Tell Me Your Stories

Leave a comment

Tell me of the time you lay down on the only green patch of grass that hadn’t been mowed
And looked up at the clear blue sky
It was early summer of May.
Tell me that you felt beautiful
Even though you knew it was just another sad day.

Tell me of the time you played fetch with your neighbour’s puppy
Your hands running through his lush brown fur
Every time he came running back to your outstretched arm
Tell me you wished you had someone too
Who would never leave you or go away too far.

Tell me of the time when you watched your best friend die
The cops, the lights, the people surrounding her
The world stopped by but you couldn’t cry.

Tell me how you drank yourself to sleep
For her next ten birthdays
Until you realized it was a drunk who ran her over
Only then you could finally weep.

Tell me everything. I want to know you.
Tell me about your dreams.
Tell me about your fears.
Tell me what keeps you awake at nights.
Tell me why you love being alone.

You are not alone.

A million moments later, when it is 4 am in the morning and you are 80 years old
sitting by the fireplace
I hope to be by your side
to tell you how much I love you
for all the things you tell me.

New Year 2072 B.S.

Leave a comment

Happy New Year 2072 B.S. to everyone inside and outside this world of WordPress  ! I’m excited because it is the Nepalese New Year YAYYY.
Which is a little weird because I am not really doing anything to celebrate it. It is just another weekday for people living away from home. But, the weather is gorgeous today, and I finally took out my summer clothes from the back of my closet where they were rotting away so YAYYYY

I never make resolutions on New Year, and don’t do much reflection either but since I feel pretty good today, here are some of the things I did/learnt/discovered etc etc. in the last year-

1. Gifted myself the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on my birthday and read all five books over the summer. Also binge watched all Game of Thrones episodes. I cannot explain how much I LOVED those books and the series and Tyrion Lannister. There are a very few things that have truly impressed me, and GOT (ASOIAF) turned me into this obsessed person who reads all fan theories and keeps tabs on everything related to Game of Thrones. If Game of Thrones was a person, I would probably be in prison for being a stalker.

2. Joined the Public Issues Advisory Committee at the Canadian Cancer Society. I’ve been a public issues youth advocate for nearly two years now, and am the youngest member advisor at the committee. I got cool opportunities to meet some MPPs, and am looking forward to all future events !

3.  Volunteered at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Hospital for nearly a year (I’m on break now, because exams !). I love everything about that hospital. It taught me to be patient and kind and attentive to kids with disabilities.

I learnt unique ways of communicating with the non-verbal clients, became the air-hockey champion of the basement, watched Frozen a million times, sang Let It Go two million times, went Trick or Treating on Halloween, dressed up as Santa’s elf on Christmas, baked and danced and painted and read and made bracelets and pictures and tons of goody crafts for the kids.

Sometimes I feel like I go there every week, looking forward just to play board games and puzzles since I have NO TIME for them at home/school. It is extremely relaxing and therapeutic for me, until I’m outsmarted by a 5-year old in a wheelchair and then I think, Losing monopoly never felt so good.

4. After struggling for years, I finally got diagnosed with ADHD- combined type, major depressive disorder and anxiety. I immersed myself in research about my disorder and mental health issues, and it has been the most liberating thing in my life. I now understand why I behave the way I do. I love that I’m one of the 15 million with this cognitive disorder and I am so thankful that I moved to a country with resources and am finally getting the right support and help.

5.  I discovered that I love communicating, expressing, public speaking, advocacy and community service more than anything else in this world. My creativity and strengths lie in these areas and I’ve finally stopped being ashamed that I can never understand math or physics or chemistry like some kids I grew up with. I learnt that I’d been wasting my time studying and focusing on things I do not love or comprehend to the least, because culturally I felt they were “the smart choices”.

After I was diagnosed with ADHD, my psychiatrist told me that I should be utilizing my strengths and not beating myself up about things I can’t excel in.

I started reflecting on moments – when my philosophy teacher told me that my paper on suicide was phenomenal and I had a brilliant knack for words and persuasion, when my professional communications prof said that I would make an excellent business leader & she would buy any product I sold because my presentation ideas and public speaking approaches were excellent, when my global health instructor said that my scholarly paper on mental health policy was worth being published, when customers at work told me that my smiling face made their days better, when kids at the hospital hugged me and told me they would miss me when they get discharged, when readers said that they appreciated me writing this blog; all of these made me realize that I should focus on the things I am good at and make a career out of it.

I do not make any resolutions, but I do plan to eat well, spend time outside in the nature, blog, go to my meditation sessions and therapy, focus on the things I am passionate about without overloading myself, be an advocate and a mental health wellness educator and most importantly, remain proud of all the hard work I’ve done and the people I’ve touched.

