{"id":1154,"date":"2019-11-08T11:57:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T11:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.wordpress.com\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2023-03-31T09:13:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T09:13:38","slug":"take-me-as-i-am-whoever-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I am sure this title would be self explanatory on what I am trying to talk about. It is this series called Modern Love<\/a> that is streaming on Amazon Prime. It was making its rounds on social media and I was intrigued. So I sat down to watch it during some free time. And dayuummmnnnn… Every story hits you right in the gut and puts your heart through a blender. But the one that hit oh so close to home was the one with Anne Hathaway.<\/p>\n

God! I love that woman. That episode dealt with a woman who leads a life with a certain difficulty. It was not what she dealt with that got to me. It was the last few scenes where she confides in with a colleague of hers and the colleague asks her how she feels now that she opened up. And she says it feels like an elephant has taken one of its feet off her chest. It reminded me of the time I began coming out to close friends about my mental health and my past.<\/p>\n

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It was the year 2014 and I had finally found a bunch of people who didn’t judge me for anything and I finally came out saying I was raped when I was 17. I was 24 by the time I was able to open up to anybody about it without fear. I was hesitant but I told them. That was the first time I ever told someone about it. I told them how it all happened and they listened. There was no judgement, there was no blaming, there was no discussion. It happened and I have lived with anxiety and depression due to it. It was one of the reasons I had those problems. That was the beginning point for me and after that there was no turning back. It helped me so much just to open up and say this is why I am the way I am. I did not feel impure or imprisoned by my secrets after that. One of my friends said I should tell my then boy friend about it. He should know, she told me. So me with all the new found courage and liberation this gave me, I told him. He went silent for about a month. He stopped talking to me. After a month he said he didn’t know how to react so he ran away. That was when I realized he was an ass.<\/p>\n

We broke up a year after that. But those friends… They are still there. After that I opened up to my really close school friends and a little while later I put this information up front to anyone who was serious about dating me. Sometime around second or third date I will relay this information so they knew what they were getting into. I wasn’t afraid of rejection or neglect. By that time I had a solid number of friends and they were in it for me. Just me. And didn’t care if I was dealing with mental illness. They supported me through low phases. Times when I had no energy to get out of bed and times when I delved into binge eating. They got it and even if they did not understand it, they did not make me feel miserable about it. I wasn’t alone anymore. Now i have a bunch of people who all know me, as I am and accept me just the way I am.<\/p>\n

I also came out to my brother. He is my support inside the family. He lets me be the way I am and helps me have my space. He does not understand the whole thing clearly. But he is ready to learn. And I appreciate that he tries his level best.<\/p>\n

I am not going to say life isn’t difficult anymore. Life is as difficult as it can be. It is dark and gloomy and cloudy. But now I am not afraid of getting drenched in the rain. Because now I look forward to the little bouts of sunshine that breaks through the clouds once in a while. It gives me hope. I am happy to see the rays of sun hitting my face every now and then reminding me of its presence. I now have an understanding family. They do not understand how mental health or my illness works. But they know when to let me be. I now have amazing friends who check up on me when I go silent and lay low. And now I have someone I really like who wants to stick by my side no matter what. I may not see the whole happiness now. But I can see that it is here and there. All because I let the elephant take one of its legs off my chest!<\/p>\n

I am 28 now. It took me this long to come out public with all of this. Do I have some amount of fear as to how people might view me after this? Yes. I do. But it is okay. Fortunately or unfortunately this is part of my life. My past, my health, my body, my mind. All of it makes me who I am.<\/p>\n

Now I wear my past proudly on my sleeves. I don’t shy away from declaring any of it. It happened. Yes! So what?<\/p>\n

I am here at this juncture of my life because of how my life has been all along. Because of every single choice and every single turn I took. I do not regret any of it. And honestly I don’t regret how I am today. Any day I would call myself strong because not many can endure my life the way I did. So I am proud now. And I think that is okay. I still have to work on a lot of things. It is a slow process but I am working on them and I have a lot of help through the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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I am sure this title would be self explanatory on what I am trying to talk about. It is this series called Modern Love that is streaming on Amazon Prime. It was making its rounds on social media and I was intrigued. So I sat down to watch it during some free time. And dayuummmnnnn……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1040],"tags":[44,59,62,272,560,618,634],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinionated-reviews","tag-amazon-prime","tag-anne-hathaway","tag-anxiety","tag-depression","tag-lexi","tag-mental-health","tag-modern-love"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":145,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aratrikaspeaks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}