Headline Dec. 04/ ''' DEPRESSION -TSUNAMI- DAMNATION '''

''' DEPRESSION -TSUNAMI- 

DAMNATION '''

*WAR OR PEACE   -  I S I  NEVER EVER SLEEPS*...............

For the uninitiated, the initials, ISI,  here stand for the Inter Services Intelligence, Proud Pakistan's Flagship Honor.

Pakistan, oh dear, dear me,  [ some nation that ]  -will always owe a debt of  invincible gratitude to this formidable security organization, -the Rock of Gibraltar.

By and large -teamed by some of  Pakistan's finest, daily battle tested brave and gentlemen officers. And on the same very hand, by its many outstanding daughters.

Conscious, Nay, nay, sure, that they have picked my arrivals and comings and goings from miles apart, this very beautiful day,  I stroll parallel past, and give the ISI building a searching glance, and wonder where the hell do they get their oxygen from.

I recite poetry,  smile up my sleeve, give them a salutary wave, -to no one in particular,  -whistle a tune to myself, heading towards an exact grid point  that this ever emotionally entwined  nation calls : Zero Point.

At Zero Point, I face up to the barren and bald Margalla Hills, and draw a virtual arc, with a radius of  40 kms. I do a 360 degrees turn and look at the stats that Zilli, has sent me. 

Every year, year by year, all colleges and universities within this radius will spew out over 30,000  technology graduates. All of them, will only end up walking the streets.

Out of the hundreds and thousands of students I had the honor to meet and interact with, more than  87%  of them suffered from a 'mild depression' of sort.

And over 2% were pure maniac depressives. And with that I turn and thank Effy Redman, for what follows as brilliant insights, sufferings and battles.

It's late morning on a balmy September day. I try to summon the will to run from the bench where I'm sitting on Broadway and dive-

Yes, dive under the massive wheels of one of the trucks roaring past.

Which section of my body, I wonder, should I hurl beneath the tires. Where would hurt the least and soonest erase my suffering.

I clutch my cellphone, hating its potential for rescue signals.

After none or ten trucks pass me by, and unkempt man in his mid-50s sits on the bench beside me, plastic cup of lager in one hand, half-smoked self-rolled cigarette in the other.

He looks me up and down and grins. Go away, Jerk,  I think to myself, shooting him an icy glance. Leave me be.

''Are you waiting for a date?'' he persists. ''What are you doing?''

I want to kill him, but my resolve switches. I stand abruptly and head for my apartment, where, I calculate, I have enough medication stored to off myself. 

I ponder what to say in my suicide note. My phone rings : my mother, responding to the  'please call me asap message I had texted her.

''What's going on?'' she says.

It is my mother who insists I call my therapist and my mother who, upon my therapists urging, drives me to the emergency room.

''Can't you think about how it's a beautiful sunny day?'' she says once I have checked in and changed into a hospital gown and scrubs pants, I tug at the neck of my cotton gown.

''I just feel utterly hopeless,'' I say.

The depression is a silent, slow motion tsunami of dark breaking over me. I can't swim away from it and don't believe I can survive its natural withdrawal.  

That's why I am here.

This was over a year ago, and I'm still alive, thanks primarily to mental health care professionals and the passage of time. 

Over the course of the past decade, I have struggled with the exhilarating highs and excruciating lows of bipolar disorder, or manic depression.

Psychiatric units are locked down, regulated, sterile.

I ate food of  hard plastic trays with soft plastic cutlery. When the medications I swallowed in front of  the policing nurses behind their grimy desks caused my skin to flake into dead orangish chunks and hang from my face.

I stole mini-packs of butter from the patients fridge and used it as a moisturizer. I had the foil-and-plastic wrappers in a drawer with my hospital-issue white underwear.

I have stared out windows for hours; a person trudging down the treeless street excited me as a major event.

Between events, i named the land-scape's components components in my head : single yellow line, grass, ugly rock, rakish slope toward road.

The unit I am on this time is all grays and beige and stale air.

The doctor prescribes  Lithium , supposedly the biopolar miracle drug. I take the button-size white pill dutifully.

Yet my depression continues.

The second bed in my room, which sits unfortunately close to the hallway's  clamoring communal telephone, is empty, and each morning I wake to a nurse asking, however gently, to take my blood pressure.

The hospital's red brick walls, visible through my window, remind me of my early childhood home in England of churches and moderate antiquity.

The Honor and Serving of the latest *Operational Research on Life and Living*  continues.

With respectful dedication to the formidable nation of Pakistan, Students, Professors and Teachers, and then the world.

See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and.................... Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Heads & Tails '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless