Tag: mental-health

  • The Lonely Path (II)

    The Lonely Path (II)

    That incomplete thought process is hounding me. It feels as if the main point that I tried to convey in the first take on this subject eluded that entire post. The main point was simply this. Before I continue, I am well aware that me using the term simple when explaining what’s going on in my head is quite the oxymoron. So there is no need to snigger about that.

    Anyway, the point is, when we choose to pursue a greater calling in life that stretches who we are and what we stand for, we need to realise that the people that are familiar with who we are will no longer know the person that we are striving to become. Under ideal circumstances they will grow with us. But ideals are most often talked about and rarely implemented. So expect to feel a creeping sense of isolation when you push yourself beyond the norms that surround you.

    Understand that when you outgrow the environment that you’re in, those that have grown to be defined by that environment will quickly assume that you are trying to be better than them. Or maybe they will assume that you think you are now better than them. Whether that is true is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you are different. You are hopefully a better version of you. But unless you surround yourself with people that appreciate and grow with you, that’s when the lonely path appears before you.

    You’ll find yourself growing uneasy as you feel at odds with what used to be familiar and comforting but slowly grows to feel discomforting and somewhat annoying. The comfort of familiarity will be replaced with the realisation of exclusion. Not the exclusion from social circles because that remains consistent for the most part. But the exclusion that leaves you emotionally wanting while physically accepted. An ambivalence sets in that challenges what you believe to be true against what you think may be an assumption of grandeur.

    Believing that you are capable of more borders precariously between confidence and delusion. Choose delusion, and you’ll be delusioned about your dreams and aspirations, resulting in an embrace of mediocrity so that the familiar comfort of fitting in continues to stroke your ego. Choose confidence and expect to be tested each time you take a bold step towards being the better version of you. Each time you break away from the norm you risk ridicule or rejection, or both. More importantly, each time you step up, you face self-doubt about your ability to succeed, and your motivation to want to succeed.

    Are you still serving that greater purpose or are you serving your ego? Are you pushing yourself to escape complacency or are you courting the admiration of others? The questions that hold you back never cease while the strength to push on is always just out of reach. That’s when you need to stretch yourself into unknown spaces. That’s when doing what feels comfortable and safe threatens to undo every bit of progress that you made up to that point. Even if no one else noticed that progress, you’ll know it was there after you gave it up. Give it up silently and it will haunt you quietly for the rest of your life as you wonder if you would have been able to pull it off. Protect that progress and nurture it into something greater, and you’ll face the reality of success and the horror of failure every few minutes in the back of your mind as you try to focus on what you feel passionate about while trying to subdue the self-doubt that gave you reason to procrastinate for so long.

    At that point you’ll slowly begin to realise that life was never about persevering through trials, it was always about facing the fears of success. By focusing on the trials we have something to raise as a trophy just by surviving. Succeeding in moments that trounced others feels like success, but once the moment passes, once the recognition of our struggles and our bravery fades, we’re back to facing off the same questions that taunted us when we grew restless in the first place when we first looked at our life and saw all the gaps we could fill to make it better and improve it beyond meaningless embellishments. You cannot unsee what you stared in the face. The more you try to ignore it, the more exhausting the effort to distract you from it.

    The lonely path is the only path that showed others that there is a better way. It is the sacrifice of one that improves the lives of many. Needing the guarantee of reciprocation or reward before setting out to improve this world feeds the transactional greed that defines too many of our interactions. Be like everyone else and you’ll always feel like you belong, except when you’re taking your final breath, or when you’ve aged beyond your fickle social needs. When your energy and your health no longer allows you to pursue with gusto the passion of your youth, desiring to change the world will be nothing more than self-inflicted torture. Building hope on the empty promises of inclusion by society is a foolish way to burn your candle. If you hope to die knowing that the world is better because of your existence, don’t shy away from the lonely path, embrace it.

  • When an act of charity becomes business

    When an act of charity becomes business

    If I do good, it will come back to me in unexpected ways. No. It won’t. The streets are full of homeless bodies and souls that have done good, but it wasn’t returned. Or are we suggesting that those that are in a bad state have done no good? This transactional view of life is becoming more popular each day, and it does nothing good for the one that holds this view.

