Swingy Moods

Why do people get sad and feel hopeless and cry and feel despair that makes them crumple and then collapse? Why do people have to see that and feel the pain themselves too, so much that it feels like they are the ones experiencing it? Why has pain become this extremely accepted form of relatability that everyone has and everyone deals with on their own except at times when it seems to get out of hand and you cannot deal with anything anymore. I also think that I am probably just experiencing mood swings at the moment and should not be taken as seriously as I would have been otherwise. I think I am close to my period time and I just realised that and what a realisation it was!

Well, let me not jinx it before it happens, for I have had many misfortunes with the lady of flow and she has not turned up for months in a row and left me a huge mess. So I don’t want to count my chickens before my eggs hatch (am I the only one finding some kind of juvenile humour with the egg analogy?). More than this, I think it also is an important thing to note that it has kind of been affecting my productivity and I do have a lot of work to get done. So I think this is where I will draw a line and say that I have other concerns to get to right now. I will get my stuff done, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Worth a Fight?

How do we not let people not screw with our brains? How do we move on and away from people that you have come to realise might never be a huge enough part in your life? It is quite a sticky situation to be in, I presume, because you are nursing a broken heart and at the same time, you are also making a move to completely severe away. That hurts a lot, I have come to realise and pain is something I really cannot deal with properly. I hate pain, I hate feeling pain, I hate it when other people feel pain, it is like I can physically feel the pain myself. It has always been the case with me that I cannot bear the pain of others, especially people I am close to. But more than all of that, I cannot bear my own pain.

This is where I have a curious case–I can’t bear my own pain but at the same time, by some depraved logic, I also believe that my pain is inevitable and that I am a deserving candidate for it. I called it depraved logic because a part of me sees the absurdity of the statement, but it is not strong enough to curb the thought. So I have to content myself with feeling like this, hating that I feel like this but not really being able to control it. That is, unfortunately, the state of affairs, a very unfavourable one but a seemingly inevitable one at that. But more than anything, I think what I wasn’t prepared for was the feeling of utter foolishness when I think back to the times when I actually thought something might be possible.

I cannot believe that I had been naive enough to have done that, it is quite hilariously saddening. All I had needed was a little bit of kindness and niceness and I had fallen headfirst into the puddle. I genuinely only needed niceness and sensitivity from the other person in order to like them. I didn’t even know them that well, I could not have potentially known them that well either–there is literally nothing between us except my own feelings for them. But now, I am in the process of raging against my own stupidity, all in a bid to move on from them. Is it working, I wouldn’t know, but the anger feels quite nice. It means that I am in better spirits, I want to fight once again, so to speak. But the question is, is this even worth a fight?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Pain in the Ear

My ear has been aching since yesterday and today, I went to the infirmary where an ENT specialist was in today. He has given me medicines and ear drops and I have taken them but my ears still hurt and I feel really bad because of the pain. It really hurts and I cannot do anything about it except wait for it to heal and get better by itself. I am cutting myself some slack today though, I did not put in much effort for my readings and I am telling myself that it is okay, I am sick and in pain, I can afford to give myself this break tonight. So the plan is, I go to sleep early and get breakfast tomorrow like a responsible person and get to class on time. It is quite a busy and ambitious schedule but if not when I am sick, when will I take my health seriously.

I went to the infirmary today and I got prescribed medicines and ear drops for my ear pain. An ENT specialist was in today, so I guess I got lucky. But nonetheless, once I got my medicines and the hope that I was doing something to improve my health and relieve myself of pain, I felt a lot more hopeful than I have in the near past. Once that appointment was done and I got my medicines, I went to meet my academic advisor, a professor I have come to adore quite a bit. I think she is extremely sweet and I spent a good half an hour just talking with her about why she chose literature and what made her think that she was a good fit for it. I walked out of it feeling a lot better than I expected to feel. I am quite glad she is my academic advisor because it means that I can develop a good bond with her, something I would love to have.

