I have struggled with anxiety and depression for almost four years now. It all began with a breakup. Teenage love and breakups are terrible, and I was experiencing severe abandonment issues that came along with it. I had no idea how to redirect my life to normalcy and neither was I taught those skills, like most Indian teenagers. My grades started slipping as a result. As a child who was a grade A student, my grades slipping was my worst nightmare come true. Well, not just for me, but also for my parents. They couldn’t understand why their child was performing so badly, had lost interest in the things she loved, such as music, and was just generally distant. 9th grade was terrifying. I was getting bullied, and I was having panic attacks, left, right and centre. My grades were falling at a pretty great speed, and voila, there it was, my first suicide attempt. Nobody got to know that I tried to kill myself, which is the most amusing part because of the repercussions of the attempt the next day. I attempted several times and nobody got to know. I was self-harming too and that was clearly visible to my friends. But all they did was emphasise on the fact that I was seeking a lot of attention from people because of that. 9th grade went that way and so did 10th . I was in a relationship, but that didn’t matter, because my downward spiral was more intense than the fact that I was in a relationship with a human who was giving me all this time and energy. It was something that I couldn’t reciprocate, and this went on to the point that I was so overwhelmed that he had to leave. Before, I blamed him for that, now I don’t. I know who the real culprit is. This is how things happened.
Then came 11th grade and I was doing something that I hated, i.e., science, and guess who chose it? You guessed it wrong. It was me. I thought I would do fairly well due to my expertise in the rote learning ideology of the Indian Education System but that’s not how it went. I hated every second of it. I hated every second of school and coaching. I wanted to die. And my want for death became so intense that I confided in a friend, and she knew that she had to intervene. She texted my sister. Here I was, talking to my sister, after years of her knowing nothing about all this, about which psychiatrist to meet. I resorted to getting help and telling myself that I will not continue with science and move towards my passion for psychology. The passion partly came from experience. Even though it was reassuring that I wasn’t going to do science in the future, the pressure it was putting on me at that moment was tremendous and I broke down. I attempted suicide and this time, my parents were involved. I scared the bejesus out of my doctor and I was soon sent to therapy.
Fast forward to now, I am an English, Journalism and Psychology student, looking at a future in psychology. I have a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and I am trying my best everyday to not let it stop me from being who I want to be. I have my share of ups and downs. As much as I hate how much I slog everyday, thanks to my brain, I am slowly being a little bit thankful that I am alive today.
To anybody losing hope, I don’t care if my story inspired you or not. I want you to know some things. Someone cares. You will make it to the other side, alright and okay. If today is bad, it’s okay, take rest and know that tomorrow might be good and you can fight it hard. And if you cannot, that’s okay too.