    We do good because we want others to experience less hardship than we did, not because we want to be repaid in some way with another good. Well, at least that is why we should be doing good. Not to earn a reward, but to reduce someone else’s pain or suffering, or simply to enrich their life. If enough people do this, inevitably it will lead to someone doing good for you as they seek to enrich your life out of sincerity, or they may wish to alleviate your burden because they know what it is like to be in a similar position when they may have had less. But that is something that we have no control over. The way that cycle of paying it forward plays out is entirely dependent on the generosity of every soul involved in that cycle. It is not business. It is not a tit-for-tat exchange of deeds. The moment it becomes an expectation of receiving something in return for what you do, you are transacting for gain. That is not charity, nor is it generosity. It is self-serving.

    The selfish motivations that prompts us to give charity so that we can be seen as charitable, or doing good so that we can be seen as benevolent is nothing more than food for the ego, not for the soul. And it’s a poisonous meal as well. Eventually we will find ourselves measuring the value of people in our lives based on what they do for us, rather than how they enrich our lives. The sad part is that most don’t know the difference.

    When someone enriches your life, they don’t necessarily contribute directly to your personal needs, but they make a meaningful contribution to how you experience your world. A simple example would be a spouse or family member that expresses love and appreciation for your children. That is not something that replaces your contribution to your children, but it is something that improves your child’s self-worth. That in turn improves the quality of life that you have with them. Although their act of kindness was not directed at you, it enriched your life, so you should not have reason to withhold kindness from them.

    The irony is that the ones that perpetuate this myth about the universe returning the good that you do are the same ones that would typically believe that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is looking. While that may be true about the definition of integrity, it loses its authenticity when we find reason to shout out to the world how much integrity we have.

    One lesson that has served me well in life is that you should always be weary of someone that finds every gap to mention their own virtues. They are looking for validation, and people that require validation that badly almost always compromise principles and values to get it. Such people will not think twice about betraying your trust or confidence if it means getting that validation from others. Choose your company carefully.

  • Depression is not…

    Depression is not…

    I saw an illustration this morning that showed a man walking with a heavy shadow weighing him down. From one tile to the next the shadow grew bigger and more daunting until eventually it got inside him turning the inside of his body into a dark cave, with a little figure of him sitting helplessly in a corner inside his body. When asked by someone else how he was doing, he simply replied that he was fine, while apparently hiding the darkness inside of him. Many who have experienced, or are experiencing depression can relate to this illustration, but not enough take the more important lesson from it. Park that thought for now.

    The good thing about the recent focus on Mental Health is that they are not calling it Mental Disorders as often as they used to. I take hope wherever I can find it because this is one topic that if ever there was profiteering from the misery of others, this would be it. When trying to sell a product we generally appeal to one of three things. We appeal to vanity, we appeal to convenience, or we play on fears. Mental health is very much in the last category and is currently a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.

    The first point therefore is that depression is definitely good for business. Turning every supposedly imperfect emotional state into a disorder was the goal of the American Psychiatric Association as far back as the early 1970’s. It is for this reason that we now even have a pill to deal with shyness or modesty because we have been led to believe that it is a social anxiety disorder. As dreadful as that seems, it is hardly the worst thing about the depression industry.

    Buying into this mentality provides the convenience of abdicating accountability for the uninformed or downright poor choices that we make in life. Take that accountability away and replace it with a pill, and you have a patient for life. Worse than this, you give others an excuse to claim that they are victims of an external force and can therefore not overcome this state by making better choices. Instead, medication and psychotherapy is needed. Good parenting and healthy friendships have nothing to do with it, or at least that is what they would have you believe.

    We then refocus our goals on individual needs and blame society for stifling us, and in the process once again abdicate responsibility for the contribution to those around us that would build the healthy society that we all yearn for, while complaining about the cruel world that we live in. Cruel world dynamics then create more opportunity for new pills and lifestyle diseases, and suddenly the overwhelming number of health problems related to depression adds weight to the farce that depression is something we suffer from as an illness.

    Back to that illustration, what we fail to realise is that the more we nurture the depressive state (that overbearing shadow of darkness) the more it will grow. Again, a choice that we make to either deal with the source of our dissatisfaction, or accept it for what it is if we are unable to change it. Unfortunately, most wait for it to miraculously change without any effort on their part, and in the process convince themselves that the universe hates them which is why they are not getting what they need to be happy.

    That was deliberately flippant because if reading that angers you, then you are more likely to be predisposed to depression or feelings of oppression because you see weakness of resolve as being imposed on the individual by society, rather than seeing that the weak resolve of individuals is what allows society to define the self worth of the individual. By showing sympathy and compassion for unhealthy behaviour, we teach people that such behaviour is not their fault.

