ANONYMOUS • FEMALE • 20 • NOIDA
Since I was a young girl, I always wanted a perfect and normal household. I just wanted to be acknowledged, and I always wanted my family to be together like every other family. Now I realize it was never meant to be that way. I always had this version of my family in my head just to make myself feel good, the version that I wanted them to be, but they never really were like that. I watched my family break into pieces until it finally drifted apart.
If I talk about my mental health, then I would say it was never stable. I always had issues, if not at home, then in my very own life. I’ve been a victim of sexual assault almost all my life. Not many people know every single detail about whatever I’ve been through, or I guess I’ll never have the guts to talk about it. I felt I was left behind, and everyone else moved forward. I’ve always lost the people I love and care about. Whatever I did for them was never really enough, and much more that I’ve experienced and am not comfortable talking about. But that’s not the reason why I’m here. I’m here to share how I never lose hope, no matter what.
There are some stages of our lives when we give up, when we feel like we’ve been through more than enough, and at that very moment, you feel like you can’t take it anymore and just want everything to stop. Or maybe we just want to escape or skip it. That moment in my life was last year when my father died due to a heart attack. My relationship with my father was never great. We drifted apart because of our same ego and grudges that I hold onto mostly. And when he died, I realized that I can’t remember the last time I talked to him, and that guilt is something that changed me for my entire life, the guilt I will never be able to overcome.
While I was going through this unbearable pain of guilt, I got to know how important it is to have people around you who care about you. A lot of people made me feel even worse in those times, but then some important people got me out of that deep dark hole. What I thought was best for me at that time was to stay connected to those important people and stay as busy as possible. I used to stay out of home just to avoid my thoughts and move forward, but that wasn’t enough. I felt I’d completely lost my true self, but the HOPE was still in there.
I decided to talk it out with my closest people and cry it out as much as I could and tried to forgive my father and myself to move forward. The guilt will always be there in my heart, but I will always try to make him proud and move on from the things I never talk about. Things will never be easy for me, but at least I’ve got myself. No matter how much I lose in life, I will never lose myself. Whatever I’ve been through so far has only made me stronger and stronger. It did feel like giving up sometimes, but I always have this little ray of light in me that will shine even brighter every time I feel like giving up. That is what hope does for me.
