What Sort of a Person Are You?

I think I am a nice person. Most of the times. And yet when I think about the way I behave with people around me, I doubt myself. How nice am I? Is holding the door open for someone considered nice? Yes. Is letting an old person get on a bus before you nice? Yes. Is apologising to someone after you step on their toes nice? Yes. Where then am I going wrong?

Thing is, I might be more than a bit sarcastic. In my attempt to be funny, I may come across as rude sometimes. That's OK, comedians are sometimes nasty. That's where we get all our good material from. All the pain and suffering we endured as children, and then adults, has to be projected onto someone in our present--loved ones included.

There is a reason for the pain and suffering and the internalisation of it all. How do you express to people your true feelings when all they expect of you is to make a joke of it? They expect that you will know how to make light of a serious situation. Sometimes they are also angry when you do that. They know that they should not expect anything apart from jokes of you. That is your job, after all.

Internalising anger, pain, hurt, emotions, and true feelings is bad. Look at me, I tried to eat my way out of depression. Six months and many awful looks in the mirror later, I am still in the same spot. I am fatter than ever and I do not how to stop myself. Once upon a time, I starved myself for 2 months and I was only happy when that ordeal ended. It involved a guy and the moment I came to know that he was not interested in me, my stomach sang with joy! It meant that it would see food again. My colon wasn't too happy about the junk I piled onto it for the coming weeks, but it helped me ease the pain I felt emotionally.

I am still eating. I do not tell my friends what I truly feel. I listen to them talk about their problems and I can never bring up the courage to talk about what I am going through. Somehow, when I hear them talk, I feel like my problems are nothing compared to theirs. Depression really isn't such a big deal compared to job stress, or husband troubles, or weight loss issues, or getting over an ex. Right?

I know that I am my own top priority but when I am busy stuffing this body, who is watching me? Sure, friends, family and colleagues say that I should do something about my fat. But what do I do? I cannot starve myself even though I eat normal portions. I do not feel comfortable exercising because I cannot come to terms with why I am doing this to myself and why I want it to stop. 

Every time I go out, I cannot stop but feel pitiful of the fact that I have no one to tell how my day went. People who ask me that question are content with an OK. They would not like me to elaborate. Anyways, what would I say? "I feel like my soul is being crushed into a million pieces each day and I do not have a clue how to repair it?" Yes, I see how that conversation would go. Awkward silence all the time.

So I make attempts to write everything down but even that doesn't fully help with the depression. The sadness lingers like the smell of garbage. It rots and rots your soul until you feel so helpless that you give up and find the smell fascinating. By then, you end up smelling like sadness. Who wants to hang out with sadness? Clearly no one who is sane. Not even myself. Depression hurts and it adds to the pain which already put you in a depressing phase. How do you turn your life around? There seems to be no rock-bottom like in the movies. The spiral just keeps going down endlessly. How does one make it stop?

Well, I internalised my anger and I make fun of people. I tell people everything is just fine and I ask them to tell me their problems. I act and act and act and never stop. I'm bad. I'm terrible. This is the worst thing. Feeling bad about myself and still not being able to help my situation? What could be worse? Being in Sudan, most definitely. See, I never stop. Depression is lesser than hunger and civil war, evidently! What a moron I am for thinking otherwise!