It’s devastating.
It’s shocking.
It’s unbelievable.
Depression takes away another gem.
What kind of a superficial world do we live in where we are surrounded with friends, people who pretend to love us, people who actually care for us but still we do not have the comfort of sharing our woes, our concerns, our agonies, our failures, our true emotions with them?
Time and again it has been proved that happiness doesn’t chase success. It was proved once again with a successful young actor ending his life, even before experiencing life to its fullest!
Sushant singh Rajput, a bright Indian actor, just 34 years of age with a blessing of five elder sisters, dozens of friends in the industry and a huge fan following, couldn’t trust even one person to share his mental state. How deeply painful and astonishing is that?
How ironical it is that we have hundreds of friends in the virtual world- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but none in the real world to confide in?
Why do people forget to be mindful about the mental health of their friends or family?
Smile, known to keep worries at bay, misguides us too.
How often do we assume that the person wearing a smile is bound to be a happy-go-lucky fellow? But do we ever try to see those pearls peering from those eyes or do we try to lend an ear to those voices screaming from the cave of silence?
No, we don’t.
We prefer to trust the façade of smile because that’s more appealing to us.
It’s surprising how people close to us fail to recognize the difference between the real and fake happiness. It’s hurtful to realize that you are not comfortable talking about your anxiety or stressors or depression with your friends or family. They are concerned, a lot concerned but somehow most of them cannot accept a distraught “you”, forcing you to hide your true emotions from people who love you the most.
Solitude becomes the only companion and withdrawal the only solution. And slowly, those voices in the head become the elephant in the room that just cannot be tamed. Help, is what the person needs but is too afraid or rather ashamed to ask. They use “Leave me alone,” or “I’ll be fine, don’t worry” or “You sort out the issues of your life” and statements like these to keep others from helping or intruding.
Can we learn to understand the true meaning of words, “Leave me alone,” or “I’ll be fine, don’t worry”?
Trust me, a person undergoing depression doesn’t expect you to fight his battles nor does he expect you to provide solutions. All that person needs is a listening ear! A non-judgmental person, who’s there to listen, is all that guy needs! No opinions, no suggestions, just someone to listen!
But all we end up doing is get into the debate of ‘My life is messier than yours’; ‘My woes are graver than yours’ or we blame the person that he doesn’t know how to deal with life’s challenges by saying “You always rant or complain about life! Nobody’s life is a smooth sail. You just don’t know how to deal with yours”
Lend a listening ear to your friends and family! Give them the comfort of your company. You may not even know the amount of courage they need everyday to pull themselves out of bed and don that masked face in front of the world.
And believe me, they all show symptoms. It’s only us, their friends and family, who either ignore or fail to notice or refuse to accept the gravity of the situation. But it’s all there- in their words, in their silence; in their actions, in their non-actions; in their aversion and in their solitude.
Let’s not have to regret by saying, “I wish I had understood him/her” Or “I Wish I was there for him/her,” because depression does take lives!
©Vandana Bhasin
