There was a certain instance where I had to meet a few of my friends one night for dinner – some of them were old friends. Old friends – we had a little falling out and the wound was as fresh as mint but when the offer was made, I took it up with due respect for the handful of them, whom I still had a completely healthy friendship with, that I decided to attend.
Dinner was going good and I was mentally patting my back for being civil the entire time. However, the conversations turned to their stories – none of which I had a part in. The silence that engulfed me while they laughed about their happy memories was like The Devil shrouded in a thick veil – he kept tightening that veil around my windpipe and I felt the food go rubber in my mouth. They continued laughing and talking about every instance that I wasn’t present, about everyone whom I stopped having contact and suddenly it felt like I was being thrown into a room with absolutely no doors. I broke out into bullets of perspiration (in an air-conditioned room) and my chest was closing in – it felt like I was trapped in that room and my sub-conscious mind was screaming at me to get out that very instance.
I stopped eating and feigned a phone call while I ran out of the restaurant, sat at the curb along the road, dialled my best friend’s number and broke down intensely. All I heard was her telling me to keep breathing – the voice of someone who loved me reduced the invisible vacuum I was being sucked into. The Devil’s veil slowly melted away as I sat at the curb for a good few minutes with my head on my knees, breathing. Fearing another “dementor attack”, I hailed a cab and called it a night.
There are certain things that we overestimate ourselves for but there are some things that we simply cannot speak about for fear of being called out as “wanting attention”. All we need is courage to accept ourselves for who we are.
Today, I wanted to share this in conjunction with World Mental Health Day 2017. Our mental journey has steep stairs – everyone has a battle they fight mentally, big or small. Everyone is precious and loved for everything great they are made up of.
