I sheepishly opened my eyes to see the clock opposite my bed showing 8:30 AM. I stared at it and wondered how it would just work and move ahead without any signs of weariness or slowing down. I had woken up earlier at 7 AM, the time my domestic help usually comes over to do the dishes and mop the floor. She, too, like the watch, never slowed down or showed signs of weariness. I wonder how she managed to do it, every single day, without being affected by changes in mood or in health.

I had to pull myself out of bed to feed the dog because she wasn’t going to feed herself. I fed her and looked at my laptop. It was a working day, and I had to turn the laptop on, not just to be shown as available on MS Teams (my phone already took care of that), but to fill in a self-appraisal form, on which I had been procrastinating for weeks, an appraisal form, which I knew did not hold much weightage when it came to my actual appraisal.

But I did not feel like doing it. I felt like going back to bed and disappearing into the sheets. I just wanted to get through the day without doing anything. Absolutely nothing. I hoped the day would turn into the night while I slept through it. But the reality was far from it. I kept waking up every hour due to phone calls and my dog's barking, sometimes one after the other. Going back to sleep felt miserable. I did not know what to do. This was a classic sign of depression that I had been dealing with for quite a few years. I was diagnosed half a decade ago and put on medication, which helped me, but off-late, I felt I was relapsing.

I sat and googled all the symptoms and ways to get rid of helplessness. I did not want to speak to anyone. I hated schedules, and the very thought of going out repulsed me. I paused my gym membership long enough but did not gain weight because I was too lazy to cook or order. My life, in short, was absolute chaos. I knew I had to do something about this because it was taking a toll on my day and, if nothing else, I felt a cloud of fog in my head. My social media presence came to a standstill. As a social media influencer who loved to post about mental health and being a constant source of motion in your own life, I could not relate to my page anymore.

It was in this helplessness that I took out my phone and dialed my best friend’s number. She was somebody I knew who provided unsolicited advice and never hesitated to call a spade a spade (at least with me). We rarely spoke, but each time we did, it felt like not a day had passed since the last. Our friendship grew stronger with time, and if there was anybody who could get me out of this situation, I knew it was her.

We hated exchanging pleasantries. The beauty of our friendship was that we always got straight to the point without bothering to ask how the other was doing. And we were both OK with it. She spoke to me like what I was going through was normal, like feeling this way was part and parcel of the healing process for people going through major changes in their lives. She had felt this way when her dog died, and the reason I was feeling this way lately was because I was going through a bad relationship and mustered the courage to move out of it.

Walking out of the relationship should have ideally made me very happy. But instead, it made me miserable. Because my routine was disrupted, I had no idea how to navigate the new circumstances and situations where I had to wake up to a different life every day (a life that in retrospect feels better but was something I could not get myself to accept).

She gave me the most honest opinion anyone could ever give. She said, "Live slow for a bit. I have noticed this restlessness in you to get things done and control every aspect of your life. Just try to take things slow and settle in... "

After I hung up, I gave some thought to her words. I was juggling multiple things at once as every other hustler would. Slacking for three days, in my mind, meant losing out on many things. It felt like a sin to be lazy and not be able to get out of bed and hustle. Hustling was my way of avoiding reality, like an escape. Work and hustling were what kept me sane. But I did not realize that, in turn, I was not facing the true emotions. I was just treating the symptoms by escaping from reality and not doing anything to actually face the way my body and mind felt.

That's when I realized I needed to take it slowly and acknowledge the days when I just wanted to do nothing. I continued to take some time off work, talk to a therapist about my wavering confidence and take baby steps toward becoming whole again.

Many times, we are all faced with such a situation where we face tremendous loss. It could be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a career path, or the loss of a personal plan. We do not give ourselves or others the time to heal. I have seen it in many movies where, symbolically, the best friend comes and pulls off the curtain in the darkroom of their friend to say that staying in bed is wrong and one must go out to be healed. But what if this is the healing mechanism for a few people? What if some people do need to just take it slow until they are ready to function properly again? Have you ever come across someone like this? with your friends or your family? and wondered how exactly to help them live slowly.

I agree that, as a loved one, it is saddening to see your loved ones be dull and not want to do anything. It can be sad to see them gloomy all the time and not even manage to build an appetite. It can be saddening to see them just want to shut themselves off from the entire world.

But they do try to reach out in different ways. The cue is just to listen to and check on them, to go and talk to them. Studies state that grieving can take months or years, but people start feeling better at the end of six weeks.

Until then, maybe just let them live slow for a bit.

By Hollini Pallavi Patnaik