Life isn’t a smooth ride but sometimes it is easy to forget what can befall you, especially when you haven’t felt vulnerable before. For me, it was the onset of depression after experiencing a heartbreak that sent me spiraling into a dark abyss. Little did I know that beneath the surface, my struggles with anxiety disorder had been quietly simmering, waiting for the right trigger to resurface. Although my anxiety disorder had remained unnoticed by me and all those around me since my teens, I found it bubbling up to the surface immediately after that emotional disaster, fueling my depression.
Looking back, I can trace the roots of my anxiety back to my childhood days. Growing up, my family often dismissed my anxiousness as normal jitters or simply labelled me as inattentive. It wasn’t until later in life, after seeking therapy, that I realized the extent of my anxiety and how it had shaped my experiences and interactions with the world around me.
I was a very anxious child and teenager, but I believe I encountered lots of kind people who heard the word ‘anxiety’ and assumed something milder. What I would feel was a wave jangling through my entire body, a hyper-vigilance prick by prick next to the need to lie still, heart racing and mind running. I was putting on a show of getting through each moment while on the inside I had been zapped, my head caught in a bright white flash, almost dazed, my neurones swarming with what I imagined was ticks or tremors, what was probably a bit like nerve gas. I didn’t always have a migraine, but the headache was the signature symptom of my condition.
The cracks didn’t start to widen until my late 20s: 27 was when I re-opened the cracks I had spent years in papier-mâchèing shut, when I dragged up the panic and a general anxiety that I had put down to childhood nerves.
My heartbreak was like a trigger, plunging me into depths of loss, hopelessness and desire to escape the pain I now knew. I turned to alcohol as an easy temporary means to shut off my feelings. However, being cognitively impaired through intoxication and with low esteem, I, instead, brought on a cascade of negative consequences.
I reached a stage where I almost perished before seeking help. Therapy became the rope I needed to hold on to: my saving grace. I learnt how to work on and with myself, using the tools my caring therapist had taught me. She helped me find my way through the fog, transforming the confusion of my emotions into understandable words that I could, finally, put a name to. I would come to understand myself better, identify the root causes of my mental health struggles, and develop more self-compassion and compassion for others as well.
Therapy has made me self-aware. Having been diagnosed with ADHD, I had been on the road to self-realisation and recovery; though it took some time, with its fair share of twists and turns, before I felt slightly restored. Thanks to a core group of friends, and my therapist, I gradually pulled myself out of the depths of what felt like overall descent.
One of the most profound insights I achieved, during the time, was that our deepest struggles, our bravest and momentous moments of falling to pieces, even though they will never be defended as a virtue or sought as a good: these are the times that shape us, the formative crucible in which we are forged. Yes, I would never wish my pilgrimage through darkness on anyone. But the great gifts it brings are the lessons it hammers into our souls and selves, and the plural it creates of what otherwise seems a singular and unified self. Those are the good days, the days on which I accept that I will be living with PTSD every day, and that any minimal trigger will bring me back into the well. Other days I am considerably stronger, better able to cope.
And, though I still battle trust issues, I have learned to live with them, better than I ever thought I could, drawing on the incredible reserve of strength I never knew deep within myself. I have let go of past and future, and have come to trust in the present, knowing somehow that whatever happens, it will be fine.
It has been a bumpy ride to where I am now both in therapy and my journey to wholeness and to myself. It has been a great struggle, but it could not have been otherwise. My demons had to be fought with valour, and they knew it. If I felt low and conquered before, and if my experience of moving forward had been characterized by one false start after the other, I have also become, to put it simply, better and stronger than I have ever been. The path to where I am going may only be a winding cadence of decreasing forks, but it does lead someplace worthwhile. I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt where I stand, who I am and what I hold dear. For better or worse, that is more than I can say I knew before. And for that, I am eternally grateful.
abhishek purkayastha 