Life’s great as it is. Every time I look back at the year that passed, I’m reminded that things could get a whole lot worse. 2025 hit a little different.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t come across happy stories in 2025. Maybe for another time.
A stark reminder that life’s been great despite a few challenges.
- A friend whose saving had been depleted by her family on wasteful expenditure while her brother’s salary remained untouched.
- A student who’s the sole breadwinner at his home after his dad. Working multiple jobs and taking on loans for an event only for the outcome to be less than ideal.
- A random Google search to learn more about a man who provided me some information over a WhatsApp group. Turns out he’s a 83 year old gentleman helping out people all over India while being a caregiver for his daughter for over 30 years. He runs a WhatsApp group, patiently types out super long replies despite having tremors in his hands, get on calls to provide encouragement and words of support, advocates for rights and has played a role in changing laws. He was also a caregiver for his late wife during her battle with cancer - Amrit Sir 1 2
- A friend (Doctor) who put her own treatment at hold because she’d been helping address financial constraints at home.
- A conversation with a 74 year old mother who’s worried about the survival of her n year old son (PMI - Personal with Mental Illness) when she and her husband stop being around. They’re looking to move to a different city and exhaust their savings to live in an assisted living facility where their son will be taken care of after them.
- A caregiver recounting the story of her son (unmarried) who believes he has to travel to a certain country to find his lost wife and kid.
- Stumbled up this Reddit post.
- A Doctor shared a story about his PMI who believed that she ruled a certain country and had to get there. She lives alone in India and manages by herself while her family lives abroad.
- A mental rehabilitation nurse showing the ward with PMIs who had arrangements to live there for life (for various reasons).
- Sharings from strangers in a WhatsApp group. Stories about a mom taking care of her son, stories of a mom and daughter admitted in psychiatric wards and so on.
- A friend who’s been depressed, working a really stressful job, has monetary constraints but still had to be on a leave of abscence to tend to her own health. To top this multiple family members have been falling sick.
- A fellow caregiver who’s been trying to get her brother treated from the last x years, but to no avail. She has since given up on the medical system and has been resorting to spirituality as a means to cope.
- A Doctor shared the story of a patient who’s been confined to the walls of a hospital for the last 12 years but hasn’t been responding to Meds.
- 2 perfectly normal seeming friends who’ve experienced intense psychosis.
- A friend’s sibling who needed to be admitted and undergo ECT (shock treatment) to treat MDD from a certain trauma.
- A relative who’s been living in delusions at a time before new age medicines for the same. Violence at the mental rehabilitation facilities, shock treatment been through it all.
- A relative’s young daughter who passed away in an unfortunate car accident.
- A friend (Doctor) recalling patients suffering from cerebral palsy, still needing assistance in their 30s with basic hygiene, parents holding on to hope and having to break the news to them
- A friend’s brother and his battle with addiction.
- A student’s young relative and his recovery from hallucinations and being on the journey to become a Doctor. More power to him.
- A student’s mom’s stint with talking walls.
Really puts things into perspective.