Sympathy

January 1st, 2021 marked an exact year of my unemployment. I felt like a hundred years have passed in the last twelve months. If you don’t have a pressure of nine to five job, you would start learning a lot about yourself. It won’t all be helpful though. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I’m brown and first born. Yes, I have childhood issues. I grew up to be a people pleaser and a bad perfectionist. No surprise there. Well, It took me almost thirty years to come to this spiritual realization that I’m a selfish son of a b*tch. What can I say, I enjoy guilt!

Everyday, I would wake up, look for jobs and study a little bit. When this routine didn’t work out. I changed it. I started a to-do list. A complete waste of time for people like me. I tried eating heathy, reading books and going for walks. When that didn’t work out, I changed it again. And again. I didn’t realize that I had already given up. The curtain on the play ‘my perfect life’ fell. I still wouldn’t acknowledge it. I didn’t want to feel like a failure. I would remind myself of people who couldn’t afford a roof or food or clothes. I would kick myself for not considering how lucky I was to have my basic necessities taken care of. This would send me into an even deeper spiral of depression. I would go on for days without talking to anyone. The voices in my head would scream to the point that I my head would start hurting. Never realized silence could be so chaotic.

Anyway, one day I was watching a comedy film to give myself a little break from everything that had been going on. For no apparent reason, I felt tears running down my cheeks. I was tired and angry. I pushed pause on the laptop and the hero stopped running toward the heroine. At this point, I was bawling my eyes out. I carefully constructed an image of a deity that my mother prayed to everyday, into my mind. And I hissed, ‘Screw you!’ I did that again and again until I fell sleep.

The next day when I woke up, my head was heavy but quiet. I was listening to a podcast while having my breakfast when I heard the author say, ‘Your pain is not a contest.’ My coffee hung midair as I let the sentence wash over me. The change that followed was subtle but dramatic. I found myself letting go of things that I had no control over. For once, I didn’t blame myself for every little thing. For a people pleaser, it is a huge thing to do.

I was measuring success on what other people thought I should be. Their opinions and their approval. Alas, happiness and success don’t go hand in hand. I was afraid of being left alone. I wouldn’t express my opinions because I was afraid that people would judge me for it. I was extra polite to people because I thought I might offend them. I built this whole fictional character who is a ‘yes-man’ and polite. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t my job to make everyone happy.

I spent many sleepless nights and tears stained pillows, trying to prove that I did not have symptoms of depression. That whatever this is, would go away. No, it wasn’t that easy. I was left alone to fight my battles. But for the first time, I was betting on myself. Against all odds, I was teaching myself to be human again.