That was just not right, i felt. 

I noticed that i didn’t feel angry about my mother. She did do damage to me and i am trying to repair it but at least she was close to me. From birth i had given the right to her to hurt me. What about strangers! What right had they to pass comments on my body.

Ish asked me if inji was thin. No, i told her. 

I thought of the dreams i get about people telling me that i have put on weight. That’s the most scariest sentence ever in my life. And it was pathetic. Ish reminded me how we were always hard on ourselves. I left my office group because they were constantly engaging in fat shaming etc. [Of other people. Because random people you find on internet can be fat shamed.] Yet in my own life i was chasing numbers on the weighing scale. I am not underweight but i would love to be. In fact my aim is to be underweight. That would be apt revenge on all those people who called me fat, i felt.

During the week i did think a lot about these problems about appearance that i was worried about. How it had come to matter so much to me. Like what Ish said, it was not possible for everyone to even judge me. Yet, i always felt i was being judged. The saddest part, i think is that i don’t want to break away from it. Years of experimenting with my body has taught me a thing or two about it and the only thing i can do is to stick by it even if it is unhealthy. I am always constipated and got my first piles this year but i am willing to pay that price. 

I am willing to not have a baby because that would mean that i’d have to quit smoking and eat healthy. My priorities are definitely muddled but i don’t think much about it because i have sort of made peace with it. 

Happy that my conversations with mother are improving. Maybe i am really helping her. Hope in Hadiya case. The group of women [fighting for her] gives me so much strength. 

From the previous session, there is something Ish said in passing. That she had to make sure that ‘it’ didn’t come back to me. That was when i realized that there was a possibility like that. From the age of 17 i had always thought that depression, suicide attempts and self destruction was going to be my cycle. In 2015 when i popped all those sleeping pills and survived, the first realization that i had was that that was how i was going to die and that there was no escaping that. But here was a woman who was talking about not making it come back, like it was her job. I didn’t even know that that was part of her job. And because i trust women doing their jobs, i felt hope. It might mean that this sadness that i thought was part of me would not be there anymore. But then i thought of priorities. What did i want, romanticising depression or less number of cuts on my wrist. 

Plus, i feel good when i laugh. There was a time in SRFTI hostel when people actually asked me why my laughter was not resounding in corridors anymore. (Because my laughter is another weird thing about me.) It feels much better to laugh than to prepare oneself for some scarring so that you can escape the sadness. 

My question for the session – is it actually possible to eradicate depression forever from a person’s life? Does PTSD include forgetting names and other things i forget? Is there anything i can do about that? 

Free Hadiya: This group of women have provided unimaginable comfort to me over the past weeks. We will not rest till we #FreeHadiya. Wish someone took this news to her.

Other Diaries: Death Too Shall Pass

On 13th February 2015 i popped thirty sleeping pills in an attempt to suicide.
It amounted to 46mgs in my body, i found out later from the report i got from the hospital.
I was fifty three kilos. It was nothing in my body. My body was nothing.

The previous day while i was having tea i had given D Jeet's memory card which contained footage from our final day of shoot. The burial. The digging of the grave. Aalayam knocked at my door later that night and asked me 'what was in that card?'. I knew it in an instant. He had lost it. With a ludicrous grin pasted on my face i asked in hope for a miracle, 'tell me you didn't lose it'. He had. I conveyed the news to D Jeet. He was heartbroken. I was devastated and numb. I kept hoping it was a joke. D Jeet asked me why i hadn't dumped the card even after three days of completion of shoot. He asked me if i was busy with badminton or Florence. I was dumbstruck. He was hurt. I didn't know where to dump all my pain. Where does a director dump their pain? In a goddamn mise-en-scene gone wrong?

When it finally struck me i ran through the campus and into the street which Aalayam had walked. Went to the cigarette and liquor shops where he had bought things and asked if they could check their money box. They asked me to return at closing time. I went to the cigarette shop at 10.30 p.m. Waited till around 12 a.m. He cleaned the shop but didn't check the money box. I pleaded. He felt i was accusing him of robbery. 'I wouldn't take it even if it was a diamond'. I broke down. I couldn't even formulate my words let alone convince him. People gathered. Took my side and his. I was unable to speak. He didn't let me look in the steel bowls in which he kept all the coins and in which i was sure the 32 GB card was in. Tiny little blue thing. Looked ugly. Carried a tiny little funeral. A film.
I went to the liquor shop. They asked me to return the next morning. I did. At eleven a.m they let me know that the shop owner had gone home the previous night with all the money and that he hadn't found anything in there. I knew that they hadn't looked hard enough. The film was mine. It was my funeral. My death.

I had a lot of tea and bought a pack of razor blades.

I went back to the institute and wrote some mails and spoke to my concerned family. I assured everyone i was fine. I called upon her and hoped she wouldn't reply. She didn't. I was gleeful like i had a happy little secret inside my pocket. Only it wasn't happy. It was a weeping little wimpy child.
I looked at one of the blades and my wrist for a long time. My wrist was tired. I was scared of seeing my vein. I changed and headed for a medical shop. Asked for a strip of sleeping pills. They refused. It was not the first time i was buying it. They had given it to me over the counter the last time and i said that to them. I said i was insomniac. They complied. It was a bargain. Sad and helpless face in exchange for some breaking of rules.

I went back to the room again, tidied it up , watered my plants, curry leaf and all, took my dried clothes in, did dishes. Wrote a suicide note which made no sense to myself which as far as i remember said something about not being able to live without cinema. I wrote it on a paper from a sketch book that Sivaram had gifted me. The pen was a gift from Rehna. Purple. She had sent it twice just to make sure that the purple one was in there. My room was strip searched by friends later to find out which the pills were that i had taken. The note is no longer here. Good. I wrote the names of the six people i loved on earth on the note and popped them pills. I cut up my wrist so that friends wouldn't suspect when they found me if at all they did. I lay down to die.

I heard bangs on the door. Kunju Thalona had called the registrar and had asked him to check on me. She had intuition. I had death. They broke open the door. Emm, my neighbour was one of the voices i remembered. I kept asking her to keep speaking to me till i died. I wanted to hug her and kiss her and feel a human being till i died. I wanted a human voice which i loved till i died.
They took me to the nearest hospital. I was saved.

More than one doctor asked me how the 'experience' was. More than one of them asked me if i would do it again. School girl. Johnny Johnny. Yes Papa.
One of the doctors asked me why i had poured hot wax over my foot. 'Don't you think it's a funny thing to do?', she asked, ostensibly seeking a nod from the nurse stationed near her.
One of them assured Sethuvamma that i wouldn't do it again because i must have got tired of all the needles and pain and stomach cleansing. I must have. It hurts, physically. Tired? I hope so.
They could tell me a million things. I had nothing to say to any of it. 'You only laugh', one of the nurses remarked, amused. 

It was only on 17th february, after 4 days like she predicted that i regained complete consciousness.
In the days before that when consciousness peeped in and went back, i spoke to Sethuvamma, Kunju Thalona, her, calico and Rehna, August, Jay. I thought of the pens Rehna had sent me. I needed to start sketching again. I remembered some jokes from the conversations. Some professors, the registrar, the director and classmates visited.

I remember once when i noticed that there was a tube from my genitals which went to a bag full of my urine. I felt like an old woman. They did that in old age. When i sat up once it fell and piss spilled over my bed. The nurses changed me. I was naked. I must have been naked in front of a lot of people, i thought in the loo when i saw my shaven pubic area. I saw circular areas of glue marks over my belly and above my breasts. They were monitoring my vitals, i was later told. All cinematic. Wired girl, the vitals monitor and may be the green line going flat. Bated breath and tears in a cinema hall.
On the third day my withdrawal symptoms from cigarette addiction were the worst. I whatsapped a professor who was also earlier admitted in a hospital what he had done with his beedis while he was there. I arranged for cigarettes the following day and smoked in the loo. It was oxygen. I didn't know how smoke alarms worked and how much of smoke triggered it off. I coped. No alarm went off. It never did around me. Would have helped if some did.

In the hospital i had visions of streets in Kozhikode and Fort Kochi. I was walking them alone. Cloudy Evenings. Melancholic and hence nice.

On the last day there i dreamed of a funeral in Church of Christ the King, Park Circus. D Jeet, NN and i were shooting. There was a girl from my college. There was a car in which the coffin was carried to the cemetery and some nuns rode it. I sang Cohen's sisters of mercy in my head and whispered 'we weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right'. D Jeet and i had once spoken about that line. He had used it as a title for one of his work. I loved that line. All of us weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

Except nothing was.
It was my second attempt at suicide. The previous one was when i was 19. It seemed like a long time ago. It wasn't. I wasn't that old, urine bag or not. I was nowhere close to death in the first one. I brushed past it five days ago. I am alive but i know how i am going to die. It is terrifying and sad. It is an end and a definite one at that.

I sometimes wonder where i stashed all my love and lust for life away. In which dark closet of my past i had buried it so well so that i could fantasize about death and defy love. I will never find out. May be i don't want to.
Back in the institute i faced all sorts of responses. Bad to bad. I thanked Emm. She gave me a sketchbook. I laughed. Played badminton.
When Sethuvamma and Kunju Thalona leave i want to shut myself up in my room and weep. About what they went through i shall not even attempt to write. Nor about Calico or her. Something dies when you kill. I must have killed a lot of them. I was a born bitch. Fangs and all. Family killer. Killer.

I thanked a lot of people. There was a girl i fell in love with when i was in my first year here. Sri. She sent me a text when i was in the hospital. She was who was there when i was in CCU. Jay told me later that she was who was relaying news to family before they arrived and the one who stayed. A lot of people texted me. NN called every day. She was in Mumbai. So was D Jeet. Our short film was getting a 'married print'. [Sound and picture get married. Nothing fancy. Institutionalization of cinema, i called it]. Sri's text read this way

'Get well soon. You can't die without writing a single word about me in your blog. I exist in your life. I do exist. U better understand how much everyone loves you, you silly stupid girl. I hate u!'

Dear Sri, dear everyone, do you know why i write? It is so that i survive.
Much love from that closet in some alley bathed in darkness and pain.
Alive.
Fighting.

Out the window at the hospital. Was told it was on the 6th floor.