I hope you all have a beautiful and a healthy year 🙂

The Confused State of an Anxious Mind

Leave a comment

I don’t know where to begin.

Maybe this is not even a poem.

But I want to tell you how anxiety feels.

My heart races at the speed of light.

And my brain slams the break pedal.

Can you feel what happens then?

The laws of physics, inertia, motion, Newton.

All come flashing back in my head.

I never liked physics anyway.

But I cant help it.

My thoughts are racing backwards.

I need to get out of here.

I think I’m gonna die.
I think I’m gonna fail.
I think he’s going to forget me.
I think my mother just had an accident.
She hasn’t called me in an hour.

I ask my brain to stop.

Or maybe it is my brain asking itself to stop.

I don’t know. Im confused.

But my heart.

Oh my heart loves to run.

140 beats per minute.

Running towards the finish line.
Running to save my life.
Running to study for that test.
Running to beg him to stay.
Running towards my mother.

What do you do when two parts of your body move in different directions?

I cannot breathe.

Sometimes I think it is all in my imagination.

At least that is what someone told me.

“Relax, nothing’s happening. Why are you so anxious?”

If everything’s my imagination,

Then why can’t I draw pictures of it?

Why can’t I write a book about it?

Why does my body respond to something that I’m creating?

I take deep breaths.

Sometimes into a brown paper bag.

Sometimes I have panic attacks.

Once in the movies with my friends.

The muscles in my chest tighten and I cannot breathe.

It is embarrassing.

This is why I’ve become a recluse.

I don’t know when anxiety is going to hit me.

I need to be alone.

I don’t know why anxiety hits me.

I just wish it didn’t feel like home.

The Song I Wrote For You

4 Comments

I am sitting here in the library on a perfect little metal chair that is freezing my behind, while the air conditioning above is sweltering and sucking the air out of my chest. Listening to Coldplay with a chem book in my hand, I am trying to compose a poem or write something meaningful about life, and experiences and love and joy and little butterflies and rainbows and unicorns and magic. I am writing a song for you right now, only it isn’t a song, rather a jumble of words that make no sense, everything pouring straight out of my head as I type it with no filter.
But I am singing.

It is a sad song. A song you sing when you are sad and are sitting on the bathtub with the shower running over your head, half empty beer cans rolling around near the trashcan, the yellow light in the ceiling reflecting in the bathroom mirror, bouncing off the smooth cans into your eyes and all you can see and think about is how drunk you want to get, not because you enjoy drinking but because you do not enjoy being sober and feeling all the feelings and all these raging emotions inside your head.

Your heart bleeds and you laugh a little because the hammer you used to shatter it into pieces is in somebody else’s hands now. You handed the hammer to that person because self blame hurts, self guilt hurts, it is easier to tell the world that it was that one person who broke you, rather than shouldering the responsibility for your own mistakes.

You cleanse yourself in the water, sit there under the shower, teeth chattering because you’ve been sitting too long and the water’s getting cold because your skin has gone numb to the warmth. You get up, gather yourself, wear fresh track pants and jog outside to meet your friends in the park. They ask you why your hair is dripping at 12 in the midnight and you tell them you just swam a mile in the Pacific ocean just to meet them and they all laugh at your dedication and pass you the blunt, every single one of them with wet hair and loose grins and bandaged wrists, and tattooed scars. You light up the joint, smoking in the warmth, your insides feel light and gooey and you sit there watching the fumes that you breathe out dance with five other dancing fumes, taking the pain away for one another day.

And smiling, you sing the song I am writing for you.

Ways My ADHD Brain Functions (or stops functioning !)

Leave a comment

I was with a group of friends earlier this week and one asked me how I was doing with my meds. This led to a conversation about ADHD, and another friend rolled her eyes and said – “I don’t even think ADHD is a real thing. I procrastinate as well, but doesn’t mean I need to go to a doctor and start popping pills.”

Her statements made me realize why I started this blog in the first place. Aside from sharing my depressed feelings in metaphors, I wanted to use this blog to start a platform where I could tell people that ADHD is more than just “procrastinating”.

It is procrastinating severely. Ha ha.

