Three decades ago, my grandmother washed her hands off people. She decided to wage a silent rebellion against the world. She made friends with plants and dogs. Wept over wilted flowers. Every night she’d get high on Xanax and we’d listen to music together. I’d pester her for stories and she’d weave the most beautiful ones: but only if I promised to switch the tape when its side played out. A single thread ran through all her tales: she would take the mundane and make it magical: a broom would turn into a wizard, a book…
Creator of Living Stories Sanchana Krishnan writes about her journey to honesty about mental health. * * * The Tamil word for ‘dawn’ (“vidii”, with an emphasis on the ‘d’) is suspiciously similar to the Tamil word for ‘explode’ (“vedii”). Between the ages of two and four, I spent the better part of too many nights waiting restlessly for the explosion of dawn to bring the world back to me. Hours were spent jamming my curly head annoyingly close to my parents’ sleeping bodies, checking for breath. For some inexplicable reason, I was absolutely terrified that my parents would just stop breathing if…