Life Is What You Make It
Best Books to Read
My activity levels had been flip-flopping since the time I started noticing it. Well, there is nothing biological related, or atleast I didn’t think so. What baffled me was the unnatural weariness that proved even a long enough sleep of 7 hours scanty. Now, as an absolute coincidence coming from nowhere, one of my cab mates who happened to be an avid book reader and a promising adviser offered me a few books to read.
Reading is a silent treatment to heal your mind. It recycles your thoughts by shifting you to a brand new track.
I was hungry for something like that, exactly.
In contravention to the over-emphasized notion, I judged each book from its cover and landed on a fascinating one that featured the outline of a girl running with an umbrella. ‘Life Is What You Make It’ by Preeti Shenoy, to be precise. Perhaps, I found the novel intriguing for the picture of the girl, who I thought I could relate to in a hypothetical, universal manner. I hoped.
As I lazed in my bed after dinner, I picked the book with tingles of excitement. More than a genuine interest in reading, the thinness of the book was a palatable thing. The story started with a sad end. It was more like the author’s autobiography containing the morbid description of a hospital building she compulsively visited under an extreme state of depression.
Well, from a writer’s point of view, it was an adorably sensitive piece. No prose, no frills, no sophistication. The language was modest like a candid talk of a teenager and transparent like ice, slowly melting into your heart. For a person like me who looks for a new story to experience the possibility of unimaginable emotions, I felt like gulping it down all at once. I did.
The lows and highs in life become a precursor of strong emotions. How does it feel to become a reason for someone’s death? And how difficult is it to recover from that extreme kind of guilt? The book said it all in what appeared to be the journey of that girl damaged badly by the loss.
But there was something which didn’t meet the eyes before and kept creeping up as I went along the story. In the last part, I found what I was searching for in the beginning – the answer to my delirium.
It told something, I heard never before. I wondered about its possibility. And the next moment I thought it was probably the same thing I was going through. There was another angle to the story of the girl. She was super creative and multi-talented who underwent sharp drifts in her mind patterns in a completely strange way. Remember what I mentioned in the beginning about me.
There was a connection. An entirely new chapter unfolded before me which told about Bipolar disorder. A very common chemical misfit with creative people resulting in highs and lows of their mind power. During high tide of mind, you do a lot of things in a moment of adrenaline rush without realizing the need of sleep while in the lows, one can be sensitive, inefficient and highly depressed. It also affects the relationships, performance at studies or job and can even lead to suicidal tendencies.
I was careful, aware and mindful about what I was reading. A few months ago, as I enrolled in art classes, I slept late and got off the bed early in the morning without an ounce of tiredness. Not in a normal world would someone wake up at 4 am only to complete an unfinished painting in two hours. I was shocked at what looked like a magical transformation. I even discussed this with my office colleagues who only blew this away with nonsense pieces of advice about sleeping early. it was not just early wake up, there used to be high levels of excitement as if something very bright was about to show up. I would ask people how normal it is. But they were as clueless as me. Not that I had any problem with that.
I enjoyed my highs ever before. Because this worked for my creative part pretty well, leaving me with ideas still need to be worked on. But what about the recurring anxiety attack? I felt fearful, incapable like a loser running towards isolation. I felt short of breath and the world seemed to be collapsing on me. It was so much to handle.
Hadn’t a friend implored me to meditate that day, it would have taken me the whole day to come back to normal.
Yet it doesn’t settle. A high tide emerged again leaving me with a wild appetite to eat, to paint, to write and to love. I feel all the more desperate at once. The sudden increase in my weight by 4 kgs is the first sign. It’s a perfect weight. But all that is happening is far less than what I imagine to be doing. I want to exercise heavily, paint for eternity, eat to feed my taste, write for the whole life and love… I don’t know.
The book left a plethora of questions for me. I am still seeking the answers.
