Therapy

Ma'am, uh, I wanted to talk

Are you skipping class? Come to me during the lunch break

*Lunch Break*

Ma'am?

Yes, come sit

What's your name

Jhankar, I’m in 9th A

What do you want to talk about?

...

What is it?

I feel hands.

Their hands.

All over me.

In the places they touched and all the places they didn't

My entire body clenches when I feel it

What... what are you talking about?

I feel hands ma'am

Not just theirs

It's been like a month

I still feel hands'

I still feel scared

I still feel sad

I still can't sleep at nights

Fearing I would have to watch that traumatizing sex tape in my dream again

And then wake up, shaking, crying, unable to make a sound

Feeling like my underwear is still stuffed in my mouth

I can’t breathe

Y’know... y’ know when I feel hands

No matter what I do I can't get them off me

Just like that night

I hold myself, I scratch myself

Doesn't help

Once I tried cutting myself

And it stopped

Since then I have carved so many hands out of my skin.

*Two Years Later*

Hello, Jhankar! It's been two years,

How have you been? What brings you to me?

...

Have you been crying?

Why are your eyes so red?

... (chuckle)

Look at me. are you high?

I don't know

How do you feel?

I don’t feel much

I’m almost inanimate

Don’t know if my lungs are anything more than slaves of smoke

If there is more blood or more shots of heroin in my veins

If my liver is something more than a pool of vodka

If my stomach has anything besides pills of all the colors of the rainbow

If there is any flesh of my tongue visible beneath sheets of acid

It has started to consume me..

More vigorously than I ever consumed it

I'll try to help you with that

Is there anything else? How is it all affecting you?

Sex. I've been having a lot of sex.

Casual meaningless sex

But I have someone now

We love each other and we haven't had sex

I was lying on the bed with him

And I looked at the wall in front

And was immediately be taken back to when he pushed me against it.

I told him

"There have been lovers at my home, before you...

Leaving footprints in the dirt on the floors of my house

Like imprints of kisses in lust on my body

I prefer not making love at my place.

The walls of my house mourn their touch just like my skin.

The door of my house tired of opening for each of them just like my legs.

The mirrors sometimes still flash their faces before my eyes just like my brain.

The ceiling tired of being stared at just like my chest.

The door of my room tired of being shut just like my mouth.

The bedsheet wrinkled from being clutched so hard just like my hands.

And the floor tired of being walked over just like me."

Are you a nympho?

(chuckle) Maybe

I'll help you get through with both of these addictions.

Just continue your sessions.

Okay.

*Few Weeks Later*

Good morning. How are you feeling today?

Sad. Extremely sad. Depressed.

It's just the withdrawal. Look around you, the world is beautiful. Life is beautiful.

You tell me to look around;

You tell me how vast the universe is;

You tell me how many beautiful things there are to see,

There are to heal.

But I think you don’t understand

That it’s all perspective

It’s all subjective

It’s all in our heads.

I can’t see beautiful things

if my mind has painted my eyes blue.

Everything seems sad to me.

You'll laugh at me when I tell you

That blooming flowers, I think, are suicidal.

I think they feel exactly like that girl at my school,

Who thinks her beauty is a curse

Who thinks people only love her body

They made her believe she’s only her body,

She’s so much more than that.

I think, the flowers, they want to die.

Maybe because they think that it's better for everyone.

It’s better for the plants they grow on,

They feel like a burden on their delicate leaves.

It’s better for the soil,

It gets to bury them under itself,

And decompose them,

Petal by petal.. to its own fertility.

I also find chirping birds depressing

Maybe because of their high pitched, loud noises

Resemble my mental cries for help, a lot.

Maybe they are calling for help.

Maybe they feel trapped in the sky.

Maybe they hate how easily you assume they are free

Sky being the limit is still a limit after all.

You see, nobody is free.

It's just the withdrawal. It'll be better soon, honey.

I guess.

*Couple of Months Later*

Hello, Jhankar,

Now that the withdrawl stage is over and you're all over with your addictions,

How is your 'depression' now?

You know, earlier my depression was like this feeling 

When you are trying to take off a tight turtleneck top 

And it gets stuck right over your nose and mouth 

And you can’t breathe 

And you feel like you can’t ever get out

An anxiety 

That you’ll have to breathe with such struggle, forever 

Or like a feeling 

That you’re trapped in a room

And the walls are coming closer 

Very very slowly

So slow that you watch them creep closer every day 

But you know they’ll never come close enough to crush you

So I constantly felt the need to end it myself 

Rather than breathe with such struggle 

Or watch death creep closer every day

THAT depression interfered with everything 

Screaming in my head to make its presence felt

BUT NOW

It’s different 

It has moved

From being a constant nagging presence 

To become a part of my identity 

We’ve grown comfortable together 

Me and my depression 

Are no less than two individuals 

In a toxic relationship 

Neither willing to give up

I don’t engage in many things anymore 

Don’t talk to many people 

Don’t bathe for days

Don’t shave

Which reminds me of another reference 

My depression is like my body hair

Used to shave it,

It came back every single time

Now I don’t, 

I let it stay

I let it grow

It manifests in me

In so many ways

My skin- a graveyard of soft touches 

My voice - now converged with the ones which used to scream in my head

My lips - mourning imprints of lovers’ kisses

My hair- scattered over my shoulders like responsibilities I need to confront 

It doesn’t make its presence felt anymore 

But I know it’s there... in every part of me

It’s bigger than me

But me, 

I’ve learned to breathe through the turtle neck top

I’ve made peace with the creeping walls

You teens, need to stop dramatizing everything and calling it depression