    We teach them that poor choices are not because they were naive, but rather because someone else was manipulative or dishonest. As much as that is true, the resultant impact on us is directly related to what we continue to expect from them, and not what they continue to do to us. Waiting for an abusive parent or partner to be wholesome before we believe we are worthy is like putting a loaded gun in the hands of a psychopath and asking them to have mercy on us.

    Our lack of conviction in what is acceptable versus what is intolerable for society to thrive as a collective and not as individual indulgences is exactly what enables the bullies, the manipulators, the deceitful, and the immoral among us. Deferring our accountability for the consequences of the choices that we’ve made in life simply emboldens the toxic ones and vilifies the victims into a state of shame or…depression.

    Everyone gets it wrong. Often! But our insistence on viewing the success of others through idealistic lenses because we need to believe that we are unworthy simply provides us with comfort when we fail, because persisting in the face of adversity is only possible with the heroes among us. Like one philosopher so eloquently stated, each time we create a hero, we diminish our own capacity for greatness. Be careful who you create as a hero in your mind.

    P. S. If you know which philosopher it was that said that, please let me know because I can’t seem to find the source to give due credit for it. I suspect it was Henry Thoreau but I could be mistaken.

  • In Search of Me

    Clearing out the clutter that had accumulated for more than ten years is a tiresome process. There is an ideal way to approach it, which if followed,  could be relatively painless. It simply requires a clear view of what you have,  an understanding of what you need to keep,  and a very good idea of what you want to do with it all. That is,  what needs to be discarded,  what needs to be saved,  and what would be worth repurposing. Reality dictates that chances are great we won’t have that clear view of what is there,  meaning we’ll often have surprising moments of ‘oh! That’s where it was!’ and other moments of ‘damn,  I didn’t need that reminder right now’.

    You guessed it. Life. It echoes in everything around us,  but very distinctly in cleaning house. There are moments when I find it difficult to remember who I am or what drives me to be me. In those moments I look around and struggle to focus on anything in particular. I become reactive rather than deliberate,  but habits formed over the years camouflage that void quite well. At moments like those I stop and reflect on where I’m at in my life and if there is still any semblance of familiarity with the path I had hoped to travel so many years before.

    Do I still have a higher calling that I hope to serve,  or am I just ticking boxes? As I work through the clutter in my mind I find it increasingly difficult to decide what needs to be kept and nurtured versus what should be discarded to create capacity for more fulfilling endeavours. It’s not as simple as it used to be. I can’t spurn the martyr or ridicule the complacent as easily as I did before. What used to be a consideration for me only is now a consideration of more than me. And so the landscape is littered with little troves, not necessarily treasurable, that hide important little details waiting to derail my efforts just as I gather momentum in my surge forward.

    Eventually the sorting and the methodical approach grows weary. The frustration rises with each realisation that the more time spent rediscovering or reordering myself is time that could have been spent living instead. There is a lot to do,  goals to accomplish,  and challenges to overcome. But here I am sorting through clutter in the hope that it will bring much needed clarity so that I can pursue those goals and challenges with a renewed passion. Eventually I do the equivalent of what my spring cleaning demanded. Compartmentalise. Making a decision on every item I come across at the time that I come across it is not yielding the results I need as fast as I need it. So instead,  I start boxing things into broad repositories of potential.

    The easiest decisions I make immediately. That which is inconsequential I discard immediately. But too many have amazing ‘what if’ moments attached to them. Those are the ones that trip me up. So I set them aside  and categorise them so that if nothing else,  I know where to find that part of me.

    The process is slow and tedious,  and I’m constantly reminding myself of the distractions along the way that created this clutter to begin with. Each moment of mindlessness exacted a cost of intense reflection. Again,  thoughts of life wasting away while I am reprocessing past moments in order to be more decisive in future ones. It’s a grudge purchase of note. The desire to want to proceed but knowing that a moment of recess is demanded instead. It’s a cycle that never ends. It only ever recedes for a few moments before availing itself again,  demanding a response even when we are confident that such reflection is not needed.

    The only comfort I can offer myself is that I accept that given what I knew then,  I would not have taken a different path. Rebuking myself for not knowing better was always nothing more than a pathetic attempt to feel self loathing in order to validate my need to feel like I deserved nothing better. I could never convince myself of that lie. Despite the grave and often colourful mistakes of my past, I know without doubt that I only deserve as much as I invest in the moment. The greater that investment, the sweeter the outcome, even if it does not yield the fruit that I may have hoped for. But the greater the investment, the less likely the chances that I will find myself one day reprocessing it in order to clear the clutter before being able to continue living.

