There used to be a time when I could not bear to be social because it was draining and exhausting. I would feel lonely and alone in my struggles.

I would struggle with feelings and pain that were not even mine to begin with. It was more painful because no one understood me or what I was going through. 

I would feel so much that most of the time it was painful like physical pain searing through my body. I was called “too sensitive” or “ajeeb (weird)” because I would talk about feelings and intuition and dreams like they were real because they were real to me. I could feel emotions so strongly like you would feel a person or an object.

I gradually learnt that it was unacceptable to most people, that its not okay to talk about your feelings. So I shut down and with time it created a huge split within me. I would be a completely different person socially but I knew deep down that wasn’t me.

With time, I began to lose touch with the real me. The emotions kept affecting me, I kept ignoring them and they kept growing like poison in my body which led to physical pain and illness later.

On the surface, I started to feel like an “imposter” and I could no longer fathom why.
​I couldn’t make genuine connections with people because I no longer had any connection with myself. I didn’t know what being connected felt like because you need emotions to feel connected and I had shut that box down.