Shattering the silence | My attempt at a more genuinely open discussion on mental health

I spent my teens trying to bring peace to my home. I was the caregiver to my parents, their confidante. I felt empowered when my dad discussed their fights with me. I felt seen when my mum told me her side of things, and she put it off for very long.

I think she told me things in the absence of a friend. My dad and I were always close. And my mom probably just wanted me to be her child. But one day, she broke down, and confided in me. I think she also feared how hearing her out would affect my relationship with my dad. 

After the first melt down, I got closer to her. But of course she couldn’t always present an unbiased narrative, and often in my head, I was trying to figure out what to do to help mom dad. 

__

Now that I am in a marriage myself, I understand how many layers everything has. How quickly we are to anger and to make up. How one person takes the lead, how to understand another’s love language. There are just too many nuances there. 

And I was a child trying to decode what my parents’ were going through. They were both working hard in their own way, as immigrants to build a life for us. 

After a while, the isolation, the shame that you are struggling even though you are privileged, the cultural aloofness and the absence of anything like genuine friendships takes its toll on you. 

We had Bengali family friends there also. But as adults in such a close set up, you are wary of sharing too much of what’s happening at home. 

It’s easier to stick to the topic of kids for conversations, or food, or weather or family back home. Nobody talks about marriages, and how they are doing with their spouses. 

__

And in that vacuum, my parents found a confidante in me. 

__

I resent them for it. And now that I have started coming to terms with how quickly I was forced to grow up, I have told them so. 

In the mess that was their marriage, there was a lot of affection for my brother and I. But there was no feeling of emotional safety at home.

I can’t speak for my brother, but I was forever scared that my parents were going to split up. 

Now I know that probably might not have been the worst thing to happen to us. 

__

So my twenties were spent trying to find love and affection outside the home in stabler relationships. 

__

When in fact I should have been figuring out how to be the hero of my story, I was busy trying to figure out how to be the protagonist in another’s. So I ended up playing a supporting character in my own story.

__

Funny thing life is. 

__

My 20’s are peppered with relationships that I knew wouldn’t have lasted if I had the courage to be myself. 

They have instances full of me being a pushover, simply to avoid confrontation, fights or even conversations. 

__

My experiences with conversations or fights was all that I had seen with my parents. Their fights would lead to cold wars and periods of dense silence that lasted weeks. And then suddenly I would come home, and find them talking over logistical stuff in the living room. 

And I would know then that it was okay now. 

But those days in between were of us walking on eggshells. Our parents didn’t get violent or abusive with us. But we were on rocky waters and why rock a boat that was leaking anyway. 

__

My 20s were a ton of bad decisions that somehow got me to myself. 

It’s crazy when you look at it, and when you think about it. 

Series of wrong turns - forced relationships, lies, more lies, betrayals, jealousy, people pleasing, gas lighting, and what not - and yet they also had instances where I felt that I was loved, and understood and valued. 

__

It was mostly grey, all of it. 

When I think back to the things I allowed then, it makes me cringe. 

When I think of the things that I did then, how I wronged some people, or disrespected their presence - that makes me cringe further. 

__

There was a time when I thought that I deserved all the bad things and the losses because I had been mean or thoughtless with some people in my life. 

__

I don’t know if I still think that. But I do know that I am beginning to forgive myself for both the things that I couldn’t know/ control and the things I could know/ control. 

__

What’s the point of this newsletter?

Just that if you’ve gone through something similar, you have company. 

A lot of the crap that we go through isn’t unique to us. But it is society’s shame and stay quiet and be resilient model that keeps us wallowing in our grief. 

Let’s not do that anymore. 

There is healing in sharing. 

__

Let that be our mantra forever. 

__

My DMs are open if you want to talk about anything.