Have We Lost Our Way?

Success is like a mirage. The closer you get to it, the faster it disappears.

Epiphany. Yes.

About half a year ago, I was depressed and suicidal and considered myself unworthy of everything. All I wanted that time was a glimpse of success, popularity. I was tired of worshipping my peers who did better than me. I wanted somebody to worship me. I wanted people to tell me that I'm awesome at what I do. I wanted to be popular. I wanted fans. Sounds shallow and uncouth, I know, but this is all you can expect from a 20 year old.

Or maybe, I am flawed.

What I am today is what I always wanted to be. And now that I'm here, I want to be somewhere else. A better place. The definition of success keeps escalating, apparently. 

And in the midst of all this chasing dreams, there is pandemonium and paranoia and existential crisis.

Do I need all of this? Why can't I just be happy? Isn't life all about being grateful to everything, having a peace of mind?

I hate myself, why should I live?

Disclaimer: Not a blogpost, this is my answer on Quora to "I hate myself, why should I live?"

Let me first tell you My story:

It all started about 2 years back. Because of some personal failures. My depression would oscillate. There were times when I was extremely suicidal and times when I was just emotionless and cocky. About 6 months ago, the depression started to consume me. I would cry. A lot. At least twice a week. Even the slightest perturbations would get to me. And on May 12th, 2015 something happened. I woke up and started crying profusely. I couldn't breathe, I was terrified. It was horrible. The pain had to end. I had no reason live. I sat in the corner of my bathroom and started thinking. Something had to be done. A part of me was screaming, "Jump off the fucking terrace, you piece of shit!" and the other part was calmly saying, "You've just lost you way. You need to seek help."

Since I didn't have the guts to do the former, I got up, went down to my parents and told them I needed professional help. They knew all my problems and they also knew I was miserable, but they didn't know it was this extreme. 
What exactly was my problem? 

One failure --> Considered myself unworthy, a total crap --> Sadness --> Wanted to change myself --> Thought I wasn't talented --> More sadness --> Lost all my ability/Procrastinate --> Depression.

I was in a deadlock: I would be sad because I wasn't productive. I wasn't productive because I was sad.

And depression is like a black hole. Once you're in, it's gonna suck you in deeper.

My parents took me to a consultant. Not a psychiatrist. I was specifically told not to tell this to anybody because then people will think I'm crazy. But the world needs to know that depression is not a condition. And people who consult doctors for this are not crazy. I was given some anti-depressants and they tried to find the root cause of all my worries. They asked me to find the root cause of all my problems by posing questions. Why. Why. WHY.

The change: The anti-depressants just got my serotonin level up. Once I stopped taking them, I would go back to being crappy. Now it was up to me to get my life back on track. I started doing things I actually loved. I started writing on Quora a lot. I knew I was good at writing, was highly opinionated about a lot things and Quora was the perfect platform. I did not care for the upvotes or followers, I just started writing like a madman. In the past 3 months, I got 1k followers and over 20k upvotes. I get 3-4 messages per day telling me how amazing my answers are. 
I also started coding and took up random courses on Codecademy. I study CSE in a crappy college but I don't want to give lame excuses once I graduate. When it comes to technical skills, I want to be at par with my peers who come from awesome colleges and I'll do everything it takes me get there.
I'm so much more happy right now. Without the anti-depressants.

Why you should live: 
Okay, You don't want to live. You're getting such thoughts because you have way too much time. You need to engage yourself in activities. You need to start keeping yourself busy. So busy that you shut out such thoughts.
My vacations were going on last month, I did not sit at home and while my time away. I used to wake up early, water my garden, go jogging, joined a course, coded, read books, wrote about 40 really long answers, visited friends, met new people, extended my friend circle, explored my city and so much more. I had no time to think about miseries of life.

My advise to you:

• Take a day off. Go to an isolated area with a pen and a diary, sit down and think. Think about anything you want. Board any train of thought. Cry if you feel like. Cry how much ever you want. And then snap out of it.
• Question. Why. Why do you hate yourself? When you have an answer for it, question it again, question all your answers until you know the root cause.
  
