By Kamash Baloch
There was once a man I knew, named Banashah. He was not like everyone else. He carried a silence around him, a kind of calm that felt heavy, as if he were always thinking about something far away. People called him quiet, sometimes strange, but I always saw something different in his eyes — a kind of sadness that had learned how to stay polite.
Banashah was a medical student when I first met him. While most of us were dreaming of becoming surgeons or cardiologists, he used to talk about psychiatry. Not in the usual way, not like a student showing interest in a subject. He spoke about it like someone who had lived it. I remember him once saying softly, “I don’t want to just study the mind; I want to understand my own.” Back then, I didn’t really get what he meant. Now, I do.
He suffered from depression and anxiety for many years. He told me there were nights when his thoughts became louder than the world outside. He would stay awake staring at the ceiling, feeling his heart race for no reason. Mornings were harder, because that was when he had to pretend everything was fine. He smiled for people, but it wasn’t real; it was survival. Yet somehow, despite everything, he kept moving forward. He kept studying, kept trying. Maybe that was his quiet way of fighting.
I remember one night he told me, “Maybe I’m not strong; maybe I’m just tired of breaking.” That sentence never left my mind. But it was this tiredness that later became his strength. He learned that understanding pain makes you softer, not weaker. It teaches you how to listen when words are not enough. It shows you that healing doesn’t come from ignoring pain, but from walking through it.
Years later, Banashah became a psychiatrist. His clinic was small, with pale blue walls and one window that always stayed open for sunlight. On his desk, there was a single quote written on a paper card: “We heal others in the same places we once bled.” I remember reading it and feeling something stir inside me. He told me he never wanted his patients to feel judged or rushed. “I know what it’s like,” he said. “When your own mind turns against you, you don’t need advice; you need someone to listen.”
He had learned empathy not from books, but from battles. Every patient reminded him of a different version of himself — scared, lost, tired, but still trying. Sometimes after his sessions, he would sit quietly, staring out the window, as if he were praying for his patients in silence. I asked him once if it was hard, treating people when he still had his own pain. He smiled and said, “It’s hard, yes. But it’s honest. My pain keeps me human. It reminds me why I’m here.”
After that day, I started to look at psychiatry differently. It wasn’t about theories and diagnoses only; it was about connection. It was about people like Banashah, who turned their suffering into something meaningful. And somewhere deep inside me, I began to dream of walking the same path — not just to treat minds, but to understand hearts.
Banashah taught me that mental illness doesn’t end when you achieve something. It stays with you, like a scar that fades but never fully disappears. But that’s okay. Scars are proof that we survived. He told me that being broken once doesn’t mean you can’t help others heal; sometimes it means you’re the best person to do it. “Because when you’ve been in darkness,” he said, “you learn how to guide others toward the light.”
Even now, when I think about him, I feel both sadness and inspiration. He showed me that being mentally ill doesn’t mean being weak; it means being human, deeply human. It means you’ve known what it feels like to be lost, and that’s why you can help others find their way. Maybe that’s what psychiatry is really about — not fixing people, but reminding them that they were never truly broken.
One day, I’ll become a psychiatrist too. And when I do, I’ll hang Banashah’s quote in my own clinic: “We heal others in the same places we once bled.” Because it’s true; sometimes our greatest strength grows from our deepest pain.
The writer is a student of MBBS.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Balochistan Post or any of its editors.