I was once asked “how does it feel to be depressed?” I smiled and said: “It feels like drowning. You keep fighting and struggling to save your life and you try harder and harder as your chest can’t bear the pain of lacking oxygen. Then you feel tired, exhausted and you lose hope. But as your body reaches the bottom and your face feels the warmth of the sunlight you get your strength and hope back, you swim as fast as you can to the surface, and you finally breathe. Then you start struggling again and you go through the whole experience again and again until you choose to stay at the bottom and surrender or you float on your misery and swim out of it.”
As you go through this painful and devastating experience, you may lose a lot of people. People may think you are just a miserable person who is looking for problems. They may call you names or hurt you so badly with just a look from their eyes. But you should not be bothered because the person who does not feel your pain and support you through the whole process should not stay on your list of friends.
However, people who really care about you will form a very strong support system which you can hang on to whenever you feel tired and hopeless.
Personally, my family was very supportive, very caring and very patient. But as I was going through depression and started talking about it, I found out that a lot of women around me are going through the same experience but are too shy and scared to admit it. And this is when the idea of Osturaa Support Alliance came to my mind.
The first thing I chose was the name “Osturaa”, which means “legacy”, because I wanted to encourage anyone fighting depression alone to create a legacy out of his or her battle. I started brainstorming and writing down everything that makes me happy and anything that can help a depression fighter to be happy, energetic and optimistic. Finally, I came up with seven things.
The first and most important one is establishing a place where people can go and be greeted by a smile and a gentle whisper to the soul saying: “I have been there. I know how it feels. I can help.”
The rest were activities and things that would massively help in defeating depression, such as art and music, cognitive behavioural therapy, support meetings, cooking classes, communication, charity work, cultural dialogue and research.
No one deserves to live even one minute in depression. But the reality is we don’t choose our destinies and we don’t choose our illnesses, but we do choose to be happy; we live our lives once and there is no way back. It might be crucially hard, but the sun always shines after a long dark night, and nothing feels more glorious than triumph. Just stay strong and believe.
This week’s columnist is a mother of two. After a period of depression that coincided with the birth of her second child and moving to a new job, she started Osturaa Support Alliance to help others going through depression.
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