I went to the counsellor today and I spoke for quite a long time and it felt good to finally release some of the emotions. My emotions have been running quite wild these last few days, especially the last two days. I have been in a very bad mental state, crying and losing hope so fast that it is a miracle that I lasted the last few days (at least that’s what I believe, I could very well be wrong). I think these bad days have always occurred to me, they are not a new fixation on my wall. But never has it been so common and prevalent, all my days are on some form of pain and bad mental health, so much so that the days when I feel good are almost non-existent. Well, I am extremely tired and I think I need to call it a night. Hopefully, the pain (which pain? My ear or the general pain of life and existence, I shall never know) will pass by tomorrow?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Impending Doom

There are days when things go horribly wrong when everything is coloured with the feeling of impending doom. I have never felt so helpless in my life as I felt today when I realised that I had let people down, let myself down and missed so many things. It was enough to push me into a state of crisis and sadness, pulling me down completely and making me feel utterly useless and pointless. I have very few things to worry about and I still end up screwing them up, for all my speech on wanting to be self-sufficient and dependable, I cannot even trust myself. I have lost trust in myself, I don’t believe that I can make myself pull through anymore. That is scary because I have never felt that way before (maybe the fact that I am scared means that all is not lost yet?).

There has been an underlying pool of sadness that has come to define my existence, I cannot exist without it it would seem. Everything I do rests on this base of sadness, at least that’s what I make of it. Now, I don’t mean that it has become intrinsic to me. I, for one, really hope that is not the case, that there’s nothing intrinsically sorrowful about my existence and myself. But then, it is extremely deceptive and I definitely feel like this has become my “natural” state of being (once you start reading Literary Theory, words like natural, being, etc start to seem extremely limiting. i.e. they are ruined forever, you can never use them in peace anymore–that is not a bad thing!). Today, I gave the example of a clear pool, a perfectly still pool to describe this sadness within me. There are small ripples that occur on its surface, small moments of joy and happiness, but they are all ultimately rooted in, find their existence in that pool of sadness. It was a pretty good analogy (and some might say that it is extremely lit major-esque, which I will gladly take as a compliment–I need validation about my major choice)

My right ear has been aching since today morning. It started in the morning and as the day progressed, only seems to have gotten worse. I have been tearing up in almost all of my classes, helpless tears as I was hit with pain and sadness. I tried my best to pass it off as my eyes just watering from the cold but somehow I have a feeling that someone might have noticed. Maybe I wanted someone to notice it, maybe I found some perverse pleasure in showing off my pain and getting the attention of other people? I don’t really have any answers for myself, might as well add more questions to the list. I can already imagine what a sensible Yashasvi might think of all this, she would think it is all worth a rat’s arse and that I need to get my shit under control. I would agree, I do need to do that but I am helpless at the moment, or at least I feel that way and that impacts the way I look at and respond to things around me.

I slept for nearly four and a half hours today evening when I excused myself from my flute class (owing to the pain in my ear) and came back to my room. I took a painkiller and decided that I needed sleep. The plan was to wake up in an hour and a half, get to dinner, work, go for a quiz, return, work some more. The day was extremely tiring and I was functioning on only a few hours of sleep, it seemed a good enough plan to get back on track. But that worked out really well when I ended up missing dinner, missing the quiz, waking up nearly three hours later than I wanted to. No one knew what had happened to me and I had gotten so used to being taken care of that I stopped taking care of myself. When people did not come to find me and ensure I was awake, I had ended up sleeping through my alarm. That is quite ‘alarm’ing (pardon my juvenile 2am humour) and it is a lesson on self-sufficiency. I need to learn to be there for myself from now onwards, I cannot let myself be ruined because I cannot take care of myself. I need to start being there for myself and this sounds easier on paper (or screen) but that’s okay. I have an appointment counsellor tomorrow, I can still turn this around I hope?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Facing Fear

My head aches a lot while I’m at university, I’ve realised. Maybe it’s a combination of bad food habits, sleep schedule mess-ups, academic stress and a thousand other things I let bother me and ruin my mental health and physical health. IN fact, even today, I was assaulted with a kind of banging pain and I could not fall asleep either because it felt like my head was dislocating and I could not do anything about it at all. That is not a very nice state of being, but then that’s exactly how it was. So when I collapsed into a weird position on the bed, sideways, hair blocking the light because it hurt my eyes, I was just hit with this uncomfortable feeling of my head being disjointed from my body.

I performed at the open mic today and I was so scared of it, so much so that I started panicking and I cried. When my friend called me to check on me, I had been crying and I felt so embarrassed to pick up the call but I had to because I knew she was checking on me to ask when I would come for the open mic (which I had signed up for in the first place). Long story short, I did not want to show my moment of weakness to the whole world. Well, I ended up showing quite a lot of weakness when I freaked out quite a lot and I also don’t think it was that good a performance, but I think that’s alright. They don’t know me, the people in the audience and the people who do matter know me well enough to know that I can probably sing better. And even if they don’t I don’t think I should really let that colour my considerations. That said, I was glad I sang nonetheless, even though I felt it was quite a bit of a waste of time. It is done and dealt with, I am facing my fears as bravely as I can and that matters enough, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

People Relationships

I have seen a few friends crumble right in front of my eyes, friends whose crumbling caused my own. I have been witness to pain through their eyes and call me a sensitive soul, I cannot bear pain, not of mine, not of others. Which is precisely why seeing them crumble made me crumble too, it made me cry, it hurt me (sometimes more than it hurt the person themselves). If anything, their life experiences only gave me pointers on what I probably should not do in order to not cause pain to anyone else. Unfortunately, I guess, these pointers never really taught me to not cause pain for myself. I probably spent more time nursing my own sadness over what was not even my problem than actually helping the other person out. In retrospect, that probably makes me a bad listener, but maybe it is consoling to find someone who would shed tears on your behalf?

I see so many people around me, people who are suffering, maybe in silence, maybe not. It makes me wonder if my suffering is actually something of substance. Now the usefulness of the comparison can be debated upon and I suspect the results won’t be that favourable. But it is nonetheless a comparison I tend to make, because I think, in a way, we are socially taught to make comparisons and run our lives based on those comparisons. Oh wow, I have used the word comparison so many times, proving my general lack of articulateness. But anyway, back to the point at hand, how can one ever measure or quantify suffering and pain? How can I say, objectively, that the pain and suffering I underwent is less than or greater than or equal to someone else’s? We all live our own realities, and in those realities, each of our phantoms differ, but they are phantoms nonetheless, and they are scary.

I have been, quite surprisingly, in a better place than I expected to be a couple of days back. It is refreshing and I am not questioning it because I am trying to take it as it comes. I think a lot of this general good feeling is an attribute of being around people who genuinely care about me and who I care about. I know for a fact that I would do anything for these people I have come to love with all of my heart. It feels weird that I have already grown so attached to them all, but at the same time it is an attachment I am not burdened by, which is also really refreshing. These relationships I have built make me feel hopeful, they are wholesome and they keep me alive, they help me survive. Am I being too grateful for these people? Is that necessarily a bad thing?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Underlying Melancholy

There is an underlying feeling of melancholy or sadness that has permeated every sphere of my life. It is not a conscious sadness, as in, I don’t know what is making me feel that way. But it exists, I know it exists and there are some days when I just feel like I should probably not get up and do anything at all. It feels like I am out of control and numb and I don’t like that, I don’t want that. I just want to be happy and laugh and see the good things in my life–to see them, to realise them and to be content in them. I don’t want this to become normal, become everyday life. Why is that such a hard thing for me to do?

I have shed too many tears the last few days, so much that shedding tears has become the norm. But a depraved part of me finds consolation in the fact that at least I care enough to shed tears. If I were numb and didn’t care, I would not be shedding tears and that is quite alarming and sad, because it would mean that I would simply lose the will for anything. The fact that I shed those tears (which is a very conscious word choice, I don’t “cry”) means that a part of me is fighting and not given up yet. Hopeful but also scary because I am finding comfort in this narrative, I should be looking at ways of trying not to feel this way. I am, but I don’t know where to start.

