The dark circles don’t lie

People die every day, and as a matter of fact that’s how the world functions but ever batted an eyelid at the ‘dead bodies’ walking among us?

There are people who go to work, keep track of the dead lines, students who score good grades or to put it simple, individuals with normal functioning capabilities. What happens to these people once they reach home and are by themselves? What is that that bothers them and forces them to doze from one side of the bed to the other finding it impossible to sleep while their eyes shut just hours before dawn.

They wake up tired, they have to persuade themselves for minutes until their body finally gives in starts to move. They stand in front of the mirror and start brushing, the only time when they can see a smile on their face, a fabricated one of course. They notice their scars, a voice inside their head tells them how ugly their facial features are and how everyone talks to them in the name of humanitarian mercy. It soon starts screaming that they should leave everyone at peace as everybody is better off without them. All this happens in the morning, the time when people thank God for their beautiful lives, the time when everyone else is enjoying the birds’ chirping while the person with this illness has a single aim- “Get through this day as soon as possible.”

A mental illness, as they whisper down the table. Whisper, because it is something that fetches you unwanted and unhealthy criticism. These people wake up with the dark circles and get back to the work, once again as normal human beings.

They get used to hiding, everyone else gets used to ignoring.

How and why did mental illness become a taboo? The bigger question though is that why is it still a taboo? Why is it still something that people have to hide until they no longer can?

Mental illness does have physical manifestations. Even though you can’t look at a person and tell that they have some sort of anxiety disorder but you can obviously try to pay some heed to their shaking hands while passing you the coffee mug. When you look deep into your eyes, you’ll see a glimpse of helplessness and fear but they’d blink soon after and all would be gone.

They say that they’re better off without you and that they are capable of solving their issues by themselves but they do need help as well. At times, they plead and in literal terms beg for help from some unknown unvisible forces. They simply don’t want to push you off. The stigma around mental illnesses has fed into their minds that that is something that would scare people away and factually it does but only those who don’t deserve your time and energy, not even a tiny bit of it. So there’s no loss here.

They don’t hide their illness by choice rather they’re not good at hiding at all. maybe we’re just too bad at noticing. They’re not adamant at rejecting, maybe we’re just too lenient at inviting.

You have a physical illness? You feel no shame in accepting and vocalising it but as soon as you find yourself trapped in the clingy arms of a mental illness, you are forced to shrink down and build walls around you. You feel unaccepted, you feel as if you have let others down, you feel guilty for something that you’re actually a victim to.

A mental illness doesn’t only cripple you mentally but also sucks every ounce of physical strength out of the last cell of your body. It debilitates you, affects your mind and body equally.

You can see that, if you try a little hard.

You can notice a broken smile, if you try a little hard.

We can find out the reality of these dark circles, if we try a little harder.

What these people need the most is acceptance, they don’t need your sympathies or your condescending advices, what they need is to be okay with people knowing about their struggles. They don’t want to battle an illness and along with it bear constant mental pressure for hiding it, they don’t want people to be expecting them to behave ‘normal’, to have a mental illness and still behave otherwise.

They’re scared to come out and confess to the world that things haven’t been cool or okay since some time and that they haven’t been feeling themselves lately. They feel as if they’re locked in a car with someone else driving it recklessly, someone who never listens to their instructions and simply keeps on changing turns without any forethought or foresight. They’re scared to die of course, but what scares them the most is the thought of having to tell that person on the driver seat to move onto the passenger’s. The driver looks into their eyes and reluctantly smiles and then gets back to their driving.

Everything in their life is feeble and all the msuic and dialogues just play in the background while they wonder who chose them to play a lead role.

They don’t want to wake up to a world with no mental illness, they want to wake up to a world where there dark circles don’t always have to be hidden under makeup.

*****

Namaste