You Are Spring

If you Google the title of this article, you will be led to Quora and Reddit queries, but also credible sources talking about support for mental health issues. With this piece, I do not intend to discredit those with mental health issues, diagnosed or otherwise. I am not one of you, and I don’t know or understand how depression, anxiety, or any other disorder feels and manifests in everyday life. Therefore, I apologise in advance for any insensitivity, claims, or absolutes that I make in this article. 

What I am going to talk about, however, is related to how one purposefully drags their misery and denies their agency in their happiness. Of course, there is an unprecedented amount of privilege associated with what I am talking about, but here is the thing — one must move on. One must get up, dust themselves off, and set sail towards a goal, a task, or anything that brings order. Yes, one must grieve, mope, scream, and cry, but not make oneself a victim of one’s misery. 

I have seen and been friends with people whose whole personality revolves around a perpetual state of being miserable. There is always something wrong in their life. As a friend, I have made myself available to them for hours at a time, where they have cried on video calls, ranted from midnight till dawn, and vented till they had nothing else to talk about. But I don’t believe such friendships or relationships are healthy, at least not in the long run. It is exhausting and draining to be constantly on the receiving end of negative thoughts. When a person unloads all their life’s problems on the people in their life, do they think about how it’s affecting them? Transactions have no place in human relationships and interactions. That is a principle of emotionally intelligent life. We must not love people or be kind and empathetic towards them in exchange for a reward. But what is the limit? One is not a bottomless pit or a black hole where they will keep sucking in all the complaints. Is there any end to it?

People who live in their misery make those around them miserable, too. They probably do not understand, but going around unburdening one’s life on others equally distresses their friends and family. It wouldn’t be overarching to compare humans to a sponge, where they tend to absorb the emotions and energies of those around them and reflect their interactions and conversations in their behaviour. 

I also greatly believe in the role one plays in their happiness. I understand that I have the privilege of making this claim and having agency as well. For instance, a lot of times, people, and primarily women, are stuck in situations, abusive or otherwise, where they do not have the means or the resources to leave that situation. I am, in no way, trying to undermine or dismiss them or such people. I am specifically referring to people who are educated, financially independent, reside in urban areas, and have access to all other necessary means and resources. In fact, what made me write about this is some recent conversations that I have been having with a close friend who has all these privileges. Yet, they choose to perpetuate their misery by never talking about anything that can be remotely associated with joy. They only ever reach out to talk or text when something is not going right in their life. Making oneself available for their friends and showing up is the bare minimum in any friendship. I said earlier that relationships are not transactional, but shouldn’t one expect their friends to show up for them once in a while, too? Understandably, one would feel exhausted in relationships like these, where they are the ones who just keep taking in. With nothing to give or put out, where does that leave one?

As dismissive as it may sound, one cannot deny one’s agency in one’s happiness. Grief doesn’t come with an expiry date. It is within us every single day, quiet and subdued on one day, loud and screaming on another. Decade after decade, humankind has kept going on, relentless, adamant, and determined. And that is what makes us human. The ability to grieve, the ability to hold grief inside of us, and still keep moving forward, still keeping our heads up and continuing to live. That far outlives one’s misery.