I can only laugh, in a bitter way, about how I possibly made a big deal out of smaller things back then. Who knows? Maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing even now, maybe drama is how I choose to exist and this is how I can get attention? I don’t like to believe that, but I am not so sure of my own agendas these days. Which is also a major cause for concern, I don’t know myself and where my loyalties and priorities lie. I desperately want some kind of help, some kind of support, some kind of love and attention, but I don’t know where to seek it from, who to seek it from. I am truly and magnificently lost, like I have always been in my life, but now the feeling is simply magnified because it is accompanied by the realisation that I am desperate in my search for these things.

There are sometimes when something or the other gives me a small dose of joy, I feel the light then, I feel like I can smile and laugh then. But I don’t smile or laugh otherwise, I don’t like the feeling, I find the process of pulling my lips into a curve cumbersome. I used to stand in front of the mirror in the mornings and sometimes a smile used to involuntarily appear on my face and I would beam at myself. But I cannot even smile at anything else these days, at least the last couple of days. I cannot speak to anyone without feeling exhausted and with a desire not to be in that conversation, to not speak at all. And when I think of this all, tears uncontrollably fall and so I sit here, in my closed room, on my bed, lonely and sad, but with no answers or solutions to make the pain go away. Absolutely none, at the moment at least. Maybe that’s a good sign, I still think I can make it out of this, that should be hope enough, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Writing Worth

I think one of the biggest challenges of writing a blog post every day is finding the motivation to write it as well as examining what happened during the day that could be used for the post. Of course, this is if quite a bit of thought goes into writing a blog post rather than being a plain stream of conscious writing. I tend more towards the latter, I have noticed, especially during times when I have university work to deal with. When I was home during the break, I had a lot of time to allow my thoughts to marinate in my head. Sometimes, I actually felt like what I was writing could be of potential worth and value in the world I was putting it out in. But of course, that is quite a crisis-inducing question to ask.

I ask myself a lot of these questions these days, I cannot help myself sometimes. It is like my brain decided that there are some hard truths I need to be forced to face and that it should be the ones that come to me at the hardest times. The worst part is, I am fully conscious of my brain trying to start the question and it is like I am so depraved that I want that pain, that crisis that will push me to completely lose it. There you go, I have said it. I have started fancying pain and crisis, I have romanticised it enough. This is my brain once again making me realise the hard truths. Who wants to admit that they like to see themselves in pain, to put themselves in pain? Not me for sure, I doubt there are many others who want that.

What does it mean to put something of value out into the world? What does it mean to write anything at all? How am I supposed to know that whatever I am writing, why, take for example, this blog post itself, how am I supposed to know that this post was meant to be written at all? That there is something worthy of being written and read in these words? I am pretty sure that there is going to be at least one person who could read what I am writing and wonder what made me write it in the first place. I wonder that enough about myself that it is not completely foreign for me to put myself in some unknown imaginary reader’s shoes. Well, I guess it is quite moot point right now to wonder, especially when I have already written 430 words. So there I go, wondering again, life has never been this confusing has it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

The Flow of Thought

Good news first, I got my period today. Now, there is absolutely no logical reason why I would welcome that painful experience in my life, but I do. Because it lays to rest some of the worries I had been having about my health while at university. The whole of my first year, I did not get my period even once. That meant that I went for a period of nearly 4-5 months without getting my period. It really messed with my head because my hormones were going everywhere (this I know in retrospect). So I am merely thankful that my period showed up on time, which means that I can be healthy and fine.

