Radio Silence - What it means to Live.

"Sometimes I think if nobody spoke to me,
I'd never speak again."

  - Radio Silence, Alice Oseman.

 10:24 pm, Song Cry - August Alsina

Trigger Warning: 
This blog post discusses anxiety and depression. If you are someone who is triggered by detailed narratives of depressive episodes and panic attacks, please click out now. This post is meant to be insightful, but it may not be the most comfortable read. 

Often, little me lived in Radio Silence. Until I learned how to make friends. But even then, the silence would drag me away and I would take my time returning. Over time, the frequency of the silences reduced, but the intensity increased ten folds. 

And it gets harder, over time, to remain silent. Because the world keeps spinning, and everyone expects you to keep going. Though sometimes, you genuinely can't find the strength to. 

So I find myself googling what it means to feel this way, to live this way. 

10 signs you have anxiety - 

the article makes my fingers itch, makes my breath hitch. I know what to expect. I've spent enough time revising notes on symptom assessment, on diagnoses, on how to spot anxiety in someone else, but never in myself. 

1. excessive worrying - 

Do I worry? I do. I worry about the places I've been to, the people I've walked over, the stories I carry. I worry about where I'm headed, about mornings, about life. I worry about overcooking an egg, I worry about eating. I worry about the weight on my shoulders, I worry about the girl in the mirror. 

But do I worry excessively? Is twenty years worth of worry excessive? What does it mean, to do anything excessively? What marks the point between just enough and far too much?

Why am I worrying about worry? 

2. difficulty sleeping - 

Sleep does not come easy - has never been easy. When was the last time I slept without finding myself in a time loop? Sleep feels a lot like drowning - like January 5th 2020 all over again, defenses down, walking into the deep end, arms wide open, and drowning. Knowing very well that you will, still wondering why you are. Gasping for air. Struggling, then staying still. Accepting that there's really no going back, that this, is the end. and the end feels an awful lot like falling asleep. Heavy Lids, Heavy Head. 

Heavy.

Sometimes, when sleep is ready to take me in, I spring awake and gasp for air. Sometimes, I dig my fingers into my palms, kick my legs against the bed frames - anything, anything to stay awake. to stay alive. 

3. fatigue - 

tired, constantly tired - so tired that when mama comes to my room and tells me, in a gentle voice, to take down the Eid deco from three weeks ago, I joke about how we should just leave it up for the next one - it's not like there's much time left between then and now. so tired that I have four different empty mugs scattered on my shelves - reminders of my inability to function. so tired that when the bedsheets slip off the bed and the pillows fall through the distance between the bed and the wall, all I can think of is how at least the mattress is still intact. so tired that my teeth have grown cold and numb, my day clothes are buried in my drawers. so tired that it feels like I've never known ease.

4. concentration issues - 

finals around the corner - a new subject every week, and every concept I had felt so fond of not too long ago now feels like indistinguishable needles being pushed into the cervices of my heart - reminding me of how much I forget, how much I struggle to remember. work is the only thing reminding me of the passage of time, I hop from Tuesday to Thursday and to Tuesday again like my week consists of nothing more than two days. My students remind me of lessons I've taught them, but I don't recall teaching them any of it. everything, including this, is a blur. 

5. irritability - 

when my brother pokes his head through the gap between the curtains, eyeing me as I stare at the ceiling, he's trying to say he's here but all I see is a reminder that I am not. I tell him to leave, throw him a scowl, get off the bed for the first time in two days to lock the door and clamber back in, heart heavy, head heavy, breath short. The sound of my mother in the kitchen makes me feel like a tree listening to machines chewing out other trees in its vicinity - I wait to be addressed, to be chewed out. always on edge. but when she comes to my room, syrup smile and heartbroken eyes, I pull the pillows over my head, shut the world and her heartbeat out, dreaming of the moment when I'll have the courage to look her in the eyes again.

6. increased heart rate -

at tea time, when I wake up to pray, my heart hammers in my ears - it begs. to be heard, to be let out. My hand rests on the cleft where this abscess of hope rattles its confines. Seated, it feels like I'm running miles into the horizon. Asleep, it plays loud like a soundtrack to my dreams. 

Alive. It is telling me I am alive. That I must survive, that it (and so much more) relies on me, to survive. 

7. sweating - 

Three in the afternoon, the cold sweat drenching my pillow is disgusting. It feels disgusting against my cheek, against my palm but it, just like all of this, is a part of me and I have learnt to let it exist. So it drips, over and into my pillow, accompanying salt laced tears and all my greatest fears. Why does my bed know more about me than you do?

8. trembling -

Over a dinner of things I can't stomach, I tell mama that surgeons have steady hands. We discuss nine year old Najaha, dreaming of slicing open bodies and hearts and minds and getting to know, truly know, what lives within. We discuss my unsteady hands. 

The way they quiver when they aren't holding something, anything- how she has not seen them still for the past month or so. How my legs don't hold me up quite the way they used to before. How my eyebrows and my smile twitch when I leave my room. How I flinch. 

The way every part of me is uncertain and on edge - the way I have lost the little balance I had always clung on to.

9. chest pain/ shortness of breath -

When the coldness of the floor soothes the tired bones on my back, the sound of my brother singing in his room reaches me. It's two in the morning - all the inhabitants of my house are awake, except I have shut myself in my room, again. 

This is when the shooting pain travels over my heart and into my throat - I am torn between gratitude and grief. My thoughts switch between 'Thank God' and 'For How Long?' - because being alive is both the greatest feeling and the deepest sorrow I have ever held. 

