There are many tablets. Most are a shade of white, a few are yellow, and I do not remember taking any which were coloured otherwise. They were invariably round, except for the one which was shaped like a coat of arms with a scored line running the length of it. It was probably not a coat of arms but a shield. Some of the tablets makes you sit on the toilet for long, some of them make your legs shake uncontrollably, and on a few your hands become unsteady. If you are really unlucky, a few of them make you feel high. Not to mention the most common side effect where orgasms are barely felt—if they occur at all. There are also funny ones that gives you a lot of focus and clarity for the first few weeks, and then there are a few which melt in your mouth and induces a pleasant sense of sweetness under the tongue. The melting, however, is not smooth. First the tablet must disintegrate into pieces the size of sand grains and irritate your buccal lining, before they disappear leaving only a strange medicine-taste on your tongue.
Depression is a clever marketing campaign run for mattress makers. The mattress becomes an intimate friend who smells of your sweat after all those hours spent on it ruminating, staring, masturbating, and sleeping. I have to fold the upper end of my mattress to make it fit my bed and this fold creates a visually appealing but functionally upsetting temporary pillow, on which the real pillow stands up at a height that bends your neck too far, which I am afraid is a cruel imitation of the way the hangman’s knot jerks the neck to break the vertebrae. The bed cover becomes an optional accessory that is reserved for those sunny days where the bed lets you go, and the crumbs of all those binge-eaten chips invite a convoy of ants who may or may not bite you.
Depression teaches us critical thinking better than Socrates. Most importantly, this is a self-critical thinking that people hate to undertake even in the most self-reflexive cultures. The radical doubting process makes us good academics and bad people. The doubting process begins with such innocent questions: Am I a bad person? Am I a misogynist? Am I islmophobic? Am I creepy? Do I sexualise women too much and too often? Am I a proponent of progress or am I simply playing a role? Why do people leave me? Why do people stop talking to me if I do not respond to their messages? Will I be able to get out of the antidepressant regime? Am I disappointing my parents? Will I be alive in two years? Why am I alive? Does this not end?
Clothes are unfortunate preys of a depressed person’s depression. Clothes fit our lithe and healthy bodies when we go to the psychiatrist for the very first time. In fact, we try our best in front of the psychiatrist the first time. However, in a few months, these clothes stop fitting our body, because we are binge-eating, taking some antipsychotic which makes the buttons of our pants press painfully against the waistband. The buttons of our shirts fall under immense pressure and load as they try to hold together the two halves of the shirt joined over our stomach. This leads us to a wardrobe overhaul which leaks money out of our pockets, but we become proud oweners of black t shirts which hide the curves of our bellies, oversized t shirts, loose pants. Underwear fills the laundry bag and you start going commando. The clothes start smelling of sweat and the room acquires the scent of sweet, rotten fruit.
tbc.