I looked up at the sky and it is overcast

Then, there are those days where you wake up feeling exhausted and teary-eyed. Nothing is wrong, yet everything looks difficult. Even a smile takes a lot of effort, and you are left wondering what went wrong. The day before was amazing; I almost felt like I won. And today, that feeling seems alien. There is this ball of emotion stuck at your throat, which you need to gulp down during every interaction. You need to force the water from your tears back into the glands. 

Yesterday, I dreamt that I experienced my own death. I was on some excursion in unknown lands and there was a meteorite shower.  And then I died and became a ghost. The dream continued with the usual science fiction influence.

The dream, most probably, isn’t the reason. The fear of my own death is nothing compared to the fear of losing people I love. I did lose them and shall continue losing them, because life. But today it is not about that. 

I wanted to talk about the choice. Between giving in to the despair and holding on. Motivating oneself isn’t just looking at the mirror and repeating a hundred times that you can do it. I think it is the hug that you give yourself, while assuring that things would be fine in future and that it is okay to feel low. That there is no need to explain or justify why you can’t smile today. It is to accept that dark days, and believe that this too shall pass. In my dream, I remember feeling scared and then it was also I who was telling myself to be brave as I faced death. I successfully comforted and consoled myself just before death.

Making the choice to embrace yourself and not the sadness, is crucial. We need to save ourselves from the outside world and sometimes from our own negative thoughts. And most importantly, we need to love ourselves like the person who loves us the most. 

No, I am not alright and that is normal: Part 1

So, I haven't been doing so well lately. Mentally, of course. Why did I choose to talk about it? Let me just say, in order to keep a record, to explain how it feels to be depressed, to be in pain 24/7, to always be accompanied by sadness. I initially thought of writing all this in my diary, but I decided that it would be a good idea to share the experience for future references. There is a certain amount of vulnerability associated to sharing these short of things, and may be this is some weird way of proving to myself that I still have some strength left.

I shall come to the possible causes behind it, a little later. Let me start with the experience.

So, what is it like to be depressed?
I have this constant heaviness in my chest, along with anxiety. When you are anticipating or living some scary moment, you kind of hold your breath and feel your heart pounding. That is a constant for me. Of course, for now things are going okay, but this feeling doesn't go away. I can always sense some unaddressed packet of emotions bobbing near my throat;  I allow them to come out and express themselves occasionally. And in general, I constantly feel unhappy or neutral. Somehow, my brain can't detect happiness or remember all the good things that have happened. The memories, good or bad, just make my stomach turn. Everything appears grey and pointless. I feel very distant from everyone else and no matter how much I share with those few people I have left, the sadness never goes away permanently. My mind is slowly accepting that I am not doing well.
I am perfectly capable of being normal or my usual self throughout this time. I laugh as usual and tease my friends and my brother, continue doing math. It is like as if I live two lives. Of course, I am not faking anything. The ability to be normal sort of drives me through all this. It is the reassurance I get from myself, that may be, no matter how ridiculous it sounds right now, things are going to get better. May be, after a zillion years, I shall feel better about my life.
Till a few months ago I have also been feeling this pointlessness and it heavily affected my work. I wouldn't feel like investing myself in anything - for example, in math we have to read and learn new things everyday just to be able to understand the open problem that I am trying to solve. We also have to do additional reading to keep ourselves updated. I usually love such activities; reading and understanding complicated math articles have always been my thing (not bragging: I find it difficult as well, but there is a lot of satisfaction that follows...). So, till a month ago, I had completely lost interest in all this and got extremely demotivated. Besides, I would find it very difficult to put myself in the math mode. Around that time I had attended a lot of seminars and conferences, and math researchers have this habit of always talking about math, even during lunch or dinner time. I used to find it overwhelming and exhausting because I would have to so badly struggle just to be able to concentrate for half an hour. This alienated me quite a bit from the math community. At home, I would see Thibaut always involved in his own research and all this added up to result in outburts.
And finally, the nightmares. I almost always remember dreams from the previous night.  And that is a curse when you keep dreaming about your family members dead or alive, dying. Whenever my morning starts with one of these nightmares, the rest of the day is spent by fighting with myself, trying to keep the thoughts away. But that traumatic feeling I get during the nightmares never really goes away, and it affects me in many different ways.
 So all this was the description of my usual state of mind. Sometimes, it becomes worse. Recently, I had an episode of post-traumatic amnesia - it basically means that I could not remember anything that have happened since January 2015. I kept asking for my mother and Alan, and could not understand why they would not take my calls. All the events ever since January 2015 seemed to have never happened, although apparently I did remember some names and faces without recognising them. The memories came back after a while. By that time, the ambulance had been called and I was taken to the psychiatric ward. They didn't admit me; took me to a psychologist/psychiatrist. This incident shook me to a great extent; I lost all my confidence and could not go out or do anything for a few days on my own. This was followed by multiple panic attacks. I would start shivering, my insides will go cold and I would start crying. There would not be any particular reason behind it, all I would feel is  a blank sadness and despair. This would last for fifteen minutes, leaving me exhausted. It even happened while I was in a meeting with my advisor. I don't think he had noticed.

