How Writing Saved Me

Which came first: the chicken or the egg? In the world of writers, this dilemma can be reframed as follows: What did you start upon first, reading or writing?

For the majority it would be the former, I am however the proud minority. This realisation dawned upon me not too long ago, and that too through writing itself. When I first started writing on os.me I was full of self doubt. Not just about the kind of content I would present but about my own life in general, and as you might have guessed, about my writing skills as well. I took my sweet time, reading member’s posts and making myself familiar with the crowd and the content they consumed. The stories could not have been more diverse, ranging from devotional anecdotes to personal crises and philosophical queries. Someone was sharing how they met Swami ji while some others were yearning for his first ever glance. Scrolling through the comments I realised that this was indeed the kindest corner on the internet where everyone was accepted as they came. My hesitations vanishing away, I wrote my first ever blog on the theme of feminism which garnered a warm response. I thought I couldn’t be more surprised but your kindness never failed to amaze me.

Although on the outside I appeared to be a proud amateur, doubt was still gnawing on the insides of my brain, for everything I was writing seemed fake to me. For the longest while I was uncertain on how to react to the comments, afraid that none of it would sound genuine. Even after total acceptance I was feeling that I was only copying what others were doing on the platform and was not as passionate about writing as it appeared. Then one day, one of my articles made its way to the editorials, and Meera Ji became inquisitive about my writing skills. I started narrating the story of my family shifting from a small town to a big city, when I was in 5th standard and my admission in a convent. Hailing from a tehsil, my command over the language was questionable, and questioned it was on the very first day in the new school. The teacher halted at my name in the roll call introducing me as the new student. I said, “Yes ma’am” and pronounced the ‘yes’ in a weird way. I was made to stand up and then the teacher explained bit by bit how the Y in YES was to be pronounced. 

IT WAS YES AND NOT AN S.

I couldn’t forget the humiliation. I do not know what overtook my 11 year old self, but unaware of my own resolve, I started making consistent efforts towards familiarising myself with the language. The smallest of school assignments would find me seated in the farthest corner of the library, immersed in dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Even one good remark at the end of an English homework perked up my spirits, one day at a time. I started writing for the school magazine and participated in almost all the literary events, failing some and averaging in others. The girl who could not pronounce “YES” correctly, by the time she reached high school had become the head of the school’s literary society. Toppers used to beg for my help with the literature assignments. All this started just with the desire to write grammatically sound English homework in order to gain the teacher’s appreciation.

A few hours after narrating this story to Meera ji, I started chastising myself at how I had presented it in an unnecessarily grandiose manner and that there was nothing special about it. The next week, another article of mine got featured on os.me.

I laughed at the fact that someone thought my writing was valuable. I didn’t take this too seriously, but this small gesture changed something inside me. I went down to the storeroom of my house and dug out my school notebooks. There among the dusty volumes I found the worksheet of my first ever English assignment. It was about how we celebrated my mother’s birthday. Written in pencil, straight yet cursive handwriting. I TRACED THE WORDS MY TWEEN SELF HAD WRITTEN IN ORDER TO SAVE MYSELF FROM ANOTHER HUMILIATION. At the bottom of the page, there was the teacher’s remark written in red ink, ‘Good’ the first ever positive review on my first ever article.

I healed a little and the doubt regarding my love for writing vanished and took with itself almost every other kind of self doubt, as if a circle was completed. Even if I sucked at it, I still enjoyed the whole process. Even if editing gave me headaches and all it needed was rearranging the punctuation, I would come back to the smallest of articles again and again, until it wasn’t such an eyesore!

