The Past, Present and the Future

There is a character, he always ends up finding himself in problematic situations that he created for himself. Things like being worried about getting fired from his job when he is totally doing fine an nothing has changed to warrant that kind of change. He could never trust people easily due to his past and he could never accept when things were going right for him; always finding ways to get himself back down again. To his surprise, things started to change, he was slowly able to fight these thoughts off and get better, but sometimes he still had to surrender to the whims of the demons he created within himself. Each time he handled them, he got stronger! But that also means that there will be a next time.

The Past

Whenever he used to cook these problems inside his head, he used to always shut off from the world and play the self-pitying victim, craving for attention and help but too scared to ask for it. He used to be extremely erratic and emotional about it.

Many times these problems were about work, or relationships around him, thinking that he is being a burden to the workplace or to the friendship. That made it even harder for him to seek out help from people close to him.

To his credit, he was self-aware enough to know that what he is doing in maybe not the right way to handle it, but sadly that wasn’t enough of a reason to accept it and use the “right way”. His entire life used to crumble when these pesky demons were birth inside his head. All his relationships, work and responsibilities would suddenly take a backseat and self-loathing would become the driver of his brain.

“Yikes, how did he even get out of that?”

I thought you might ask that, be patient, I am getting there. Eventually with time he would get annoyed of having these demons inside his head and he would finally try to seek for some help or use logic and reason to break past them. Somehow that worked for him but it really was a long process. It used to take him a month or more to get to that point.

“That is low-key hilarious that he got so annoyed of his own problems, clearly it wasn’t the last time, did he get better?”

The Present

Indeed he got better and learned from some of his mistakes; “f*g thankfully”. In the recent times he learned that ignoring his responsibilities for self-induced problems would lead to actual problems down the road. He tried his best to not shut off from the world as well, still keeping a moderate level of social contact.

Sounds good is what I thought, but even an infant could tell that his mood was down and that there was something very clearly that was bothering him. It was way too obvious especially when he met people in real life. It was very apparent that he wasn’t being himself.

Recently he created a whole issue inside his head about how he has no value in this world and he is not doing anything worthwhile literally out of nowhere.

“Well, at least he met people in real life on the bright side”

That’s all for the good part sadly, yet again he took way too long to ask for help because he felt like it would be too much of a burden for people around him to actually help him. But when a helping hand did appear, he grabbed it and asked for help and learned that there are people in his life now that he can trust with his burdens to a certain extent. There are people in his life that care about him.

“That’s quite wholesome, good for him. I think he will do alright in the future, he is clearly getting there” The Future

Right, I think I am starting to believe in him too! How about we ask him how he does plan to handle his own demons the next time they try to give him a midlife crisis out of nowhere.

“Yea good idea, so what’s your plan Varun?”

Damm you really did not leave any sympathy for me huh! But since you have given such a good explanation, I might as well try to answer what you asked.

For starters I think it would be a good idea to not spawn these demons inside my head in the first place, but if a situation like that were to arise, I would of-course not cut off from the world or my responsibilities, but also I would try to be less hesitant in asking help.

Another thing that would help for sure is just trusting my own logical reasoning more when trying to fight these demons, there are going to be things that will be new and maybe not easy to handle but if I just give myself a little bit of leeway to breathe and not loath in my own misery, I probably would be able to handle it better than before.

“Okay that works as an answer, I don’t know you enough but umm all the best to you!”

Author
Varun Bhalerao