If you asked me to define life right now, my answer would be ‘a constant struggle between walking faster to avoid a speeding car on the road, or slowing down to let it run me over.’

An effortless death. No tricks with God. An accidental end. The perfection amuses me. Perhaps that is why I fire off a little prayer every time I’m crossing a road; let that car end it this time, please.

Most people tend to confuse this with being suicidal. No. If you, or someone you know is experiencing this, let me make it perfectly clear to you that this is not being suicidal. There are areas that overlap, like a greater chance of self-harm (something I never thought I’d do again) but for the most part, it’s different from a suicidal mentality. It is a lack of will to live. A solid, unchanging absence of motivation. A depression feasting on the very part of your mind that deals with self-confidence, self-esteem and self-motivation till all that’s left behind is a vague empty sense of uselessness. The worst part is that you don’t realize it as it’s happening.

It starts out with laziness. Let’s call this the What’s-The-Point stage, for lack of enthusiasm to think of a better name. You’ll find yourself embracing nihilism. Simply putting your faith in the fact that the universe is pointless and no matter what you do, everyone’s going to die off. So it doesn’t matter.

That next meal? Doesn’t matter.

That college you were supposed to apply to? Doesn’t matter.

That person you’re supposed to be talking to? Doesn’t matter.

That helping hand you wanted to lend to your mother? Doesn’t matter.

You promised yourself you’d start working out? It doesn’t matter.

And you attribute it all to laziness. “Oh, I just can’t get up and do this.”/”I’ll do it next time.”/”Someone else will probably do it for me.” In this stage, you rarely accept that you’re headed downhill. To you it’s just an “off day”. Something’s upset you. It’s okay. It’ll go away. Complete denial of the bigger picture. Denial of the mental instability that needs to be dealt with. You only begin to realize something is wrong when you have an “up day”. When you feel energetic and motivated. When you actually accomplish some tasks and feel happy for not being useless. And you wonder why you can’t be like this everyday. That’s your first hint. Your second hint is experiencing sharp pangs of overwhelming anxiety randomly throughout the day. Possibly sometimes accompanied by a physical disruption in your head. Not a migraine but a contracting pressure inside your skull. My suggestion is to text/call a friend or anyone at all when this happens. Distract yourself. Don’t start smoking. That just makes it worse.

By now, you’ve started accepting that you’re losing your mind. Here’s where fear sets in. The fear of your transition from perfectly normal to mentally ill. Co-occurring with that lack of will we talked about before. Most commonly wanting to be run over while crossing the street or wishing to go to sleep and not waking up. At this point everyone starts thinking of reasons to stay alive. Some people might be afraid of the prospect of life after death, others might stop when they think of the repercussions it would have on the people around them, and some might still have some vague form of optimism left behind in their minds which compels them to believe that things might get better in the near future. For me, it’s my mother. I don’t think I could add the pain of my death to the list of problems she already has and put her through that kind of mental torture.

The easiest solution is to talk about it. Talk to someone. If you can relate to any of the things I said above, I know all too well about the thoughts that go through your mind when you consider talking to someone about your problem. About how you’d rather keep it bottled up and you can’t tell anyone because they expect too much from you. I won’t tell you that the only way to get better is to talk about it and I won’t force you either. It’s just advice. Advice that I, too, should follow.

Anyway.

Here’s to another day of living.

Cheers.