When Delhi Broke The Spirit Of This Small Town Girl

Brut India

“All I wanted was acceptance.” When Avani moved to Delhi from Ranchi to study at SRCC, she found herself lost. She simply struggled to fit in. She shared her story with video platform We The Young to help others like her overcome mental health hurdles.

Transcript

00:00I shifted from Ranchi to Delhi.

00:02People used to make fun of me, call me Behenji,

00:05ask me, is it a village or something?

00:08I secured a seat at SRCC

00:10and my self-confidence was shattered

00:13to an extent that I stopped going to college.

00:17My father was like,

00:18you have watched Dear Zindagi recently,

00:20that is the reason you want to go to a therapist.

00:25My name is Avani.

00:27In 12th, with God's grace,

00:29I scored 98% and I secured a seat at SRCC.

00:34And it was just like a dream come true kind of situation.

00:39But we generally don't know what time holds for us.

00:44Because I shifted from Ranchi to Delhi,

00:46so people used to make fun of me,

00:49call me Behenji.

00:51And they also used to ask me,

00:54do Jharkhand only have Jhariyas?

00:56And like, is it a village or something?

00:59So it was a very small, small incident.

01:02But then I tried.

01:04Then I tried fitting into the situation.

01:08I got my hair colored.

01:10I started wearing small dresses.

01:12Because as an 18-year-old,

01:14all I wanted was to be here.

01:17All I wanted was acceptance.

01:19I was so used to acceptance

01:21that I craved for that existence.

01:24And somewhere, trying to fit in,

01:27I started losing myself bit by bit.

01:31I became extremely vulnerable

01:34and I started depending upon

01:36every other person who used to speak sweet with me.

01:41And because of that,

01:42I landed up in a lot of wrong companies.

01:45There were people who bullied me.

01:47There were people who physically abused me.

01:50My self-confidence was shattered

01:52to an extent that I stopped going to college.

01:58When things went to this extreme,

02:02my college professors were the ones

02:04who took me to the doctors.

02:06I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder,

02:10acute depression.

02:12There were six to seven ailments.

02:16So they wanted me to take a gap year

02:19from the college and then continue.

02:22But my father was like,

02:23you have been a topper throughout your life

02:26and I know you'll make it.

02:27It's just the anxiety of having competition around you.

02:31And he was not at all ready to accept the fact

02:34that no, it's not happening.

02:36His statement was,

02:37you have watched Dear Zindagi recently.

02:40That is the reason you want to go to a therapist.

02:42After that, my therapy, it went on.

02:46And in the initial one month,

02:48I think I was kept doped most of the time

02:51because I used to self-harm.

02:53So this continued for about an year.

02:57And I thought that I won't be able

02:59to complete my graduation from my dream college

03:02because doctors were asking me to drop out.

03:05Then I was lucky enough to find a professor

03:09who was extremely helpful.

03:11She took care of me like a child

03:14and she told my parents that

03:16she will get a degree from this college

03:18and you don't need to worry about that.

03:20She used to keep me at her home.

03:23I used to play with her kids

03:24and she used to teach me and my,

03:26even my mother and every,

03:29my mother and one of my school friends,

03:32they had literally no clue about economics,

03:35but still I was not able to read and retain.

03:37So they used to make small,

03:39small stories out of the entire chapters.

03:41And that is how I graduated from that place.

03:44But then I realized that

03:47only excelling in the academic thing

03:49is not that good

03:52if you cannot develop other aspects of your life.

03:55So I thought that I'll take a gap year.

03:57I'll come in terms with everything.

04:00I'll focus on myself

04:02so that I can restart on my journey for the dream ball.

04:07There was a time that I was just lying on my bed

04:10and I was thinking of all the dreams I've had.

04:14I felt like a failure for three years of my life

04:18and I was just lying on my bed

04:19and was thinking that,

04:21will I ever be back there again?

04:26Or will I always be with a failure tag?

04:29Will I always be this psycho for a few people?

04:33That day I thought that,

04:35no, there's no point in continuing life

04:37because I'm not adding any value to the society.

04:41But when I was writing certain blogs

04:44about how I was getting through my life

04:46and I just received a random mail

04:49where someone called me a hope.

04:52And that was a time it struck me that,

04:54okay, if I cannot be an IAS officer,

04:59I can at least be a hope for a person

05:01who is going through the similar situation.

05:03Because when I was going through all these things,

05:06I used to randomly search on net

05:08that is there any such case who has been healed?

05:11But I couldn't find a lot of people opening up about it.

05:15So that then was the time I decided that,

05:20if I can't be anything,

05:22I won't stop myself from being that hope

05:25and I'll live to help the others.

05:29I certified myself in life coaching,

05:33in NLP, in art therapy,

05:37self-love workshops and a lot of other things.

05:40That is how I started with a few projects

05:44in Ranchi whereby I started a project We Care.

05:49So in project We Care,

05:50we try to make mental health more affordable to the people

05:54just because I wanted to become the hope

05:57that I once needed in my life.

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