Playing dead until the dark days turn into bad days. I can't get out of my bed, I can't.

It wasn't one of those usual nights, it wasn't a night if you ask me. I was breathing, not living.
With a shoot planned for the next day and a meeting wrapped up well a few hours back with some sumptuous dinner, it all looked like a cake walk when I walked back into my empty house. At least my heart was full. The business woman in me who lives everyday with an agenda was doing very well and it all looked very fine until the monsters under my bed came out to haunt me and choke me making it feel like the last day. My veins beginning to have the last laugh, my heart planning for a long break, my head going in thousand wrong directions like there was never a right one ever.

I had a fish bone stuck in my throat. My depression was a shape-shifter, which had woken up my insides churning like the mixi in my kitchen, which I never had. I had all the comforts around me yet I wasn't comfortable that night. Had I ever felt this before? NEVER.

All I wanted was to be on a call with someone with no words exchanged, who knew what I was going through without me having to explain what it was that night, but did I know what it was? NO.

Several calls made, none answered, no sleep achieved, a night of smoking it all up in the air and breathing it all back and screeching and crying to self with the hope of a new dawn, I had cancelled the shoot, sent a few messages, called off my work plans, tried calling sleep too. It never answered!

While the actual plan was to shoot life at a go in Calcutta with Agnisha Basak who I had only met once, the night before had a different plan for both of us.
THE REAL STORY had to be told and told in a way that nothing hides. Agnisha took it upon herself to catch my untamed demons and feed them and ask them to leave slowly. She entered my house to hold me close and erase the marks of last night while pushing me to create than delve into destruction.
What you see next is not a blogger, not an influencer, not a curator, not a person you say #Goals to on my social platforms, not someone you see at a coffee shop and want to get a picture clicked with to post it on your social media, but a real person dealing with real life issues one day at a time yet holding her head high and breathing in and out positivity. With social media taking over our lives, do we really live to live anymore?

NO sleep, NO make up, NO designer labels, NO re-touches, NO posing. NO pretense. This is the harsh reality of anxiety and depression and getting over it and leading a normal life the next day like all was well last night in a photo story that was shot right after I left my sleepless bed at 12 noon and walked out into my living area.
Next time, someone says "Please just be on call with me", do not leave them alone. We all need a wall to rest upon and on days like these, a strong wall is all you need.