The weight of feelings. [Ch. 1]

I arrived in Bangalore today. It was a good journey. Wait, can we call a 2 hr flight a journey? Still, it was good. About Bangalore, really nice place. Awesome weather. It’s been only 8 hrs since I came here and I don’t want to go back. I definitely needed an outing. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step and I think this is my first one. Being at home all these months, it’s been good but mentally I haven’t been sound. The last few months were hard. I’d be going insane if I weren’t busy at my job. It’s been hard for a couple of reasons. Because I’m feeling so good right now, I’ll shed some weight off my heart talking about feelings that were running rampant these months. I need to start from the start to explain how all of it happened. It’ll be a long story.

When I went to college in 2017, getting engaged was the top interest of many students. It’s definitely normal as you’re in peak teen. For me, coming from a bad 12th score and still, guilty about not making it to at least one of the national institutes, it was a bit different. I was enrolled in mechanical engineering, but honestly, I was clueless about what I wanted to be in the future. Fast forward a couple of months, in December we started a small company. It was a clothing company that dealt with custom orders. Along with the company also came many problems. The issue with all the money we borrowed from our friends, and issues with clients and merchants, all came at once. It was too hard for 2 undergraduate students to handle. With this, my mental problems slowly started.

Because the amount was too high for any middle-class student at a state college, we got a verbal notice from our lender friends almost every day to return the money. I’m not good at handling people. My partner handled them and slowly all those verbal notices turned into verbal and physical abuse. It’s definitely our fault, not being good at business and unable to return their money when they asked. I kept thinking about all these and got severe headaches and BP problems from time to time. Sometimes I felt so down and guilty that I didn’t step out of the hostel. All the money I got from home went to pay the lenders. We tried hard to save the company from drowning and kept taking more orders. Eventually, we were able to pay them everything back. From all of this, I became persistent. Going all the way and doing things that initially seemed impossible. I became habituated to hearing difficult things, feeling heavy but still not giving up.

My second year wasn’t that good academically. I was busy saving the company with my partner. When our third year started, all these company stuff went a bit lighter and I met her.

This piece was written on 4th of July 2022. I don’t have time to write eveything at once, so there will be more chapters to this. Thanks for reading.