You know , I have always heard from my mother “Being a Woman is not easy” , when she used to tell me this I was very young in age and didn’t know what she was talking about! I used to take it in a very sarcastic way ! As If she is taunting me to teach me good manners but today when I have grown up , I realised why my mother told me this .

This world today is filled with numerous people who belong to different gender identities and the awareness came to me via webseries , newspapers and even reading . But what my mother and other female relatives concealed from me was the evil side of humanity . The evil side of being a woman . Probably I assume they never wanted me to go through the same experience which they underwent in their offices , homes and colleges .

I had just turned 21 and I have always kept myself away from the relationship shit because I always believed that singlehood is equivalent to freedom and rather I am not emotionally available to take care of someone else’s needs .

One fine day , I was chatting with a senior friend on WhatsApp and suddenly he started using words “hitting on you” , “flirting” , “flinging” and what not … In my innocence that night I thought he is pranking on me but when I woke up in the morning and googled out these terms , I realised it was not a prank but had certain sexual meanings in it . I was deeply shocked , scared and nervous and felt like almost breaking down into tears . I felt guilty and ashamed of myself . But then I eventually confided in my elder seniors and they told me that they have gone through such similar experiences too . The same person and also other men . This affected my mental health to an extent that I began to feel hopeless and felt I have no purpose in life

I just went on further to ask them …. Why was this not told to us when we were in school ? If our schools and colleges can hold talks on menstrual hygiene , then why can’t our schools and colleges teach us sex education and how to deal with such problems. Probably if I would have learnt that in school or college , I would have learnt how to deal with such situations better . I just urge and request schools and colleges to organise mental health seminars or webinars as to how to tackle such situations so that many young girls like me could get better clarity as to how to go about such situations and whom to approach . Probably I consider myself lucky that I took strength and confided in my seniors but other women may not and hence to make mental health a priority it all begins to be open to talking and teach our children at younger ages the importance of sex education and consent to make the minds emotionally strong and happy from within .