Sowmya Hiremat

am a 41 year old, single woman, living in India. My life is privileged. I had parents that raised me in a middle class environment, gave me an education that helped me find a job. I have made good of these opportunities graced on me. I have a life that is not bad at all. I love what I do now, I have few friends that I trust and family that largely lets me do what I want. So there is no rough sad story just the usual amount of trauma we face in our lives.

But for the past 10-11 months now I am feeling more and more listless. I haven’t stepped out of my house to socialize in over 2.5 years now… ofcourse except when my friends insisted. My love for life seems to have dried, my enthusiasm for new things is gone and I feel no excitement about meeting prospective dates. Talking is exhausting, eating is exhausting, life in general seems too much. Though there is nothing really I am exerting myself with.

I maybe depressed there is that possibility but mostly I feel like I am stuck. All this life energy is rotting within me. And the only person obstructing it is me. I have the willingness to do what is needed but I don’t know how. I find myself consistently scrambling for a direction, a guidance, a path to walk on but it’s just too dark and I feel lost. I even try to sit in this and let it tell me it’s meaning. It speaks but I don’t understand the language. It’s all too confusing, complicated and chaotic. 

Initially I tried escaping in all forms but it left me feeling emptier. So now I sit in this fog everyday, waiting for the day to break. Wondering what is the lesson here. What is the wisdom. Sometimes I feel I cannot do it anymore for it really hurts the insides. I feel desolate. I am deeply in despair and in denial of how much it has permeated into my being. Maybe I am being destroyed. But I don’t know if I should fight it or surrender to it. There are so many questions. The answers are there too but I cannot read them. 

I know I need help. I need guidance on how to navigate this path. I feel lost. I don’t mind the suffering but then why is it that I don’t mind it. This pain is comforting in a weird familiar way. But it is not how one lives a life.   I don’t know anymore what joy feels like. The only glimpse of it I get when I see animals and their babies. It’s more peace, a pause from the pain. But then I see them suffering and I wish I could die. Because they don’t deserve to suffer this way. They are innocent. 

So this is my life these days. I am alive. But I don’t know why.