“Being challenged in life is inevitable, but being defeated is optional”
-Roger Crawford
Challenges come to test our mettle and our determination. When we overcome them, we come out a better person on the other side. A fighter becomes the best of all only when he/she keeps fighting.I was what can be called overweight in my middle and high school years. With that came the fat jokes, the fat taunts, the pranks that sounded funny to the ones doing them but were plain cruel to me. Surely being locked in a bathroom stall to see if I can fit won’t sound funny to me. I stopped eating to lose weight. Nothing really worked. I stopped meeting people, attending classes and my grades dropped. My life turned worse when I hit puberty. I seemed to have more body hair than most girls, gained weight faster. The bad turned worse. I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). People found more things to laugh at now. With my board exams looming, I was what could best be described at below average. One day, a classmate came up to me and ridiculed me to the extent that I broke down. A teacher saw me crying in a corner, she came up to me and said,” The more you cry, the more they’ll make you cry. Fight.” Something had hit hard that day. The medicines that I was taking had their own side effects including weight gain. After consulting my doctor, I decided to go off medicines. I completely changed my lifestyle. I exercised, I ate healthy food, I stopped all junk food and my body started changing for better and I became healthier. My aim now was to score well in my board exams. I could concentrate better and eventually fared far better than most of my classmates who had left no stone upturned to bully me.
Another huge challenge I overcame was something that almost sounds straight out of a film. I was on my way to my office to meet my clients. It was a big day for me since I was about to seal a really good project for my company. On the way to office, it was raining heavily, the cab that I was in skidded on the road and hit an oncoming truck head on. It all happened so fast that when I gained my senses, I could see that I was bleeding profusely from my mouth. My lower lip had split into two and my front tooth was broken. It all felt like a daze. A good Samaritan who was incidentally a Pantaloons employee took me in his cab to the hospital where I received 14 stitches on my lip. Although, I had no major injuries, I knew the meeting I had was of extreme importance. I met my clients via Skype and explained the situation. They were also extremely accommodating on their end and my work went through in the end.
All of these experiences had taught me one thing: You are defeated only when you accept defeat.