I live in a small city in India, and in 2017, when I was 16, it felt like my whole life had fallen apart. My partner dumped me at the same time that my family was having some financial problems. It felt like it was all piling on and my mental health took a really sharp turn.
I was trying to pretend like everything was fine, because I didn’t have the courage to tell my family or reach out for any professional help. Because things weren’t great at home, I would walk around my city for hours at a time. My focus was wrecked, and my school work suffered. I barely managed to pass exams.
Some of my friends noticed my weird acts, and asked me what was going on. Why haven’t you talked to us for the past few weeks? they asked. I did make lame excuses like I was busy, because I just didn’t have the strength to tell them what was really going on.
The Breaking Point
And then, my own so-called best-friends started cyber-bullying me. They created a WhatsApp group with my ex girlfriend because they thought I was being weird in front of them (when in reality, this was me trying to hide the mental health problems I was dealing with.) They’d mock me by saying things like “he is such a hack and he cant do shit.”
Thats when I realized that there was something brewing inside of me. At night, I wanted to cry to let my emotions out and feel better, but I didn’t feel like I could cry because I’ve been taught to never cry. Man up, was what I would hear.
But from holding back my tears, I would have panic attacks at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. I did not tell anyone about it, thinking they would judge me, especially after everything with my friends. Moreover, because it is taboo talk about mental health here in India, especially as a man. So I kept it to myself for the next 18 months.
I was around 17 or 18 by then, and it all just piled up. I used to be too skinny and underweight at 86 pounds. I weighed myself and realized I had started to gain skinny-fat at 137 pounds. My grades were in the tank, and the panic attacks had kept coming. I knew I had to make a change.
The Catalyst for Change
I searched online for resources where I could talk to someone, and I found the 7 Cups website. I then tried it out, and I found it really helpful.
You talk to a listener and they help support you through empathy, and just really hearing what your problem is. It inspired me, and I decided to volunteer and become a listener too. Through other people’s experiences, I learned about my own pain and started to feel relieved.
The other thing I did was getting back at bodybuilding. I had tried it before when I was a little younger, but when I was looking for a distraction, it seemed like a perfect fit.
When I was 18, I joined a gym, and lifting helped me feel like I was getting rid of my anxiety in the form of sweat. I started to lose my skinny-fat too, and decided to build muscle.
The Rewards
At this point, through 7 Cups, I’ve had over 1,600 chats with people from 8 years old to 65. I got the abs I was after too. I even reconciled with my friends, who then apologized to me afterwards. I feel like I finally found the power of my voice after it had been hidden for 3 years.