    The apparent incoherence of this post is an accurate reflection of my trains of thought as I work through the clutter around me. My mind has never, and probably will never be free of noise, and so my only saving grace is to find a way to be functional in spite of it.

  • Defining Moments

    I’ve often mulled over the idea of one day listing the moments that I believe defined me in ways I often still don’t fully understand.

    The images that flash through my mind when I contemplate those defining moments are often not scenes of hope and happiness, but most often they’re scenes of struggles, pain, isolation, betrayal, and detachment. Being one of six siblings in a small house makes it easy to disappear into the clutter. Sibling rivalry never needed solicitation.

    Standing in the cold night air urinating into the flower bed in front of my uncle’s house when I was a scared little kid barely 6 years old, I remember staring across the road at the sight of my mother standing in tears under the carport of our house out of concern for my wellbeing. I was physically dragged by my collar and kicked out of the house for not being able to find something I didn’t lose. A lesson my father thought was very much needed in order to teach me not to forget my jacket outside after playing with my cousins; so he chose to hide it away until he was ready to stop teaching me that lesson. It worked. I’m anally responsible these days.

    Moments like those were numerous and such a harsh approach to establishing discipline was the norm. I often find myself resisting the inclination to apply similarly harsh measures in dealing with untoward behaviour from my children. It’s strange how easily we adopt the nature of those that reared us, despite having had distinctly distasteful moments at their hands. I was born with an inherent resilience that prevented me from seeking affirmation from others. I was odd and I didn’t give a damn, and for the most part I still don’t. I sat and browsed through encyclopaedias that showed me life in full colour while siblings, cousins, and friends played cricket in the streets of the township where we lived. I sometimes joined them, but it often ended in injury, so there was hardly ever much attraction for me to immerse myself into the sporting experiences that others seemed to live for. This, I realised later in life, was a source of much disappointment for my father. It didn’t deter me. For as long as I can remember, anyone attempting to coerce me into doing something I didn’t like or want for myself often departed frustrated and unfulfilled in their attempts to prevail over me, or the situation.

    My academic achievements at school were largely unnoticed and barely celebrated, until I lost total interest, slipped from the top of the grade to the bottom of the pile, and eventually dropped out of high school without anyone caring, including me. Girls wouldn’t talk to me and guys wouldn’t bully me because neither group knew what to expect in return. But those weren’t particularly defining moments for me.

    Being jailed for bogus charges of domestic violence and child abuse against my own children. Now that was a defining moment, especially since I was the one that called the police to stop the abuse meted out against me for years. My timing as always was impeccable. I chose to do that at a time when domestic violence against women was a priority for the South African justice system. Nonetheless, it spelt the end of a tumultuous relationship with a depraved soul that was diagnosed as having several severe mental disorders, when in fact all she cried for in the most destructive ways was security and affirmation from parents that made dysfunction look like an admirable next step in life. Unfortunately she projected her demons on me and found it therapeutic to win the favour of others by demonising me instead. It was during those four distasteful years that I lost the very few friends whose presence I always cherished in my life up to that point.

    Pacing around the courtyard of the holding cells at our local police station on the coldest night of winter that year left me even more detached. My pleas to the police officer for common sense to prevail echoing in my head while the nagging knowledge of having hardened criminals sleeping in the cell alongside me left little space for peace. But the moon looked distinctly beautiful that night as I watched it cross the sky through the metal grids that sealed the courtyard above the 20 foot high walls, just in case someone was able to climb up the sheer face of it. It was odd how the police officer that arrived on the scene appeared to be more traumatised than I was. I later discovered that he had presided over another arrest relating to domestic violence during which the alleged perpetrator hanged himself in the bathroom. No wonder the indignity I was afforded when I needed to use the bathroom that night before being taken away by the police. I still smile at the memories of standing in the holding cells below the courthouse and having random convicts coming over to me to tell me their stories of claimed innocence. I seem to attract the weirdest kind.

