Every now and then, comes a storm. The trees get uprooted, the windows are shattered, roofs are blown off, the birds lose their home and we are left in darkness. Bad things happen !! We have to move past it. We need to leave it behind, sooner the better. Or else, it is going to eat away at you and stop you from moving forward.
A failed business, unsatisfied parents and a broken relationship are basic triggers that have made a few people lift a blade and mark their body with a scar. In my profession, I get a chance to interact with lot of young minds. I usually love these moments because I learn about the human psyche. However, hearing about the suicide attempts by an intelligent, promising young girl, set a gray tone I couldn’t shake. She expressed a continued “sense of loneliness,” and some days suicidal.
Suicide in teens is usually correlated with factors such as depression; anxiety; school pressures and exposure to violence, trauma, mass media and cyberbullying. Even television has been suggested as an influencing factor. After the release Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, a show about a teenage girl who commits suicide and leaves behind the 13 reasons she did it, Hannah Baker was a name I heard a lot in the usual chit chat in between my class sessions. Since I wasn’t aware of the show, one day I intervened in a very serious conversation happening within some students about it. When I heard about the theme of the show, I was taken aback. Not because I found the theme atrocious, but because my teenage students were actually justifying the reasons of the suicide. One said to me, “Ma’am, she didn’t have a choice. You have to see it to understand”.
I didn’t utter a word. I read the plot of the show online. I did feel sorry about Hannah Baker, but I certainly did not find my Hero in her. Not somebody I would look upto. May be I would copy her hairstyle. Life gives you 1300 reasons to give up. We struggle and moan. We end up hurting ourselves with the fear within us.
I was slut shamed in college, was made fun of because of my frizzy hair, was body shamed by relatives in a family gathering and failed in my catering business. It ripped me apart for a long time. After a while, I remember not worrying.
Hope is recurrent thing for me. No matter what happens it will creep in back into my life and give me a reason. It feels good to get rid of things. I feel powerful to strip down all that crap to first survive, and then, thrive. I love to try harder when the barriers are a little higher and the odds are low.
After all the destruction that has happened and the winds have hushed, the rain has stopped, the sun will still come to give you hope. You will have your silent moments to pick up the broken pieces after which, you will emerge stronger than ever.
quotidian 