Arfa T. Chaudhary 
^{Edited by Rabhia Shuja}

In January 2019, someone asked me to start writing, “I can see you can write. You can overcome your anxiety by putting your emotions into words. Tell people around you about these emotions, empathize them with your inner light.”

In April 2018, after having an emotional conversation with my parents at around 1:00 am, I started getting therapy sessions. Over a phone call with my therapist, I told her about things with a shivering voice. The phone in my hand shook and my eyes were filled with tears. I could feel a heaviness settling in my chest, like there was no heart. It felt like I had a stone in my heart.. I can still feel it.

She said, “Arfa, write it away and send it to me on whatsapp.” I was terrified, shivering but I wrote it. Tears were rolling down from my eyes. I could see that I wasn’t able to write proper words. I made spelling mistakes and I couldn’t help but feel like it was a proof of my mental instability back in those days. My therapist wanted me to try this on and off. 

If I get a chance to draw a picture of negative thoughts, I would draw a child sitting in the corner of a room sitting in the dark, hiding his face in his arms. Darkness is like a deep dark night when there is no moon in the sky and no light around. The darkness is covering him from head to toe, from left to right and from the back.. He can’t see anything, he is not feeling anything as he is numb. He doesn’t want to see anything, in this darkness he keeps hiding his face in his arms. This is how my mind interprets it. 

But there is something that I haven’t drawn here with my words. Whenever I go through these negative feelings, I always see a light in front of the boy, like a spotlight. When the spotlight turns on, it spreads and crosses the darkness from left and right and explodes around. The source of the light is the little boy who still has his arms draped around his legs; his face hidden between the comfort of his arms. I don’t have an idea why I always see the light? Why is he not seeing it? Why is the light coming from inside, lighting him while lighting the path in front of him?

This picture always made me more depressed as I wanted to ruin everything. I wanted to scream and run. I wanted to leave everything behind; all that I had been through. I wanted to forget all those moments that made me feel hopeless and useless.

Then I started to put it into words; emotional and full of anger. One night, I was in the same situation, I had a thought, what if I die doing nothing despite this negativity? Would it be better? A voice came from inside, “No! We have one life and we are blessed to have it.” It insisted. “If we have to die once, then why die every day?” 

In those days, there was nothing positive around me or at least, I was unable to feel it. I had spent nights lying on the cold floor in front of my room’s window, staring at the darkness outside. I couldn’t feel the cold, I couldn’t feel the left side of my body because it had been frozen, I couldn’t feel my eyelids because they were swollen… Oh, negativity how powerful you are!

But there is a light inside me which is more powerful than any other negativity. Still, sometimes I encountered it. I was fed up with my therapy sessions. I was unable to continue as these were making me more depressed. I never ever felt any motivation from any motivational speech. I always felt and I still feel there is something missing about these motivational things. Motivation and positivity comes from inside. You can beat your demons when you really want to change yourself. When you want to change your surroundings to make it a better place for you. I have and I am still in the process of beating those demons inside me called negativity. And I can say that I’ve been successful in that phase till now. It just needs courage and self realization. When you attach your happiness with your inner peace and contentment, when you are happy with whatever the situation is, when you have a strong belief mechanism, it will create your way to the positive valley. Self realization is the very first step to be positive and happy. There is no hard and fast rule about it. You can follow any path and even you can create your own optimism bubble. For me, writing about my feelings helped me a lot and it is a very helpful way to have good thoughts in your mind.

Similarly, when I created my first gratitude list, it had a very powerful impact on me, which stayed for more than one week. I was supposed to make it every day as prescribed by my therapist. 

I will conclude with the following.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.