To each his own

#40/100

One of my close friends is going through a difficult phase in her life currently. She isn’t able to be at peace and happy with the proceedings in her life. I, including our other close friends tried to calm her down, give her solutions, tried to make her see the silver lining in her current situation. Somehow, she isn’t able to do that and it makes me helpless to the point of feeling frustrated. I’m not able to understand my behaviour.

I have gone through such difficult times too in my life. I try to keep such things to myself and get better on my own. It takes a long while but I get past the hurdles eventually. I feel helpless when my closed ones go through such situations. More so, when I’m not able to make them feel better. As a spectator, I can clearly find a solution to each of their problems. But when I go through a difficult phase, my mind blocks out any sense of relief or possible solution to make me feel better. Nothing seems practical and I’m not able to find sense in any of the solutions provided to me by anyone else. Being in misery and pain is really awful. Deep inside you know that you want to be happy but being in distress somehow feels easier than working on finding a way out. It’s always easier to quit than run the extra mile in a marathon. But the runner in me never likes to quit even if the pain gets unbearable. During one of my recent prolonged episode of anxiety and depression, happiness felt like a distant dream. I was irked with every single detail of my life and just wanted to quit everything and do nothing. After days of feeling absolutely terrible and sad, one fine day my mind reached it’s limit. It didn’t want to be the spoilsport anymore. I decided to live in the present, be grateful for whatever I have in life and find happiness in small things. These are truly my mantras for living a peaceful and happy life and they have been working wonders for me.

I’ve tried telling this to my friend but it’s very hard for her to make sense of this. I’m trying very hard to make her understand and motivate her to work on her happiness but she needs some time. Pain and sorrow are a part and parcel of our life. Life is too long and filled with uncomfortable incidents that are bound to make us jittery. The only thing that matters is the manner in which we handle them and grow stronger with each such situation. I hope my friend feels better soon. I remember when she was going through a horrible phase some years back and truly felt that was the end of her. But she got through that and I’m sure she’ll get through this too. There’s always a silver lining.