About Me- Tejasvi Roy
I’m scared to write this because I don’t know who I am yet
The moment I decided to write about myself, my mind started wandering in directions it did not want to go to as if it was scared about the wounds it might see again.
But “we like doing difficult things here.”
You and I are on this journey to figure out who I think I am. Let’s get started-
I am a kind, confused, lost, and a loving 25-year-old who is figuring out her life. Writing makes me happy even now I’m smiling while typing this article. I love reading books, and it has literally saved me, along with therapy.
I have been in therapy since March 2022 because of a clinical diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. I like to mention this about myself because without this condition I would have never known who I truly am, why I do what I do, and why I am feeling what I am feeling.
Life in general has been abandoning and turbulent for me. I often hurt my mind by exerting unimaginable pressure to dig out good and bad memories from my childhood. Don’t get me wrong, my childhood wasn’t unhappy or horrible. It was alright with a kid who was always looking for validation from everyone.
All I remember from that time is being lonely even around people. I never felt seen, heard, important, or prioritized by anybody.
It felt like I was present but was invisible to others and more importantly to myself. I had no sense of self.
The worst part about my childhood is the memories because I don’t seem to remember most of it. I realized it when I started having mental health issues. Unintentionally, I had suppressed most of my childhood, thereby remembering only a few bad memories. It still haunts me.
I hope you encourage vulnerability because that’s the only way I know how to communicate. Let’s talk about a few things that I love-
You know that feeling you get when you discover something new and it comes so naturally to you that it hits you hard and you know ‘this is your calling.” You love that feeling and want to feel it again.
That’s how I felt when I wrote my first poem in college.
Honestly, I don’t remember how I wrote it, all I can recall is it just came to me without any effort. Probably, the pain of my mother’s sudden demise and my first romantic heartbreak needed an outlet.
Since then, I have been writing. Here, I’m happily talking to you, today. Truly, I consider myself extremely lucky to have found my passion so early in life. Even the universe was helping me when I stumbled onto freelance writing via LinkedIn. Guess what, that’s what I do for a living.
Talking about love- I share a bittersweet relationship with myself.
Imagine a 20-year-old girl with frustratingly low self-esteem and self-confidence falling into the pit of depression. That was me.
You might have heard people saying pain shapes you and makes you stronger. There is no lie there but the strength comes after hitting rock bottom. The sudden death of my beloved parents at an early age made me spineless. After all, you feel like an orphan when you have no family.
I was in denial for years and I didn’t know it but it all came crashing during COVID when I started having anxiety and panic attacks. All the pain started coming out as anger and rage. I didn’t even know what was happening to me but I became desperate for love and attention. I wanted somebody to hold me but no one understood why I was lashing out. My friends and family started distancing themselves from me. I felt abandoned.
You know discovering anxiety and panic attacks for the first time is like entering a rabbit hole where you are running and crawling haphazardly, frantically trying to find a way and get out of it before it consumes you.
It took me a year and a half of unbearable suffering to finally gather the courage to see a doctor. The realization that “I’m not okay” hit me hard and that was my breaking point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. The pain was smothering me and drowning me and I needed something to hold me to stay afloat.
That’s when therapy entered my life.
Since then, I have been clobbered, broken, healed, shattered again, abused, manipulated, and started my life from scratch over and over. Most people spend their early 20’s partying, chilling, and making their career. I spent in fear and despair, hibernating inside my four walls alone and dealing with everything and nothing for 2 years till I was ready this year to give myself and my life another chance.
Don’t get me wrong- there were some beautiful moments too but when you have cried more than you have smiled you often overlook the happy moments. I’m proud of the fact that I never felt inclined towards drugs or alcohol to numb my pain. I chose the harder way. Feeling, dealing, and healing.
All I had was my will to not give up, some amazing friends, books, and my therapist.
2024 has been my Healing Era
This year, I started living for myself. I started eating right, swimming, and creating talking reels on Instagram. There were moments of weakness but I had only a handful of panic attacks this year which is a huge progress for someone like me who had multiple panic attacks every week for almost 2 years.
I was able to feel my emotions and navigate them the right way without self-destruction.
Here’s a glimpse of my where you can see the love I have for books in the reels section. My community loves me a lot. I feel blessed.
I started reading fiction novels in the 10th grade. I fell in love with reading. Somehow, I stopped in my college days because I lost interest in reading or even buying books. Thankfully, one of the best moments of 2022 was when I picked up reading again and I have been reading ever since.
Books might be a source of entertainment for people. But for me, they are my safe space. They calm my mind instantly and all the voices in my head just vanish.
Reading books truly saved me from myself.
Why fiction you would ask- I get to vicariously live different lives through the lives of so many characters. I cry, shy, float, swim, run, vanish, love, kill, make mistakes, do magic, do amazing things, do horrible things, and do everything with them and really live in ways that are unfortunately not possible in real life. Books are just always there for me and I can travel through books.
When I’m not reading or writing I’m hanging out with myself. I love being by myself. Though it started because I had nobody back then, now, I have truly started to enjoy my company.
I love watching podcasts about self-improvement, marketing, and health. My day is incomplete without listening and dancing to music. I also like to buy books, travel solo, and explore non-touristy places.
I have bared my heart in front of you and there is a lot more to me that you will see on Medium.
Here, I will be talking about books, marketing, writing, mental health, realizations, mistakes, and everything that shakes me enough to start tapping the keyboard keys.
I hope you liked reading about my journey. I would love to know you as well.
Hey, beautiful human,
I hope you are having an amazing day. If not remember-
This too shall pass.
