RETRACTED ARTICLE: Search of Self Amidst Chaos
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Search of Self Amidst Chaos Pankaj Suneja1
Received: 10 November 2014 / Accepted: 1 March 2015 Ó Springer India Pvt. Ltd. 2015
I am 27 years old. I live with my father. I am a person with psychosis. My mother, a patient of breast cancer, passed away when I was 7 years old. I grew up with a single parent and my elder brother. As I grew up, I found myself relying on friends in school and in my neighbourhood. Most of my career decisions were influenced by my friend’s choices. When I finished my school, I separated from these friends. It was much later that I found a new friend. However, after some time I distanced myself from this friend also. In the days to follow, I did not join any group, a social organisation or an institution, like a university. I disconnected from my friends. I wanted to feel genuine and real. I wanted to find my own way. For 2 years I wandered with a sense of chaos within me in a hope to find myself and what I have to do. I was introduced to Ayn Rand’s philosophy and it seemed to me that for the first time I found some validation for what I was trying to be an individual. I read her work during that time ‘‘FOUNTAIN HEAD’’. I tried hard to understand the emotions in isolation.1 I began visiting a library and I read about philosophy and psychology. I hardly had any communication with my father and my brother. My father was occupied with his business and my brother spent most of his time at work. I used to be alone at home. I was pushed by my father constantly to go out and do something. There were days when I was afraid to go out. I feared that people will hurt me. In library I tried to find space where there was no one around and I behaved timidly. On my journey to find myself, I hardly had any & Pankaj Suneja [email protected] 1
Flat No. 219, Pocket A-1, Sector-6, Rohini, New Delhi 110085, India
support. I was traumatized by my father’s constant disapproval of my life choices and no space for existence of my being and individuality. I began to believe that the mobile network towers, that were present mostly everywhere, were actually devices placed by the government to control our minds. The Delhi Municipal garbage van that came every morning to collect the household garbage used a particular jingle. I thought that it was another way to control our minds. I lived as vigilantly as possible. I could not maintain that intensity for very long. After some time I felt an immense amount of guilt for not being able to keep up or resist and I began to collapse. I went to a psychiatric OPD in a hospital for the first time, completely on my own, without telling my family. I told the psychiatrist that I am going crazy. When he asked me to elaborate I expressed that, ‘‘I do not make healthy relationships. I am co-dependent on others. I am not able to decide about my career and feel emotionally unstable’’. The psychiatrist listened to me and whatever I expressed he wrote it on my form and gave it back to me along with a prescription for medicines. I was advised by the doctor
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