    Wintery nights seem to be the common thread in many defining moments. Years before, I was held at gunpoint by my previous wife while she went through yet another crazy mood swing demanding that I call the police to settle an argument or else she would shoot me with my gun while holding our daughter in my arms. You read that right. It didn’t make sense to me either, but such is the logic of a recovering drug addict. Again, the police were sympathetic towards her, while confiscating my firearm that she mishandled, and asked me to leave the house while entrusting my daughter into her care for the night. Amazing what the weaker sex can get away with.

    My naivety has been a loyal friend throughout my life, and still remains a bosom buddy if recent events are anything to go by. Many accuse me of gullibility, but I would rather live a life of being consciously naïve than to live suspiciously.

    I’ve had good moments, and even a few great ones. I’ve recoiled at the unexpected loss of loved ones, but always receded into a private space to grieve, rarely showing my pain to the world. It’s none of their business after all. The buoyancy of my spirit often mocks me because it leaves me confused about who is being fooled. Or perhaps no one is being fooled, and in fact this inherent resilience that I cannot lay claim to, but nonetheless do possess, perhaps this is what makes it possible for me to see the present moment for what it is rather than what it should be relative to the souring experiences of my past.

    The moments that have defined me are many, but their realisation and conscious recollection still largely eludes me. There is a strong undertone of changes blowing through my life right now. Profound changes that barely show in the normal light of day. Perhaps this is why my mind has been distracted to the point of mild dyslexia recently. My sub-conscious mind is pre-occupied with contemplating these changes, while my conscious mind knows nothing of it in the face of the routine that effortlessly persists.

    I still feel a need to define who I am, but I suspect that I may never fully achieve this goal in this lifetime. Life is…undefinable, and I remain a mystery to myself, and most often, to those around me as well.

  • Introverts don’t exist

    I’ve often been accused of being an introvert. Some apologists would say that it’s not a bad thing, but then they’ll continue to describe specific adaptations in behaviour that ‘normal’ people should adopt in order to understand or engage with introverts more meaningfully. They’re idiots, and so is every other person that allows some idiot with a degree to classify their state of being by attaching a label to it.

    I am not an introvert. I choose to be introspective. I choose to observe before flying my mouth off, and I choose to be measured in my responses only after I am comfortable that I have grasped the true nature of what I am dealing with. That is not being introverted, that is being reasonable. Yet once again, because spontaneity and instant gratification is worshipped by the masses, those that choose to live with substance rather than overt expression, are considered as lesser beings.

    To a much lesser extent extroverts are similarly labelled. The irony of that label is that it places many of ‘them’ on a pedestal, which denies them the ability to assume a quiet and introspective disposition when needed because there is always someone waiting to accuse them of being in a bad or sad mood. Those that don’t care for the labels will shun such shallowness and continue their introspection, while most will succumb and find the next best distraction through which to express their extrovert-ism.

    Labels will be the death of many kind souls because just the term introvert has such negative connotations. According to our friend Google, the dictionary definition of introvert is:

    image

    As if that isn’t enough against which to rest my case, I would go further to suggest that many consider introverted behaviour to be a personality disorder. Those that buy into this Neanderthal way of thinking embrace that label, and then go through life trying to find coping mechanisms defined by the ‘normal’ idiots with degrees so that they can fit into someone else’s retarded definition of what their behaviour should be like.

    It takes a healthy dose of a superiority complex to assume that just because you do not relate to the disposition of another, your inane academic qualification endows you with the right to define them as flawed in capacity and therefore a charitable case for those that compensate for this apparent shortcoming in introverts. This post is deliberately condescending because the hogwash about supposed introverts seems to prevail regardless of the logical reasoning offered in return.

    Just because someone doesn’t like your company, or because they prefer their own company to that of the gossipers, the nit-pickers, the shallow ones, or the distracted ones, doesn’t make them flawed. In fact, if you were honest with yourself, and you subscribed to the label of being an extrovert or a ‘normal’ person that is neither introverted nor extroverted, seeing someone shying away from company should prompt you to consider what is distasteful to them rather than assuming that they have a mental disorder that was created by sadistic capitalists with a degree is psychiatry.

    The world has learnt more, and benefited more, from those that are introspective by choice, than they have by the party animals that throw caution to the wind in order to appease the fickleness of the masses with which they surround themselves. Distractions rarely inspire growth. The art of introspection is to navigate through those distractions in order to grow. So the next time you see someone sitting quietly and observing, before you assume they’re an introvert, consider that they may very well be observing your whimsical behaviour and trying to understand what drives you to be as fickle as you are.

