STORYTELLING- Mental health during pandemic

This is a story of a teenage girl name Arohi Singhal. She has a great family  and has many of friends too. She was quite popular in her school because of her friendly and helpful nature. She was just about to complete her 12th  in  year 2020. But then this pandemic happened and some of her exam got  postponed and later on cancelled. She got promoted with 85% marks less than she expected.

Arohi and her family suffered and changed a lot during  this pandemic. She realized that she has lots of friends but at the end of the day she has none to talk to.

Arohi’s mother is an extrovert women but due to lockdown she has to stay home and as the time passed. She got addicted to using her phone and this also affected her behavior and her behavioral  change also  affected her  other family members.

All alone at the home all the time she started to feel depressed. She lost so much weight that she started to look pale.

Arohi wasn’t able to share her feeling to anyone because she used to think no one will understand her situation. Then very famous Sushant Singh Rajput’s case happened and everyone started talking about importance of mental health and all. Her friend Shivani was one of them who was talking about mental health at that time. So she taught she should talk to her  and tell  her what’s she is going through before it gets worse.

Arohi told her about family drama, her anxiety  and how she feels so alone. Shivani listened to her very patiently. Arohi felt too good and quite confident after that.

A month passed, Arohi was in her school to collect her 12th marksheet and other documents. She met a lot of  her friends and classmates there that day. Everything was happy-ish  until one of her classmate with whom Arohi was not on a talking terms started to call her mad and started making fun of her weight.

Arohi got anxiety attack after listening all these talks about her. Shivani broke her trust.

Arohi’s condition got worse. She can’t even tell her family members as her family already had their own problems.

3 months later, she got a call from unknown number.

*She picked*

Arohi: Hello??

Person:  Hii!! Is this Arohi speaking?

Arohi: Yes, who are you?

Person: okayy!! So some people are so busy now a day that they don’t even recognize…..uhh!! What should i say….Ahh!! their former Best friend.

Arohi: ( a genuine and sweet smile come on her face)  Mayank??

Mayank: thank god.. finally you recognized me. By the way where are you right now? I want to meet you it’s been a while we haven’t hangout.

Arohi: Umm… I am not well. Can we meet any other day?

Mayank:  Actually No because i am right outside of your house.

Arohi: Really?! ok  then come on in.

( Mayank was Arohi’s once upon a time best friend/crush. He left the town after high school so they stopped talking eventually)

Arohi doesn’t wanted to meet anyone at that but she could not say no to mayank.

they hangout for a while. Arohi didn’t talked much she just listened to mayank.

Then at night she got call from mayank again.

*She picked*

Mayank:  is something  wrong happened with you?

Arohi: What do you mean?

Mayank: the Arohi i knew , she was not that much quite. She was so talkative. That’s why I asked what’s wrong? Tell me!!

( Arohi started crying as after a long time someone tried to understand her and simply asked how is she)

Shivani is one of the people who does things out of trend as it was only trend to talk about mental health at that time because of some celebrity did suicide.

But Mayank genuinely called her friend may be they stopped talking after sometime but at that time it doesn’t matter. Arohi must have felt better after talking to him even after an hour.

The Covid-19 pandemic have negatively affected many people’s health and worsen the condition for people already suffering from mental illness.

Many relationships broken during this time out of no reason.  Home sexual assault increased. People’s mental health Detroit’s during pandemic.

We all have faced or facing some kind of stress  during pandemic. No matter it’s big or small we should talk about it to our loved ones.