This is a personal essay written by the author, sharing their individual journey and experiences. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this piece belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MyndStories. This essay has not been professionally vetted or reviewed for clinical accuracy.

I must have been six. Maybe younger. Because in the dream, I was small enough for the Ferris wheel to look impossibly tall, stretching into the sky as if it had no end.

It stood on my left, a few meters away, staring coldly at me and mocking my effort to make my way toward it. On my right, a line of stalls bustled with life—games where people tossed rings and won prizes, snack stands filling the air with the scent of sizzling jalebis and freshly fried samosas. The crowd pulsed with energy, laughter rippling through the air like a festival song.

And yet, I felt no warmth.

The sky above was a deep, cold blue, the kind that looks beautiful but gives nothing back. No heat, no comfort. Just endless space stretching meaninglessly. My uncle walked beside me, but I don’t remember what he said. But I know he was trying to distract me from my thoughts. To pull me into the rhythm of the carnival. To make me forget, even if it was for a few seconds, that my mother was dead.

I had that dream when I was six. And when I woke up, I couldn’t stop the tears. I was sobbing, the kind of uncontrollable, body-shaking cry that makes no sense to anyone but the person feeling it. It was as if my mother had truly died, as if the grief from my dream had followed me into waking life.

The tears that never cease

Since then, I’ve had a constant urge to cry at random points in my life. There was a time when I used to cry at least once a day, for absolutely no reason, but just because I needed to. And once it was over, life resumed as if nothing had happened.

But nightmares kept piling up. Each one heavier than the last, pressing down on me even when I was awake. Those quiet, fleeting urges to cry turned into uglier, uncontrollable fits. I shattered under the smallest inconvenience. My father raised his voice—I crumbled. I argued with my brother—tears spilled before I could stop them. My mother spoke a little too sharply—and suddenly, I was sobbing like the world was ending.

Crying came to me as naturally as breathing. It was instinct, reflex. And before I even understood what it was, depression had seeped the life out of me. And in its place, it left something else. 

Violence.

The angry scars of depression

I remember the sharp crack of a water bottle hitting the wall after I threw it at my brother. The way the wooden table shuddered when I kicked it in front of my father. The sound of my own voice—ragged, venomous—as I screamed at my mother, the one person I could never hate. But, in that moment, it felt like I did. And that realization alone was enough to break me all over again.

And then came the images. Uninvited, intrusive. Me, standing on my school’s terrace, ready to jump. Me, stepping onto the road, in front of a speeding truck. The unsettling sensation of being watched—eyes trailing me when no one was there. The voices at night—whispers, creaks, something pressing against the edges of my mind as I sat alone at my desk, studying for my board exams. Some nights, I swore I heard someone trying to break into our house.

I did not know what anxiety was. Or what depression looked like. But I’d lived with it for so long, I thought this was just how life felt for everyone.

Until one day, after my last class at school, one of my teachers stopped me. “Are you doing alright?” 

That was all it took. Just a simple question—one that nobody had asked me before. And just like that, I broke down.

At first, I was embarrassed. I wiped my face, muttered an apology for crying like a toddler. But my teacher didn’t scold me. She didn’t tell me to pull myself together. Instead, she handed me a small slip of paper—a contact number. “This is my son’s therapist,” she said. “He’s autistic, and Dr. Singh has helped him handle stressful situations.”

I don’t remember how I got home that day. I don’t remember if I cried on the bus or if I stared blankly out of the window, numb and drained. But I do remember handing that slip of paper to my mother. I remember her quiet pause, the way she turned it over in her hands before speaking to my father that evening. And for the first time, I let them into a small, dark corner of my mind. I told them about the images—the exhaustion of constantly seeing myself hurt. How empty I felt. How maybe, just maybe, therapy could bring a little life back into me.

But I wouldn’t say it worked. Not the way I had hoped.

When healing feels a burden

If anything, therapy made things more complicated. I could feel my parents tiptoeing around me, carefully measuring their words and actions, as if afraid one wrong move might shatter me completely. They started hiding their own miseries, their troubles, their bad days—so that I wouldn’t pick up their sadness. They stopped arguing, stopped raising their voices, stopped being the family I had always known, just so I wouldn’t feel like a burden. They tried so hard to change—to unlearn years of believing that a child is only as good as their report card.

Was it nice to have a peaceful home? Yes. But that peace felt so strange, so forced, I choked on it. The harder they tried to make me happy, the more I felt the need to hide my sadness.

And then one day, my mother broke down.

She sat in front of me, on my bed, and sobbed—not because of a fight, not because of stress or exhaustion, but because she couldn’t bear to watch the light disappear from her child’s eyes. She didn’t understand why I was always sad. Neither did I. But we both knew I was becoming a stranger in my own skin. And she mourned me like I was already gone.

That was the first time in my life I saw her cry because of me.

In that moment, everything I had been feeling—rage, frustration, hopelessness—numbed itself. It didn’t disappear. It didn’t shrink. I just stopped feeling it. Because all I could think about was how much I had hurt her. How cruelly my unexplained sadness had seeped into the people I loved the most.

Every time that familiar urge crept in, I’d see my mother’s face—tear-streaked, broken, terrified of losing me. The image clung to me like a ghost, and I had to force myself to stop crying.

It wasn’t easy. It felt like dragging myself out of quicksand, clawing my way back to reality when my mind wanted nothing more than to sink. You have no idea how much strength it takes to swallow your own sobs, to wrench yourself out of that spiral when sadness has become nature.

So I distracted myself—deliberately, relentlessly. I drowned my thoughts in comedy shows, ones that still feel like home to me. I deep-cleaned anything and everything at my home—a TV remote, kitchen drawers, windows, and whatnot. I rearranged my wardrobe every other day. Anything to keep my hands busy, my mind occupied, my heart from slipping back into that abyss.

I won’t say I stopped crying completely. But I found ways to anchor myself. And little by little, the weight got easier to bear.

It’s been six years since then.

The urge to cry still creeps in sometimes—not as often, but it’s there. The sadness that once poured into me like molten glass has hardened over time, and I don’t think any therapy could ever smash it.

There are moments when I still feel like kicking the table or hurling a bottle across the room. But you know what’s different now? That I’m able to see through it. I recognize the impulse for what it is. And I know it won’t fix anything. It won’t make the ache go away. It will only hurt the people who would rather stitch their own wounds than see me cry for them.

Isn’t that what love is? It hurts, but it also heals. I don’t think I would have found my way out of the dark if my mother hadn’t loved me so fiercely. I wanted to save her from the pain of watching me disappear—and somewhere in that fight, I saved myself too.

That phase in my life feels like a blur now. I don’t remember exactly what went wrong, but I remember how I felt. Sad. Tired. Lifeless.

And yet, I’m grateful for all that sadness. Because in the midst of it, I learned just how far my family would go to see me smile. And I needed that reassurance more than anything.