Monday 30 June 2014

Bipolar

She was always like a concave receptacle that received and soaked in every word that was spoken to her, until she sank to her bottom, like a wet and heavy sponge that had been saturated with too many memories to remain afloat.
The nagging, accusing voices of the world were forever stuck in her ears, the syllables striking at her heart and conscience like blades of sturdy metal swords. She knew that this was a point of no return, and that nothing would ever be the same again.
Her kajal fled her eyes with every teardrop streaking across her face, making sorrowful tattoos that made her reflection in the large mirror before her look rather ghostly and manic.
With every molecule in her body, she wished for every single memory to vanish and leave her brain forever. Somehow, there was a deeper solace in unhappiness and misery. An ignorant person would immediately have labeled her a masochist, but she knew, her condition was more complicated than that.
She had a mental switch, that sat like a time bomb in her brain, going on and off, on its own accord, or maybe because of certain chemicals that decided to wreak havoc with her conscious mind. Her bipolarity had always been very apparent, even when she was a child; but in the recent past, it rose like a tidal wave engulfing her entire life.
She had called her condition her "arch enemy", that seemed to be the cause behind every single disappointment she had thus far had to deal with. Every time she tried to rise above it, taking her pills on time, sleeping for longer hours, eating healthy just like Dr. Derozio advised, until she would reach a day when she felt as though she had perhaps finally conquered this terrible disease. This fleeting glimpse of victory was enough impetus for her to ignore her lithium, and even a day of negligence would result in painful payment that stretched on for weeks. Horrid painful weeks that she would end up spending fastened to a bed at Dr. Derozio's mental healthcare facility.
Every time before that mental switch would go on, she had noticed how a few days prior to that she would feel a sudden spike in her energy levels. She would feel overjoyed at the slightest and silliest things, smiling on for hours and walking with a visibly bouncy, happy step.
And then with the passage of time, gradually, she started associating these 'happy spurts' with inevitable bouts of being terribly depressed and angst-ridden. When she became that version of herself, she no longer knew or cared about anyone. Her words became poisonous and mean, and off late, she had showed signs of violence too, and especially towards those that she otherwise cared for very deeply when she was herself.
It felt safer to be miserable and in tears. At least she was aware, awake and in-charge of her senses.

But what had just happened, what she had just done, was beyond being simply labeled as violent behaviour. This was beyond redemption, beyond anything that could be treated with lithium and banished from her system, albeit only for a while.
Her action had been able to turn that nasty switch in her head off, for the very first time, and she suddenly saw the scene through her own eyes, feeling as if though she had only just been magically transported to the spot she stood at.
She stared at her own reflection with the disheveled hair, the irregular trails of black kajal that ran across her cheeks in an unruly manner, the steady stream of panicked tears that trickled down her eyes as if the floodgates had been left open.
And she stared at her white hospital gown, stained scarlet with fresh blood, and at her own hands that were now the hands of a murderess. Dr. Derozio's corpse lay before her, his head bleeding profusely from the fatal blow that her own alter ego had evidently delivered.
She did not blink; her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, breathing shallow.
The nurses and hospital staff burst inside her room. There was yelling and screaming, several slaps and punches delivered to her face and body.
"YOU KILLED HIM, YOU BLOODY BITCH! YOU KILLED HIM!" yelled someone at her, as some pairs of arms held her firmly, still afraid that she might just go ahead and kill someone else as well.
They dragged her away, and injected what she believed to be a sedative--for which she was grateful.
Her life clearly was a lost cause; there was nothing left to do, nothing left to be.

In her state of sedation, she dreamed of a beach kissed by gentle waves that played with her feet. The sun shone like a big ball of solid gold; she smiled at herself and at a seagull as it flew past her.
The world was a happy, joyful place without any people, any judgement, any fears, any diseases. There was no one to hurt or harm. She was free.
As long as she was asleep, she wasn't a mentally deranged murderess. She was just a free girl.

No comments:

Post a Comment