“Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push away, even your close friends who you really like”

You’re sitting alone in a place. Your mind is blank. Everything around you seems to be pointless. Every sound, whether it be soothing or anger filled, whether it be a melody or noise, doesn’t affect you at all. Your body feels weak. You don’t want to get up. It gets dark. You could switch the light on, but you keep on sitting in the dark, which seems to calm you in your own mysterious way. Messages give out their occasional ding voice out of your phone, but you don’t care. You don’t want to talk to anyone, but you still want to talk to someone…..

Gathering that courage which was totally non-existent earlier, you talk to your friends. Some give reactions which make you believe that your feelings are just some trivial phase, while some actually want to offer help. But you reject both. Something inside you, while you were spilling your hearts out, chokes you, making you feel as if someone is squeezing your neck so that you don’t talk. Still, you talk and talk and talk, trying to get everything out of you, out of your heart, out of your mind. Everything which makes you feel like you are feeling right now. You don’t want to talk, but you talk.

Your friends try to approach you, but you shun them. You stay with them, but don’t let them too close. You think that you’re not good for them, and make them sad when you say what you want to say. So you stay with them, but not with them.

You are fed up. With everything. With the issues invading you, poking you everywhere, making you cry in ungodly hours. With those masks you have to cover yourself with, to make yourself appear okay.

With that loneliness which you’ve come to love and hate. You want to go to someone, but something stops you. Maybe your self-consciousness? Maybe because don’t want your friends to worry about you? The mess in your mind slowly devours your remnant sanity. Your mind then goes to that one dark corner….after which you decide to harm yourself. Up to some extent. Something violent inside you calms down after what you do. That activity, it seemed to give you some peaceful sanity, even though you knew it’s dangerous to tread those waters.

You give into that dangerous temptation to do it again and again, until one day one of your friends catch you with those scars. Persistently they keep on asking you, pleading you to stop it, pleading you to speak up. Something bubbles inside you, you yourself don’t know the feeling, but it makes you burst out in front of them and cry out… cry out until your shoulders are shaking violently, until you are taking deep gulps of breathe, until you feel a pair of arms wrap around you and give the warmth you craved for. The warmth you craved for but never asked for it, because you were scared. Soothing words which earlier didn’t have any effect on you, now makes their ways to your heart and mind, calming you down and giving you the comfort and assurance, that it’s okay to open up. That’s it okay to talk about you. Because there are people in this world who will accept you in any form of You, even the real You. They will listen to every conflict of yours, every happy feelings of yours, and will laugh along with you and will be the shoulders and hugs you need when you shed your tears.

It’s okay to talk about depression.

“I’d like to ask all of you, what is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat? Tell me your story. I want to hear your voice and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, your gender identity, just speak yourself. Find your name find your voice by speaking yourself.”

– Kim Namjoon (Rapper, BTS)

Yes, initially you would be hesitating. Of course inside there is that inner voice which tells you to stop and be like you are, all alone and all masked up in front of others when needed. But take that step talk to someone about the things you are going through. Someone you trust wholeheartedly. Someone you can rely on, the one who would be all ears when you spill out everything bunched up painfully inside you.

And then when you talk about it, slowly and gradually, bit by bit, you will feel the burden inside you being grabbed by an invisible force which then throws it somewhere. Things are not going to be suddenly okay after talking it out, but the feeling you get after it, it is like you floating in the air for a while.

Listen to some mellow, calming, soft music. Music which you feel would make you feel calm, which would calm down the emotional turbulence inside you for a while.

And then, stand in front of a mirror, and dictate to yourself the things which you love about yourself. The more you fall in love with You, the more you would feel motivated, and optimistic, because, true love first begins with loving yourself. We all are beautiful in our own beautiful ways … J

This journey is itself is not easy. But, take the first step. A small step. It can be as simple as just standing in front of a mirror and smiling. Those steps will gradually lead you to that one day when you love yourself.

“I’m shaking and afraid but I keep going forward. I’m meeting the real you, hiding in the storm”

– Epiphany, Love Yourself: Answer