They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta

Author:Prachi Gupta [Gupta, Prachi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2023-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

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I canceled plans to visit Swapna and Nancy in Chicago that week, telling them just that “something came up” and I couldn’t go. I gave no indication that I was dealing with something difficult, yet I was angry that they didn’t seem to care about what we were going through, as if they should have somehow figured out what we’d all worked so hard to make impossible to figure out. Holding on to my resentment was more comfortable than telling them the truth, which would open me to potential rejection or judgment. I could handle the pain of disappointment better than I could handle the feeling that maybe my friends wouldn’t understand.

Days later, after Papa told us that he had been diagnosed with depression, he began to insist he was fine—more than fine. Now that he understood what the problem was, he was back in control. Yush and I were both alarmed by what seemed like a performance to say what he needed to say to get out of a place that he felt was below his dignity. We spoke privately with one of the nurses who had been administering Papa’s care and begged her not to release him yet. She told us that she agreed but that there was little anyone else could do unless he was at risk for suicide.

Papa’s suicide attempt had revealed to all of us the depth and severity of his pain, but it was Papa’s extreme denial of his suffering mere days later that terrified Yush and me. We had dismissed Papa’s behavior in the past as machismo, or as an immigrant dad under stress, or as a little strict and controlling due to his own cultural values, but now we believed these explanations to be severely lacking. We suspected that “depression” didn’t fully explain or describe what Papa was dealing with, either. We believed that the way Papa engaged with others fundamentally interfered with his—and our family’s—ability to function.

Yush and I wrote a letter to his doctor, in which we expressed concern over releasing Papa without a more thorough investigation of what ailed him. “You may have observed this on your own, but in our conversations with him at the ward, he has expressed that though he is aware of his depression now, he thinks he has reached a solution and is fairly confident that he can fix this,” we wrote. In our letter, we connected the dots between traits that at first seemed like a difficult personality and something destructive that required serious professional intervention. “We wanted to be sure to share what we know with someone who can help him—because we have tried to reach him and cannot,” we wrote. “We fear that if he does not change, he will reach another episode similar to this one.”

The doctor overseeing Papa’s care did not respond to our letter. Papa returned to treating patients within weeks. To ask Papa about his mental health was to rip open a scab and let the blood flow all over again.

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