In the next post, I shall discuss the possible reasons and triggers behind my depression and these attacks. For those who read till the end, I would request you to kindly not discuss this post with people who haven't read it, and also not to share it without first checking with me. For those who are feeling worried, I am doing fine and I am supposed to visit a psychologist from February.

Here's hoping that you have the strength to fight your own demons.

Loneliness.... the positive aspects of it !

I never understood what it means to really feel lonely of course, till the time i stepped outside my home to a new city.

The Origin

Back at home, after my brother shifted to Assam around six to seven years back, I got the taste of loneliness for the first time in life. I admit that it was difficult initially. However, it gave me the opportunity to interact more closely with the rest of the people who were still residing in the family. It brought me closer to Baba, a person whom I cherish the most. 

Gradually, due to the ever changing relationship dynamics with my friends in college and all that, I started enjoying the old taste a little more day by day. However, on this ground, it is good to say that I already had a strategy which I had built for myself long back before this in order to combat occasional loneliness. I imagine people and situations around me as per my own convenience, with its own set of struggles and negativeness and positiveness and all that and believed it to be a real situation. You might call that a Subthreshold Psychosis or something similar (just kidding !) but this really helped me a lot during my difficult times to deal with that ever persisting loneliness. So I am thankful to let's say those imaginary companies. 

Since this blog was made by one of the closest person I have found in life with the idea of sharing our ways to combat loneliness, I shared the above phenomenon which has become a very integral part of me now that I have been doing it for years. However, it is an immatured coping strategy and so of course, no sane person would like to try it out I believe.

However, the best part of it is that I have realized that the feeling of loneliness can originate even in the midst of a 100 other people. Back at home, fortunately I always got someone or the other with whom I could relate myself with. Hence, they call home as a comfort zone. So the loneliness can arise when one does not get people to relate themselves with. 

So when you need to find out new people at 24 years of age with whom you can relate to, you can never expect them to be a handful. Consider yourself truly blessed even if you find a single person and a queen if you find two.

Oh ! I sound needy. Well I am so. That's a very weak point I have. Believe me, I am trying my best to work upon it here and fortunately I get ample opportunity to do so. 

Ok, now the most positive aspect of it. 

 You get to focus upon yourself. You get the opportunity to make yourself grow and improve as a person by engaging into meaningful activities like let's say good reading, for example. You get to re-discover yourself in a new light. You get to know what truly makes you happy. You get to know your choices, sense of belongingness, the unfound love that you forever had within you for yourself. You learn how to indulge yourself into things you that gives you the peace you have been searching for all these while. You learn how to develop yourself into a whole new independent being. 

And that's very important ! And you don't really think of doing that unless you find yourself standing under the blue sky all by yourself ! And unless, you do this you never grow up as a person. 

Unless you do this, you never really get to know yourself in the best light for You. And that in a way increases your self-esteem.

Unless you do this, you forever keep on wondering why you are so much in a state of dissatisfaction. 

Unless you do this, you never get a chance to realize the limits of your potential even if you have found the area of excellence for yourself. 

And you remain incomplete forever unless you have felt lonely at some point of time in life, irrespective of whether you have realized it or not. 

Hence, I have decided to put this to good use. Its an opportunity you get at certain periods of time in life. And no matter, how much never-ending they seem to be, they do end sooner or later. Till that time, I have decided to put it to good use for my personal growth. And fill up that Lakanian hole.

:-D 

From loneliness to solitude

I am back again, this time with a few solutions to my loneliness problems. I should quickly let the readers know that I still do feel lonely now and then! But, thanks to my analysis, I am more aware of what exactly is causing the feeling of loneliness, that makes things a little better. I feel more in control than before, although that does not necessarily solve the problem. But every positive feeling is valuable; they are the stepping stones...

So, let us begin...

