*The content below may be triggering those experiencing depression and/or suicidal thoughts.
Pill bottles wrapped up in a bathrobe. I found my mother lying on the bathroom floor, incoherent and whispering goodbyes to me. My one-month-old sister was asleep in her crib, and all I could do was call 911. Minutes later, there was an ambulance and a fire truck outside my house. The way Iâd see those red trucks with flashing lights and ringing sirens would forever be altered by that gloomy November day. Sometimes, Iâll be walking home and Iâll see an ambulance turn onto my street, and Iâll wonder if itâll stop in front of my home, and Iâll see my mother on a gurney again. After all, my mother would end up attempting to commit suicide numerous times.
Those days, I thought I would lose my mother. This woman caressed my hair so gently when I was a toddler, called me âPomPomâ instead of pumpkin because she wanted her own variation of the name, and never let me see how much she was struggling. I was 10-years-old when my mother gave birth to my younger sister. At the time, I couldnât comprehend why she didnât even want to look at my younger sister, or why she was so sad and restless. How could a mother not want to look at her child? Arenât mothers happy when they give birth? After her first suicide attempt, the doctors told my father that my mother had postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is moderate to severe depression in a woman who has given birth, which can occur anytime from the time of birth to a year later. My mother developed postpartum depression when I was a baby as well, but having a second child only exacerbated her symptoms. For five years, my mother was in and out of an institution. For a while, it felt like I didnât even have a mother because she was either absent or too drowsy to recognize me as a result of various treatments.
I remember going bra shopping for the first time with my best friend because my mother wasnât there, and I felt like I couldnât even talk to my traditional Indian father, who is irked by discussing anything remotely feminine. Living in the conservative bubble that is Indian families, mental health wasnât discussed either. In fact, my mother was shamed by my father for having a mental illness. He said he shouldnât have married my mother because she was âcrazy.â It wasnât until I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety years later that I found myself in the same situation.
My diagnosis was a result of my not going to school for months on end, only to fail my second semester of my sophomore year of high school. I just stopped caring about my responsibilities and myself. Â Kids at school started berating me for struggling with something that is common. My father started saying that I was weak, sensitive, and âjust like my mother.â I was made to feel like an outcast in both social and familial settings.
I denied myself treatment for so long not only because mental illness is stigmatized in our society, but also because I knew Iâd be rebuked by my father for my condition, and dehumanized by the cruel assumptions of family members. My father even resorted to medicine men from his village to purge my mother and I of the shaitans (demons) that he believed were plaguing us, not mental illness. Seeing a therapist or psychiatrist was very âAmericanâ and riddled my father with confusion because he believed that I was cured after consulting one of his medicine men. It was then I realized that I shouldnât deny myself treatment because I feared judgment.
My anxiety and depression donât make me any less of a person and they donât make my mother any less either. Sometimes a parentâs judgment, or anyoneâs for that matter, is not useful. Rising above my fatherâs problematic rhetoric meant that I had to trust myself.
- Adolescent Crisis Intervention & CounselingÂ
1-800-999-9999 - Adolescent Suicide Hotline
800-621-4000