The Unquiet Mind

Whether due to illness, self-choice, or just to bury the pain, this is it.  

I gave myself two weeks, as per my doctor’s mandate, to sort myself out. I wrote a book during a suicidal spiral, with the support of AI to dive into journals, notes, interviews, and messages going back to 2014. 

Given the subjects I dive into, you wouldn’t assume this is a love letter. But it is. It’s my release of him, as he requested — but on my terms. I’m feisty. An overachiever. He once told me I overachieved at upsetting him, with my texts and my invitations to talk, because they triggered his risk radar. I reminded him: I don’t have to make you happy anymore. That said, the book is my answer to all his questions. I can finally rest my mind. 

It was in the quiet moments, when the hum of the city was distant and my mind was filled with the rustling pages of textbooks, that I began to find my own path. I was never alone in this pursuit. I had inherited my father’s fierce work ethic, and perhaps his belief that nothing in life was truly given. If you wanted something, anything, you had to earn it.  

Writing has not always been my path. From the moment I could read I dove into the world of numbers, equations, and formulas. While other children played outside or huddled in the corners of their homes watching television, I was hunched over my desk. Studying for the next test, the next competition, the next chance to prove myself. 

At an event, my mind was elsewhere, racing ahead to the possibilities of a different future. A life where I could be free from the confines of tradition, where my intellect could be more than just a tool to please my family. The dress, the makeup, the obligatory smile; none of it felt real to me.  But whilst I twirled in my gown, as the cameras flashed and the guests clinked their glasses, I couldn’t help but feel that the future I longed for was slipping away from me, trapped beneath the weight of everything I had been taught to value. 

I was raised in the warmth of the Catholic faith. The familiar cadence of Mass ringing in my ears and the smell of incense hanging in the air like a comforting embrace. Jesus Christ was the centre of our lives. His image hung in every room, his love our guiding principle. My family, for all the complexities of our lives, had always placed our trust in God. The Virgin Mary also held a place of reverence, her image often present in our home, her gentle gaze a reminder of the divine protection we believed we were afforded. I knew the prayers by heart, had learned to cross myself before meals and before bed, and found solace in the idea of a greater power watching over us. 

But I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The rituals weren’t quaint. They weren’t symbolic. Not always. Sometimes they were blood-soaked prayers to the earth, to spare us from its wrath. Or to promise it power in return for profit. I didn’t know how to reconcile this Bolivia (the one of sacred mountains and generational trauma) with the one I loved, the one I fought for. Maybe the land didn’t ask to be worshipped this way. Maybe it’s just tired of being bled. 

But with each passing year, the rituals weren’t healing me anymore. They weren’t holding me together. I had therapy. I had medication. I had all the "right" tools. Still, the sadness crept in. Not like a wave, but like fog. Slow, low, curling at my feet until I couldn’t see the edges of my world anymore. 

That’s what most people don’t understand about mental illness. It doesn’t always break the door down, sometimes it just rearranges your furniture so subtly that you don’t realize you’ve stopped sitting by the window. 

I walked through markets like a ghost. I smiled at meetings with no idea what I had said. I began to whisper to myself, to narrate, to anchor, to remind myself I existed. I sent postcards to a man who wouldn’t write back, just so I could hear my own voice come through ink. 

People called me strong. Resilient. A fighter. 

They didn’t know I cried in supermarket aisles. That I paced the kitchen, trying to remember if I had eaten. That sometimes, I didn’t want to live. Not because I hated life, but because I couldn’t hold it anymore. 

There is a difference between wanting to die and not wanting to exist. 

My doctors gave me names for it: adjustment disorder, major depressive episode, complex PTSD. Labels like tags on a suitcase that had already burst open. 

But I didn’t need diagnoses. I needed permission. To fall apart. To not be the saviour. To not be brilliant, or beautiful, or productive. To be. 

And Bolivia, for all its salt and sky, did not give me that permission. 

Australia tried. The counsellors were kind and mindfulness coaches smiled. But my trauma didn’t speak their language. My panic didn’t understand affirmations. 

I needed a place where silence wasn’t scary. Where rage wasn’t shameful. Where healing didn’t mean forgetting. 

In time, I built that place. Not in therapy rooms but in cafes and in pages. In slow, hard conversations with strangers who became soul anchors. 

That is where my mind began to find peace; not in solutions, but in shared unravelling. 

There are still days when the fog returns. When the salt tastes like memory and the sky feels too big. But now, I know how to wait it out, how to write through it. I know how to let the mind be wild without letting it win.