The first and foremost thing to do is to fight the feeling: I am alone, so I am lonely. This can be done (it helped me quite a bit) by being comfortable with our own company.  Like I said before, I was someone who could not spend an evening alone, without resorting to mind-occupying things like watching a movie, sleeping or desperately trying to get people's attention. I would try to get through those few hours by doing anything and everything that would keep me distracted. If I could not find anything like that, I would just over-think which would make me anxious and restless. So, when work was needed to be done, I was highly inefficient. I still work better when I am surrounded by people who would not interact with me (for eg. at my office, there are three other phd students who work on different areas). As for spending leisure time alone, it was nightmarish.
The key to counter all of the above is to get comfortable with ourselves. We need to understand how we work, adapt our habits accordingly and not associate being alone to something pitiful. Blogging, reading, playing games, drawing, editing photos, learning some computer languages are some of the ways that helped me deal with this problem. And of course, controlling my thoughts. Whenever I tend to go down that path of overanalysing or remembering traumatic events from the past, I force my mind to think of something more cheerful. Doing household chores is also quite helpful a distraction. Washing dishes is not always fun, but you can make it so by using a timer!

Today I am working from home, and I probably would not be talking to another human using my vocal chord before 5. I have to cook for myself, wash dishes, and of course continue studying. I am enjoying spending time with myself; it is very empowering to realise that I am in control of so many tiny decisions that I had to make so that in the end I was productive and at peace.



The next step is to accept the fact that my situation is unique. This was not easy.  I had indeed alienated myself before during my stay at Polytechnique when Alan became sick. I distanced myself from people who, according to me, were having normal lives. And, did that help? Absolutely not! Towards the end my life completely changed  when I started opening up more. I immediately felt better and would crave for a tiny drop of normalcy in my life. Opening up doesn't always mean talking about your sadness and your deepest secrets. It is rather about sharing a laugh, teasing your friend, studying together, discussing movies and book, playing video games, etc. It is about telling yourself that despite how abnormal you think your life is, you are very well capable of doing normal daily life stuff. We need to accept our complicated, not so easy lives, and then still wake up in the morning for another attempt to leading a boring, normal life. One of the reasons why our lives can become complicated is because we are doing many things or at least attempting to. If we stayed in our tiny comfort zone throughout our life, will that be normal?

Finally, each one of us indeed has a unique life; no one else is in our position so we can't possibly expect someone else to understand what we go through. The same holds for every other human being. The maximum we can get, if we are lucky, is someone who would listen to us, give suggestions and love us when we are unable to love ourselves.
Then again, so what?
To be honest, after ma passed away, I was quite afraid initially that I would alienate myself from my social circle because I went through such terrible times which they can't possibly imagine. That is in fact true for most of my acquaintances. Fortunately, things didn't turn out to be how I had imagined. I have been socialising ever since quite normally. This is partially because, I don't expect to be treated differently. Things have changed drastically in my life, but that is also a part of me, and only I can understand it. I can not emphasise enough how important it is to be with yourself, be your own support through triumphs, disasters and mistakes. If there is one person you should count upon, it is yourself, and this has taken me 26 years to accomplish. Our minds are not connected to others, so we can never know what another person is going through and also expect to be thoroughly understood.
In short, you are unique, embrace that. So are others and only by communicating would you get a glimpse into their unique experiences.

People make me lonely: This has made me suffer quite a bit. I would unnecessarily feel left out or hostile. Most of the people don't get up in the morning thinking about how to offend us. Everyone is just thinking of themselves, consciously or subconsciously.
I am afraid of speaking in front of a group of people because I am scared of saying something wrong, something logically incorrect. So I think and rethink before making a statement. Well, it is good to think before you say something, but that should not hinder your communication. Even if you say something incorrect, and someone corrects you, BIG DEAL! Since when are we the flag bearers of perfection? We are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. I used to resort to self-pity and insecurity if people didn't agree with me. Now, that I am more supportive of myself, I don't let triumphs and mistakes define me. As a result, I have started communicating more and more. Of course, I don't always feel like talking, but if I am not communicating, I try not to put the blame on others. Alone time is equally important for me to charge my batteries.
 As for socialising in France, I am learning how to have conversations about topics that are very neutral and impersonal so that I don't feel hurt or offended by another stranger's opinions. Sometimes, I do end up revealing a thing or two that get negative reactions but I don't really mind. They don't know me, I don't know them, so even if they judge, they are not aware of all the parameters that led me to make a certain choice.

