The silent storm 🌩️

⚠️ TW: Mentions of mental health and grief ⚠️

📢 Hi everyone! If you’ve read any of my past articles, you’d see that this one is quite different from the rest. In honour of National Grief Day 🎗️, I present to you a short story about the monstrous fight inside. It’s horrible how this pain is dismissed so frequently, even by professionals but it remains true that silent battles are the harshest of battles. So here’s to everyone that kept going for another second, another minute, another day, another fight. Much power to you, never forget that you’re worthy of love. Worthy of happiness. Worthy of life. Happy reading :)❤️

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

‘’To live without hope, is to cease to live’’- Dale Carnegie

Right from the very beginning, she knew that she was different, her mistake was that she looked at her uniqueness as a flaw, rather than embracing it.

As the eldest daughter of first-generation Canadian immigrants, Sukhanisa, Sakshu for short, definitely fit the sanskara meaning of her name; divinity and grace. Underneath her bubbly, extroverted personality, she had an itching sensation, a hum at the back of her head voicing that she simply did not fit in. She managed to push through this repetitive anthem that played at the back of her head until she had to face a huge shift in her life.

She moved alongside her Mother, Padmashri, and her younger sister, Bhavya, across the ocean, in a plane that was nothing but a foreign piece of metal and paint to them. This family came all the way to Canada, mercilessly fleeing from Uttar Pradesh, a small village in India. They left as soon as their mother financially could, they had to as the horrid caste system managed to engulf their family for years, controlling their lives, similar to how a puppet master would.

She, a brown-eyed and academically excelling seventh grader saw evident differences between her and her peers as she walked into her first day at her new middle school. As Sakshu skipped energetically into her first-period class, her previously confident, head-held-high attitude tumbled like a Jenga game. She started to shiver while all the hope she had within herself, drained.

She knew that she was not like others, physically, mentally or emotionally in this foreign country that was now, her so-called home. This sudden fog of doubt within her only got worse after the initial murky-feeling incident in class.

To her, everyone else seemed so highly accomplished from their clothes to the way they wore their hair. They seemed poised with perfect postures and tight-knit families, something she thought she gravely lacked in. In her eyes, Sakshu was just ‘’that one brown girl,’’ in the middle of a community that seemed to accept only a specific type of person. She was the one who oiled her hair and wore it in braids, that one that preferred traditional clothes for their fabric and embroidery over other styles, the girl who packed authentic Indian food filled with a variety of spices and strong aroma for lunch, the girl who…the girl who she no longer thought was good enough.

This train of thought was something Sakshu carried with her well on after school. It followed her around, stalking her, affecting her psyche at job interviews, potlucks, parties and above all, in the tender realm of self-confidence. When in social situations, she never felt comfortable being true to herself, fearing it would cause more harm than good. She so desperately wanted to be like the ‘’others’’ so far so, that she eventually lost sight of who she truly was. No doubt that she was gorgeous. From the way her hazel eyes glistened in the sun, dark curls of hair bouncing around her shoulders to the way her melanated skin spiked envy in others and how her kind words managed to brighten even the worst of days, she was a true masterpiece, but to her, she only saw her shortcomings.

This mindset of Sakshu’s, the heinous cloud of self-doubt intertwined with anxiety is undoubtedly one of mankind’s biggest weaknesses. Any other animal would never self-inflict harm upon themselves, but, as intelligent as humans are, this phenomenon holds us back. Such can be compared to a fish in a starved fisherman’s coiled net, trying to escape but alas, not having the necessities to do so.

Sakshu never learned to overcome this way of thought, thus, it gnawed away at the backbone of her pride, taking every ounce of grit she had with it. She never learnt to see herself the way she authentically was, the way she deserved, something that held her back from a truly beautiful, prodigious life.

In the end, the saying remains true, no matter the enemy someone is faced with, an internal war within themselves will always be the greatest of villains, the harshest of battles and, the most silent of sufferings.

If you relate to this story in any way, remember that you are not alone. The grief, the internalized pain isn’t something that will feel like the weight of the world every single day. Even though it’s hard, you have the power to get better.

Here are some resources for anyone struggling:

💡Global resources: https://www.befrienders.org/

💡Toronto Distress Centres: 416-408–4357

💡Canadian Suicide Hotline: 1–833–456–4566

💡American Suicide Hotline: 1-833-456-4566

💡Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668–6868

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