Depression: When I have battled for my survival

Depression is deep shit and this can take life…it always has. The biggest issue with this is that there is no known remedy to it and all that motivational crap about dealing with it is…crap at best. This is my story and I would share with you that how deadly depression is..coz I have attempted suicide because of that. 

School was all good because there the progression was all defined, till class 12 your progress is defined. Things take a different turn after that when you have to choose your career. I had nothing fixed uptill then but doing nothing as professional course is a sin in India so partly due to lack of knowledge and mostly due to parental pressure I took Company Secretary ( they wanted CA but I said no that much amounts was too much for me and numbers are my kryptonite). Due to the fact that foundation was all BCom 1st year and my school subjects, I managed to pass it in the 1st attempt but trouble started when I went to the Inter level. The level there was 3 year Bcom ( I was in 2nd) and had difficulty grasping and syncing things in studies. I tried my level best but failed twice – my grand total reducing desperately from 70 to 35 ( you needed 250 back then to pass then). 

One day during my exams I realized I was not made for CS. Just could not sit and cramp all day. So I mentally left the exam and did not study. Apart from the IT paper, did nothing (made the excuse of food poisoning). After the results, did not reapply and deliberately missed the form deadline. There was a storm in the house when parents came to know about my no . I was depressed because I had no backup career ready and home was all about “ What next”? I was severely depressed. I took up career counselling and came with MBA and Armed forces. Airforce is my 1st love and Army comes 2nd. I started preparing for IMA and the reaction of parents again was the same as with Hrithik and parents in Lakshya. I prepared myself mentally. In that no youtube era, I watched Vijeta , Border, Lakshya daily to get that aggression. Due to some circumstances I could not pursue that. MBA at that time was totally unknown territory for me so I had little info and relied only on CAT and not MAT too. 2005 was the time when I passed my grad and July 2007 was the time when I got admission into an MBA college. Those 2 gap years totally destroyed me as for the 1st time in my life I was having gap years. 

After paying lakhs as tution and other expenses I was depressed again in 2009 when recession hit and I was not selected anywhere. As I was looking for returns now, my objective was to start earning asap. No success. I came back to my hometown and started selling sim cards at a salary of just 7.5k. A huge blow for me. I did that for only 5 months as late night/off times made my health and love life go for a toss. 

In 2010 I went to delhi and joined a big group and worked there for 5 long years and was more desperate and depressed in the last 3 years as people were not offering me any job on hearing my employer`s name (such bad was the situation and the salary was peanuts). Ass lickers got hikes and I got raises worse than peons. Then I made a decision to leave the company abruptly, my mamaji was already pushing me to help me out in his business as he needed someone from the family to handle the operations and administration as his health had taken a toll. Probably that gave me the exit I was looking for but after just 8 months I left that because all he thought was business 24x7 whereas my mind used to switchoff after office hours ( I had a parallel life as a blogger, poet also). The thing which business taught me was something no school could have taught me. Things change drastically when you move from this side of the desk to that side- there are tons of unforeseen circumstances cropping up everyday. My main reason to leave the business was due to the technical nature of the product. Plus I thought that I could not build my later married life on the basis of someone else`s business. 

Feb. 2015 was the month when I left Delhi and shifted back to Lucknow – my hometown for preparation of competitive exams. In the previous 6 months I had known that studies and work cant go hand in hand. You have to concentrate only on 1 . I worked my ass off for the studies and competitions like I was going to die tomorrow. Coz I was, I had no 2nd chances now. I gave all competitive exams (no civil)– IBPS, SBI, Associate, Pre, Pra, Pro.. Whatever exam/Institution/Vacancy you can think off. Depression hit me hard when from June 2015 till October 2015 I just did not succeed in anything. Time was flying by. 

In Oct. 2015 I had to leave attending the BNLF by Indiblogger in Mumbai bcoz the bloody IBPS main exam was on the same day as the conference. It was a matter of life vs passion and I was heartbroken. Renie – the founder of Indiblogger knows how much dejected I was (I did not even have enough money in my bank to go there). I was ready to forgo the exam for Indi but then another incident happened and I had to give the exam. I cursed the whole world openly and with a vengeance of terminator said to BNLF “ I`ll be back”. The fruit of my effort bore result finally in April 2016 when I had cracked IBPS in all available posts – PO, Clerk, Specialist Officer. 

I had to wait till July 2016 to know my posting date and place as PO – Patna in November 2016. I thought that I had 3 months of holidays until another bomb exploded and I got another joining letter from an insurance PSU to join from August in Lucknow itself. Reluctantly enquired about the pay package to discover that insurance was paying way way more than banks. Its been 22 months of working here with a secure job but you cant say there has been no depression. Cracking departmental exams during probation period was one kinda of a hell as in the race against time and myself, every failure further broke me. 

I 1st got depressed when I got to know that for the AirForce you needed PCM , Army dreams were dashed when came to know that I was having flat feet. The 1st instance were I attempted suicide was the gap between leaving CS and figuring out what to do. It was my friends who saved me then. That gap year of MBA exams and admission were another instance of depression. Out of luck I discovered something about myself at AIIMS and that broke me to a new low and attempted another. Exam efforts and result disappointments aside, I went to another depression low when I lost someone I loved so much, I loved her till eternity and 1 family member broke my trust when I most needed support and the fallout of that- I have never forgiven that person, have become more aggressive and  I never trust. This pain would remain forever. There are few more parts in the general life but they cant be shared because they are very painful for me.

At every stage of my depression cycle, I had friends to bail me out so for me all bookish fundas about dealing with depression is all crap for me. Had it not been for them, it would have been curtains for me long ago. I was lucky to have them, for you it might be someone else but depression does kill.. no matter what age or stage of your life and its tough to survive in the web of depression.

I coped with my depression of joining the armed forces by blogging about them now. I remember her by my poems now… but still then, the mind keeps going back to how many of my years have got wasted in all my various attempts vs where I could have been had everything happened on time and another wave hits me.. So this has been my story of going through depression.