This leads to my final point: the need for validation. This is one of those problems that I still face quite often. If I do something right, I immediately want recognition for it; if I make a mistake, I need someone to tell me that I can be forgiven. So, how do I deal with this. Well, at the risk of being repetitive, be by your side. Yes it does feel good when we are recognised for our deeds. But, we should not be desperate. I have the tendency to behave like a 10 year old who would run to her parents with some drawing or article that she has written, asking for a "very good, Hiya!". Now, that I have become aware of this, I remind myself why I chose to do something nice, where it was for validation or because I really really believed in the cause. As for mistakes, it is much more difficult to be supportive towards myself. Only recently, have I learnt to forgive myself and move on. I did something impulsive and immediately regretted it; for three days I had to be by my side and teach myself to look forward. I analysed my problem and tried to get busy with work and hobbies. After those few days of oscillation between self-hatred and self-support, when I finally was at peace, is when the external validation came. I was highly tempted to use it to forget everything and feel good about myself but I chose not to. I realised that it was my own forgiveness that mattered to me. It was quite liberating.



This journey from loneliness to solitude has taken some years. Throughout I had the support of Ma and Thibaut who would so easily love me when I could not put up with myself. Their constant love and affection has inspired me to become better and find a friend in myself. This is the most precious gift anyone can ever give to another person.

I had started writing this post before lunch. Time to go back to work...
Sharing a pic of my food: Tomato-based sauce with pasta, made with spices we bought from Marseilles and Rome, with grated Comté cheese on the top. I am impressed with it!

Why

Since all this was my idea, I am going to volunteer to write first (unless someone is already writing :) ).

What is a better way to start a post than with a book recommendation! I recently used the goodreads app to find good books to read. Obviously, I started with fiction (here tilakmama rolls his eyes...) and came across Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman. Although the plot isn't exceptional, I personally could connect with her in many important ways and hence I finished it in a day.

One of the topic that is book addresses is that of loneliness. The protagonist faces this on a regular basis so much so that she is in complete denial and hence the name. (Not a spoiler!)

Loneliness. I kept thinking about my own struggles with it, and recently I have come across a few of my friends who are going through similar situations. Hence today's topic. 

Before I begin, I must quickly apologise for my rusty English and non-literary way of writing. I am writing a math report in parallel and there I must be precise and methodical, so this post might reflect some of it. Of course I am not claiming that I write better in general, although I think I used to, when I blogged during school.

Anyway, let us start.

 I have been always surrounded by people when I grew up. All the time. Not just physically, that is very true for everyone in India, given the lack of space! Mentally, I was always enveloped in my family's opinions about my everything. If someone did not like some aspect of me, I would simply go to another person who would agree, this was not hard to find as I was the youngest in the household, always pampered to the core. I never had to be alone, I never wanted to, and I never knew if I needed to. Perhaps, I did. So, when for the first time I had to be alone in the hostel room of IISER Mohali, 2013 (I was 21 years old), I completely freaked out. I could absolutely not sleep alone, having slept for 20 years everyday with my mother. I could barely stand being alone in the room with just myself as company. My own company haunted me quite a bit, so I preferred staying alone in my friend's room whole day, surrounded by her possessions. At the end of my two month internship, I had barely managed to sleep alone twice, while being awake till sunrise. 

From there, I have come a long way. I have face different sorts of loneliness which I will try to list below. (lists, there you go!) In 2013, I went on a turbulent journey as I landed in France. It had become extremely eventful, and everyday I would experience a hundred things. It made a whole new person out of me and I am happy that I could survive what I had thought to be the most difficult times of my life (now I laugh at my superlative). One of the major problems I had faced throughout is some form of loneliness. For the others, let me dedicate some other post.

So what are the different forms of loneliness I faced?

