I don't know what to do now. I have spent most of my life trying to survive.

I don't really know why I am writing this.

Maybe because I have carried so much for so long that I don't know where else to put it.

Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been about surviving one thing after another.

I don't know what to do now.

Some days I feel like maybe this is bad karma because nothing else makes sense. Why would so many things happen to one person?

Then there are days when I feel like everything is already ruined. Like there is nothing left to salvage.

But another part of me still wants a fresh start.

I don't know if that is still possible.

1st standard

I don't remember much from this time.

Things were mostly fine as far as I remember.

My younger brother was born around this time.

2nd standard

After my brother's birth, my mother became very sick. She almost died.

We were not financially stable, and my father could not take her to a hospital.

I remember going to the neighbourhood with the excuse that I was going to play with my friends.

But I actually told my friends and their mothers what was happening at home.

They came to visit us.

I don't know whether they helped us financially or in some other way, but eventually things seemed to become normal again.

Soon after, we moved to another house.

I had to leave behind all my childhood friends.

After that, I moved twice, but I never really had long-term childhood friends again.

Around this time — I am not completely sure whether it was 1st or 2nd standard — I wrote a letter saying that I wanted to die.

I was a child.

I don't know if I fully understood death. I just knew I was exhausted.

I was being beaten at home very frequently. It felt like an everyday ritual.

My parents behaved as if they hated me.

They found the note.

My father choked me while I was on the ground.

Later, we moved again.

3rd standard

My mother left for her parents' house with my brother because she wasn't okay with where we had moved.

She was also diagnosed with TB.

Eventually, she came back.

But even though I had missed her, she did not have the warmth towards me that I expected.

My parents fought often, and she was thinking about leaving again.

I remember lying to her, saying that my father had said sorry or something like that, because I wanted to stop her from leaving.

I was just a child, but I felt responsible for keeping things together.

Later, a relative had to intervene between them.

I used to travel by school bus.

I had severe motion sickness, but somehow I survived.

I had a friend who was in 2nd standard. She was very cheerful and wanted to be my friend.

Some boys from 11th or 12th standard in the bus forcibly kissed her.

They asked me to leave my seat, and I left because I was scared of them.

I felt guilty because she had been sitting with me and I left her there.

4th standard

We moved again.

I was living with my parents, my sibling, and a cousin.

Later, my parents moved me to another room where I had to sleep in the same bed as my cousin.

He had bad intentions.

The sexual abuse began during this period.

I was not doing well in studies.

My studies became really bad.

Nobody paid attention to how badly I was struggling.

5th standard

The abuse continued.

I was still a child.

I did not fully understand what was happening.

I knew something was wrong, but I did not have the words to explain it.

6th standard

The abuse continued.

By this time, I understood that something bad was happening.

But I also felt responsible because I did not speak up.

The truth is, I did not know what to call it.

I did not know how to explain what was happening.

The only reference I had for sexual violence was the Nirbhaya case, where the victim died.

I thought that was what happened when something like this happened.

The abuse had not reached full penetration at that point.

Later, he tried to penetrate me. He also tried anal penetration, but it was too painful and he feared getting caught, so he stopped.

He became worried about pregnancy and gave me pills.

After taking them, I bled for around a month.

My mother was at her parents' house during that time.

Nobody was there to guide me or explain what was happening.

Eventually, he left the state.

I thought I was finally free.

7th standard

I thought I was finally free.

I worked extremely hard.

I studied and covered the work of the previous two years.

My grades improved.

For the first time in a while, I felt like I was moving forward.

8th standard

By this time, I somewhat understood what had happened to me.

I think I became depressed.

I would suddenly snap and then become silent.

My parents thought it was normal teenage anger.

My father sensed something was wrong and tried to talk to me.

I wanted to tell him.

I tried.

But I was crying and somehow no words came out.

I could not explain what was happening inside me.

He got angry and left after telling me never to share my problems with him again.

9th standard

My school gave me a fresh start.

New teachers. A new beginning.

I started doing better academically.

I became almost one of the top students.

I loved studying.

During summer vacations, my mother became sick again.

Family issues started again.

I took responsibility for household chores for those few months.

She survived it.

But a distance started developing between me and my father.

10th standard

Again, more family problems and fights happened.

A day before my birthday, my mother said she would leave with my brother.

She said she would not take me with her because my life was not something she could financially support.

She also told me that my father did not want me.

I had thoughts of ending my life.

I had my board exams during this period.

One day after my board exams ended, I woke up and heard my parents talking.

My father said he expected me to fail, but somehow I managed.

Around this time, my female cousin was getting married.

11th standard

I thought I would finally get some rest.

But my father was constantly worried about my college and my preparation.

My grades started going down.

Even though I was scoring more than 90% of students, my teachers had higher expectations from me.

Towards the end of 11th standard, my grandmother started becoming sick.

My father visited her often.

Everyone was stressed.

Nobody wanted to lose her.

Before this, wedding preparations for the cousin who abused me were already happening.

12th standard

I wanted to tell people what had happened.

I did not want my cousin's future wife to go through something similar.

I wanted to stop it.

I felt responsible.

But everyone around me was already angry, stressed, and dealing with their own problems.

