I am natively from Kota itself, and the first time I heard about IITs was when I was in the 9th grade. Then till 11th, all I knew was that you had to crack an exam to get into an IIT, and I wanted my shot at it. I managed to convince my father to let me sideline 12th boards and spend money to get me coached at Resonance for JEE. The following 2 years were slightly depressing. I couldn’t crack JEE in my first attempt, but I got a good enough rank after repeating a year to earn admission in IIT Kanpur in the MTH department.
My academic performance was average in college from the 1st year itself. I had failed in ESC101 and MTH101. Being from a reserved category, I was told that the competition would be difficult for me to handle and I was under pressure to perform well right from the start. My performance never really improved significantly and it was always a struggle.
Socially, I always felt cut-off from the rest of my peers and outside friend circles too as I always had a bit of insecurity and underconfidence. In my first semester, I managed to make only one or two friends. To be fair it’s not very probable to find your type of people among your ‘behens’, you have to hunt for friends. I had little to none contact with the batchmates and seniors of my department (MTH), and I think that added to my academic struggles. The situation improved in the second semester as I joined athletics and was able to make a few friends there and a good group was in formation. But in the fourth semester, I got overwhelmed with academic work in the form of departmental courses and had to quit athletics.
I entered into the first romantic relationship of my life with a fellow Athletics teammate in my second year which started out as extremely time-consuming. I couldn’t give enough time to my demanding academics, my co-curricular activities, or my newly made female friends hence destroying my social life completely. Even though he was introverted and resisted sharing personal things, he had a lot of friends thanks to crowded wings in the male hostels. So he never had to face the problem of isolation that I had to. Even academically, he used to perform decently well.
Entering our 3rd year and realizing higher amounts of pressure caused by internships, he started focussing on his studies and spending more time with his friends, ignoring me completely. He used to avoid seeing me, which was very difficult for me since now I didn’t have the few friends I used to in my second year. I couldn’t handle the abrupt change. My new room was isolated from the rest of my batch and I didn’t even talk to my roommate, let alone the neighbors. My semester was overloaded with courses that I had dropped in my 2nd year.
One day, we had a fight and I left the room in a state of anger to go cycle around in order to calm down. When I returned to my room, I saw my broken trophy, glass stained by a banana, and other things thrown around lying in a messed-up room. I was very angry and disturbed by his behavior and it made me realize I needed to get a handle on things. I was able to make two to three PG friends doing their masters at the time so I did have people to talk to, but they were only there for a year more.
Due to some bad decision making, I took up five compulsory departmental courses in my fifth semester which resulted in me failing 3 out of the 5 courses. My only priority now was finishing my degree on time. That December brought some of the lowest days of my college life as I was facing monumental academic and personal problems. Sitting at my home, I texted him saying that I wanted to break up since I was feeling very sad and irritated. He started crying about how he has some family issues and that he even missed the Inter IIT tryouts because of the bad mood I put him in. Since I was not determined enough to break up, I gave in and decided not to and he later admitted that he didn’t go to the tryouts because he didn’t think he would get selected (which was a fair self-assessment :p, but I couldn’t demotivate him). Now, I think that he just tried to manipulate me and used my kindness to his advantage.
More fights occurred after I got back for the sixth semester. In a fit of anger, he slapped me and said that I should never even think of breaking up. At that time, I did not pay much heed to the incident. I went to the Counselling Service to improve the state of my mental health and the counselor asked me to visit her with my boyfriend and so I did but he wasn’t interested in the process at all. The counselor gave us a task. She asked us to write down the problems and expectations which we had with the relationship on a piece of paper and to share them with each other regularly. He didn’t do the task even after the multiple times I asked him to. He used to break down and start crying about how I’ll break up with him and that just saddened me more. He used to lock himself in his room for long intervals of time and miss all his lectures. And it was always up to me to console him.
