Life's Like That: Why I Shout From The Rooftop On Social Media

Once upon a time, the word psychiatry was seldom in currency and mental health was shackled to lunatic asylums and treated by a mad man's doctor who more often than not prescribed lashes instead of placebos.

In movies, therapeutic counselling sessions were not an option; instead, electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as shock treatment, was shown to evoke maximum pathos.

While mental health in the modern world refers to taking care of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being, back in the day, we grew up watching how such patients and their families were alienated to the point of being ostracised.

Sreeni was one such person we avoided in our neighbourhood. As we went to the market or school, we avoided taking a shortcut through his property or having a tête-à-tête with his academically brilliant daughter. We heaved a sigh of relief when Sreeni was found lying on the verandah bound with fetters of iron during an episode. He was proud of his daughter and talked about her achievements when he was“normal”.

We never bothered to see the other side of the family's predicament, such as the plight of his daughter growing up seeing her hapless father tethered to a pillar most of the time. She masked her agony with a smile and academic scores.

Fast-forward to the era of the Internet and social media, mental health is no more a taboo and yet it takes centre-stage in discussions, especially after the Covid pandemic and subsequent phenomenon like work from home. People don't cover up their psychological issues and the therapeutic sessions they attend. To seek help is no longer a taboo.

In our Dubai heydays, wild family parties on weekends were the only window to throw out one's frustrations and agonies. Friends, parents and children alike waited for such occasions to vent emotions and then hug and make up. And then before the hangover wore thin, those tales would spread like a wildfire.

I'm not sure if it's the pandemic that broke the shackles on our mindset. The newfound freedom to talk about one's own mental health in public, especially on social media, has not only emboldened us but also fostered a community that's ready to lend help.

Though I was an early bird on every social media platform as soon as it was available, I wasn't a regular on any of them and was even sceptical of those who posted all the happenings in their lives. I would just post my columns or other articles, and wouldn't even revisit to check on the number of likes. I never bothered to hashtag my posts for visibility either.

This isn't the first time I have dealt with mental health in this column. It's almost a threadbare topic, so why again, readers might wonder. I have never been a private person. My life has been an open book that all and sundry could read, trample on, and tear pages from. Some even add a foreword or a postscript.

Probably alarmed by my frequent portraiture on Facebook, good old friend Suresh Menon commented:“Is it the old mid-life crisis?” Which made me sit and wonder:“What am I doing here?” Call it by any other name, even an existential crisis, but I believe I am doing it right. I am not shouting from the rooftop to seek attention or a million likes. I am on social media to express myself; to chronicle my emotions, my frustrations, my likes and dislikes, and my successes and failures.

Once sceptical about such platforms, I now use social media to empty myself. FB is not my political manifesto; LinkedIn is not my professional portfolio; Instagram is not my family album. They are my diary entries. They have empowered me to manifest my thoughts. To cry is no more an option but an elixir in life, and when I don't have a Juliet balcony outside my four walls, such platforms lend me a theatre to perform. Call me a hero, or a villain or a comedian, let me act out the last scene of my biopic on this world stage.

I know the audience is made up of my family and friends, colleagues present and past, critics and commenders, flames old and new, and role models fallen and evergreen. I remain unbothered. For me at the moment, life is a soliloquy I am destined to act out. I will ever be grateful to those backstage lending me valuable support.

I understand social media means different things to different people. To my friend Malaika, it's her alternate universe where she is on a mission to discover what life is all about, and hopes:

Somewhere in the future, or sooner

I would get to know,

What this was all about,

Or maybe in some alternate universe

Where neither logic nor conscience

Determines how or how much

I will love you

The way love must be.

And somewhere down the road, when life after me would turn normal for my loved ones, my posts would stay there as a signboard that would read:“Once upon a time, here lived a chaotic soul.”

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