  • From Disappointment, to Despondence, to Depression

    I saw a meme this week that suggested that the reason a baby cries at the time of birth is because that experience is the worst experience of its life. It seemed like just an interesting observation at first, but later I realised that it spoke volumes about perception and reality. Several incidents since then, including the passing of Robin Williams prompted me to revisit many aspects of how poorly we define our own realities.

    At times in my life when I was riding the crest of the wave, I found myself mildly annoyed by the actions of others that did not meet my expectations. It was easy enough to shrug off because I had enough else happening in my life that made me feel accomplished and relevant. So I would ignore it and instead polarise towards those groups or activities that bred positivity in my life. After some time, the trend of being disappointed by the actions of significant others seemed to grow, and given a few stumblings of my own, I found those disappointments weighing down on me much heavier than before. Suddenly I didn’t have the abundance of good vibes from the crest of the wave to keep me grounded in positivity, and so I slipped from being easy going, to being disappointed.

    That disappointment grew as my reality continued to throw curve balls at me. I started wondering where did I make a wrong turn. When did the wave throw me over so that I would find myself crashing into its trough? Blaming myself for my slide didn’t help much, and soon enough I found that the disappointment started turning into despondency and a deeply ingrained sense of sadness. That sadness lingered longer than the brief smiles I would muster. But I still found myself questioning myself. I questioned my worth to those around me who kept disappointing me, and I questioned my competence to make the right decisions to break this cycle that I found myself in, but all I ended up with were questions and no answers.

    I kept doing what I thought was the right thing, but I found myself challenged to uphold the principles that I subscribed to. The more I tried to live a principled life, the more I found people in my life demanding a response from me that would force me to choose. Be true to my principles and values, or succumb to their pressure so that I would feel included? Inclusion was another evasive aspect of my life. Perhaps that is why I find it so easy to dismiss the negativity associated with being the odd one out. So I chose to be principled, and despite being true to myself, the disappointing reaction I got from those that were encouraging me to throw caution to the wind and live a little weighed down on me even more. And so I continued to question myself, even though I couldn’t find enough reason to abandon my principles.

    So the slide into despondency continued. I looked at the pitfalls of the lives of those around me, the emptiness, the trinkets, the lies, and most of all the insincerity. All it did was make me more adamant to hold on to what I chose for myself even though holding on grew more difficult by the day. There were endless cycles of insincere ones coming into my life, celebrating my resolve, embracing my principles and me along with it, and then drifting away when the burden of commitment to our shared ideals became too burdensome for them. The moment it meant reducing their popularity with the social circles that they aspired to be a part of, they abandoned those principles because affirmation was more important. Being insincere didn’t bother them, because the people they aspired to be like were equally insincere, which made it acceptable.

    I didn’t want that for myself, and so I continued to search each time for someone that appeared sincere in their conviction to subscribe to that which I subscribed to. But the cycle ended in disappointment each time, and each time I found myself contemplating the hopelessness of it all more seriously than the last. The hopelessness quickly grew into depression until I was diagnosed as being depressed and placed on medication to help me out of what was assumed to be a clinical condition that I had acquired.

    The medication didn’t help. If anything, it made me feel numb. I didn’t want to feel numb. At least in the disappointment and the depression there was still a sense of purpose and passion. Even though that purpose and passion didn’t always bring me joy, it still gave me a reason to want to prevail. But now all I felt was numbness. My jaw tightened, but my senses dulled. I was easier for people to tolerate, but my contempt for what I saw outside of me started being redirected internally. I didn’t like the state I found myself in. I didn’t like the lack of passion or purpose that I felt, and the entire situation was unnatural. I was not me anymore, and I hated it. So I stopped. I weaned myself off my medication, visited my psychiatrist once again, and he confirmed that it was the quickest recovery he had ever seen. His praise fell on deaf ears.

    I soon realised that the medication didn’t alter what I despised in those around me. Nor did it give me reason to change my conviction about right and wrong. With or without the medication, my reality remained my reality. The only difference was, with the medication I was numb and unable to respond to it effectively, while without it I was forced to deal with the full impact of it. I chose the latter because I knew that inaction and passivity, as was my perpetual state with the medication, was not a life to be lived. It was merely an existence that made me more tolerable for others, and made others less annoying for me. At best, it was a distraction, but at worst, it was a nightmare, with me standing on the outside looking in. Those moments when I tried to scream and no sound came out. It reminded me of those dreams when I saw myself trying to drive a car that I had no control over. The lights would go out, the brakes would fail, the steering would be unresponsive, and I would end up lying upside down with the car on its roof, entirely unable to influence the outcome, and my scream remained a silent scream. That was what the medication did to me. At least without it, I could scream. I could beat my chest and curse the world. I was not powerless. And that’s when it hit me.

