— IV Year, HSS Dept.
I never cried when I was younger. And when I say that, I mean it. Before the last year, I remember maybe 2 times in my whole life when I cried. I thought I was incredibly strong-willed and things just failed to faze me. I was proud of it before I got to college; but on the day my parents left me at college and I dragged my feet into the small Sarayu room I was allotted to, I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry so the ache in my chest would go away, but I couldn’t make the tears fall. I cried so hard. And when I couldn’t, that’s when I thought, maybe something was wrong with me?
Fast forward to 2020 when I was at home and the pandemic was at its peak. I’d lie on the drawing room sofa all day, getting up to eat and then going back to staring at the ceiling from the sofa. I probably should’ve already guessed that I wasn’t alright, but it felt like to much work to think about it. One day in May, at around 11 at night I suddenly couldn’t breathe and I felt myself about to throw up. That did the job. I talked to a friend and booked the appointment with a therapist I’d been putting off for weeks.
The very first day of (online) therapy felt strange to me. I had to sneak out of the bedroom and go to the drawing room where I knew I could be alone. The therapist asked me to talk to her, tell her anything I wanted to, and I did. Throughout about 1 year of therapy, I did breathing exercises, writing exercises and art therapy to cope with anxiety and depression. I didn’t want to do a lot of them because it felt awfully emotionally draining to deal with so many emotions and put them out on paper at the same time. But I am glad to say that I didn’t worry too much about it. I did my exercises when I could and didn’t when I couldn’t. I knew they were supposed to help but I didn’t know if they were actually working. Now that I look back at those, I think they did help. I won’t claim that therapy helped me make incredible discoveries about myself. To be honest, I had already thought about all the things that came up during therapy. I think where it helped me was in navigating through the maze of feelings in my attempts to make sense of them.
A few days ago, I closed my sessions with the therapist. I wasn’t planning to but it so happened that I couldn’t do meet her (still online) for about 3 months, and after that, my college schedule didn’t allow for enough time for me to have proper sessions. Moreover, I felt like I needed to focus on understanding my queerness, which the therapist didn’t seem to help a ton with. She was always accepting of it whenever I spoke of it, but it was nowhere nearly enough to just be non-judgemental about something I think is such a big part of me. Right now, I am keeping busy and I think I will be okay for the foreseeable future. If I feel the need to restart my sessions, I will, but this time around, I think I will look for someone exclusively working with queer issues.
Still, I am glad I stuck with therapy for a whole year. I think it worked. I think that because I cry at absolutely everything now. I struggled for so long with being unable to cry that even though the crying feels excessive sometimes, deep in my heart, I like that I feel things now. Last night, I cried at a K-drama scene where a CEO gave his new employee a name for his yet-to-be-born son and told him that the child will do great things and be remembered for generations and generations to come (hopefully some of you have watched the K-drama Guardian – the Goblin K-drama with Gong Yoo – and know what I am talking about). It was absolutely ridiculous. I could’ve smacked the back of my head if I wasn’t so busy being emotional about that scene. To be completely honest, I don’t know if this level of crying is a sign of me healing or a sign of me getting worse; but I like to think I am getting better. I like feeling all these things, even if it means that I will cry at absolutely anything now.
Edited by Samaja
Design by Rohit G
Article 19 