I've Never Been (Un) Happier

by Shaheen Bhatt

‘Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night’

And I was reminded of what Nietzsche had said . . . that he was more afraid of being understood than misunderstood. Because if he was misunderstood, only his intellectual vanity would be hurt. But if he was understood, he would feel even worse, because that meant that the person who understood him would have had to have suffered enough in order to have understood what he was saying in the first place.

When a grain of sand gets into the craw of an oyster it causes it great pain. So, in order to escape from that pain, the oyster covers the grain of sand with a substance that turns the grain into a pearl. Nowhere does the oyster intend to create a precious jewel.

for her, writing this book was an act towards sheer survival.

I’m talking about the ‘there’s-a-deep-unexplained-sadness-in-me-that’s-eating-away-at-my-hopes-and-dreams-and-skin-quality-and-making-me-want-to-literally-jump-out-of-this-window’ sort of anguish.

Situationally speaking, I’ve never been subjected to or lived through anything truly horrific;

Depression is a common mood disorder and a serious medical illness.

Depression is not a one-size-fits-all illness, and the diversity of its markers makes it that much harder to identify.

‘Think positively.’/‘You have to want to get better.’/‘You’re only doing this for the attention.’/‘You’re just being lazy.’/‘You aren’t even trying to pull yourself out of it.’ Statements like these suggest your salvation lies in a choice you are simply electing not to make, but of course, that is categorically untrue.

The overwhelming narrative is that succumbing to pain or sadness indicates weakness and that they’re feelings you ought to keep to yourself.

Monsters like depression live in the dark, and the way to turn on the light, is by talking about it.

On the worst days it comes to me as myself, as everything I could have been and as everything I will never be: immaculate, and completely without fault. It taunts and belittles me, obscuring my successes and highlighting my failures, reducing all that I am to a loathsome, insignificant speck.

On some days this bed is my home, on other days it is more like my captor. I’m unable to tear myself away from it, unable to even sit upright. Each time I muster the will and energy to lift myself up, I’m pulled back into its depths by some overpowering magnetic force.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t want to kill myself. I haven’t been actively suicidal for years. It’s just that on some days I simply wish I were already dead. I’ve learned over the years there’s a big difference between wishing you were dead and wanting to kill yourself. When

I rack my mind for the memory of a definitive trigger, the sudden flip of a switch, an inciting incident that led me down this strange emotional path, but there wasn’t one. Sometimes I feel as though the change happened overnight, but I know that wasn’t the case. I didn’t just wake up one morning with my mind fundamentally altered. For me, it happened slowly. It crept up on me one tiny, disconcerting feeling after the other; a lifetime of peace was slowly but still abruptly disrupted by all-encompassing feelings of unease and I couldn’t make

While other people live, I languish within these four walls with all ambition and drive sucked violently out of me. And for what? Most of the time I don’t even know.

On the occasion I can say there is, I feel a strange sense of gratitude and relief. I feel lucky on days I actually know why I’m sad. There is deep satisfaction in being able to trace the genesis of a feeling, especially a negative one.

I feel like a lost and confused child who is being forced to steer her way through a very adult world.

It felt as though I was let in on a secret that no one else knew but me—life is suffering, and there is no point to anything.

It was like being both dead and alive all at once. It was like a part of me had died and could no longer feel—it could no longer be moved by sight and sound and experience; it could no longer see the value of existing in a living, breathing world.

This disruption doesn’t just mean a lack of sleep though; for some people, it can mean sleeping excessively.

I used alcohol as a crutch during depressive episodes. I

In the times I drank to escape, I did it to hide from my feelings because it was too agonizing to confront them.

When you’re depressed or anxious you’re desperate to feel good, or at the very least desperate to feel less bad. In order to avoid feelings of stress and sadness we turn to not-so-great things that will help us feel better; things like alcohol, unhealthy food and binge-watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

I wondered if I was just spoiled and unambitious, content with living out my life within the four walls of my bedroom because I didn’t want to make an effort.

Shame about what depression has turned you into: I’m not productive enough, reliable enough, happy enough.

Shame about not being able to control all these disturbing thoughts: I’m not enough.

You’ve said something stupid because you are stupid.

you’re not even good at your job.

Shame, on the other hand, is the all-pervasive feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with who you are. It’s what makes you want to hide. It’s what makes you want to isolate yourself, to vanish from the world so that no one will notice all the horrible things about you that you know to be true.

Guilt is all about making amends while shame is about hiding, isolating and escaping.

You experience shame when you believe you are bad. There’s nothing more toxic or more distressing than believing that the problem, the root cause of everything wrong with your life and everything you are, is you. What do you even do with that? How do you fix who you are?

Certainly, most people dealing with mood or anxiety disorders seem to have an overdeveloped ability to feel shame.

Depression and the lethargy it caused robbed me of my will and ability to be productive or feel like I was contributing to society, and that in turn led to deep feelings of shame about my value as a person.

It almost seemed like a logical fix—I wouldn’t feel pain if I didn’t exist.

A person experiencing their first depressive episode is more likely to attempt suicide, while someone who has lived through a few episodes has more or less learned how to cope with them, and more importantly recognized that they eventually end.

but after that experience, the thought of suicide left me, and it was replaced with an all-consuming terror of death.

I have these thoughts, but right now, I also have a kind of certainty that I will never act on them.

With no real external pressure or sense of purpose I slid further into a life of inaction.

My day-to-day life comprised of a steady, unchanging stream of guilt and anxiety, guilt for never doing as much as I should have and the constant anxiety that I was steadily losing more and more time. And the anxiety never abated.

When you’re depressed, time stops. When you’re anxious, it speeds up in a terrifying, unsettling and inconsistent way. Depression is lying immobile on the ground for hours. Anxiety is fidgeting, pacing and hyperventilating. Depression is grief. Anxiety is fear.

Even the concern from my loved ones is draining. I feel compelled to reassure other people that I’m okay because if I don’t they’ll spend their time trying to make me feel better or asking me questions I don’t have the energy to answer.

Isolation is one of the hallmarks of depression. The shame and the fatigue of depression are just a few of the many reasons I find that I tend to isolate myself. For me, some of the most alienating and exhausting parts of this entire experience come from simply having to explain to people how I feel. It always seems like an exercise in futility.

‘No one understands how I feel’ is in all probability the most frequently thought and spoken descriptor of depression (and being a teenager) of all time, and I think that’s because it’s true. No one can truly understand how you feel because the pain you experience is unique to you.

In other words, you can buy happiness off the rack—but sadness is tailor-made just for you.

And all I did was shut her out and pretend I was fine.

Psychotherapists are usually able to provide you with guidance and help you ascertain whether or not you’re in need of further medical intervention and are required to progress to the second line of defence—meeting with a psychiatrist.

I can’t say I took to therapy easily or that I was thrilled about being branded mentally ill and needing anti-depressants, but I had finally understood what I was going through was much bigger than me, and that I had to try everything I could to feel like ‘myself’ again.

I learned early on in the experience that finding the right therapist, like finding the right relationship, can take a great deal of patience and willingness to occasionally be disappointed.

therapy is most successful when you find someone you can communicate well with.