“I want to commit suicide and I don’t want to live anymore,” these were the words that Sangeetha, sitting on a bench in a park, blurted out over the phone to her dad. That day she was fed up with everything and the 20-year-old decided to end it once and for all. However, she was successful in regaining composure for a moment and made the effort to call her dad. That was the end of every struggle she was going through since childhood. Her mother rushed to her rescue and took her home. Her father arrived and finally, Sangeetha’s parents understood that their daughter was not keeping well and that she needed help. After consulting many therapists and finally finding one she was comfortable with, Sangeetha was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. She was referred to a psychiatrist. Four years since then, this young talented girl fought every odds and has emerged a winner. She is now a writer and a familiar face in the public speaking arena.
Giving an insight into the dark days of her life, Sangeetha says, “Despite being a person with a vivacious personality, who would make friends at school easily, I did not have even a single friend with whom I could share my thoughts and anxieties. Moreover, I also had to go through abuse and bullying as a kid, which had created a huge crater in my mind.”
“I was not able to fit into any group and with each progressing day, the urge to talk to someone and to be understood grew so much that I started to look for opportunities to start everything from scratch. Every day I would think that it is a new start for me and I would become happy. A few days would go by and then I would find myself in the same situation and in an awful mood. The entire happy-sad thing was getting on my nerves. I didn’t know that it was the Bipolar Disorder that I was suffering from made me feel like this. None of the emotions came to me in a balanced way. Everything was extreme.”
Sangeetha started finding solace in hurting herself and at a point, she reveals, it became an addiction. She adds that these insecurities were the only reason that persuaded her to take up a BSc degree at a time when all her friends were pursuing engineering or medicine. She did not want to face even a single person she knew.
Commenting on the reasons that might have acted as catalysts for her condition, Sangeetha says, “When I look back to my childhood, I have never found myself radiating that joy that every child of that age does. The symptoms of my Bipolar Disorder began at home as it was only the place where I could let it out. But my parents considered it as hormonal changes that every teenager goes through. As I went to college, I started making friends but it was very difficult for me to maintain those relationships. It was because I was also suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.”
Four years of therapies and medications have helped Sangeetha come out of her illness to a great extent. She started going to public places where people would talk and wondered why she couldn’t do it herself. She started public speaking and very proudly says there were five people to hear her very first talk and it overwhelmed her to the core.
Sangeetha
“I thought that even if one person takes home a lesson from my talk then it is a victory for me,” she says, adding that it was an essay she wrote, about her feelings as a caretaker to her ailing father, that opened the avenue towards writing.
Sangeetha has published two books Keys to Acceptance and Echoes in My Attic. Her public speaking skills slowly gained her popularity, which will now be escalated to a whole new level with her giving a talk at TEDx event at the Sikkim Manipal University, Gangtok, on October 7.
Ask her if she has any regrets about not opening up to her parents before and she says that she never felt guilty as she was afraid of their reaction. Sangeetha, however, stresses on the fact that such issues can be detected at the starting stage itself if the parents try and understand the changes their kids are going through rather than assuming things.
“I have left behind every bad memory I had regarding my disorders. I showed the courage to admit that everything was not ok with me and therefore, the willingness to cooperate with the therapist and doctors came naturally. Now I can make out what my mood is. I can now understand the difference between being sad and depressed. I feel I have come a long way but still have a lot to traverse,” she concludes.
After the TEDx talk, Sangeetha wishes to visit her hometown of Thiruvananthapuram as it gives her happiness. She will also get a chance to catch up with her relatives, which according to her is time well spent.