    My diagnosis of depression had nothing to do with a clinical state that I had acquired. Instead, my clinical state was in fact a result of my reality. My depression was my way of expressing my dissatisfaction with the world, and those that I held to be significant in my life. The more they didn’t react, the more I expressed, until eventually I forgot why I chose to express myself that way.  They stopped caring enough to even attempt to understand, and all I was left with was the reality that I was alone, with little to no joy in my life, and still surrounded by the same people that either didn’t care, or were too distracted to notice. I was not a victim of depression. Depression was my chosen form of expression. But when it didn’t yield the response I was looking for, I once again found myself asking questions for which I had no answers.

    I think that’s part of the problem in that state. The less answers I had, or more importantly, in the absence of answers that appeased my needs, I slipped further into the belief that I probably just wasn’t significant enough for anyone to want to do what was important for me. And they must know what is important for me because I had been expressing my dissatisfaction for so long that surely they could have figured it out by now if only they cared enough, right? So it stood to reason that they probably just didn’t care enough. I needed to make a choice. Continue to abandon myself in the hope that they will notice and respect me, or abandon my expectations of them and give up my principles in order to feel included.

    I chose me. I chose my principles. And most importantly, I chose to stand unapologetically for what I believe to be right, in spite of what is socially acceptable. This increased the accusations against me of having unrealistic expectations. It increased the isolation when I challenged people’s insincerity or hypocrisy, but none of it deterred me. I saw my weaknesses in those around me. Some of them put in a sincere effort to overcome it, like me. But most choose to live in denial because of the fear of losing those that they still wish would recognise their significance.

    Depression set in when I looked for people to respect those things that I felt most passionate about and instead only found ridicule and rejection instead. It set in when I abandoned myself in favour of others, only to find that they had abandoned me as well. Depression became my voice when I gave up my right to be me. But depression never defined me. It never will. It will always only ever be the most passive form of resistance I would be able to muster up against a cruel world that celebrates conformity while crying out for individuality. It will only be my chosen form of expression as long as I fear rejection from those that I despise at worst, or disagree with at best.

    I now realise that I didn’t abandon myself in favour of others. Instead, I sacrificed what I wanted in the hope that that sacrifice would bring solace and a smile to those that I thought needed it. Unfortunately, I realised too late that no amount of self-sacrifice can fill the void of an ungrateful soul. So now I give without the expectation of receiving. I live with the hope that they will realise what is important rather than being distracted by what is popular. Unfulfilled expectations of significant others can never be remedied by a pill, nor by self-harm regardless of what form it may take. Seeing people for the flawed human beings that they are is the only way to maintain your sanity in an insane society. It’s when you expect perfection from yourself, or others, or both, that you solicit for yourself the most painful reality that need not be experienced.

  • Licensed to Drive

    Most people can relate to an analogy about cars, so here’s one relating to mental health that I thought would be able to demonstrate my point about the main stream approach to dealing with depression and other so-called mental illnesses (hopefully you have the patience to read it to the end).

    Imagine that the accelerator pedal of the car is your ability to express positive emotions, and the brake pedal was negative emotions, and you are the driver. One day, while driving along minding your own business you get hit by another driver that wasn’t paying attention. The crash isn’t serious enough to write off your car, but it did cause problems with your accelerator and your brake system. More than this, there was some damage done to your car’s appearance.

    So off you went and replaced some of the damaged parts, did some repairs on those parts that couldn’t be replaced, and gave it a coat of spray that made it look just like new again. Only, it wasn’t new, because you knew how much went into getting the outside to look perfect again, while under the paint work, you knew how many wrinkles and scratches were covered up. But everyone told you how great the car looked again, so you ignored the defects and made a point of getting back into your car to get to all the places you wanted to go.

    However, you didn’t do such a good job of the accelerator and the brake pedal. At times, the brakes would feel spongy and unreliable, so whenever you needed to use it, you doubted, until eventually the doubt grew so strong that you started driving slower than ever to avoid using it at all. Then you realises that the accelerator doesn’t feel the way it used to either. It used to feel firm and responsive, almost as decisive as you were, and it used to cause the car to lunge forward when you needed to, and to just cruise when it felt good to do so as well. But now, the accelerator was also unpredictable. At times it would accelerate beautifully, but without warning, the car would slow down almost to a halt for no reason. No matter how much you wanted it to move, pressing your foot on that pedal just wouldn’t get it to go.

