Let me start with this quote “In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we’re made of.” This is quite relatable with everyone’s life. Each one of us will at some point of time will have our life interrupted by an adverse situation and these are the situations that make a long lasting impact on your life. They break you, they deform you but they make you a worthy individual.

This is a story of a 12 year old boy who is 28 today. The 12 year old who was blessed to have been born in a family and to the parents who supported and stood as a pillar of support to the boy at every stage of life. Things were just as normal as any other child of his age till the age of 11. The boy had ambitions, dreams and aspirations just as someone of his age would have. Until things changed completely for this young kid. At the age of 12 he was diagnosed with Depression, an illness which does exist but we don’t talk about it often considering the stigma it carries in our minds.

The boy started withdrawing from everything including giving up on studies and ended up completely in social withdrawal which lasted for 4 years. All these years the boy was inside his darkest phase with no sight of dawn and the nights kept getting darker and darker. As in India something like this is considered as a sign of presence of evil spirit and the boy had to face some really unusual and awkward situations. Though he did get the medical help that he really needed at that time. It took almost 4 years of medications to kick in and the boy started to see some sight of dawn. He did start to feel like a normal individual but the 4 years had already made an irreversible dent in his life. Imagine a 16 year old boy trying to face the friends of his age with whom he had completely cut off for 4 years only to realize that they are academically 4 years ahead and the boy who had given up on everything in his life including studies had to start again from when he had left.

As they say “What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”, he was shown the unconventional path to complete his education and this boy graduated and did his further studies without a conventional education system. For this, I applaud the government and education system in India for setting up open universities that allows people to get a graduation degree who for any unforeseen reasons couldn’t complete their conventional education. 

The 12 year old boy who is 24 now holds a graduation degree and postgraduate degree and has already been through some of the darkest phases of his life. The real test of life starts now because he has to face people now in interviews for getting a job and explain the most hardest thing the depressive phase of his life and its impact on his life and his education.

The boy who is an adult now started to devalue himself after a couple of interview rejections. This is when he was introduced to anxiety disorder which got triggered during a job interview for a company which was like a dream job for him. This was his first hand experience with panic attacks which got triggered during the course of the interview. The experience was scary and nothing less than a bad nightmare. The experience became a regular phenomenon and kept continuing and as that boy who is 28 years old still suffers from multiple panic attacks and bouts of depressive episodes on a daily basis. There were times in the boy’s life when the struggles were so overwhelming and difficult to cope up that he even had to go through the thoughts of giving up on life.

He always chose not to take that grave step and decided to go through the worst because he loved his parents more than anyone else and he never seldom wanted them to go through the pain of losing their loved child. It took some years for the boy to realise what panic attacks were and till date he is in search of coping mechanisms that would help him to deal with his illness along with medications and some therapies. All through this journey the boy has discovered so much of positive qualities he possesses. He considers himself fortunate and blessed to have been born with a great fighting spirit that has kept him alive and has given him the courage to face life in spite of all the adversities.

Even though the boy still struggles with his illness on a daily basis, he is equally optimistic and on the path of acceptance and healing in the best possible way and hopes to make some positive impact on the society in helping people with mental health see beyond the stigma and shame surrounding mental illness. This is my journey with depression and anxiety I penned down recently and the journey still continues.