Writing has literally saved my life in the truest sense. My journals have been my friends through the bullying I faced at school and these treasures have helped me in diagnosing the most serious issues of my life. Yes, the stupid diaries of a teenager helped in analysing the symptoms that could have otherwise been easily misconstrued. In February 2017, I was going through a rather difficult phase accompanied by clinical depression. It used to be difficult for me to even undertake daily chores. Bathing seemed like such a task. One could find me locked up in my room, on the bed, phone in my hands, slouched down, staring at the screen. Endless scrolling, mindless exploring. On one such particularly dull evening, I decided upon leafing through my old journals. It was a collection of my memories from school to college, the stack could have easily touched the ceiling. It would have lasted me the entire winter and may have bored me to death. I started reading. I had detailed a lot of my activities over the years and I found a pattern in my behaviour. Some days I was happy and impulsive, on others I was sad, depressed and indecisive. I would make plans in a rush and then cancel them the next week. I noticed how many lectures and meals I had skipped on the days I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Then there were days when I had roamed about the city, painting it red with a total stranger. Since I had nothing better to do, I charted out my zigzagging behaviour, trying to figure out whether it was a mental illness or was I just an unreliable narrator! I thought it could either be a personality disorder like borderline or worst, bipolar. The next day I decided to meet the HOD of Psychiatry from my college.

As I was sitting in his clinic, telling him about my symptoms, a part of me was wishing he would come up with some other diagnosis, other than the one I already knew about. His eyes glowed at how transparent my case history was. Afterall, I was the one who had meticulously compiled all the signs over the years, thanks to my journals and the habit of collecting written souvenirs to mark my memory of the events. His exact words were, “It is like you are feeding me the diagnosis yourself,” ecstatic to have found a classic case. I was looking for even the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice, “I am sure your favourite subject was Psychiatry and I can see how you are imposing all the symptoms upon yourself, not unlike every other intern out there ever!” Being thrown out of the HOD’s chamber is every student’s nightmare, but there I was praying for the same. I would have celebrated in the hostel canteen had he shunned my diagnosis and called me incompetent as a doctor. Instead, I got congratulated upon and a huge smile of approval. The HOD’s smile, every junior doctor’s dream, was turning out to be my nightmare that afternoon.

My heart sank upon his approval. It was Type 2 Bipolar Disorder like I had suspected. I wasn’t pleased but determined to get all the prescribed medicines and start the treatment. And I did.

And no points for guessing, I decided to chronicle my treatment journey as well. With Lithium and Sertraline being pumped into my system twice a day, I became an obedient zombie complying to the daily routine. I started getting up on time and never again missed another clinical posting. It looked like life was slowly getting back on track.

But I had lost my creativity. Whenever I sat down to write, all I could hear was buzzing in my ears. After about 6 months, having experienced what it felt like to be normal, I decided to visit the psychiatrist again, hoping he would taper my dose but instead he doubled it. I dutifully brought the entire dose, and self prescribed an alternate treatment, halving the usual dosage. After a few months however I threw it down the drain, realising that the medicines did not actually let me be myself.

I COULDN’T WRITE! 

I had also started therapy and counselling in the meantime, but most of my healing depended upon myself. My Bipolar wasn’t as bad actually, the hypomanic bursts always brought with them such creative ideas that I used to run out of time implementing them. Through the year that I did go through the treatment, I had charted down my triggers with the help of my journals, so when I stopped the medicines, that awareness helped me a lot. Since I could identify my triggers, it became easier to control. I started writing and painting again, channelling both the up and down phases into it. It came in surges. I harnessed the hypomania as well as the depression. I used to write even during the depressive episodes and came out with some extremely melancholic melodies in the form of poems. A good few months, a lot of anger outbursts and suicidal thoughts later, it dawned upon me that writing was the only thing that was helping me get through anything and everything in life, including my Bipolar Disorder. Little did I realise that I was in fact healing gradually and creating another stack of journals as well. This time however, those journals were full of poems and articles.

I cannot say that I am cured entirely, but the level of awareness and control that I achieved upon this so called disorder, is beyond words. Although no, it is not beyond words, for it was in these confines that I turned my mental illness into my superpower. 

I loved writing and it loved me back.

PS: I had originally written this for one of the os.me write-up challenges.

Picture Credit: Thom Milkovik