Mental illness and love-hate relationship with corona virus

It was month of November when I first heard about covid-19. It was just another disease that might go on to kill the world but wouldn’t affect me as long as I was in my house, safe, surrounded by pale yellow walls and well, curtains that kept the thoughts of dying away. I could always draw the curtains. I have been depressed for four years now and haven’t had much social interaction with anyone. My friends left me soon after my diagnosis well because they were searching for their purpose in lives and one cannot manage that while having to go back to depressed friend. Soon it was New Year and I had nobody to wish except my family and I didn’t have any plans for 2020. I was after all living under the effects of antidepressants that convinced me that world was a horror game and I was definitely not the hero in this game. So I did what I had been doing for the past four years. Waited for a change. And maybe god really did listen to my prayers sans the fact that he didn’t listen to the part where I was wishing for change in my life and not the entire world. The funny thing about being mentally ill is that nobody dares question your thought process because in their heads you are already crazy. So now that you are thinking that my prayer gone wrong started the covid outbreak, well, it’s better to keep you thinking than put my rational mind to work and clarify the situation. I live in India and this virus hadn’t hit until February. It was always the other country. Just like how aliens always attacked America. But soon the things got out of hand and entire country went into lockdown. Roads were empty and people hoarded the necessary utilities a day before. It was scary, how shops were full of people as if doomsday were near and the last thing people didn’t want were empty stomachs when they died. It makes sense though. The first time we bought oranges during corona, I washed it with Dettol for extra protection!

Nobody knew what kind of danger we were in. There was a new virus nobody had heard about, there were conspiracy theories and there were people dying like falling dominoes. News channels always gave hourly details of how many new cases were discovered, how many people died and how many survived this dangerous virus. Doctors and nurses were the new superheroes then and I envied them in some little corner of my mind. My already anxious self now had anxiety at its peak. This situation seemed a bit funny to me. My depressed mind thought that it was better anyway that the world ended while my anxious self was scared about dying. Schools were closed and teachers, including my mother, started teaching online which was new for all of them. While people were facing intense bouts of loneliness, my privileged lonely self was already swimming comfortably in the lonely sea with no shore whatsoever. I wrote poetry, waited desperately for my friends to talk to me while none of them did, and went into the hellhole of depression even more. The doctor’s appointments had to be made via calls, WhatsApp and medicines had to order only if pharmacist agreed. But this was not the part that affected my mental health even more but the fact that even when we all were then perhaps part of the same struggle, empathy in their minds for people like me still was negligible. I texted my friends, cousins saying I needed someone to talk to me while they constantly said they had little to no time. People started writing about how difficult it was for them to accept this loneliness, but nobody ever questioned even once, those who were already suffering from this for years. It turned out that “normal people” had to now see through the eyes of mentally ill, the world, its debilitating loneliness and frightening secrets that hid in it.

I was getting more and more depressed. But in some corner of my mind, the part of me that demanded revenge from the world was getting its high. To be misunderstood, unheard, taunted, judged for illness that one had no control over, this little taste of bitter medicine seemed the only way for the people who took privilege in degrading people over their mental health. I started writing poetry meanwhile, and found that it was in intense times like these that my faulty wired brain was most creative. I think when end is near we all want to leave something behind to be remembered for. Intense loneliness that I felt, relatives and cousins who denied to meet us, and the four membered family who thought that maybe yoga and meditation were the only ways to combat this disease looked like the silver lining, but there was no cloud and there was no sun either. Some days I was almost thankful for the situation because it helped people lay aside their masks and some days I were almost frustrated with how things went downhill for the unprivileged ones, the ones who had no access to mental health care, whose only idea of escape was the work they did, who were thrown out of homes because their caregivers couldn’t afford such expensive medicines to keep their dopamine and serotonin levels at check. So many people trapped at their abusive households had to remain at their homes and while I was lucky in that sense, it felt a bit unfair to all those people. I was lucky to have access to mental health care facilities, understanding parents while some weren’t.

It felt as if I was in a love-hate relationship with corona virus. On someday, it seemed godly to me, nature’s way of showing what actually mattered in life and how little we were in front of it while on other days, I felt sheer anger on being so lonely, depressed and almost unaffected that world was under lockdown because I had been in my mind’s cage for four years and there seemed no end to this kind of lockdown my brain and body faced every second, every minute of the day. I knew these feelings arose from my unhealed traumas, and it was toxic to say the least, but I held on. Didn’t give up on days I desperately wished to get this disease and die. I survived the pandemic while some could not. There were so many cases of suicides across the country that it was horrifying. But in the end, if I survive the tortures of my mind, I will have a story to tell my children and what are we if not storytellers waiting to be heard.