Who Am I? What Am I?

Hetal Kamani

27 June 2020

Who Am I?
What Am I?
For a day, I love the colour pink- I’m not a feminist however, I feel pink to be healthy! It is bright, it is bubbly! Sometimes I even lift the healing scab to revisit the pink flesh of pain to feel more alive. Rest of the days I just like black- the darkness, the suspense! I almost feel like being a star cast to a thriller movie. I even like staring at my black scars, reminiscing how far I’ve come.
I might sound trivial or sadistic talking of colours and their characters, but don’t they describe you? You talk of wanting things in black and white, howbeit on a blue day you count on the shades of grey. Paradoxical, isn’t it?
It is such a dilemma to discover yourself.
While everyone is recognising and endorsing about how crucial is mental health, I intend to share you my diary and my not so cheery-butter phase of life-

August 19, 2019:
I am this pretty messed up person.
Depressed. Bipolar. On the edge of surrendering life to death.

August 16, 2019:
Breathing isolation, soaking in self loathe, succumbing in ennui and despair, it is when the sky goes light to dim and dawn to dusk, and I can’t comprehend with the simple eat-sleep wake cycle of the body. Something is offbeat. I don’t starve, it is just that I am unable to eat. I want to sleep like a baby so I count sheep.
One sheep, two sheep, three sheep,…
ten sheep,…
hundred sheep,…
two hundred sheep,…
nine hundred and ninety-nine sheep,…
six thousand and twelve sheep,…
I’m so done! With all the sheep, where is even my sleep?

September 21, 2019:
Today I got out of my bed and I’m alive. Wondering why I mention this? I guess these are the days when I feel so accomplished getting out of bed as if I had made my path to the moon! Or maybe won a Nobel prize for surviving like a warrior!
Don’t judge me, I just said, I feel fulfilled and victorious waking up every morning and sometimes getting out of bed too.

October 3, 2019:
I realise I'm suffering losses. If I forgot to mention, I’ve already lost the love of my life, three of my best friends and now I’m on the verge of losing my career.
Just so that you recall, I’m a final year student of physiotherapy. Not so sure but I’m gonna be a doctor only if I’m excused for my regular absenteeism in the lectures, in clinics and also if I take the exams and pass.
I don’t know anything, anymore.
I don’t recognise myself anymore.
The agony of losses is amassed, it's too late. I can’t pinpoint the moment when I was exposed to the sun too long, to make raisins of myself, sucking the juice out of my mind and body in the vines of life.

October 28, 2019:
My inner self trying to convince me: I need help. I feel like I am in the middle of an ocean, all alone. I can’t swim in these waves anymore. I scream and I sob. I need some help. I need a rescue.
I sit all day and all night with my eyes wide open thinking to myself whom do I go to. With every blink of eyes in anguish I fear, I feel lost wondering would I know what peace looks like if it gently knocked at my heart? Would I open the door or pretend I wasn’t home?
I get these flares of goosebumps when I try to express myself loud and clear, I strive hard to trust, to open up. I feel as if my thirst is unquenchable, yet I try to voice up with my dry mouth.
I’m tired. I’m desperate. I’m vulnerable.
I look pale. Dark eyelids and swollen eyes like yeast in heat, thin short kinky hair curling round, mind engrossed and barely alive.
I have started to escape the world, the anxiety and the overthinking with alcohol. I’m falling in love again, just not with a human this time but the trance. The reverie. The chaos of longing.

November 19, 2019:
Since I’m an apparent failure, I also failed to inform you- yes, I belong to a protective, conservative Indian family. Precisely, I can not disclose at any cost that I drink alcohol and that I might soon become a leech.
Additionally, I have OCD- obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Since I’ve figured it out, I think I'm gonna have a word with my mom. I just take my phone, dial-up. Here, we go!
“I need a psychologist! Period.”
“What? Does that sound funny?”
“No, I accept I’ve become a wasted person. So what? I’m willing to grow. Let this vine cling on, I promise I will be a beautiful climber all over again.”

What next?
It went as I promised. I started with the therapy sessions with my psychologist, I clanged to her strategies to climb up the wall of doldrums. And here I’m.

July 27, 2020:
I’ve been sober for 6months now.
I sleep well and have gained my lost weight.
I’ve made a few new friends and I work at an online company of physical therapy with built-up grounds to be a consulting editor and a social media manager.
Moreover, I’m a certified nutrition and fitness coach, a budding entrepreneur.
Can you believe it?
I'm sorted. I have foresight. I’m no more wasted person or a failure. I did not self-sabotage.
I’m the very same Hetal Kamani residing in the very same body of the year 2019, now a 22yr old woman, living her independent life!

No one promised me it would be easy to surpass the lone wolf in me, but it was worth it!
All you need to do is- ask for help.
Take some help.
Be willing.
Be welcoming.
After all, it is such a dilemma to discover yourself.


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