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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