    So you eventually decided that maybe the damage was more than you were capable of fixing, so you decided to go out looking for a mechanic, especially since all your friends and family kept telling you how great they are. The mechanic looks at the symptoms and quite quickly lets you know that with some work, it can be back to what it was, and with your consent, he set about fixing and upgrading the brakes to perform even better than before. Then he looked at the accelerator and found the cable to be loose. So he tightened the nut, and adjusted the cable and once again, the car was able to accelerate without any problems. He also tuned the car with some new equipment that wasn’t previously available, which made the car lighter on fuel, and faster than before.

    However, having had too many close shaves with the brakes and accelerator being faulty, and still remembering the impact of the accident, you keep holding back, wanting to reduce the risk of getting into another accident. The memory of the dents and scratches hidden by the new coat of paint still fresh in your mind, you start driving more cautiously than you ever did before. You slow down for no reason other than just in case, and you don’t even drive at the speed limit any longer, even though the car is perfectly capable of handling it. In fact, the car is now capable of performing better than it did when it was brand new because of the new technology they put in, yet you still drive it slower than ever.

    The crash caused by the other driver is what happens in life. They’re the people around us that we trust, but they end up being mindless in their actions that results in damage in our lives that they’re most often oblivious to. They move on and focus on their own lives, while we wait for someone to come along an fix us. The mechanic is modern medicine. A necessary intervention strategy, but nothing more. Able to recover most physical aspects of our health, but failing to remedy the emotional ravages of what took place.

    The wrinkles and scratches beneath the bright shiny paint work is the memories that haunt us, while the paint work is the face we show to the world when we pretend that everything is perfect. The new technologies are the life lessons learnt, that allows us to deal with future encounters more effectively and maturely, but we refuse to use it because of the fear of getting hit by another reckless driver. So instead, we plod along at a fraction of our capability from before the traumatic incident so that we can reduce as much as possible any potential for another impact that could send us spiralling out of control.

    The psychiatrist that so many believe in blindly have tools to re-establish mental pathways, but they don’t have the tools to make you use it. Again, at times, a necessary intervention strategy, but not a long term solution.

    Then there is you, the driver. Focused on the impact that hit you from nowhere, and too afraid to even consider having to deal with such an impact again. All the while, the distraction of that memory causes you not to notice that with the lessons learnt, your ability to avoid such impacts in future was significantly improved (upgrade of brakes and accelerator, knowledge of how situations like that occur, and what choices could have been taken differently, or could have been more informed), but instead of leveraging that knowledge that you have acquired through the experience for improving the way you navigate your way through life in future, you choose to avoid it instead. Your avoidance of those life experiences, of people, of interactions, is what causes you to slip into a depression where you refuse to acknowledge the tools and abilities you have at your disposal because you suddenly don’t trust yourself due to you blaming yourself for the reckless behaviour of that others.

    The thought almost always comes before the chemical reaction. And in cases where the chemical reaction may have been preventing the thought patterns to occur, the intervention strategies that are available provides us with the ability to kick start that process. Once that process is kick started, we have to apply our minds actively rather than rely on the intervention strategy to sustain us. The problem that many face these days is that they’re being told that the intervention strategy is in fact a long term dependency that they have no choice in. When we give up the choice to take control, only then does the intervention become the mechanism for survival, or even just to cope.

    Our inability to believe in ourselves is the most profitable outcome for the pharmaceutical companies quite possibly in the history of modern medicine. But we have drugs to distract us from that sad reality, that’s why we don’t even have the presence of mind to realise what it is that we’re capable of.

    I once heard someone say that the only way to cheat old age is to continue learning. The more we learn, the greater our ability to acquire new knowledge. Therefore, it is easier for someone with more knowledge to appreciate and intelligently apply new concepts, than it is for someone that hasn’t applied their minds much towards the acquisition of knowledge. When we discard our life experiences as bad memories that we’d rather forget, we effectively throw away priceless knowledge that could never be acquired through any other means. Books and doctors can only give you facts and assumptions, but only you will ever know the truth about you. Don’t suppress that truth, embrace it, and use it to build yourself up from strength to strength, realising that you decide what your limits are, not society.