The Change

I had once been through a phase where I use to watch a lot of movies alone. At first it was like 'Oh wow my first movie alone in theatre! Write a post, save the ticket.’ Then it started happening a lot and I lost count of how many movies I saw alone in the theatres.

How did that happen?

Well, it was the time when I was doing a lot of 'figuring out myself' things, dealing with depression, anxiety, and loneliness; all in all it was a crazy time. Oh yes, it doesn’t just happen to rich and famous, it’s pretty prevalent. For people from mediocre lives and familes, everyday business gets pretty tough to deal with at times.

Is it easy to talk about it?

It’s tough, I mean people are telling you they love you and care for you all the time but there are days when you just can’t believe any of it. It hurts. The shit is quite real. I remember this one time; I went to my room and locked the door. My father was sleeping in the next room and my mom was in the living room doing some work. And I was crying in my room contemplating suicide. I was planning to gulp all the sleeping pills my psychiatrist had prescribed me. I don’t know if they were sleeping pills or some kind of tranquilisers. All I knew was that a lot of them at a time could do harm. I started reading about them online and it said it may or may not kill, mostly NOT. Suddenly I was petrified. If it kills me then I know, but what if it doesn’t? I knew it could do serious harm and I know mainstream medicine is never spoken of badly in most conventional public spaces. There are always these subtle hints. But what if it really didn’t work? Then what would happen of me?

So I sat there for almost an eternity thinking if I should eat them or not. I was always of this opinion ‘talkers don’t do, doers don’t talk.’ I didn’t even want to leave a goodbye note per say. Just wanted to leave, just wanted to end it all. I was crying, no sound just tears and I could barely breathe. I felt so lonely I can’t describe. I had once seen this movie called ‘what dreams may come’.  As a child, it shaped my principals of 'never commit suicide' at the time when teenagers were committing suicide due to academic failure. I was pretty strong as an individual but then the movie’s actor Robbie Williams himself died committing suicide. Just like so many other apparently strong, successful and happy people have. In the movie Williams’ wife commits suicide and ends up in this no man’s land kind of a place, neither hell nor heaven, but a dark lonely place. It seems that is where all people who commit suicide end up. Suddenly I felt so damn lonely. I was feeling any which ways but I knew if I tried to kill myself to escape this I will only die in body. Me the name would be dead but what about the me inside this body? What about my soul, what if it ends up in that dark loneliness for eternity or for whatever time that I would! I don’t know! I don’t know anything and I won’t even be able to kill myself again! Like where am I going escape to from this escape? Suddenly I felt the room becoming too dark and I got scared. When I die I want someone to hold me tight and tell me how much they love me. I guess there is no better heaven than that, the transition from living to dead is lonely, I wasn’t scared of dying or the pain. I was scared of ‘what next’? Where do I go? How far and long and with whom? All alone? Without even a goodbye. I knew if I was lonely now, killing myself would take me to a much lonelier place so I sat there for a long time before I went off to sleep.

It reminded me of all the people who say they have had near to death experiences. I don’t know what they see or how they feel. I simply don’t know! But I have a certain times felt like I was dying and trust me it’s not much about the living or the dead. It’s the transition that freaks you out. It’s lonely, we are all lonely or rather alone and it’s not easy to deal with it. it’s like entering an empty room with no doors and windows and no one around you or going through a tunnel and no one to tell you when its ends, where it ends. No one to hold your hand and say it’s alright. So when people hold you and say they love you, it may be difficult to believe them but do it for the moment at least, accept that love.

 
How does one get the courage to stay strong?

One doesn’t. However when you have no choice but to stay strong, you stay strong. People will tell you all sorts of things but then again it doesn’t matter if anyone is there with you or not. This is when you truly realise the meaning of loving yourself. You have to go on. You can’t give up on yourself, simply because you don’t know where you are going to end up, in what shape, in what form? You realize that killing yourself is just jumping from a frying pan into the fire. Slowly it starts to matter less what people have to say or do. So you do what you have to and keep yourself afloat. You watch movies alone, you eat alone, you talk less and you slowly get accustomed to being alone. It’s not something that many people would want to do or accept as a solution, but you don’t do it as a solution! You just do it, because you know you just can’t give up and there is no other way out. 

So does this happen for a reason or no reason at all?

Sometimes there is a reason, a sad or angry situation, perhaps. But sometimes it’s just a deep sense of lethargy, nothing makes sense, there is just no meaning to anything or anyone around you. The world seems a tumbling mass of senselessness.

Was your suicidal moment reasonless?

Not really. I had previously wished to die but never attempted only imagined an attempt. When I was growing, up a lot of kids where committing suicide mostly as they scored less in the exams. One could hear a story in news almost every few months or so. So you heard different conversations and opinions and as a child you are always very sensitive to others/ elder's opinions around you. Hence I never really dared commit but I used to wish death upon myself. I grew up with a lot of abandonment issues and got severely bullied too. But that day I was scared of myself, I had the least painful tools at my disposal and I had a reason to kill myself. But when I sat there thinking about ‘what happens after I take those pills’ it seemed a lot more scary than my reasons to consume them. 

Has anything changed in you after that?

Not much, may be I have become a lot more stubborn and a lot more aloof. Or may be I learnt to pretend how to be happy. Sometimes genuinely be happy. In the sense that nothing truly matters, the ego we hold so dearly, the guilt we can’t rid ourselves from, the love we can’t contain or express, nothing matters as much as staying afloat as long as you can, or as long as the course of things wants you to.
 

Would you call yourself a nihilist? 

I can’t confirm that yet. I still have values and principles that I strongly stand by, I still have faith, I still strive to make myself and my loved ones happy, but I try not to beat myself up about it or let others pull my strings. 
 

Can you say you will never ever try to commit suicide again? 

I don’t know, no one knows such things. all I know is I promised myself that day that I would never leave my side, what it may need me to do ? I do not know.