the DaRKness was blinding

My Story (CONTD.)

My best friend, the one who had laughed, played guitar, and dreamed beside me just a day earlier, had taken his own life.

He was only twenty.

Something inside me shattered that day.

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The Early Cracks

For as long as I can remember, I battled silent enemies: sadness, anxiety, and a crippling lack of confidence.

It didn’t begin with my friend’s death.
When I finally paused and looked back, I realized the first cracks had formed long before, when I was just a little boy.

At seven, I was sent away to boarding school — a “prestigious” place meant to secure my future.
But to me, it felt like abandonment.
One day I was home, safe and loved; the next, I was a small boy lost among cold walls, harsh rules, and unfamiliar faces.

I didn’t cry. I adapted.

Because I had no other choice.
That place taught me how to survive, but it also planted a seed of emptiness deep within me.

By my late teens, that emptiness had grown into something darker.
After a scolding from the headmaster one afternoon, I remember walking out beneath a giant oak tree. The sunlight filtered through the leaves, but I felt no warmth. Something inside me broke that day — quietly, permanently.

It wasn’t the reprimand.

It was years of silence and suppression collapsing under their own weight.
That was the true beginning of my battle with depression.

For more than two decades after, I lived imprisoned, not behind bars, but inside my own mind.

Depression. Anxiety. Fear.

They became my silent companions.
Life felt like a losing hand, and I truly believed there was no reshuffling the deck.

Looking back now, those years blur together in fragments: sleepless nights, blank walls, a fog that refused to lift.

But this isn’t a story about despair. It’s a story about hope.
About learning to rewire a broken mind.
About finding courage where there once was none.

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The Descent

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Some days, I managed to function. Other days, I was drowning.

I felt unwanted. Unseen.

I tried to open up once — I told my mother, “I think I’m depressed.”
Her eyes filled with fear. “Don’t talk like that,” she said.
And just like that, the door to vulnerability slammed shut.

So I stopped talking.

Instead, I hid behind music and art — songs soaked in sorrow, poems no one would read.
One of those songs, written at seventeen, still echoes in my mind:

“Stare out of my windowpane into dark and endless emptiness,
And all I hear is the sound of the rain…”

The pain never really left, I just learned to numb it.

When a friend handed me two blue pills and said, “You’ll feel better,” I believed him.
And for a while, I did.
The pills, the coffee, the endless nights of music, they blurred the pain, but never healed it.

Then came the loss that broke me completely — my best friend’s death.

Grief didn’t just hurt.

It annihilated.

I locked myself away, haunted by nightmares and guilt.
Every morning, I woke up gasping for air.

Anxiety. Panic. Paranoia.

No matter what I tried, nothing worked.

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The Turning Point

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And yet, even in the deepest darkness, a flicker of life remained.

It was December 2018.

I was alone in my living room, kneeling on the floor, when I finally broke.
With tears streaming down my face, I cried out to God — really cried out.
I asked Him to take away the shroud of sadness that followed me everywhere.
And in that moment, something extraordinary happened.

A warmth, almost electric, filled my body from head to toe.
An indescribable peace replaced the heaviness I had carried for years.
I knew, right then, that I had been touched by something divine.

When I stood up, I wasn’t the same person anymore.

Even my wife noticed the change.
Suddenly, I was joyful. Outgoing. Confident.
It was as if light had broken through after decades of night.

At first, people thought it was temporary — “a phase.”
But months turned into years, and the joy remained.

Family, friends, and even strangers began to ask, “What happened to you?”
That’s when I knew — I had to share it.

Because I know what it’s like to live in darkness.
And I know how simple — not easy, but simple — it can be to step into the light.
It begins with surrender, with crying out to God and letting Him rebuild you from within.

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The Rebirth

Healing wasn’t about pretending or forcing fake smiles.

It was about making a daily decision: to choose gratitude, faith, and hope — again and again.
I began journaling, praying, speaking life aloud, and looking for beauty in small things.

At first, my family laughed when I’d grin at grey skies and say, “What a beautiful day!”
But I wasn’t being naïve. I was being free.

The Spirit of God was moving through me, healing wounds I thought would never close.
Pain no longer defined me.

I was being remade — from the inside out.

Today, people see me smiling, laughing, radiating positivity, and assume I’ve always been this way.
They don’t see the years of despair, the sleepless nights, or the moments I almost gave up.
But maybe that’s the point.

Because my story isn’t just about pain, it’s about hope.
It’s about courage.
It’s about the fierce, relentless choice to live when everything in you once screamed to give up.

And if there’s one thing I want you to know, it’s this:

Your story is not over yet.
You’re still in the middle of it.

And sometimes, all it takes is one moment of surrender — one decision — to change everything.

Be strong. Be courageous.

Vikram