I have never been clinically diagnosed so I will not claim solidarity. This is just to say to people who suffer like me that they are not alone; and to tell people who know, live with or share space with someone who has similar issues exactly what they may be going through. I have suffered from almost irresistible desires of jumping off heights, digging sharp objects into my body and being incapacitated by fear even when my mind was telling me I have definitely locked the door.
I have battled these demons quite successfully since my teenage. I have stopped expecting the world to go up in flames if I did not touch the right places while I was jogging on the terrace. I have stopped feeling the need to absolutely make sure every single thing I do is done with perfection. But the fear of losing control never quite goes away.
Over the last year and a half, as a result of my privilege, I have suffered very little at the hands of Covid. I have not had to walk miles upon miles back to my village carrying all my worldly belongings to a place where I know I will not get healthcare. I have not had to quarantine with abusive family members. I have also not suffered financially (or in any way really) for having to stay at home during the lockdown.
Everything that has happened to me has happened in my head. Oh, just to add to the mental cocktail, I also suffer from acute anxiety which sometimes causes shortness of breath, which, during a pandemic where that is a common symptom, did not help. In the beginning, it was alright. I was getting a much-needed break from the grind. My body was getting time to physically recover after years of overextension. It was about six months in that I hit a wall.
My research work was stalling. I was arguing with my parents all the time. I began to spend more and more time isolated in my room. I was actively trying to pick up fights with my partner. Every time I went to the balcony and looked down I felt something inside me telling me: “Go on, jump! Let’s see what happens. I’m sure you’ll be alright.” It was when my oldest (not in terms of age, but time spent) came back from Pune and we could go for short walks in the evenings that most of the severest thoughts died out.
Once restrictions were eased at the start of this year, I was able to go out; like out out. I didn’t want to. I had to. A couple of times I was summoned to college for some admin and once when one of my uncles succumbed to Covid. These few times when I was forced to take public transport, I suffered heavily. This was exacerbated by the complete disregard for hygiene and social distancing that the general public continued to show.
I could not touch any surface without sanitising my hands immediately after. In my head, I could feel microscopic death bots crawling up my hands, into my skin and into the very crevices of my soul. I tried to be cool and casual, leaning against glass partitions or steel rods on the metro. But even then I could feel the virus burrowing into my back. It was incapacitating. I knew I was helpless. But I could not accept the loss of control.
You know, when people talk about demons living under their beds, it is this absence of control that they talk about. They fear that something beyond their purview will and does affect their lives. They are stuck in a world where not everything can be known. For most people, this does not register. It is easy to convert this into superstition or silly fears and forget about them, suppress them. But many find it incapacitating. There were phases when the oppressive power of this knowledge of the absence of control made me feel like my life was pointless. I asked myself what use it was to continue doing everything I was doing on an infinite loop. I wondered what it would be like if I ‘tripped’ and fell down the stairs; or dropped the plate of food I was carrying; or if I dropped my phone from the balcony.
I am not nearly as organised as the typical ‘OCD’ characters you see in fiction. I do not want to keep everything in exactly the right place (although I often try to replace a glass or bottle exactly on to the ring it left on the table). It is the fear of losing control of things that I struggle with the most. In this pandemic, when so much is out of my control, in the hands of other people whom I cannot fully trust, this has slowly turned into exactly the type of nightmare that kept me up when I was younger. I cannot imagine how those without my privilege are suffering. I don’t have to. I can see it.
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