Jokes aside, I am going to try my best to explain some of the things I go through-

Things people (mostly me !) with ADHD go through-

  1. We cannot concentrate. Most people mistake it as not being able to concentrate ONLY on school work. Any one can do that. But it takes special ability to lose focus while talking to people, listening, doing basic chores like cleaning or laundry, working in customer service (where you have a memory span of a goldfish and forget what your client just asked of you), missing appointments every single goddamn time, forgetting to go to work, classes, or other commitments. My house caught on fire a few years ago because I forgot to turn the electric heater off (True story !). You get the point.
  2. We fidget. A LOT. My lack of ability to sit still or fall asleep if I sit still too much has caused me a lot of trouble. I’ve been called impolite and uncourteous, customers at work always ask me if I’m cold or if my hands are dirty because I keep on rubbing them together like a mad scientist plotting my next evil invention.
  3. Our minds work at the speed of light. Between writing point number 1 and this sentence, I chatted with two of my friends, played a level of Frozen Free Fall (don’t judge !), talked to my sister, checked in with my dad about dinner, googled life goals and wasted about 45 minutes of my time. Just magnify this scenario by several hours and you will watch your entire life pass by.
  4. We are very impulsive. Impulsivity comes in different forms. For me, it is excessive talking, interrupting people ALL the time, answering questions not directed to me, hyper social behaviour (jumping up and down like I won a medal when I beat my 5 year old cousin’s score in Candy Crush), embarrassing parents by blurting out family secrets at dinner parties, LOL.
  5. People with ADHD usually have accompanying depression, anxiety or other disorders that affect every single aspect of their lives including friendships and relationships. I will not go into much detail about that here, my entire blog is the proof how sad I am.
  6. One question I’ve received from quite some people is – “But how do you have a disorder when you are so smart and confident ?” It saddens me that people are very quick to assume anyone with a mental illness or disorder is embedded with stupidity, clumsiness, shyness, ineptness  in their genes. This stereotyping is the reason why I feel it is important to talk about mental health and educate people that any person is susceptible to problems at any point of their lives. Having ADHD is not being stupid or failing school all the time. On the contrary, people with ADHD are quite smart and creative, and there are some bloggers I follow who prove that. It is our cognitive difference (caused by pure chemistry in our brain tissue and not the lack of will/determination to do something) that makes our learning and behavioural abilities different from the ones structured by the society. This results in most people with ADHD struggling in various aspects of life, leaving them feeling different, frustrated and anxious.

But guess what ? Different is good. Though I’m struggling with lots of things because of my ADHD, anxiety and depression, I am also happy that I am creative, confident, have my unique strengths and talents that make me who I am. Taking medication has helped me immensely in all aspects of my life. I have become a (bit) more organized, can sit in a place for hours without fidgeting, can listen to people without interrupting, prioritize my to-do-list and actually do chores at home! But I’ve also realized that medications don’t solve everything. I am equally or less lazy and still procrastinate for hours if I don’t set my mind on something. Nonetheless, life is getting better, and I better stop writing now because I need to go thank the people in my life personally, and not through this blog, for always  being there.

Adult ADHD is a neurobiological disorder that can also be categorized as a mental health condition. Symptoms include difficulty with regulating attention (being unable to focus for any length of time, hyper-focusing with the inability to break focus, and difficulty with prioritizing focus) to a level of impairment and possibly, but not necessarily, hyperactivity and impulsivity. ADHD Researchers have studied impairments in the brain chemical neurotransmitters, dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine, as being a contributing cause of the disorder.

(For more information on ADHD: http://caddac.ca/cms/page.php?2 )

The Fish that Flew Out of The Tank

Leave a comment

Have you ever felt like a lone fish in a huge fish tank, where all your little fish friends have died and their skeletons float slightly above the rocks every time you try to bring them back to life?

You watch the world outside, the light patterns refracting in every surface that is between you and the infinite space of air. You are just a fish, but you know all too well that lights cause illusions and the world is never as it seems.

Sometimes you want to break out of the tank, but the thick glasses separating you from your freedom seem to stretch for miles, that one tiny crack you made months ago by hitting your head first into the glass seems to dissolve if you glance at it from a side angle.

You are alone. You and your dead fish bones. There used to be dreams too. But dreams come from your imaginations, and your imaginations are choosing to float away, one air bubble at a time.

Life outside the fish tank looks beautiful. You can see rainbows and unicorns, and oh look there’s the green field and the sun shining on those pretty pink pansies. You cannot wait to get out. The tiny crack you made months ago now suddenly seems larger. I have to get out. I have to touch the rainbow. One push, two push, a thousand pushes. I shall not give up until I smell those pansies. The crack finally gives in.

You flow outside the fish tank, the amount of water that falls on top of you is enough to make your own little pool, until it starts seeping and soaking down the thick carpet below and you look around to see little wet rainbow pieces and torn pansy pieces making paper islands in the vanishing pool. The air doesn’t seem so fresh anymore, and you flop around hoping that someone will pick you up and lay you down among your fish bones, for you realize that in pursuit of something wild and beautiful, you forgot that you were just a tiny little fish who didn’t know how to breathe out of water.