How does it feel?
Most days started with the agony of being woken up from slumber by the subtle violence of a sunrise alarm, only to take arms against a sea of troubles.
Email inbox — all promotions, marked all as read. Open Instagram to shit I really don’t give a fuck about. Open Twitter to debates about ‘Project 2025’ like evil is a potential future and salvation is one blue vote away.
The work day begins and just as soon ends. However, the dissatisfaction at the day’s labour can always be mellowed by rewatching sitcoms I have by now committed to memory. My meal times didn’t follow any defined schedules, I ate when stomach pangs remind me I have a body. Or supposedly am a body rather than disembodied eyes called to witness. I was sick of it, but closing my eyes was not enough.
It occurred to me that I was depressed.
Every night for six years I had fallen into bed at whatever hour I gave up on the day. I would turn to my right and open up my bedside drawer. Without looking I could identify the correct pill packet. Behind a calendar of plastic and foil was the anti-depressant l had been prescribed back when I was twenty and disillusioned — left to the wild beasts of existentialist philosophy and critical theory while navigating post-adolescent stress disorder, diagnosed as one thing or another. The nightly habit had become so mindless, I almost forgot what it was for.
A year ago I decided that I would stop the meds because my life was comfortable enough that I believed I was okay. Six months ago I consulted a psychiatrist who agreed, and together we devised a plan to wean me off the SSRI. In early June I took the last half pill right before I left for a long weekend in Portugal. My suspicions were correct, I was relatively okay without them. The adjustment was hard but I remember feeling happy. I also remember crying on holiday over something embarrassingly cliche like a dress not fitting how I wished it would. I remember thinking “how teenage”, but also “how good it is to feel.”
The novelty of returning emotions wears off like a new job. I’m 27 this week, and despite my many convictions I’m still disillusioned, and there’s not enough time to do anything about it — and these are much bigger pills to swallow.
The world felt definitively against me, just as it had been when I was 17. I wish I could say that in turning my back on the world, I turned to Allah (SWT) but lying would only add to my sins. I wish I could say I worked it all out in the gym and now have rock solid abs. But the truth is I did nothing but grow resentful over my own inertia.
The realisation that I was running on autopilot sent me on an inward flight from anguish, and deeper into my own self-pity. I was a long time melancholic, first time high-functioner – desperate to flee the cage or at least be the bird that keeps on singing its soulful tune in spite of it.
I tried to remove potential threats — Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (only the apps because I’m too indecisive to delete my accounts). Along with my peace of mind, I hoped the joints in my fingers would recover from the reflexive scrolling that sent me down, down, down into the depths of boredom. They call it a digital footprint, but these are the marks of a life untrodden. Words and images, the axes of my sense of self, were suddenly just words and just images — futile and redundant. I found myself in an overly visual world where everything you could possibly say had already been said.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at a friend’s house eating lunch and watching her four year old explore the garden. Another guest remarked on how interesting it is that this child’s primary experience of the world is through texture. A thought got stuck somewhere near the front of my brain — when did I last touch something to learn about it?
What does the world feel like?
What does 2pm sound like on my street? Can I recall a friend’s scent from memory? Where in my mouth do I taste bitterness?
I don’t know if this path can lead to contentment (or whatever the opposite of disillusionment is), but it feels good to approach the world with a fresh set of questions.
Last week I went to see the Duomo in Florence. I was about ten days clean from Instagram, standing amongst the midday throngs of people taking photos. I took some too, of course. I was overcome with the urge to know what the building feels like. Because I’m not an empiricist by nature and have appalling spatial awareness — I thought I could reach it from the other side of the railing, at least two metres from the walls. No luck.
The next day on a late night walk from dinner to the hotel, we passed by again. The side of the building we approached from didn’t have a railing in front of it (it turns out a lot of it doesn’t). I climbed the steps up to the ornate doorway to begin my sensory experiment in earnest. Although I can’t tell you how it tastes, I did finally run my palm across the 19th century marble facade.
It was soft, in the way that some rocks are.
Words are coming back to me — Alhamdulillah.