The Despair Syndrome

Setbacks are never easy to bounce back no matter what others say. They erode a part of you leaving you with self-doubt and tons of questions and emotional turmoil.

When something happens you keep asking yourself “why me?” “Why did this have to happen to me?” and so many questions that fill your head  threatening to drown you, threatening to suffocate you!

They say you’ll bounce back and higher but first how do you get over this heaviness in your chest, this anxious feeling that’s weighing you down. How do you get over this fear that clouds your mind, that threatens to push you down a bottomless black hole. How do you stop your brains from overthinking the worst case scenarios.

Setbacks leave you with self-doubts often questioning your ability and capability. Often questioning who you truly are and is this for you. Often eroding your confidence in self.

Failure can be a bitch, a tough teacher leaving with you with this bitter taste and hopeless feeling. Often leaving you embarrassed and frustrated and disappointed with yourself. You find yourself questioning your ability, your inability, ending in this feeling of an impostor syndrome, making you feel like a fake, unworthy, a loser!

There’s a lesson to be learned but somehow you feel so hopeless, drowning in your own sorrow that you find it difficult to even learn the lesson that you have been taught. You are unable to see the lesson in it all. And somehow you are unable to learn the lesson you are meant to learn.

You’ll bounce back, they say, but when and how, is the question you ask yourself, a question you want to ask them, cause you are feeling so hopeless and low and you are unable to perceive an end in sight , apart of putting an end to it all.

You want to scream and shout and cry and let it all out, but you are unable to do so, cause you programmed yourself to appear strong and clam. But internally you are crumbling, you are melting, you are sinking in a quagmire of despair.

Though there are others around you, others rallying for you, you find yourself alone. You find yourself internalising your feeling unable to give it a vent, thus filling you with despair and pain, threatening to burst out and consume you in its flames.

But through this despair you try to find hope, hope that you can hold on to, hope you can cling on to. You try to find that hope that will keep you going and will get you through it all.

You know you can never give up, you will never give up, you will  continue to soldier on, keeping the faith , hoping for a better new day.

You know that giving up is never an option and the only time you will is when you’re dead. 

So you continue to soldier on, to fight through cause you know that as long as you have hope you’ll continue to fight through it all, it will keep you going on. You continue to hold your head up high and move on knowing you somehow, somewhere you’ll find you’ll find your way through!

Free Falling

One moment you’re standing, admiring the view, the next thing you know is you’re falling, as if the ground beneath your feet just gave way, sending you free falling into the dark abyss below, at a rapid pace.

Is this a dream or is it my worst nightmare come true? I desperately try wake up from it. Is this for real? Is this happening? What happened? Is there something or someone below who will catch me and stop my fall?

I try desperately to hold on to something but all I can feel is the air as it caresses my face. Hands flaying, as if trying to grasp something, as if by some miracle a branch, if not a hand, would sprout out of thin air, that I can hold on to. But there’s nothing but despair.

So is this it? Am I going to end up like a splatter on the ground below? They say that when the end is near your whole life flashes before eyes, but where was my show reel? Didn’t anyone prepare one for me? Don’t I have anything to show for?

But then how did I come to this situation? Was I pushed? Who was up there with me? Is this deliberate murder most fowl? Or did I just jump off??? Was I that desperate to take such a desperate step? What pushed me over the edge, literally and figuratively? Or was I peering too far way to have lost my balance and toppled over? A silly accident.

But the main question is what was I doing on that ledge? How did I get up there? What made me get up there? Didn’t I have a plan or a safety net in place?

So many questions to be answered, but I am still falling. How much more time till I hit rock bottom? It seems like have been falling forever. When would it all come to an end and how will the end come?

Like a death row inmate waiting for a last minute reprieve, you wait hope against hope for a miracle. Maybe you sprout wings at the last moment and let’s you soar before you hit the ground. Or that gravity that has been pulling you, now starts pushing you right back up. 

But no such luck for me, nothing and no one coming to my aid. How I desperately hope that this is a bad dream. But again no such luck. And then slowly you feel it, you feel all the panic and fear slip off and replaced with a numbness, making you feel nothing. And then you begin to float, your spirit rising to freedom, breaking the shackles that binds you. You feel a lightness. 

And then with the thud you land, hard on the ground. But then you realise that this was the despair you felt, and now that you hit rock bottom the only way for you is up. And no matter how bad things are and  how you free fall, you will fin your way back.