I try, then, to let the pain do its thing, to let it exist for as long as it would like to, to let it have its moment of glory. But pain is not humble, is not kind, is not subtle - no, pain only knows to take from the very hand that feeds it, so when I let pain seek refuge in the open casket my chest has become, it feeds off every breath, off every happy memory, off every thought and I am left staring at the vacant ceiling of my unbearably white room, foolishly hoping that the pain will leave if I let it be.

10. muscle pain/soreness -

It is when I complain of pain in my legs that my mother asks me if I'm okay. No, she asked if everything is okay. Like I am everything to her. My legs pin me to my bed, two days and two nights I struggle to walk without falling, without being gazed at like something had gone terribly wrong, like I had become something terribly wrong. The pain feels familiar and even after it fades, the ghost of it lingers in my mind and I take cautious steps to the living room where I remember the time my arm gave up on me - May 2019, when I couldn't write two lines without wincing. And I understand what all of this is - where all of this stems from, what went wrong. 

Anxiety lives within me -

 a festering reminder of incompetence and the fuel that flares up my insecurities. Some days, I live in its shadows, on others, it lives in mine. Like a distant relative outstaying their visit, growing far too comfortable in my home, anxiety takes for itself parts of me that I cannot control. Anxiety takes from me my ability to stay afloat, takes from me the need to care for myself and others, takes from me myself. But anxiety never comes alone. 

You see, anxiety follows a B1G1 policy - always bringing along depression, except I don't recall when I purchased such pain. And each time it feels different, so I can never be sure which is which. So I turn to google again, after reminding myself of Five things I can see, Four things I can feel, Three things I can hear, Two things I can smell and One thing I can taste. 

What does it mean to be depressed? 

Google lists out symptoms again, but I already know what they are. It tells me depression is constant - I know this, it's the only constancy I've known. Here's what Google doesn't tell you: 

1. Depression feels like you're drowning - like you're struggling to stay afloat in a kid's pool, like the air bags and your lungs are both useless flaps of fabric and tissue weighing you down, like everyone else is walking on solid ground and you're the only one sinking. 

2. Depression feels like you're walking backwards - like every step you take takes you a step behind, like your mother left you in the grocery line and the cashier wants to know how you're paying but you've never had a mother (so you know she'll never return) and the cashier is your brain throwing a million questions at you, knowing fully well you have no answers to give. 

3. Depression feels like you're talking to a friend - and this friend understands you well enough that they say exactly what you want to hear, but only because they want to say they tried. Because you were only ever a riddle they wanted to solve, only ever a token of their competence. So unless you want to lose this very special friend, you're going to have to suck it up and deal with it. (Depression is this friend). 

4. Depression feels like everything you've ever loved but couldn't save.

5. Depression makes you feel like you are unworthy of love, like you were never going to make it (so why try?), like every kind word you were ever told was only ever said to you because it had to be said (they were never meant for you), like every avenue you walked down (and every avenue you will ever walk down) was meant to (and will always) lead you here, like a house that no one visits because every one that has ever been in it have only ever felt at a loss. 

I know there will be people who will have questions, I know I will have to answer them someday. I know there will be people who will have solutions, I know I will try not to tell them I've tried. 

I know there will be people who will not believe me, and there will be people who will understand. There will be people who will want to know more and there will be people who will think I said too much. There will be people who will have gone through the same thing and there will be people who will never have to live this way. I know, there will be people who will expect me to tell them I will be okay and there will be people who will expect me to ask for their help. 

But people come and people go, and I will still live inside this body, with this mind, cradling my anxiety and its plus one, surviving because I must, living when I can - So thank you, I understand this has been a difficult read and thank you, even if you find it hard to believe. I could apologize but what good would that do to either of us? 

Some general realizations: 

- I've felt this way for a very, very long time but because I like burying my feelings under layers of work, I don't feel them actively; unless they blindside me. And when they do, I tend to have a hard time dealing with them. 

- I'm learning what it means to feel every feeling as they come, to not sweep them under rugs and to acknowledge their presence. This body is the only body I have, this soul is the only soul that will understand. Learning to sleep when I am sleepy, to eat when I'm hungry, to laugh and cry and dance and sing and live. I'm learning what it means to live. To be alive.

- Writing helps, so much. So does putting my work out there, to be seen, to be held. But I've let the silence and criticism of a handful of people outweigh a plethora of well wishes. I am learning to accept that my writing must be felt, that it will never be understood quite the way I intended it to be and that's okay because that's what sets my writing apart from those of the brilliant writers around me - that my writing will always be an extension of my soul; humming and alive. Still, I struggle, so if I tell you I haven't been writing, I mean to say, 'help me.'

- anxiety stems from a need for control and I'm learning to focus on what I can control rather than what is out of my control: on who I am at this very moment over who I want to be tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. 

- I keep in touch with who I can but I don't talk to many people any more. Not because I don't want to, but because of how tired living can be. I'm trying, to reach out and still protect my boundaries, to treat myself the way I like to treat the ones I love. I do what I can, to stay afloat. 

- death can be the greatest comfort when living becomes exhausting. at the end of the day, we'll all die. and that, is comforting. To know that all this pain will one day be erased and replaced with ease. I pray it will be, for myself and for those around me and for you who reads this. 

- you are never alone :) no matter what your mind may be telling you, no matter how difficult it might be to keep in touch with the people around you. Someone is always here for you, thinking of you, praying that you're okay. So am I. 

I know this doesn't answer much, but I hope this has been insightful. Radio Silence isn't a choice, sometimes, and that's okay. I've put my friends through it, and my friends have put me through it - it gets better over time. You learn to accept the silence when it comes, to live within it and to let it teach you new things about yourself, so you can grow. The silence is only here to give you a break - take it when it comes but let it go when it becomes heavy. You are okay, because you can be, so you will be - you are.

Thank you for reading. 
All my love, 

N x.