He refused to break up and he refused to make an effort to improve our equation, and I felt completely helpless. So I thought, focus on the semester for now. My previous PG friends graduated, but I did make a new one over the sixth semester and summers, so I used to talk to her about my troubling issues.
The seventh semester arrived, and he was still ignoring me. I understood that placements were near and he needed to prepare, so I didn’t try to cause more breakdowns or drama. My birthday arrived in August, and I was rightfully angry since he hadn’t even wished me. I asked him to go to the mall with me, but he barely showed any interest. So I decided not to bother him and went with a male friend of mine, leaving my room unlocked. He called me, and I could tell by his tone that he was very angry. When I came back to my room, everything was already a mess. This time my laptop was broken, along with some lights I had put up. He came by later to tell me that he was waiting for me on the road and if we had taken that route, he would have beaten up my friend then and there.
Another disturbing incident I remember is when we were walking on the road near GH1 and we had an argument, which led to him hitting me on the head. Even then I was the one who had to get over it and console him by saying that “it’s okay” and “just do not do it again” to stop him from feeling bad about it.
By the time the placement season ended, I was very afraid of him and his temper and extremely distressed due to the aforementioned incidents. Our equation didn’t improve, and he didn’t pay heed to any of my requests. I was really scared at that time and I started trying my best to avoid his anger but similar scarring incidents and arguments kept taking place.
I found breaking up on campus impossible because I had no support there. No one to talk to. Whenever I hinted at breaking up, he used to throw a fit of anger and start misbehaving with me until the point where I had to give up. I used to hope that somehow things would improve in the future. That maybe he would be supportive in the future and start understanding my problems. I truly believed that people can change for good. But things only worsened. He used to feel very insecure and would try to manipulate me in those bouts of insecurity. I started to feel like I was out of control of my own life.
Our relationship slowly deteriorated even further after graduation. He was in Gurgaon for his job, while I was preparing for UPSC in Delhi. Whatever little conversations we had were only through text. All conversations finally stopped after Aug 2019, a year after my graduation.
When we broke up, he shifted all blame to me, even I started blaming myself thinking it was all my fault and how I had hurt him. Only by December when I found more about him, did I finally realize how manipulative and abusive he had actually been, both physically and emotionally. I hit a new low realizing this, realizing that I am not the one to blame.
I still am in a healing phase. When you have invested 4-5 years of your life in one person and they have impacted you in such a way, only God knows how long it would take to eventually feel free and normal again. When I made the public post in the Y14 group, I found support from friends who had also gone through this. I found three male friends who were extremely helpful in the process. They used to uplift me, listen to all of my rants, and steer me away from negative thoughts. Whenever I wanted to call my ex-boyfriend, knowing very well how abusive and toxic he was, they always convinced me not to. I guess maybe because of them I could come out of this phase relatively easily. I talked to counselors on the YourDost app recently, and that has also helped me manage. I used to suffer from insomnia but I started running again and I am in a much better state now.
I learned quite a lot from my experiences. First and foremost, it is essential to have friends of the same gender, batch, and department. You must identify supportive friends who would help you without being judgemental. When I used to talk to my only friend about the problems, she would shift all blame and guilt on me as if I was the one with all the faults but you need people around to tell you that you are not. Friends should at least understand when something wrong is happening.
Secondly, never invest so much in one person and never trust anyone blindly. I still remember this one time I got full marks in a quiz and he would not believe me. He always blamed me for all our problems. Do not keep such negative people around yourself.
Third, maybe rather than being too optimistic, you should be prepared with backups if things get really bad. Also, always devote time and genuine effort to academics 🙂
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If you want to reach out to me anonymously for some sort of advice, fill the form at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVK-foymEnnYPw_jTWgSnue16R9mdzj1grH2bUNUCi2rTJeg/viewform?usp=sf_link
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Credits: Soumyadeep Datta, Ankur Banga, Aayush Priyadarshi, Shiven Tripathi, Tanya Arya
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