I suppose you could have called me a cautious child. My worries were diligently balanced between macro and micro concerns. Why were certain countries in disagreement with each other? How can I behave so that everyone will like me? Why wasn’t I good at sketching? I lived in a sea of inadequate self-perception. There was no childhood trauma that induced this, no overly harsh or negligent family, no experience of bullying at this crucial formative age. I would just excessively worry and ruminate about the smallest things.
At the dawn of my adolescent years, I moved across an ocean. No linguistic barriers existed for me, yet the language of insecurity dominated my interactions. I delved into isolation, even resorting to the histrionic eating-lunch-in-a-bathroom-stall tactic. I wanted to be home. I wanted to live in a country where I could see my aunt, my cousins, my uncle. I teetered between the identities of both countries, slowly transforming into a foreigner in both places. At 16, this self-hatred and isolation became an internal storm of fear, depression, and despair. I was desperate for help and yet found my grasp of the vocabulary of connection to be frustratingly absent. Rather than genuine friendships and relationships, I fostered an unhealthy dependence on those around me, who became life rafts of affirmation amidst the choppy waters of my own darkness. For a few years I found the eye of the storm and floated apathetically in its light and stillness – existing, but by no means living.
I believed I was the only soul enduring the storm, that underneath the waves existed infinite nothingness
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At 20, the tropical storm became an unprecedented hurricane. Flashes of lightning presented themselves as sporadic, irrational fears. Treading water was the only means of survival. Thoughts of giving up and sinking to the bottom constantly crossed my mind, and I believed I was the only soul enduring the storm, that underneath the waves existed infinite nothingness. But small flotation devices appeared in the forms of friends and family and I emerged from the depths of this ocean. Without a full understanding of the opaqueness below the surface, people in my life nevertheless always proved their willing to dive down and pull me back up. Through changes in my life and a re-commitment to determination, pounding rain became mist. Waves became stillness. The shoreline appeared.
My story is not unique. Depression and anxiety infiltrate minds of any calibre. I believe that they are not inherent flaws of my upbringing, my surroundings, nor my personality. It is just a mistake of neurological wiring. Unfortunately, what starts out as a minor electrical malfunction becomes a short-circuited fuse, darkening your relationships and perceptions. Though I wish I could say I had a mystifying moment that sparked recovery, it was instead a series of enabling elements. I moved away for a year and decided to use a physical relocation to facilitate a recovery. I performed in front of a crowd, the anxiety still pounding and pulsating in my throat, yet never fully materialising. I sifted through the broken pieces of my former self and began to make a new mosaic. Broken once does not equate to broken forever. Colours now overlap rather than existing in segregation, and the trauma is visible. Yet, once again, the light shines through.
If you are suffering and believe that your own self-worth has drowned or suffocated or ran away, I tell you this: you are just as significant as anyone else, and I completely believe in your ability to recover.
I recently discovered a traditional Irish music group called The Gloaming. The name enthralled me. Gloaming is another word for twilight or dusk, and I believe discovering this word at this time in my life is in no way coincidental. I am in the gloaming of a difficult time, and soon a dawn of a different story will begin. But in this gloaming comes wisdom, a limited one of individual experience. And in this gloaming I’ve realized I was never alone, that recovery emerges from an inexplicable inner force of determination, and that through acknowledging the interdependence of dusk and dawn, the storm will pass. If you are suffering and believe that your own self-worth has drowned or suffocated or ran away, I tell you this: you are just as significant as anyone else, and I completely believe in your ability to recover.
These psychological conditions find their victims in anonymity, in indiscriminate selection, in haphazard infection. They can invade the minds of any faction of society. The outgoing girl beside you in a lecture. The thoughtful, reserved boy you flash a weak smile to in a hallway. The middle-aged woman who feels lost on her life trajectory. The elderly man on the bus who shuffles for a seat. They are connected through falsely viewing themselves as isolated. But they, you and I are enough and will always be enough. However difficult you are finding it, know that there is solace in the gloaming.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article you can contact Trinity Counselling at (01) 8961407 and www.tcd.ie/Student_Counselling, Niteline at 1800 793 793 and niteline.ie, or Samaritans Ireland at 116 123.