• I am alone, so I am lonely: Somehow I ended up believing that if my current situation is forcing me to take care of myself for daily-life stuff (washing clothes, preparing food, washing dishes, groceries), that means that something is wrong with my life, and I have nobody to support me. This is partially due to our upbringing; our parents, grandparents, maid did so much thinking and doing for us, that suddenly everything comes crashing down when you have to live by yourself. Living on my own is inevitable for people like me, we always end up choosing career option which takes us far, far away from home. But it took an exceptional amount of time for me to come to terms with the fact that I am supposed to take care of myself and that it has nothing to do with loneliness. Depending on others for basic survival is a luxury that comes at a great cost. Initially, we do get it for free, and then take it for granted. Then, one fine day, you wake up and realise that unless you make breakfast, you will be hungry and oops you have forgotten to buy food the day before. Nowadays, I am not always alone, Thibaut's being around sometimes makes me dependent but I quickly try to shake it away. 
• My situation is unique: This is the tendency we have to alienate ourselves from our social circle because we think that nobody would understand how we feel. It is true though; no other human's life has followed the exact sequence of events as ours. So yes, nobody would understand us. I felt this quite often in the last four years, because my situation was indeed very different from my peers. I was doing a four year long masters instead of two, I was studying in French medium, I had to do 4 different scientific subjects, two language classes, one social science class and sports, while taking care of my sick boyfriend whom we had to rush to hospital every other day. I am of course not claiming to have helped him a lot, but I tried to be at his disposition as much I could. It was mentally very stressful too, and when you can barely understand the language, everything gets difficult tenfolds. So I would lock myself away from my friends who I thought were leading a normal life (later I found out that the father of one of my friends passed away during the course, the mothers of two had cancer, many were fighting chronic depression, etc). I would barely reveal what I was going through to my well-meaning friends, and as a result I felt lonely. Like I said before, nobody goes through the same set of things, but similar or worse things happen to so many around us that we would never feel lonely in that way if we knew. This way of thinking would often give rise to self-pity in my case and that, in my opinion, is a dead end. 
• People make me lonely: I am unable to to socialise with a large number of people. Talking one-to-one is fine as long as the other person is not a big extrovert. I feel drained in gatherings and parties, it literally feels like someone is sucking out my energy. So I look for pet animals or sit in a corner. After a while, I would realise that everyone is talking to someone and nobody is talking to me...BAM! I am lonely. This happens to me much more in France because the French are very shy so they stick to their groups and would avoid people if conversing with them involved another language. Basically, every gathering would end up in my feeling like a furniture, that too invisible, witnessing others having a nice time. Whenever I go to the university cafeteria for food, I feel this loneliness engulfing me, as I sit in a corner with my tray. Yes, I should ask my friends in my lab to join me, but most of them either don't eat lunch at all or they eat at their homes. One often eats with their advisor or reasearch group mates; my advisor skips lunch too, and there is no other phd student in my group. Hence, my phone keeps me company. Last year, right after I came to Lille, I did not have any office. So for four months, I would go to the lab once a week to meet François, and then stay at home the rest of the days. Thibaut had to go to Paris  or for conferences so I would end up alone for days with no body to talk to. Oh I had almost forgotten about Nantes. There I stayed in 9msq for 8 months, with a shared kitchen. I was surrounded by students from different countries and subjects. Yet, starting a conversation would be so hard! Everyone would simply stick to their own nationality and due to lack of Indians, I ended up friendless. I did try though, I would gather up courage and start a conversation with a random person in the kitchen while cooking, but it would end with his response to me asking what he did. I remember having spent more than two days without using my vocal chord and it was terrible. Thankfully I had to attend classes and there I found some company. So yes, I feel lonely around people too often.
• Need for Validation: Being a person with very low self-esteem is difficult in many ways. Loneliness is one of the consequences. I always needed someone to validate my choices and decisions. When you study abroad, and you are not social, finding validation becomes difficult. With nobody backing me up for what I chose to do or not to do, I would often feel helpless and lonely. Sometimes, I would call up my mother and she would encourage me a lot. But as things became more and more complicated, it was impossible to always explain to her what was going on. And of course she had her own life to deal with. 
• Free time: This sort of falls in the first type but I am talking about it separately because it  has caused me a lot of problems. Till recently, I would find it very hard to survive free time alone. I always needed somebody with me or otherwise I would feel morose. I think this is partially because I am an over-thinker and I always end up upsetting myself my remembering and thinking about too many sad possibilities. I needed someone to bring me out of that black smoke that engulfs me every time I spend too much time alone. I end up wishing someone was there to save me from myself. 

Now that I have broadly classified the circumstances that resulted in my loneliness, I would move on to some solutions that I have found over the years to my problems. I will write about them in my next post. 

Till then, enjoy every moment and here is a glimpse of nature during Lille summer...

(FYI: Huge fat rats were running around beneath the bushes 😅 )

The beginning

All we have is ourselves and each other, don't we?
 My idea of a support blog came while washing dishes in my apartment. I was alone at home and I realised that it doesn't bother me anymore. Several other things do. I wanted to talk about both and listen to other people's victories too.  I have invited the first few people that immediately came into my mind. I thank them all in advance for participating- it is not easy to share the stories of our struggles, to make ourselves vulnerable.

But hope is what keeps us going.