  What's the root cause? Are you guilty of something you did? Or is it because you feel like you're good for nothing. If you're guilty of something, make amends. If you can't, then forget it.
  
  If it's because you feel like you're good for nothing, then you're mistaken. You just don't know what you're good at. Nobody is born without any talents. You're just unaware of it. Your happiness is with you, it's just behind you, out of your sight. You can't see it, but it's there.
• List out all the things you're good at. If you're good at none, no worries. List out things you want to do. And then Prioritize.
  For example, I want to write, code, do well in my acads, paint, quiz and give seminars/public talks.
  My priorities: Studies > Write > Code > Quiz > Seminars > Paint
• If you already know something, better yourself at it. If you don't know, learn. But stop giving the goddamn excuses, stop being lazy. It's a lot of hardwork. And it will take time. I've been writing for the past two years, it's not like I woke up one day to challenge J.K. Rowling.
• Practice. Until you're perfect.
• You will feel much better about yourself. You'll now be more confident. You'll feel worthy of something. 

Look, only you can pull yourself together and get out of the mess you're in. You need to stop undermining yourself. You need to trust your instincts.

Just imagine how your family and friends will feel if you die. You're being super selfish by not wanting to live. It will cause immense pain to your parents, remember that.

And you don't really want to die. You know that too. You just want to end the pain. Pain that comes from self-loathe.

Now go and do something to inspire yourself. Do something that will make you love yourself again. Seriously, life is not a joke.

My first Abstract Painting! :)

Hello, readers!

My sincere apologies. I'd been super busy with my semester exams for the past two months and hadn't gotten any time to write anything! My vacations have finally begun and I have lots to tell you guys!

Anyway, it had been long since I painted. So, I gave a try at abstract painting. I hope you guys like it! Leave a comment! :)

Study Holidays: Such Oxymoron, Much Wow.

Okay, my fourth semester finally ended. Oh, what a pain in the neck twas! I was depressed for most of the time. My GPA plummeted like a meteoroid and I couldn’t care less. I graduated from Level 5 Procrastinator to Level 10. I cribbed more about my college. And the endless comparison with the people from other colleges pushed me further down. My aspirations became obsessions and I became suicidal.  -_-

It felt like I had lost my confidence, my charm.

But I’m way past all that!

Good things happened too! I finally found the right group of people to hang out with. Four boys. Shreyas, Preetham, Supreeth and Sumanth. I’m the only girl and I like it this way. It’s so much less complicated. There’s no bitching, talking behind people’s back, backstabbing and doing other mean things. It’s only endless laughter, sarcasm, insults, pinpointing, bunking, movies, pizzas and milkshakes. I do get a lot of glares from lecturers and overly obnoxious people who think it’s a sin for a girl to hang out with boys. But as long as I’m happy and not doing things that doesn’t point north on my moral compass, I don’t give a shit about what others think.

 I attended a bunch of quizzes and won two of ‘em (Credits to my super awesome quizzing mates).

I finished a paper and I’m too proud of that. I was always skeptical about my perseverance: I start things and never really finish it. But the moment I finished my paper, I knew I wasn’t a total waste of space on the face of the earth. I went on a writing spree on Quora for a month and the upvotes were simply overwhelming. I think it’s safe to assume that my writing skills have improved over the year.

I also started learning Java and I’m glad I can write simple programs. 

And and and, I left that nightmarish building in Bengaluru, my hostel. I came back home and I’m so much more happier. I have a room to myself, a king-size bed in which I can lie in whichever position I want, my own freaking bathroom in which I can shower as long I want and a wardrobe! I can sleep whenever I want, sit however I want and do whatever the heck I want without having another person judge my every move. Ah, blissful!

