Ramblings of a tired heart and an exhausted soul

 

So, this is about fifteen days into the New Year, 2022, I cannot believe that it is 2022 already. I know most people will relate to this feeling, so many of us are mentally somewhere in 2019. Once the Pandemic hit us, we couldn’t fathom the way the world around us was about to change and how that in turn would change us. Since March 2020 I feel like I have been stuck in a limbo, not sure of what was going on and not sure of what was going to happen. To be honest, the past two years have been extremely tough, I know this is true for so many people all around the world. But on a personal note I don’t think it was just the pandemic alone that caused me so much pain mentally, it was to do with the things that were going on in my life as well, initially the lockdown served as a time to heal from past wounds some of which were freshly inflicted upon me just before the lockdown, but as the first wave subsided I was hit with something even bigger, my PhD being at stake, my whole career hanging by the thread, my whole future at stake, at that point I wasn’t even sure if I had the will to live anymore and by the end of 2020 I wasn’t sure if I will make it to the next year, I remember giving a warm hug to my husband on the day of New year 2021 and I was filled with  a feeling of dread, unsure if I would be able to hug him again the next year like that. There was so much anxiety in me, I kept pushing myself to move forward somehow one way or another failing at some point each day and waking up the next day and trying once again to move forward, somedays it got extremely tiring and exhausting and so many days I just really wanted to give up and I know I had so many moments of weakness where I just wanted to give up, I remember there was this particular day when I came so close to actually giving up and I don’t know to this day how I was able to hold myself back and not act on my impulse. Then came the second wave, and something that hit me really hard was my brother in law’s passing due to Covid, and it ushered in a whole lot of anxiety, sleepless nights, panic and what not. Depression and Anxiety seemed to gnaw at me from both sides throwing me completely off balance. Then we had an accident, a slab of granite fell on us in the middle of the night while we were asleep, I don’t know how we both even managed to escape pretty much unscathed that night, I was so afraid that one of us was not going to wake up the next morning, the fear and panic I felt that night was indescribable, it just added more to my already escalating fears. I kept waking up with the fear that something is going to happen to us. In the peak of my anxiety and depression I found solace in books, I kept reading as much as I could, I made it my vocation to just keep reading, in a span of two months I read about ten books. And then I saw one of my worst fears come to life, my husband had to be hospitalized, we thought it was Covid, but thankfully it wasn’t and he came home safely in a few days. I thought I was going to die from the sheer fear I experienced those days. Just as I was beginning to recover from all that, there came an upheaval in my life, I relocated to Hyderabad, leaving a space that was a source of comfort and stability and that was extremely difficult to say the least. I immersed myself in trying to find a good house for us and setting it up on the way we would like so as to stop the anxiety from taking over me. Then came December, Christmas season, that part of the year which gave me most comfort and solace so I once again sought refuge in that, decorating our new home organizing a Christmas celebration with our siblings and planning for Christmas with our parents and then came the Dengue. Both me and my Husband were affected with Dengue and it got quite serious for my husband to the point where he had to be hospitalized for platelet transfusion and I was reliving my nightmare once again, fear gripping my heart and with no energy left to fight my fears, I had no energy to stand up straight for five straight minutes let alone fight my fears. My only solace was that my husband returned home on Christmas eve and that we were together with our family on Christmas day. Even though it wasn’t so many days ago it still feels like a blur to me because I was lying unconscious on my bed for most part, I only vaguely remember my mother coming and waking me up to drink fluids at regular intervals. Gradually we started to recover and then came the next blow, my parents and sister fell ill over the New Year, all those feelings of panic only seemed to get more and more magnified, we had to change our plans and return to Hyderabad and slowly my parents and my sister recovered. And just when I thought we were recovering I fell ill once again making me weaker than I already was. And now with the flu season and omicron cases increasing every day, almost every person I am getting in touch with seem to have some illness. I cannot take it anymore, I really am in need of some respite. I have reached a state of mind wherein the simplest thing sets off anxiety within me. I wake up with panic in the middle of the nights with an extremely elevated heart rate not knowing what to do, with this constant fear and worry. 

When things started to go bad for me during the second half of 2019, I was hoping that 2020 would be fresh start for me and that it would be better year than 2019, and in all honesty it did to some extent but that was too brief and short lived and things only started to go south very quickly after that, I was hoping that 2021 would be better but if anything it only got worse and experienced more trauma through the year, and now it is 2022, I no longer am sure of what to think or expect, I kept holding on to hope, now I think I just really want some peace, some strength to get through whatever is in store for me this year, my old resilient self seems to have faded away to a large extent but I know in some corner she is still there and that positive part of myself tells me to hold on and to hope for the better, but that voice is so faint now that I am no longer able to get myself to listen to it. 

Before August 2019, I saw myself as this strong, bold and resilient woman, a humming bird, who wouldn’t stop, but keep going in whichever direction necessary, but now I feel like my wings have been clipped and have been so for such a long time that I have even forgotten how to flex my wings. I feel so crippled by the weight of the anxiety I experience each day, by all the bad experiences I have had these past two years, it just kept getting worse and still there is no sight of that ray of sunshine I have so desperately been waiting for, my PhD. Each time I am reminded of it I break down and begin to sob uncontrollably, at this point I can’t afford to do that because it will only delay the process of recovery as I am still extremely physically weak from Dengue. I am truly thankful for all the things that I do have in my life, at the beginning of last year I wasn’t sure if I would make it through the year and I was reminded of that feeling on this New Year’s Day when I hugged my husband to wish him, I made it through, I survived, through all the things that came at me this past year, for that I am truly grateful, but this constant mental struggle seemed to have depleted me of the mental energy I once seemed to have possessed. All I can say is that I have burned out from all the challenges that life has been throwing at me and that I could really use a win at this point, because I truly don’t know how much further I can go on like this.