coming back to myself
Depression lives in me. I remember the exact moments in my life when I was depressed. I was aware of being depressed, the feelings, the apathy, and the loss of appetite. I am familiar with it all. I know it like one knows an old acquaintance you crossed paths in different periods of life; there is familiarity. Still, once your encounter is over, you don’t miss them or think about it.
So at the end of spring 2021, on May 27th to be exact, after submitting a year-long research project for my postgraduate training in the field of periodontics, depression and its familiarity brushed past me like waves. I can remember the very moment on that day in late May, walking up a hill towards work in the morning. It was uncomfortable and suffocating. It was also unexpected because I had been in therapy for over 2 years now to deal with the stress of the minute details of everyday life. I repudiated it because I knew what to do this time around and was determined not to get to fall down the hole of depression. So began a dance of resistance against accepting the feelings, the waves of disenchantment. The more I resisted, the further I fell. I kept up a good fight for a few weeks and then suddenly nothing.
Life stood still. The days were just long June days of summer, where the sun rose and set. It was all a blur as they bled into each other. I went to work, came home, and sat staring into space until it was time for sleep to take me far away from my apathy. I felt empty. It felt like the loss of my life, which was filled with books, cooking, feeding, and talking to friends over FaceTime and coffee or lunch dates and regular exercise in nature. Everything I had built after the bouts of depression before. I couldn’t even do simple tasks like replying to text messages. I tried reading a book, and the words seemed complex, like English wasn’t a language familiar to me.
After a few weeks of numbness, I mentioned to a friend that I may be sliding into a depressive phase. That it felt as if I was in mourning for someone or experiencing loss. She kindly smiled and said, ‘ well, you are, aren’t you? You are saying goodbye to a version of yourself, and you’ve just completed an extensive research project that took over a considerable part of your life in the last 18 months. You should lean into it without resisting. Mourn this so you can welcome the new you. Call it a ping from the universe or sound advice from a kind friend, but it was the first time in my life I leaned into my feelings without resistance.
I put a pin in all my side projects, including launching a gum health patient support platform. I didn’t resist the lack of inspiration I had towards cooking, reading, and writing, all the things that ordinarily brought a cheer into my day. Instead, I went against the grain (for myself); as lockdowns started to ease, I went to brunches and lunches with friends or even just myself. I booked last minutes tickets to take myself to the theater and to see art, rejoicing in their return but also in eavesdropping on other people’s analyses. I chatted up complete strangers in cafes, on the streets, and in restaurants. I rewatched Friends from beginning to end and transported myself into the fictionalised world of the 90s and 00s New York. I did a detailed analysis of its characters, themes, and the character’s wardrobes with complete strangers on Instagram. All the while wondering if my appetite for ‘normal life’ would ever return?
As I let go, somewhere between May and August, my craving for life returned. My creativity came back with a second life. This time it was fresher but lighter. So did my urge to travel. I found myself dreaming of Paris, somewhere I retreated to frequently but hadn’t since before the pandemic. While I was out for coffee one Friday, I booked a trip to Paris. Solo. I was going to romance myself in the city of love.
So I found myself on a taxi ride to St Pancras International one morning, my mind fresh, yet to be corrupted by the world of that new day, nervous and excited on the way to Paris without a to-do list.
Paris was bathed in September’s golden light, and I felt things I hadn’t in a month. My heart fluttered as if I met a new lover or reunited with an old one. My soul started to breathe for the first time in 2 years. On a walk back to my apartment in the Pigalle district, my heart was exploding with months of numbness starting to thaw. High on Paris or as an aftereffect of being away from the rut of everyday life, I arrived back to my apartment and cried the numbness away. Afterward, I sat dazed with a brewing rainstorm outside the terrace, thinking about all the relationships in my life.
My urge to read returned, so I read fervently on the themes of love, family, friendships, and loss, all significant matters that I had neglected in the months prior being preoccupied with my clinical and academic work. I found art on Paris’s streets even more alluring, culminating my trip with a visit to the Rodin museum. Where both the setting and the sculptures are a sensory sensation. My eye caught the ordinary happenings of Parisian life to be captured on my camera like nostalgia in the making. My palate felt cleansed. All the meals felt nourishing, from a picnic along the banks of the Seine made up of seasonal market goods to the solo four-course dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. Life’s flavour returned to me.
As I rode the Eurostar back, I was returning with a bag full of loaves of bread, pastries, grapes, stone fruits, and end-of-season tomatoes and a replenished soul. My mind started to wonder about new scientific research in periodontics and nutrition. My intellectual curiosity returned to me.
So when I look back on summer 2021, I will remember it as a period when I fell into a depression again. I knew what to do this time because I had been depressed before. The only difference was that I didn’t want to do any of those things this time around. This is not true. I didn’t have the emotional capacity for those things. I have never been a perfectionist, nor am I a cynical person. I am an emotional investor. I do everything with feelings and go deep into the crux of the matter, but I had none left in me. Instead, I became fixated on controlling the narrative to prevent myself from falling into a depression. Only to realise that by allowing myself to sink in and slip away for a little while in my own company, I could climb out and come back to myself.
Mehlaqa Khan