In the days leading to a new year, some reflection is in order.
I didn’t expect to last this long. Many things coincided in the past that brought me, at a very young age, to the realization that no matter what medications I took, what meditative practices I pursued, demons would haunt me forever, lest I sought delivery through death. In some ways I did died that day, and left a corpse to roam the world in my stead.
This is the true insidiousness of Depression. It drains out of you all the hopes for a better future. Even in those lucid moments when the fog is dispelled and colour rustled in, your first clear sight is that of the devastation this condition has wrought upon you. It’s not unlike emerging from a long prison sentence to find the world changed and people moved on.
Except that you have done no ill and committed no crime. If anything, you are a good person, because you have known pain and suffering and would do what you can to shield others from it. So why are you being punished?
When I was a child I entertained the delusion that these were the trials and tribulations paving the way to greatness. Even with a shackled mind I was still moderately competent at everything I did and of average intelligence, and had attained – at least in material accomplishments – a level above mediocrity, so that no one could say I was a failure. Surely that means excellence lay beyond, just one step out of reach. I could get there, I thought, when I am freed from illness.
That was denial. The child was possessed by the ghost of my would-be self, reaching for shades of a what-if life. That child was in mourning.
I never knew clearly what I was reaching for. More money? In the span of years, I had lived in abject poverty and in relative abundance. Now that I am warmed, clothed and well-fed, I know wealth won’t bring me more joy. More status? I shy away from the spotlight like a troglobite. More stability? Perhaps. But then I often fall sway to wanderlust.
To change the status quo. That’s my goal. To live with the certainty of suicide is oxymoronic. I shall never be free from this madness, but I can aim to live without despair, to belong, to be loved, to become all that I can be.
In the past year I embarked on the first step in this quest. I didn’t make any attempt on my life. I wasn’t even once intoxicated.
In the months to come I have an even grander goal. To live an honest life. I am a deceitful man, but it’s never for personal gains. I have only ever lied to conceal a charred, twisted, rotten thing. I’m good at it. When you see me, you would not see a liar. You see a carefully crafted image of a highly functional person – conscientious if somewhat aloof, direct and focused in demeanour, muted in attire. It is a mask I have meticulously cultivated and strenuously maintained, an identity to which I have devoted so much sincerity that I have long forgotten who I really am, and if this is who I really want to be.
I want to put aside that facade and experience the world as it is, not how it ought to be. It’s time to exorcise the ghost of my would-be-self.
#00117F 