Hello guys👋🏻 I'm Athira 😉and in this blog I am about to share my battle with OCD, Major depressive disorder and Anxiety.

I am a very positive tomboyish like character when I was a kid and like to be happy☺️.... But everything  changed...

It's exhausting, to pretend to be happy when you are not right? 
So everything starts when I was 10 years old. At first it feels like something terrible is going to happen and I eat a lot all of a sudden and  you feel a push in your chest and hard to breath and those were the initial symptoms. But at first I didn't knew that it's was my anxiety and I thought its OK and it's normal. But things became to be worse in high school and I was bodyshamed and I am a person who really didn't care of others but when depression hits I became to fear of being  judged, I became to change for others expectation. I wear traditional clothes and paint my nails, grew my hair and became silent and thought may be they will love me for that and so that my situations are also going to change. Later I understand most of them loves you only because you are behaving according to their expectation and they don't love you for who you are. When I look myself infront of the mirror I feel I lost myself and its not me. I know that societies expectation, study pressure, stressful environment or anything can contribute risk on depression. For some it may be hereditary. 
I ,like many others I’m sure, used to associate OCD with not being able to leave a room unless the light had been switched on and off a certain amount of times. Or repeatedly counting, an aversion to odd numbers, or consistently cleaning your home. I had this obsessive thoughts. These thoughts are clever, because the voice they are spoken in sounds like your own; they are convincing, realistic and almost always very distressing. Things happen all of a sudden, a voice keep telling you to repeat things that you are doing or else something will happen to someone and you keep repeating things. For instance, if you are cleaning you can't stop the action till the bad thoughts entirely left your mind. But  outside I hit pretty well, Iam a straight A student I participate in school sport and arts team and won student of the year. 
But everything including my personality changes when depression gulped me,it just eats you up from the inside out. It’s like a monster inside your head that takes over. Later I became to experience anxiety, my vision blurs, heart beat rises, your entire body feels shaky and feel dizzy. Sometimes it's really really hard to move and even harder to grab a glass of water. I would come home and feel so exhausted from all of the voices in my head and feel hard to sleep. I didn’t want to wake up because Iam not afraid to die but living is nightmare. I felt sick with the fear of night time because that’s when the voices got even louder. I would get so frustrated because it seemed impossible to sleep, as if insomnia and depression go hand in hand. I feel happy while sleeping because imagination is better than reality. Pretending to be happy for the whole day, but no one literally know what happening inside my bedroom. I simply don't want anyone to know that something bad is happening to me. I became silent as I feel its a way to escape from everything. I trying hard like crazy to make my parents happy and try to be the school topper so that everyone think that I'm doing well. It's like 4 am morning I'm still studying because I couldnt sleep and I keep forgetting things that I study make me so much frustrated. I feel comfortable sitting in darkness and I feel afraid come out from it, because I feel like someone is follow or watching you. Like everyone I also decided to go for help but no one is willing to listen or even try to understand. These constant what ifs I feel fed up and it come to a stage that why Iam not able to say that I'm not okay, like every day feels the same so what is the point of living? You pretend to make everyone happy by hiding your pain which killing you each seconds but if no one really care about your happiness then why should I? I ask these questions myself. Gradually it lead to self harm, suicidal thoughts. I felt as if I had lost myself and wouldn’t ever be the same again. I had no motivation to do anything because I couldn't see a future for myself.Anxiety caused me to believe everyone was faking their love for me. ‘Cheer up’ was the worst thing anyone said to me. But the hardest part is that it's a body try to survive and a mind try to kill yourself. And the scariest part is only you can help YOU .

On a Friday night I wrote a letter to my mom saying what is happening to me because I thought this will work and she will understand . And that's when she really listen everything about how bad it is and I'm suffering so much. And she said its going to be OK... you are thinking about something and tomorrow it is going to be OK, its not a big deal, but I know it is not going to be okay... Because I need help... And I still remember saying to my mom that "I don't think I could keep myself safe". And I know that my parents shocks when they knew how bad its actually was. And that's when i started taking medication and I remember saying to my  doctor that "I didn't necessarily want to die but I knew I need to take a break from all the things that is happening to me and death seems to be the only option and I don't know what to do" . And I remember crying for help.

While having conversation with my doctor my mom cries a lot because that the first time she heard that I self harm myself and I'm suffering so badly, she saw the scars in my hands. Medication helps me a lot that I can manage every sphere of my life I don't know that I still have  it or not but I can live with it.. Accepting yourself is the important thing so that, you feel like you need to get up from bed and do something positive and you need to fight. I'm grateful to everything that I have. And it's ok to feel lost sometimes..

If I want to give one piece of advice to others who are struggling, it would be not to suffer in silence. There are people out there who have been through everything that you are experiencing . In fact, their experiences have made them who they are today. It may seem impossible to overcome but believe me, you will get there. And I want to say everyone out there don't compare anyone and don't judge anyone because you don't know what they are suffering, if you see or feel that someone is suffering from any kind of mental illness be with them and support them is the only thing that you can do and more than that is reach out for help.

If I hadn't been through these things I wouldn’t have learnt that the most important thing in life is to be happy. Be happy for the little things around us. Life is too short enjoy every moment😉.I hope that one day everyone out here will be happy😊
 

Don't feel that you are alone... Fighting.. 🤗

Thank you😊