it's all in your head,m

Manjiri Indurkar

My rating 5/5 stars

Sometimes I don’t like being in my head. I feel unwelcomed.

It is not always a warm place you see. Sometimes it is as if you are at one of those loud parties you are trying to avoid except that you are also the host. So you know you don’t have a choice. You are in it until it’s over.

Around the time I read Manjiri Indurkar's "it's all in your head, m" I was going through a period of despair I thought I had left long behind. That I had reached a certain juncture and was now prepared to take care of things that had once troubled me.

To wade through existential crisis once and in your mind to come out of it successfully, should have been sufficient for a lifetime no? Guess what. It wasn't. That feeling of utter anxiety when the helplessness stares at you right in the face was gone for good only in my thoughts. So when it came back creeping my head, making its way slowly to tighten its grip, I was left bewildered. Then I turned to the only refuge that has never disappointed me – books.

I picked up Manjiri’s memoir and went on a journey to the deepest recesses of her mind. As I continued reading, it felt like I was ambulating through a past that was not only hers but also mine, instances I had buried in my head because they were baffling - more than they were painful. 

In her absolutely honest and lucid voice, Manjiri narrates the story of her life. Taking the reader on a ride through her head, she offers glances into various phases of her life - her childhood, growing up years and adult life, her anxieties which had built up slowly and which she registered only when she came face to face with a physical illness. She writes about her discomfort in a relationship, about her depression and about finding a good counselor, about making decisions and facing the demons of trauma of sexual abuse as a child.

This book however is not only about her sufferings but also about moments of joy in the ordinariness of life lived in a small sleepy town, about love which twines familial relationships, about that warmth of companionships which sprinkles days with happiness – making it gleam with kindnesses we allow to ourselves, about those cherished places returning where is also an arrival.

What really struck me most while reading this moving memoir was that it is as much about coming to terms with depression and anxiety as it is about accepting the challenges of living with them day after day and of understanding that it might be a long battle and that despite the struggle, life will not and should not halt. Is this book about hope then? I would say it is about taking one day at a time, of letting the anxieties pass you by as you stand in the awareness of your own vulnerabilities and strengths.