I had nobody to talk to.

I started having severe anxiety attacks and breakdowns.

I would not be able to sleep through the night.

In the morning, my parents would throw jugs of water on my face to wake me up for school and then shout at me.

I would cry because I did not know how to ask for help anymore.

My teachers noticed how unwell I was.

I genuinely believe I am alive today because of them.

During summer vacations, my family took me to my cousin's wedding.

I locked myself in a room for the entire day in the July heat without a fan or anything.

I became physically sick intentionally.

My parents adored my cousin.

They considered him like their own son.

For my father, his family was everything.

After returning home, I fell apart again and again.

Somehow, I continued until my exams.

Then COVID happened.

I moved into a corner of my bedroom and started reading fiction.

Fiction became an escape for me.

It was one of the few things that helped me get through that time.

After 12th standard / Competitive exams period

I don't know when things became this bad, but during the period around my competitive exams, I reached a point where I was completely disconnected from life.

I did not know whether it was morning or night.

I did not know what time of the day it was.

I felt completely gone.

About a week before my exams, my parents decided to move to the village where my cousin lived.

They said they were doing it for me because they thought I was depressed and needed a fresh environment.

They also did not let me fill applications for some of the top institutions.

They said I should move to lower-tier state universities so that I would understand how children who don't have anything live.

According to them, I was ungrateful.

My exams were postponed, and I was stuck there for months.

I did not have proper food, clothes, books, or internet access.

They had not even let me bring my books with me.

During this period, my cousin's daughter was born.

I even held her in my arms.

Eventually, I came back home.

After months of disruption, I did not score well in my exams.

My father decided my future.

He got me admission into a private college.

College years

When online classes started, I thought that I had made it this far, so I should try to make something good out of it.

I treated it as a fresh start.

I studied hard.

I tried socialising online.

I participated in competitions.

From the second year onwards, I went to college physically.

I also faced bullying in school for some time earlier in life.

But when you are already hurting so much, other pain almost disappears. You become used to carrying things.

During college, I met someone.

I fell in love with him.

He was my first relationship.

In the beginning, he seemed like the best person ever.

But he lied and deceived me.

We became physically involved.

He did not have good things to say about my body.

By the final year of college, he decided he did not want to continue a long-distance relationship.

The breakup was extremely emotionally intense.

It affected me mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I felt like it took everything from me.

One thing he said during the breakup was:

"What motivates me to be with a partner is that they are working towards their goals. But I don't see that zest in you."

Those words stayed with me.

My master's and career

Despite everything, I completed my master's degree well.

I was not first, but I was the second highest scorer.

After finishing my master's, I wanted to pursue a PhD.

I have given different competitive exams.

Sometimes I miss qualifying by a few marks.

Sometimes I miss by a huge margin.

I keep trying.

I have also been trying to find a job.

There have been opportunities where I received responses, but my parents often did not approve of them.

Now both my parents and I feel desperate for my career to move forward.

After my master's, I was diagnosed with PCOD/PCOS.

I gained around 10 kg.

I lost some weight after starting treatment, even in the first month, but my weight keeps fluctuating.

My health keeps changing.

Family situation now

Things at home are better in some ways.

But there are still things that hurt.

My mother does not talk to me.

This happened after a verbal argument where I mentioned that she had called me a whore.

My father heard it.

Since then, she has stopped talking to me.

My parents also had their own conflicts and were not speaking properly for a long time.

Even though they talk somewhat now, she still does not talk to me.

Another incident I remember from 12th standard

A day before we were supposed to leave for my cousin's wedding, I was returning home from school.

A man sexually harassed me.

He exposed himself to me.

I was travelling through the same path I had travelled every day for years.

Nothing about that day was different.

But it still happened.

How I survived

I think the only reason I am still here is because I kept creating goals for myself.

I told myself I would finish all the novels I had started.

I held onto the idea that every cell in our body changes after seven years, and that maybe I would become someone new after that.

I started creating things I wanted to create. I mostly make what I want and wish would happen.

I created memories for myself.

I wanted to make my life valuable.

I did not want my life to just end like that.

Growing up, I never really went out to dinners with my parents.

I never really went to movies with them.

But in recent years, I have started wanting those simple experiences.

I have gone to the theatre with my sibling.

I have visited exhibitions.

I have tried hobbies.

I have finally seen some places and landmarks in my own state that I had never seen before.

Some days I dream.

Some days I am just tired.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I really do not have the "zest" that people talk about.

Even when I was in 8th standard, my tuition teacher noticed that I was always very unexcited about everything.

I worry about my sibling.

I hope they never have to live the kind of life I had.

I hope they get happiness and success.

Some people tell me my dreams are not big enough.

They tell me to move abroad and aim higher.

Those comments make me angry and sad.

They make me feel helpless.

Because I have already spent so much of my life trying to survive.

I am tired.

But I am still trying.

I don't know what happens now.

I don't know how to rebuild everything.

Sometimes I feel like maybe this is bad karma because nothing else explains why so much happened.

Sometimes I feel like everything is already ruined and there is nothing left to save.

But somewhere inside me, I still want a fresh start.

I still want to know what it feels like to live instead of just survive.