Dancing to the Beat of Depression and Anxiety: Q. Anuradha’s Story

By Q. Anuradha //

I’m a dancer. Because my body is looking for cues to guide its movement, I pay more attention to the underlying beat in a piece of music than the average person. Music with a steady beat is easier to move to, the patterns easier to anticipate. But what happens when you live life against a score with a constantly changing tempo? To me, that’s one way of trying to explain my experience of living with depression and anxiety for the past seven years.

If I were to say that depression involves incredible amounts of inertia, most would agree. They would think of the effort required to start moving, to get out of bed on hard days, to somehow stand up despite the pile of rocks on your chest. And they would think that once you manage to take that first step, and do the small things, and get some momentum going, it’ll be fine for a while. At least until the next depressive episode.

But, my experience isn’t characterised by periods of smooth sailing interspersed with low periods. For that would mean the presence of a constant steady beat at least during the “good” periods with it slowing down massively during the “bad” periods. It presumes that inertia only works one way – that it takes effort for a stationary object to start moving.

But inertia works both ways. It takes effort to bring a moving object to rest too.

So when I’ve finally gotten out of bed for a few days in a row, and I’ve started getting the small things done – I know what’s coming next: a relentless drive for constant productivity, regardless of how tired I am.

I also know what awaits at the end of this productive cycle: the inevitable slump into a depressive episode.

And so I stay busy all the time, as much as possible, beyond what I humanly should, just to stave off the next “down” period. Even when I want to take a break and rest, I can’t. My brain is already on high alert and constantly running; I don’t have enough energy to slow it down to a more manageable pace.

Frenzied activity builds, the drum beats speed to a frantic crescendo. Then silence. I am in free fall. Down to the depths of the next episode. I hit rock bottom. Then a lone drum beat sounds. Another and another. Individual beats spaced so far apart that it is barely recognisable as a tempo, sounding out into the void. I begin the slow climb back up again with a constant cycle of drum beats ringing out; the tempo starting from zero, exponentially accelerating to the asymptote of infinity before there is once again silence. This dance never ends.

I’ve learnt not to fight the free fall, to accept it is happening and prepare for the immense energy I will need to expend to build up momentum again. Slowing the crazy buildup to something more manageable, so that going off the cliff does not need to be a part of the cycle, is still something that I am working on.

For me, the day my life is accompanied by a steady comforting anchoring beat, is the day I know I will finally have won my fight.

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Q. Anuradha is a volunteer writer with The Tapestry Project SG who has lived experience with depression and anxiety. The arts (dance, writing, painting and music) are her conduits to wellness in an otherwise stressful world. She finds hope in dreaming of an inclusive world where diversity is celebrated.

To read more of our Tapestry stories, click here.

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy from Pexels