Abhishek Shukla

Life, as it is

Word Count: 1,204

“Trrrrring! Trrrrring!”

My alarm clock rings at its fixed time. I know it’s 8 AM. I shut it before it could scream again. Why do I even put an alarm? I’m awake since 4, that too when I slept at 2. It’s been going on for a week now. I think I’ve lost my appetite for sleep. In fact, I’ve lost my appetite for everything. Food, sleep, work, conversations, none of them seem to fill the hollowness of passing time.

What do I do with all this time? I think. I wonder. I stare at the walls. I spend 45 min lying down in one position, only to realize its uncomfortable, and then I move, and spend next 45 min adjusting to the new position, only to realize that too is uncomfortable. And then I move again, to realize that the bed is uncomfortable. Then I move to the chair, spend some time on it to realize that too is uncomfortable. And then I move again, and again, and again, only to realize, it’s all uncomfortable. Then I crash back on the bed. To stare at the walls. To think. To wonder.

Rarely when I manage to sleep, I see nightmares. This time I was running through different places, opening doors one after another, each leading me to a new place. I find myself in my village home, then at a beach, then at my last house’s rooftop, and so on. I don’t see people around anywhere. I feel like a ghost floating through empty spaces. I keep running until I reach home. Tired, I lie on my bed to sleep. The moment I close my eyes, the dream ends. I find myself awake, but unable to open my eyes. I feel suffocated, as if someone’s strangling me. I squirm, but the body doesn’t. It lays like dead meat. I try to scream with the breath I’m left with, and the moment sound comes out of my mouth, I wake up realizing the nightmare. Panting, gasping for air.

And then, I stare at the walls. I think. I wonder.

I was 11 when concurrent typhoid and malaria almost killed me. I’m told my heartbeat dropped for a few seconds. In those moments, I remember, I felt my body crumbling. I struggled to scream and break out of it. My mind did, but the body remained dead. I came back to senses after 2 days. Since then, this nightmare has stuck with me. At this point, it’s difficult for me to tell if that was a dream or if this is real.

I’ve spent the last four hours thinking of a reason to get up. I’ve found none. It was easy when I had a job. Now, there’s so much left to do and yet nothing that I feel like doing. I need to go out. I’ve been postponing meeting my doctor for weeks now. I like going out but hate it when it involves meeting people. For all the bad that covid did, it at least saved me from the tyranny of meeting people for a few months. Why is it so necessary for people to talk?

My phone keeps ringing the whole day. It’s impossible to answer the same damn question in thousand different ways. Are you sad? You sound dull. You seem to be disconnected. Are you still getting any bad thoughts? Bad thoughts! My mind shoots up a thousand images and leaves me with jumbled memories and indecipherable thoughts. Everyone asks me to explain. Explain what? Or rather, what all!

My last bout with depression taught me a major lesson. Regardless of what’s popularly suggested, talking with others does not make things better. People hardly listen. And it’s worse when they do. Because then, they assume the right to guide you over an experience they’ve never had. I believe we need to learn the craft of discussing problems without giving any suggestions. They advise and persuade and motivate without caring if I even need that.

My mind feels like a huge insulated box. A barren desert with snakes and thorns. There is no door for escape or letting anyone in. People who call—especially my parents—come seeking a mirage that I cannot present. Not answering their calls makes me feel guilty, but I cannot engage them. All they want to know is what happened.

Diseased childhood, toxic parents, close encounter with death, look-at-their-son-and-look-at-yourself; underconfident teenage, pent-up anger, virulent thoughts, irredeemable morale, body-image issues, I-want-to-run-away, why-me-why-me-why-me?; failures, tragedies, heartbreaks, guilt, destructive relationships, it’s-all-your-fault, how-can-you-do-this?; cigarettes, alcohol, weed, insomnia, depression, I-cannot-take-this-anymore, End-is-the-new-beginning, I-can-end-all-of-this-now; screw-meaning, fuck-purpose, this-is-all-bloody-absurd, why-the-hell-am-I-stuck-here?, why-suffer? Why-suffer-anymore?

How do I explain all of this?

—Ding-Ding--Too-Doo—

A message from my doctor: Reminder to meet this evening. She suspects I’ve stopped taking my medicines. I haven’t told her that I stopped taking them long back. Those pills make me numb. I pass the whole day without feeling a thing. They’re addictive and costly and useless. I don’t understand what she wants.

She keeps saying, ‘Go out. Meet people’. I do go out, but only when there’s a need. Why should I wander for no reason? If it takes depression to understand this simple thing, I hope the whole world gets depressed. And why should I meet people? She herself asks me to avoid anything negative. That’s what I’m doing by avoiding them.

She knows she cannot treat me, but still doesn’t want to admit her failure. She thinks my childhood is the reason for depression. Yes, it’s one of the factors, but not the primary reason. I’ve told her clearly that I don’t see any reason to continue with this life. I wake up, perform random activities, and sleep. I don’t know why I do them, in fact, why does anyone do them. She says I’ll find reasons if I’ll judge less and accept more. Illiterate woman. I’m not sure if her degree is real. Well, even if it’s real, how does it matter! It takes nothing to get a degree anyway.

Are we born for this? Bullshitting ourselves with manufactured reasons until we die. Accepting whatever comes our way, even if that means a shitty past and a banal future. I ask her, is it a simulation, or a dream, or a cave we need to exit, or result of bad karma? Why do we need to endure this painful mundaneness when we have an exit? If there’s another side, let me be a witness. If there isn’t, let me escape. Apparently, I cannot. It’s a crime. I deny this. My denial of life is my retaliation to this tyranny. Stopping me from doing what I wish to with my life is a crime.

I want to scream in her ears that I don’t need treatment; she needs common-sense. I’m not sad; I’m exhausted. I don’t need repair; I need a shut down. I want to visit her clinic and break—

“Trrrrring! Trrrrring!”

It’s 8:15.

Why do I even put an alarm?

How do I get out of this bed…?

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