Study holidays are fascinating. For starters, the word is an annoying oxymoron. And I don’t know why everything else becomes so interesting during this time. Five days into these ‘holidays’ and I’m suddenly interested in Painting, Swimming and Philosophy.

for(i = 0; I < end_of_study_holidays; i++)
{

         
I sleep for 10 hours, sometimes 12. (I don’t know how I do that, I think something’s wrong with me). I wake up, go for a jog, contemplate about life while watering the plants and draw Rangoli in front of my house. I read Kannada newspaper and bug my mom and dad with stupid questions. I switch on my laptop telling myself to code and then the internet distracts me and I somehow end up browsing Quora for 2 hours or watching Game of Thrones or reading about Nietzsche or Richard Branson or Exception Handling or Lucid Dreaming. I’m also addicted to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I end up playing that shit for hours. Shooting people is so cool, I wish I could do that in real life. :P
I shower for an hour and consume copious amount of food. Watch every shit they play on TV. I feel terribly guilty for having wasted so much time. I call my topper friends and ask them to motivate me.

I gather colossal courage and open my textbooks. It’s 7 PM now. I scrutinize  the syllabus, decide what to study and it’s already 8 PM. Time for F.R.I.E.N.D.S on Romedy now! “Maaa, I’m hungry!”
After gobbling enough food that can last me a week and laughing at Chandler’s Sarcasm and Phoebe’s nonsense, I’m sleepy.

I’ll study tomorrow. Pinky Promise

}

Pretty, no? :P

Just a part of the garden.

I was supposed to execute Dijkstra but I ended up writing this. 

I think I’m gonna fail tomorrow.

HOLY SHIT! -__-

I have to study!

Jinxed?

I don’t know how many people want to be super-awesome in their lives. Most of the people I know are severely content and complacent with what they have and what they are.  They’re happy. And it baffles me. Or maybe I’m the idiot. The problem is that I know too many amazing people. And I want to be like them. Some of them. All of them. They unduly inspire me.

I’ve started to hold myself in contempt. I feel like I’ve wasted 19 precious years of my life.

“But you’re awesome! I wish I could be like you!”. I hear it every now and then but I’m never really proud of myself. There’s enormous room for improvement. There always is. And my definition of success keeps escalating. And I find myself struggling to achieve the next thing on my list.

I don’t know if I’ll ever truly love myself and be gratified.

I have a dream. Something that keeps nagging and etching at the back of my head, never really snoozes out. I want that. I want that badly. Desperately. That will be my definition of success. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really know. 

I have a friend who says I should make peace with myself, and that’ll help me grow. He says I’m terribly fucked up. Like, if I get into University of Southern California (#19) and my friend gets into Cornell (#5), I’ll be cribbing about not getting into Cornell and totally ignoring the sheer awesomeness of getting into USC. That makes a lot of sense? I guess. But sense doesn’t sink into me that easily.

I’m failing subjects. And I don’t give a shit. No, I do give a shit but I feel helpless. I’m not studying. I don’t want to study. I sleep crazy shit hours. Over the past month, I’ve slept for 10 hours daily. I’m always tired and languid and it’s like my head is going to burst. It feels like I’m dying. I’ve started to love and embrace the misery. If I catch myself being happy, I feel something horrible is going to happen. And it almost always does. I’m petrified of being happy. I might even have chronic depression.

With my fucked up academics, I’ll never get what I want. And the shittiest part is I don’t even want to try and clear this mess up. My confidence is shattered.

A quote keeps floating around in my head. “By doing nothing, you become nothing”.

I want to do nothing. I can spend the rest of my life staring into an abyss or the ocean. I love oceans.I can die staring at oceans. I bet it’ll be tranquilizing.

I’m just too tired of the clandestine tantrums life is throwing at me. It antagonizes me. I want to quit. Maybe I will…

Sweet Disposition
Never to soon
Oh, reckless abandon!
Like no one’s watching you..

PS: This is probably the crappiest blog-post I’ve written. I don’t expect you to visit my blog ever again.