{"id":18555,"date":"2020-09-30T10:24:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T04:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/?post_type=post&p=18555"},"modified":"2025-10-07T10:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T05:25:12","slug":"lockdown-diaries-jana-shamira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/lockdown-diaries-jana-shamira","title":{"rendered":"Lockdown Diaries Nominee#31 How the lockdown helped me find myself By Jana Shamira"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"lockdown\"<\/div>\n
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This pandemic was the most unexpected thing for all of us. We spent our whole 2019 saying that 2020 will be a better year. To an extent, it is, at least for me. This lockdown gave me time to work on myself. I do not usually talk about this has it is a sensitive subject, not even my parents know but ever since middle school, 7th grade to be exact. At some point, it got so bad that I was close to taking my own life, I probably would not be here writing this if it weren\u2019t for my cousin. I honestly no longer know what caused my depression in the first place, and I don\u2019t want to know honestly speaking. For years, I thought I was worthless and a disappointment, it did not help that things at home were not that great. My parents and I always fought. I hate to admit this but at some point, I highly disliked my dad and I thought that hey, at least I have mom until the day she did something that made me feel so betrayed.<\/p>\n

Imagine that, being so young and going through so much already. I distanced myself from my parents a bit and decided to pretend like I was not hurting. I believe I have been doing that ever since I was small. To forget my problems, I would always help my friends with their problems. Well that would only work during the day and at night I would be upset again, hearing voices in my head saying negative things, I even lost touch with God for a while. I started to not trust people with my true feelings and 60% of the time wore a fake smile. I just wanted to disappear and the pain to end, I ignored my feelings so much that I became numb by 10th grade. I no longer cried, I didn’t even cry when my grandfather passed away, I told myself crying was a weakness and started to believe it. In 11th grade, I got back to going to church and tried to find ways to get better without my parents knowing.<\/p>\n

It worked for a while but it wasn’t enough since I did not have time to think for myself, not that I gave myself time anyway the beginning of the lockdown,70% of the time if not 80%, I was alone and bored, I could not focus on anything not even Netflix believe it or not. My mind started to take over, feelings from the past resurfaced so I decided to finally face them. I started to write them down, started to exercise to feel better about my body, ignored messages, and Instagram at times. I finally let myself feel. I started reading the Bible, spoke to God about my feelings, worked on my art skills, and studied more. Slowly, I started to come back to the old yet new me, even worked on my relationship with my parents, which is slowly getting better.<\/p>\n

If it weren\u2019t for the break lockdown is giving me, I probably would have relapsed again. I now focus on myself and my studies more. There is nothing more important to me than making a name for myself and maybe one day, make my kids proud. Thanks to this lockdown, I also learned that I am my one and true love. Now, I am more confident about myself more than ever.<\/p>\n

ReachIvy.com organized an online blog\/vlog competition<\/a> to provide people the unique opportunity to share their lockdown stories using their creativity. The competition met with a fantastic response from participants across 4 continents, and our jury has handpicked the Top 50 entries from them for the Popular Choice Award 2020!<\/p>\n

The above entry has been submitted by Jana Shamira from New Delhi. She is a 15-year-old student of GD Goenka World SChool. Kudos to Jana for this beautiful piece!<\/p>\n

Show your support and help Niraja win the contest by liking this blog post on all ReachIvy.com’s social media platforms!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>This pandemic was the most unexpected thing for all of us. We spent our whole 2019 saying that 2020 will be a better year. To an extent, it is, at least for me. This lockdown gave me time to work on myself. I do not usually talk about this has it is a sensitive subject,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[793,756,757],"tags":[705,794,795],"class_list":["post-18555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lockdown-diaries-competition","category-covid","category-covid-19","tag-studyabroad","tag-lockdown","tag-lockdown-diaries"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18555"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22732,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18555\/revisions\/22732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}