When Every Day Is A Struggle: The Battle For My Sanity

When Every Day Is A Struggle: The Battle For My Sanity

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Sometimes the hardest battle we fight is the battle within.

It’s been a while since I put together a sensible piece. If it is any consolation (to me), I was busy trying to win my every day’s battle. The bad news is, I have nothing new to share with you today except self-obsessively talk about myself.

Today, I want to walk you through my struggle, a battle for my sanity. Every single day.

By struggle, I do not mean a tussle with people, in the metro or anywhere else. Rather, the emotional state of mind, and how everything affects my balance.

Now, let’s start with my morning alarm.  The first buzzer is at 5:45 am which I normally snooze. Then it’s 6:15, 6:30 and 6:45. I try to be in office by 8:30 (earlier it was 11:00).

Struggle: yuimivashum.com

So I am in office, and while I write away my task, my mind kicks in with a mind of its own.

My first thought – ‘what if somebody breaks into my house and something bad happens to my brother and sister?’. They sleep like a log, they wouldn’t even notice if anybody did rob the house in the morning. Then I calm myself with chai and continue my work.

And sometimes (or most times), two couples in my workplace have their love quarrels. That’s when I begin to cringe again and think ‘what if they start shouting?’. I cannot handle tension or people arguing. I try to go back to work with a consolation that ‘they will be okay tomorrow’.

Before I wrap up my work, my mind sends in another wave of insecurities. I begin to doubt myself – ‘what if my bosses don’t like my work? Have I done enough?’ It’s as if my mind wouldn’t stop probing. Then sometimes, I would also think ‘Do I really need a job?’. Yes. I feel like my mind is not my own.

Then making my way back to the metro, my emotion jumps in. Seeing the beggar infant sleeping on the sidewalk, or a rickshaw driver quenching his thirst from a broken pipe, I always get overwhelmed with pity. It gets worse when I see an elderly in the metro or maybe a shabbily dressed elder woman. I would imagine ‘what if my mom ends up miserable and alone?’ and then quiver. I would look at them, look at me, and cuss myself that I couldn’t do anything for them.

Most times, In my transit from Blue Line to Yellow Line, I am always getting lost in the crowd of Rajiv chowk Metro Station. I am either going to the wrong platform or confused about the right way. But I do shake out of the daze eventually.

When I finally reach my stop, GTB Nagar, I usually take the rickshaw. Partly because travelling in crowd suffocates me, makes me go numb, and partly because I feel pity for the old men waiting for passengers in their rickshaw, wheels they can barely paddle. I am always troubled by the fare. I keep thinking ‘should I pay more?’. Sometimes I get really old men, who can barely paddle me up a slight uphill. I am not heavy, just 45 kgs.

Then I brood over ‘what if my dad had to work like him?’ . Once this anxiety kicks in, I stay depressed the whole night.

black-and-white-person-woman-night

If my dog, Nony, asks too much attention, I just order him to ‘sleep’! Then I end up feeling bad 2 minutes later. I panic when I get phone calls from home too because I am scared that they’d ask ‘Are you okay?‘. What do I say then?

Some days, I am worried for my sister. I cannot eat till she is home! I worry about my brother too, constantly. I am either grumpy with my sister for not helping me or with my brother for not washing his plates! Other times, I am pissed at people for just being ‘people’. On my grumpy days, I give them a fair share of my moods and end up feeling really bad about it. When I am home, and they are not, I worry ‘what if I haven’t been a good sister at all?’.

As the chilling feeling of ‘what if they are sick of me’ unsettles me, I shrug it off and go to sleep reassuring myself that I have given the best I can”.  The calm settles in till day break and the usual cycle continue.

Now, isn’t that enough struggle for a day?

These past months haven’t been the best, I admit. From dealing with rumors to recovering my health, from fighting the urge of breaking down to trying to be a responsible adult, I was bogged down, down on my knees. For all the wrong reasons of my own making, of course.

The other day I realized that lately my outburst had been unreasonable. I started to wonder if there was more to my unstable emotion. Suddenly I felt nauseous. The only thing that struck to my mind was to check if I was having a mental breakdown. That, if I was going to have one. I went to the length of Googling up the symptoms of Bipolar disorder. I even took some online test. I also looked up shrinks and doctors that I could consult.

Then I found an interesting psychological test from 16 Personalities.

yumivashum.com- Persoality Test

I quite liked my answer. I felt a little too much and quite rebellious too. You can also take the test- click here.

I agree, I was thinking too much and feeling too much. The problem was, I was building my own roadblock. It was a bunch of white roses that calmed my nerves then. I have to say, flowers have their way of soothing a raging emotion.

But I cannot expect a bunch of flowers to solve my problems every time. The solution to my problem is myself. I need to end my day with a positive thought, that I am enough, I have done the best that I can. I need to fight harder for my sanity.

I will win this battle, one day at a time. 

Yuimivashum.com

I am writing this today so that if I fall into this phase again, I will know what to do. You will know what to tell me. 

8 thoughts on “When Every Day Is A Struggle: The Battle For My Sanity

  1. Possibly, everyone goes through such a emotional state (turmoil) when we transition into being a responsible adult from being a happy-go-lucky youngster. Our approach toward day-to-day activities starts to change; our perspective broadens to accommodate reason which we never cared about before and soon we inculcate a sense of responsibility. I think your piece fairly explains why taking up responsibilities scares the pants off of many.

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