Confessions of a Teenage Freak

Confession holds true power. It sets you free of your innermost fears, doubts and apprehensions. When I say confession, it doesn’t mean confessing something to someone else, it means to yourself. It means being complete truthful to yourself in all sense.

It sounds super easy! But trust me, its not! Being truthful to yourself about everything you’ve done takes a lot of courage. Being okay with who you are and what you’ve done has a lot of positive energy. It makes you self aware about your short comings and weaknesses. Its painful because telling yourself something like, “You know you might not be the one you pretend to be in front of your friends”, “You were jealous when your best friend got something and you didn’t and you’re not perfect like what people perceive of you” requires acceptance. It breaks your cocoon of your self comforting ego.

But it’s important! It’s hell important to know what you’re not good at and what you’ve been doing wrong all the while. Because once you know what wrong you’ve been doing wrong, you have the power to rectify the wrong and work upon your mistakes or bury them to start afresh while remembering the lessons learnt:)

The reason I decided to write about it was because I faced this “confession” or “self-realization” few weeks or months back and it gave me the power and the liberty I didn’t experience before. There was a constant thought that haunting me for months (and much longer than I thought) and I was too afraid to confront to it, that I used to hush it around anytime it used to make its way in my mind, either my saying something stupid to divert my mind or just tell myself superficially that it isn’t true even though I knew deep inside that it was and I was too afraid to admit.

Weeks back, in the middle of some other completely unrelated chaos I was sitting on my terrace thinking about “the chaos” and how things can so unexpectedly wrong that I never imagined. And somehow I had the constantly bugging thought over again and this time I didn’t hush away and I told “my brain” how they call it, “Well, okay! What you’re trying to tell me is true. Now what? I accept that I was doing something wrongly earlier and I admit that. I fully accept how wrong I was!” It honestly felt so liberating. I gave me the power to be in control of the situation and I like to be in control:)

Always remember only when you know what you did wrong, you can do something good to fix it! Anyone reading this, if you can relate, it’s because this is such a common thing that we always trying to fool ourselves by believing something since it goes with the personality and image that we’ve build of ourselves and never try to come out of that “comforting zone”.

Recently, I read a quote by Peter Dinklage, “Once, you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.” I think this sums up exactly what I wanted to convey through this and I’m happy of discovering this on my own:)

PS: I’ve been trying to finish this piece since the start of my online semester. And now I’m publishing this somewhere in middle of my vacations. Lazy me!

This is a story of kid who was born to very poor parents, whose father works in mills and does menial jobs and whose mother is maid at my home. Yeah! I love listening to experiences of other people’s life, whoever they maybe.

Once she told me about her son who is 13 years old but behaves as a small kid of 4-5 years. You must be thinking that it would be the case of dyslexia, which is a very common disease. So did I thought, but on enquiring further I came to know that this disorder was not acquired by birth but instead he suffered from this because of ‘mistake’ of a nurse. Mistakes, often committed unknowingly may even tend to destroy one’s future.

When he was around 4 months, he was taken by his parents to a hospital for a normal checkup and certain injections which he had to be administered. But the nurse, who was appointed to do so falsely injected the wrong injection which was meant for some another adult. The kid definitely had to suffer. He turned blue and their poor parents helpless. And the harsh reality which dawned upon them, was that they couldn’t even complain about the nurse to anyone as the doctor himself helped her escape. The kid nearly missed death. Imagine how painful would it have been for a mother, to watch her son’s future darkening even before he could learn to speak! Since they could gather no help, all they could do was to take care of their son.

We all must have heard about dyslexia, which is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. And most of us have known, someone who is suffering from it. Even if not, I guess hardly there would be anyone who have not watched the famous movie ‘Taare Zameen Par’ which portrays the tormented life of Ishaan Awasthi, a dyslexic child.  I still remember crying on seeing it the first time.

But this kid was born normal. Didn’t he deserved to lead a normal life like most of us? Didn’t he deserved to rationalize things, question them, and interpret them, like us? How can the mistake of one ruin the life of other?

I have a keen interests in learning about various mental disorders. Reading about various case studies of people suffering from different mental diseases, I in a way feel very involved and connected, as I love to see how their brain functions and the mysteries behind what can cause such disease, so here I present one of those which fascinates me the most: Dissociative fugue. 

Agatha Christie, one of the famous detective story writers of all times. She has huge collection of crime novels, short stories and plays all by her name. But Agatha Christie is also remembered for her mysterious disappearance for straight 11 days. Her disappearance sparked one of the largest manhunts ever mounted. She being a famous writer, her disappearance made a national headline, a large no. of policemen and detectives were assigned the case to find her out. They successfully spotted her car but could find no clues of her. After 11 days of this manhunt, she was identified at a hotel where she booked a room in name of Theresa Neele. Upon identification, she was unable to recall her past days and how she reached here and what she did these days. Her biographer Andrew Norman belived that she was sucidical and said , ‘Her state of mind was very low and she writes about it later through the character of Celia in her autobiographical novel Unfinished Portrait.’ Some said her reasons of disappearance were depression and trauma due to his husband having an affair with Nancy Neele, a beautiful secreatory. Whatever the reasons were, she must have been under low mental condition and as historians points out under ‘fugue’.

 In dissociative fugue, a person embark upon an unexpected journey that may last for up to several months. During this journey, there is memory loss and confusion about personal identity or assumption of another identity. Once the fugue ends, the memory of the journey is lost. Outwardly, people with this disorder show no signs of illness, such as a strange appearance or odd behavior.

Isn’t it weird and at the same time horrific? Roaming around the world endlessly, don’t know where to go and why to go. Didn’t we humans started our journey on this planet the same way? Having no clue to what to do and why to. Scientist regard that phase of human lives as the most beautiful phase of all. It was the time the when words like anxiety and depression had no meanings. Take a hault and stop running behind the things endlessly. Share your feelings with your near and dear ones! Don’t let you mind be drowned with mixed emotions of confusion and cloudiness. Let yourselves think about how would you feel to be lost in the world, roaming purposelessly?