Mr Green, the resiliant tree.

The boy in the corner was always the last one picked for the team. Not because he was slow or unskilled, but because his words stumbled out like a broken puzzle. His name was Arjun, and even before he knew what it was called, he carried the weight of apraxia. The other children laughed, mimicking his halting speech, their cruelty a sharp stone thrown at a pane of glass that was already cracked. The teachers, who should have been a shield, were more like a chisel. Their impatience was a quiet form of bullying, a dismissal that felt even colder than the children's taunts.

At home, the air was thick with a different kind of tension. Raised voices, the crash of a dropped plate, the silent, trembling fear in his mother's eyes. In the 1990s, the concept of domestic violence was a hushed secret, a burden women carried for the sake of financial stability and social appearances. His mother stayed, not just for herself, but to avoid the shame she believed her family would feel if she left. But in that act of staying, a new kind of trauma was born, passed down through the very windows of the home they were meant to be to their son. Arjun learned to be quiet, to be invisible, to hang on by a thread of his own making because no one else was there to hold him.

He grew up and threw himself into the corporate world, a place where his hands could be busy even if his heart was empty. For twenty years, the office became his sanctuary and his prison. The long hours weren't a sign of ambition; they were a coping mechanism, a way to build a wall between himself and the emotional void that had followed him since childhood. He became a man detached, a fortress of responsibility. As the breadwinner, he felt a crushing pressure to protect his family, to never show a single crack in his armor. But the constant pressure was a fire that burned through his fuel, leaving him severely burnt out, running on fumes he didn't even know he had.

The anxiety and depression came not as a storm, but as a persistent fog. It clouded his mind, dulled his senses, and chipped away at his performance. His cognitive abilities, once sharp, felt like a rusted blade. He knew he had to stop, but the fear of the unknown was a monster in itself. The job gap on his resume, the insecurity about his future, the difficulty his family had in understanding his invisible wounds—it all felt overwhelming. It took him years to explain to them what was happening, to bridge the gap between their worldview and his.

His search for solace led him to an important revelation: social media was a mirage. It was a place for performances, not real connections. He learned that being vulnerable and honest with the wrong people was a mistake. True support came not from a generic audience, but from a specific community, one that understood the language of anxiety and depression because they spoke it themselves. In online groups and free therapy sessions, he found a mirror. He wasn't alone; others were fighting the same battle.

Arjun is still in the fight. Some days the fog is manageable, a thin veil over the sun. Other days, it is a suffocating blanket. The suicidal thoughts, a common symptom of the war he fights, are to him just "passing clouds," a temporary shadow that he knows will move on. He battles with hope as his only weapon. He now understands that it takes a different kind of courage to survive: the courage to say no, to be honest, to not pass on trauma, and to simply keep pushing forward. He has learned that we are all fighting a silent war and that a little compassion can be the light that saves a life. He isn't here to fix all the broken souls, but he has learned that just listening, truly listening to the emotions beneath the words, is a brave and powerful act in itself.