Receiving Help Allowed Me To Write Again: Urvashi Bahuguna On Living With Mental Illness

 Urvashi Bahuguna: Author of the sparkling poetry collection, Terrarium, Urvashi Bahuguna was the first person in her Indian family to admit to and seek help for a mental illness.

Bahuguna discusses with Archana Pai Kulkarni the many facets of living with mental illness, like family, physical fatigue, professional impact and romantic relationships, and what gave her the courage to write her new book, No straight Thing Was Ever Made.

The title of your book, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made, is a telling comment on the inherent flaws in creation, and the reiteration and acceptance of a life truth. What did you want to convey through it?

When I chanced upon the phrase that makes up the title, it became a way for me to try and accept who I was and how ill I was. It is part of a quote by Kant that says, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” There was something very soothing about that idea that we were all made out of crooked timber, that we do not come out perfect. Expectations around what’s normal and what’s desirable are hard to shake, even when one knows that one is unwell or limited by some circumstance. The phrase is a reminder that we don’t have to hold ourselves to unreasonable standards, that there’s varying degrees of volatility, contradiction and difficulty swirling within and around us, that there is something to be gained by shedding the idea that we can all be equally productive, consistent, loving et cetera.

It is one thing to come to terms with an ‘invisible illness’ and quite another to normalise things for you and others by, for example, casually taking your medication in front of people. What gave you the courage to ‘come out’ and write these essays?

I didn’t want to hide. The illness permeated every aspect of my life, and having to conceal it, even passively, didn’t feel like an option. I couldn’t have faked it. I was bursting into tears all the time in the early years of my illness. I took my medication in front of friends because I was being myself in other ways around them, and this was an extension of that. There was also an element of wanting to see if people could accept this part of me. I was afraid of being judged, but I didn’t want to be limited by that fear. I wrote these essays from that place of being both scared and eager to talk about something that had taken over my life and that I didn’t see occupy enough space in everyday conversation. I was also encouraged by the sea of personal writing that was coming out about these and related themes. I was intrigued – what could be said with this form that I couldn’t say in a poem, could the nuances of mental illness be better captured with it?

The illness permeated every aspect of my life, and having to conceal it, even passively, didn’t feel like an option. -Urvashi Bahuguna

Would you say that writing this book may have staved off more pain or struggle?

It’s difficult for me to evaluate if it staved off pain just yet. But I grew alongside it. Some of what I learned while researching the essays on suicide, being online and motherhood was illuminating and bolstering. What I learned about myself, about my patterns and ruts, I was able to carry into therapy where I worked on it. Studying other ill people’s experiences as I wrote about my own also helped fill me with a pragmatic optimism. It felt like a lot of what seemed terrifying and undoable was within reach with the right training and opportunities.

How different has this journey been from that of writing Terrarium?

They were very different experiences. Terrarium was written a poem at a time, without a real plan for organising it into a manuscript. There was no deadline, no contract like there was with No Straight Thing Was Ever Made. I imagined that the poems would only ever be read by a handful of people. I could write about anything – the stakes were low. Because poetry is the tradition I was trained in, I was much more comfortable taking risks with vulnerability whereas the essays were a place where I was learning as I was writing about sentence craft, about structuring, about reader expectations, about my own limits when it came to honesty. I envisioned the essays as an expansion of some of the themes in Terrarium, so straightaway it was a project with direction and greater scope – and both of those things frightened me every day that I worked on the book.

You describe yourself as benefiting from psychotherapy. How has it affected your writing?

Therapy is interesting because it doesn’t let me off the hook and it doesn’t allow me to let other people off the hook either. That’s important in writing too – this ability to see things at the various levels they exist. For me, they’re both ultimately acts of expansive imagination. What I capture in my writing is so often repackaged bits of what I have unpacked in therapy sessions or through tools I have gained in therapy.

How have the unpacking and exploring of your interiority impacted your dreams, aspirations and the pursuit of life? Can you tell us more about the redemption you found on this path?

That is such an interesting question to think about. Unpacking my interiority for two years for No Straight Thing Was Ever Made and for another couple for Terrarium before that has brought me to a place where I want to explore more than personal writing, maybe even venture into a world outside of literature and writing altogether. The time I spent studying and writing about my inner life was essential, I think, for where I was during those years. I was genuinely interested in making nuanced poems and essays out of the small bumbling micro-events in my life. It taught me about my own ability to build, take apart, shift perception, move on. It’s strange, but the pieces of writing I completed to satisfaction were the ones that taught me the most. It wasn’t that every time I attempted to explore interiority on the page it would lead somewhere, but at times, I would be able to arrange the pieces in a way that surprised me, in a way that wasn’t a lie. It built a kind of self-confidence to find myself capable of both creating and of changing my mind.

Therapy is interesting because it doesn’t let me off the hook and it doesn’t allow me to let other people off the hook either. That’s important in writing too – this ability to see things at the various levels they exist.

What were the challenges in balancing the self-conscious preoccupation with your illness, the research, the narration of your own story, and the stepping back to look at things objectively? What was your process?

Allowing time to pass between drafts was the only way for me to achieve a degree of objectivity. I don’t believe I was conscious of that when I started writing, but after two or three essays had been written, rewritten and edited numerous times, I became cognizant of the gradual untangling that was taking place when I gave the drafts time to breathe. In the early drafts, there would be chaos, stubbornness and restlessness on the page. I was simultaneously examining myself and working on craft, and that’s an odd dance, but both those endeavours motivated me to look upon the material with distance. I tried to ask myself hard questions every time I came back to a draft – “Is this true, what have I neglected to mention and why, what am I not facing up to?” Equally important was showing the draft to friends who could cast a fresh set of eyes on it, catching absences and unexplained knots in the writing that I had missed.

You have emphasised that mental health is not a binary between ill and well, that its unpredictability is a constant companion. What do you tell yourself or do day by day to not just keep afloat but thrive, read and write? Are you kind to yourself?

I read even when I’m not thriving. It’s one of the things that helps, especially at the end of the day, when I need to wind down and sleep so I can start over in the morning. I watch a lot of shows and movies because I need to be alone but I want my mind to be quiet too. Exercise (it took me a very long time to find a form of exercise that worked for me). Therapy twice a month. I talk to my friends and partner. I know that’s very generic, but I have found that it helps. The days are still hard and the illness is still strong, and honestly, I don’t feel like I am thriving yet. I am often reflexively unkind to myself for that inability to thrive, but therapy has taught me a lot about why that is, where those feelings come from, the importance of not fixating on what is essentially fleeting (if repetitive), how to be kinder to myself, and how to remember to turn to something else instead when the illness and the unkindness surfaces: books, friends, being active.

I am often reflexively unkind to myself for that inability to thrive, but therapy has taught me a lot about why that is, where those feelings come from. -Urvashi Bahuguna

You have spoken strongly against the dangers of holding up internal disorder as aiding artistic fodder, and the view that seeking help for a mental disorder may mean losing one’s creativity. Would you say that seeking help, on the contrary, fosters creativity?

In my case, receiving help allowed me to write again, allowed me to imagine, create, contort, shuffle. Even if I hadn’t written again, it would have been worth it. Because I have felt and behaved better for seeking help. I am not suicidal, I have far fewer anxiety attacks, I am much better at riding the waves of illness, I lash out less frequently. All of that is worth it in and of itself. That I can write comes from that place of relative health.

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