"I may not be proud of what I used to be nor was I ashamed."- Atumita Modi

 The memory of being afraid of boys older than me still seems to be fresh enough though I was in kindergarten back then. Despite loving my dad and getting more than enough love from his side, I used to fear him as well. I always had a feeling of uncertain discomfort.

Being in a safe environment, having loving parents and everything at its best I still turned towards self-harm, I was just in seventh standard. I kept harming myself until my mother found out and the news was broken, my dad cried and that being the most painful thing to see as a daughter, I promised him not to do anything of such sort. I stopped but It came back when I was sixteen, I drank a bottle of mosquito repellent. Many people questioned If I wanted to end myself then why did I go for something which is not so effective anyway? People certainly do not understand the state of mind of in such situations, regardless it is always unempathetic to say anything like that. At that moment no one thinks about the efficiency, it is all about ending it in any way and nothing about it is funny.

I was eighteen, I moved to Kota from Nagpur and started having delusions. I used to get paranoid and would stay awake till the time the sun would rise. I used to have no sleep for days. In addition, I started having hyperacidity, constipation, low Bp and severe headache. I remember lying, facing the wall because I felt that if I turned around, there might be someone standing there. Soon, I started vomiting after every meal but nothing came out in the endoscopy, some suggested that it is totally psychological but did not refer me to a psychiatrist. It is rather very hard to live in a situation where you do not know what is happening with you, with every visit to a new doctor I would pray that they could tell me a solution and if not then at least the cause but nothing turned on my tables, I started questioning my authenticity because of the uncanny ways I was seen with.

As if these things were not enough, I was sexually abused by my first cousin when I was nineteen, he was charged with the attempt to rape. This affected me very darkly, and I shouldn’t even mention this; being sexually abused is not what someone asks or prays for. I was immensely triggered by the incident. This was when @sudip69 dragged me to a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Sudip supported me in every way possible, sometimes I feel he lived with my mental issues with me.

Mental issues are not something that goes in a week like the flu so all of that did not actually end there magically after seeing an expert. I used to feel numbness in my head, I was unable to differentiate between imagination and reality, I started to get anger issues and I would run away from my hostel and then Sudip used to run here and there to find me. I have banged my head, I have eight stitches on my hand, I used to get seizures and panic attacks but I was unable to give any reasons.

Should I be ashamed? Am I here to be blamed? Or was it just my illness? It was my illness then why several people like me are looked down on by society rather than being helped? I may not be proud of what I used to be nor was I ashamed.

 I used to eat six medicines a day and now I’m at two and I think in a few months I will not be needing any medication at all. I’m proud of this because people are scared to take medications, they have a prejudice that psychiatric medicines are addictive but they are not. Side effects of medicines are inevitable in any scenario and they should not bother you, the main focus should be healing yourself.

That is why I started AnxietyBirds to spread awareness and help people in terms of mental illnesses. It has been enough of our society treating mental illness as a joke and people suffering from them not getting the respect they deserve because it has been enough of movies portraying people with a mental disorder as scary. I started this so that people can come out and seek help from professionals and not from their friends or relatives. Counsellors and psychiatrists are not paid people who listen to you when you talk, instead, they are the only ones who can help you just like any physician tackling your physical body related issues, psychiatrists are the ones who can help you tackle your mental issues.

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