🌊 Falling Apart to Rise Again – A Lesson in Kindness and Inclusion

Inclusion.
It’s a word that sounds warm, hopeful like a promise that everyone belongs somewhere.
But what happens when that belonging is taken away not by strangers, but by people you thought would understand?

Sometimes, the hardest inclusion to practice is accepting yourself when the world has already decided you’ve failed.

This is my story of how judgment, silence, and a little kindness changed me and how I learned that inclusion begins within.

🌧️ When Dreams Shatter Quietly

I used to be the girl who had everything planned.
Pass 10th. Get into engineering. Graduate, land a stable job, earn well, make everyone proud.
That’s what I believed “success” looked neat, predictable, and respectable.

But life, as it often does, had other plans.

Somewhere in my second year of engineering, the excitement turned into exhaustion. The numbers stopped making sense. My grades dipped, my motivation fell, and soon, the whispers began.

“She couldn’t handle it.”
“Didn’t she want to be an engineer?”
“Another one who gave up.”

By the time I decided to switch to Arts, I wasn’t just leaving a degree, I was leaving behind an identity everyone had built for me.

People talked behind my back. Some relatives gave pitying smiles. Others simply said I’d wasted a seat someone else deserved. And slowly, that noise got inside me.
I began to believe them.

Guilt sat heavy on my chest, like a weight I couldn’t drop. Every morning, I woke up tired, not from doing too much, but from feeling too much.

I’d scroll through my phone, read a book, write a few lines, and retreat back into silence. The world outside felt too sharp, too noisy.

When someone told me, “You should get some fresh air,” I’d step out for a walk, find my way to the Devi temple nearby. Standing there, I’d whisper silent prayers, not for success but for peace.

Nights were kinder. The world went quiet, and it was just me and my books.
They didn’t judge. They didn’t compare. They just held space for me to exist.

🍂 Drowning in Guilt

As weeks turned into months, isolation became my routine. I overate to fill the emptiness, gained weight, and the comments began again.

“What happened to you?”
“You’ve really let yourself go.”

Every remark dug a little deeper into the wound I was already trying to heal.
The worst part? I started to believe I was the problem, not my situation, not my choices, but me.

The guilt of switching streams turned into guilt for not being “good enough” in any way.
I wasn’t studying. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t moving forward.

It felt like I was living inside a fog, confused, shattered soul unsure how to walk out.

🌤️ The Kindness That Pulled Me Back

And then came my sister – my voice of reason when my own had gone silent.

She didn’t offer sympathy. She offered truth.
She looked me in the eye and said,

“I’m here for you. You are switching once, and that’s fine. But once you join arts, you’ll have to complete it. You are not a quitter. Prove this to everyone and I’m here for you.”

That sentence broke something inside me – the wall of guilt, the belief that I wasn’t capable of finishing anything.

Her words were firm, but they were wrapped in faith.
For the first time in months, I felt seen, not as a failure, but as someone worth believing in.

And sometimes, that’s all it takes: one person who refuses to let you drown.

🌸 The Road to Rising

Then came the pandemic.
Just as I thought I was beginning to rebuild, the world shut down again.

Isolation returned, but this time, it felt different. There was quiet, yes, but there was also purpose.
I had finally joined my Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. Classes were online, but they gave my days structure.

Every morning, I had somewhere to be, even if it was a virtual classroom. Every lecture reminded me that I had chosen this, that I was exactly where I needed to be.

Arts didn’t feel like a compromise anymore. It felt like home.

Through those months, I learned that sometimes, the detours lead you exactly where you belong.
I wasn’t the “girl who failed at engineering” anymore. I was the girl who survived the storm and found a gentler dream waiting for her on the other side.

💖 What Kindness and Inclusion Truly Mean

This journey taught me that kindness isn’t always soft, sometimes it’s the strength someone lends you when you’ve lost your own.

And inclusion? It’s not just about welcoming others into your circle. It’s also about not shutting yourself out of your own life.

I realized that inclusion starts the moment you stop apologizing for being human, for being lost, for making mistakes, for choosing differently.

People will gossip. They’ll judge. But their words don’t define you.
Your actions do. Your persistence does. Your rise does.

You owe it to yourself to include yourself in the list of people worthy of kindness.

Because sometimes, the bravest act of inclusion is to look in the mirror and whisper :

“Yes, I fell apart. But I rose again. And I still belong.”

📌 This post is a part of ‘Currents of Kindness Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters blog hop series.