But here’s the bad part about these periods, cramps. I get horrible cramps and this month, I happened to get it on a weekend. What would I do if it came during a weekday? During class? There is so much at stake with the time my period shows up in and also, this is all contingent on my period deciding to be normal and show up every month. Another bad part about periods are my mood swings, they are quite funny in retrospect. but in their peak, they are important (even though I know I should not be taken seriously). I will switch from hating the whole human race to singing praises in a flash, and it is weird to see me spout hate because I generally am a loving, nice, happy person (even though my internet footprint as far as my blog is concerned is quite sad). I don’t really like the hormones controlling my brain like that, they make me feel out of control (which is again, quite weird, so hormones are not part of ‘me’? What?) Okay, enough crisis for a while, this is, but probably my period talking (and the fact that I am awake at 4am to write this blog after sleeping at around 12:30)

I do this a lot now, I wake up at crazy hours to write on the blog. But what worries me is the fact that this is not even a point in the semester when work piles like crazy. There are going to be much crazier points in the semester and I am genuinely afraid for the blog, will I be able to write every day? I probably need to reduce some kind of standard (assuming I have one at the present moment) of what makes a post. I probably will also have to put a check on how long I take to write this. I cannot afford to give myself too much time for this, for that will mean that I shall cut short on others’ times which would probably need to be prioritised. How long I take to write this is also quite contingent on me knowing what I want to write. Like right now, I am pretty much clueless and going with the flow (please get the pun), but maybe I need to start becoming more focused.

Also, I love my friends. They are the sweetest people on campus and I don’t know how I would survive without them at all. Talk about irony, I was just saying I need to be focused and brain decides to say something so utterly random. But I guess, that’s the greatest part, right? Thoughts travel so fast, they are wonderfully complex or simple, but they go everywhere (or can potentially do that). It gives me hope that there is always a chance that an imprisoned mind can set itself free, or can be set free (what is free, what is not, that’s a separate question in itself). Isn’t it truly marvellous?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Hard Amends

I am much too sleepy to type and write this blog post right now. I had been holding out on this marvellous sleeping for a while now and the last few days seem to have been a real problem for me. I had been horrible to myself last semester and this semester, I have already been inexcusably bad to myself that I know for a fact that I have really affected my mind and body. But I have promised myself that I shall work on amends, that I shall make them as effective as possible. But of course, the first step is to realise that you messed up big time and being willing to move on.

After yesterday’s breakdown, I feel a lot better in general about myself and the situations I have managed to find myself tangled up in. One of the major things that had been on my mind was my own foolish fancies about this guy I like, and I was allowing myself to be carried away by things like messages and whatnot. Now, I would think of my behaviour as extremely stupid, expectable but stupid. So one of my primary objectives right now is to work through these seemingly stupid decisions, slowly by parts, to try and understand myself and essentially set up a system where I would be less prone to this kind of behaviour. But of course, that is not to say that I do not feel any pain at all about whatever has happened, because I do and the pain is numbing. I only hope that I shall be able to find the mental strength to pull through this pain.

It is just the second week of the semester and I already feel reminded of some of the worst days from last semester. Maybe it goes to say that there are more hard things in store for me, that there are much tougher challenges that I would have to tackle in the course of this semester. And I won’t lie, that is not something I am excited about. But I think what I would tell myself is that I can prove to myself that I have an inner strength that I can depend on, that I am someone who can hold her own fortress. While right now it doesn’t really seem like much of a founded belief, what I am hoping is that I can prove me wrong. Right now, I feel like one of the theorists I am studying in my Introduction to Literary Theory class, what with my saying the same thing over and over again, with different words.

I think that is one thing about the workload at university and the amount I need to study. I feel like, as a student, I have made some incredible progress, that my brain has grown indescribably, to be able to allow me to accommodate the different things that are happening in class. I am most definitely becoming smarter (while also simultaneously becoming dumber in places of common sense, but that is a situation I aim to rectify in the near future) and I can feel it and that is a great feeling. I think I do like education, at least right now, at this point in time. Maybe during finals week or mid-term week, I shall be singing a different tune. But right now, I think I should take it in stride, stop being stupid in the many places where being stupid affects my physical being and prove to myself that I am not a force to be trifled with, not even by myself. I think that’s always the hardest part to execute, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.