Finding and fighting the demons

While writing this article, I’m not yet fully recovered from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The reason why I’m writing this blog is that mental health awareness is deficient in India. When I got diagnosed with it, I read a lot about it, and I found it a prevalent and curable mental health disorder. It can happen to anyone at any stage of their life, even after months and years of experiencing traumatic incidents.

I want to discuss the main reasons why I decided to seek professional help? In 2019 I married the person I loved and fought with my family to convince them about this marriage. How all this happened, well, that’s another story. After my wedding, I was looking forward to a happy and satisfying life. But it didn’t happen; I was pleased that we got married, but it was not like I imagined.
It was not even a year since we got married, and I have started feeling toxicity in our marriage. We were fighting on tiny issues, we both looked forward to weekends, and then they went in fighting and stuff. And I thought it was all because of me. My husband tried a lot to keep me satisfied or comfortable so that we could both be happy and spend time together as we used to.

And then there came a day when he broke down, he was like screaming, and was frustrated. The worst part of all this was that I didn’t even hug him or say sorry or empathize with him. I am the kind of person that can empathize with strangers very quickly. And that day, without doing anything, I left my apartment and headed for the road. It was a late night, and I didn’t know where I was going. After walking a while, I felt there is something wrong with me, affecting my relationship, my life, my work, and everything.

Later, I came back and slept that night; in the morning, I got ready for office after pushing myself a lot (it was happening for a while now). But I didn’t have enough strength to go office, and I asked my husband, “I want to seek some medical help for my mental health,” and the best part was he understood and supported me in this decision.

While I was going to see the doctor, I was hoping that doctor would say, “There is nothing wrong with you; you are just overthinking it.” I am an unyielding will and clear-headed person. I never thought anything like this could happen to me and affect my whole personality. But after giving a little bit of thinking about it, I’m glad that I was sick and that’s why I was irritated, restless, and sad. Now I can be treated and will be happy again and will stop self-doubting myself for any actions.

When I look back, I can see there were many signs, but I ignored them all. Like a constant heaviness on my head, I felt it could be because of too much screen time usage. I used to feel exhausted a lot; I thought it because we stopped exercising; hence, I lost my strength. I was constantly feeling irritated and restless on seemly small issues. I had a constant feeling that I was not taking enough responsibilities of our home. I always want to be alone and cry a lot, but no amount of crying was helping me getting away from my sadness. While I was at work, I used to hide behind a smile till the time I could, and when I was home, it felt like I was continually looking for reasons to get upset with my husband and cry on that.

I’m sharing my feeling here because I don’t want anyone else to be in so much doubt and pain. Please, if you are reading this and ignoring these signs, please seek medical help. Mental health is as important as physical health and as real as any illness. I’ll give rest to my words here, and let you figure out at what stage you are!

Edit: After more visits with my psychiatrist, it came out It’s just not PTSD, It’s mixed anxiety and depression with PTSD.