Hello from my cocoon!
As updated I wasn't into reading since what happened last week. But I gathered myself and decided to start reading as nothing but reading might be able to give me some solace in this difficult time.
So I picked up It's all in your head, M by Manjiri Indurkar. Its a fast paced read.
The protagonist of the book M is a young lady in her twenties who is dealing with anxiety and depression. She starts narrating her story from her journey in the ambulance to an emergency room in the hospital because of the stomach illness caused by a virus. She becomes very sick and discloses an account of her struggling mind and body. Her body has been under constant torture of pills, examinations and visits to doctors. And her mind has gone through spells of depression, anxiety, low self esteem and discussions with therapists about these issues.
She is always anxious when it comes to her health. Any little change in the body like a simple limb pain or an headache intimidates her and makes her anxious to a level that she thinks this is going to turn very serious and will cause her to die. She thinks she has inherited her anxiety genes from her mother and grandmother.
M had an abusive and traumatic childhood. She was sexually abused, raped by a boy many years older than her. But she was too young to understand the horror of a abuse. She mistook this guy as the romance relation of her life.She realizes the hurt this incident has caused at a very later stage of her life. Since then she has been constantly seeking for validation from people around her mainly her relationships with the other gender. She then falls for Aditya, an NRI who is grieving his mothers loss. M tries to play the role of his friend, mother, care taker and seeks validation from him. However this relationship also ends abruptly.Next comes the guy Avi. She is truly in love with Avi but the series of not so healthy relationships continue.This guy is self obsessed to keep his interest always before M. But she, the lady who is trying to seek validation this time from Avi doesn't see it coming. Her mental health is at the brim and is about to collapse at any time. It takes her months of visits to therapist, and hell lot of courage to leave him and find a way to heal herself.
The story also narrates various passages of her stay with her boyfriend in Delhi, visits to places there, her hometown Jabalpur, narrations of her life with her grandparents, her academics, her love for literature, her vulnerabilities and much more. In the end M leaves us with a hope that she is paving her way out of being weak, vulnerable and letting it go.
One thing I want to share is that the author has given me something I badly needed. This is the reproduction from the chapter where she visits a therapist to help her boyfriend. Her therapist asks that why she was taking a therapy session for a person who is not even in the country to which she replies that she wishes to help him with his grief. On this the therapist says, " This need to make others happy, this compulsion to care for others beyond 'normal' boundaries is usually a response to trauma". This answered many questions in my mind.
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