Happyness Peddler

To everyone struggling right now, Remember, you’re not alone. We’re all struggling in some way because we’re part of the same flawed species. We see so many success stories online but very few are from the ones who are still struggling. We see how a certain someone won his battle against depression or an eating disorder or some other deadly mental illness but no one writes about how they’re in the process and how they wake up every day with a horrible thought of ending their life. This letter is not just for the ones struggling but also for my former self who had no clue about anything. Well, I’m still clueless about life but I know one thing for sure: I’m not alone. I have been an explorer and on a quest for understanding life and myself; I still am. It’s a journey you gotta cherish and tolerate throughout. I’ve switched many careers and have tried to make sense of every decision I've made. After 7 career paths, 5 jobs and 3 failed startups, I realized it’s not en...

No matter how close you are with your partner, you are bound to have conflicts. Sometimes, they end in hurting feelings that can’t be resolved. If those arguments keep repeating then the relationship will eventually come to a point from where there’s no going back. As long as the partners know how to resolve issues peacefully, they don’t stop learning about each other’s struggles and respect their recovering processes. But when they do everything they can to resolve and still find themselves unable to get past them, they may be unaware that they are amplifying the most common enemy of conflict resolution. It is the all-too-human tendency to excuse one’s own behaviour and blame the other for the hurt he or she is feeling. It shows up as “asking to be excused for what you’ve done because you didn’t mean to hurt them.” “I was just angry. I didn’t mean what I said.” “Just because I said those things doesn’t mean you can’t be a little forgiving.” “I wouldn’t be that way if yo...

When we talk about mental strength and emotional intelligence and all those big words, we assume that these are not something we can do or even think about them. Some of us don't have time for all this, some have been avoiding the words mental health as they are our biggest enemies and some have tried living stable lives but don't exactly know how. For the longest time, I thought I'm incapable of being vulnerable and open about who I really am and that has held me back from several opportunities in life. I've missed some pretty great stuff because I didn't know what I want or how to get rid of this stiffness in my personality that nobody likes. Those little bad mental habits keeping me from things I could have done, places I could've visited and jobs I could've landed just because I was busy struggling with my own head, not knowing what to do and how to do. All of this came down to three bad mental habits that I've been carrying along for a single rea...

When people say travelling changes you as a person, I could never understand what they were talking about. I couldn’t disagree more with the statement. I took 7 trips last year and not one of them had any drastic effects on me. More so, I’ve come to realize that travelling is not for me. I’m not cut out for that. It’s not because of different weather or living conditions; I survived all of them without a single complaint but I can’t see any kind of change in me. I remain the same Me as I was when I left for the trip. I've been told that if I visit with this mindset only then, nothing can help, so I decided I'll give it another try and go with an open mind but trust me, I regretted going this time around too. It's not that I hate leaving my comfort zone or I dislike new things, it's just that I'm not gonna remember even a bit of it anyway. We go, we roam around, we have different kinds of food, we come back and live to go about our normal routine lives. Nothing re...

I left something with you, It still has my name on it, If you open it you'll see that it is a little crooked at the ends,  I never knew how to make it even, I liked it a bit messy, You know, It might have lost a little shine,  Maybe rusted a little, I like that colour, Reminds me of the inevitable. Keep it in your drawer, the one next to your bed, It has a lock on it, You don't open it much, It has things you don't use anymore, It'll be fine there. You will not have to take care of it, It'll be safe there,  It has gotten used to the darkness. But remember, You have something that belongs to me, And someday, someday I'll ask for it back.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square; surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom its invisible, agony reaches a certain unendurable level, and will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from the burning windows, their terror of falling from the great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames; when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall, it’s the terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, c...

I've always been too dumb, too loud and too crazy for him. And by him, I mean my friends. And by friends, I mean the people I hang out with sometimes and regret every moment of it. And by regret, I mean killing myself twice inside my head for saying 'yes' for the meeting. And by saying 'yes', I mean an over excited, pumped up agreement every time they ask me to meet. You ask why? Because I tend to over compensate for everything I do with everyone around me. I've this feeling of not belonging to this place since forever. I feel a massive rock on my chest while I simply exist. I feel that everyone around me is doing me a favour of letting me exist and I owe them everything I have. But I fail everyday. I fail to please everyone around me. I fail to do things they want me to do. I fail to be there every time they need help. I fail to be the one they want me to be. It's like paying a price for something I didn't even ask for. But it's not that I want to...