I still remember the numbness. From the outside, life looked fine; office, emails, small talk. Inside, I felt like a hollowed shell.
This is the story of how I fell into a four-month numbness after a crushed dream in 2015. At the time it felt endless, like my future had collapsed for good.
Ten years later, I see that the pain didn’t ruin me but it rerouted me. What I thought was the worst loss of my life became the unlikely reason for everything that followed.
I used to say heartbreak hurts.
But that year, in March 2015 I coined a new word for myself: headbreak.
When your mind itself turns against you. When the thoughts that should keep you alive become the ones that make you question why you are alive. That’s headbreak.
The Fall
In my head, it felt as if someone had reached into my chest, pulled out my soul with bare hands, and walked away. I was left watching my own body from a distance, waiting for last rites.
I kept vodka miniatures by the bed. They were easier than friends. Easier than talking. One sip and the noise dulled for a while. I stuffed myself with food just to slip into sleep from the heaviness. Some days I slept with the TV and lights on, pretending the room wasn’t empty.
Phone calls went unanswered. Flatmates turned strangers. My life shrank to a bed, a ceiling fan, and the racing of my mind.
The Dream
How did I land here?
I was a 2013 graduate from a tier-3 engineering college. But from my second year onwards, I hustled. nonstop internships, three years of real work alongside my degree. By graduation, I had experience, but on paper HR saw only “fresher.”
That mismatch haunted me. Again and again, I cleared technical rounds, only to be rejected in HR.
Finally, a break.
Some endings bury you, others plant you.
I learned the difference only in hindsight.
A major service-based MNC had been trying to hire for six months. They wanted a three-year veteran. I told the project manager the truth in final round about my journey, my rejections, my hunger. He believed me. Approved HR to let go of “on job experience” requirement and I got the job.
Eighteen months later, I found myself sitting across from Ivy-league engineers at the world’s #1 medical devices company. Nine interview rounds. My first flight. A 310% salary hike. A chance to work on dialysis technology that could save lives.
Walking through their R&D lab felt surreal, like a kid from a small town who had snuck into someone else’s future.
I resigned from my current job the same day. My mind was already planning the next decade.
And then I lost it all.
The Mistake
HR asked for a drug test. Panic. Delay. Dodge. Three days later, I confessed. The offer was revoked.
People said: It’s just a job. But to me, it felt like this:
Imagine meeting the person you know is your soulmate.
They love you back, and together you start building a future. Then, because of your own mistake, it ends.
It ends, not from lack of love, but because you broke the trust that held it all.
That’s how it felt when I lost that job.
Not rejection, but the death of a future I had already begun to live.
The Numbness
For four months it consumed me. Morning to night, night to morning. There was no method, no healing ritual — just time dragging forward.
Slowly, the darkness thinned. A laugh. A lighter day. The sadness kept returning, but weaker each time, until one day I realized it no longer haunted me.
What feels like the end is often just life teaching you where to begin again.
The Path Forward
Looking back a decade later, I see how that collapse shaped me.
In 2016, I quit to freelance on products I believed in.
In November that year, I started my first proprietorship.
By 2017, I had a private limited company.
Over the years, I built multiple products, teams, and companies I never even dreamed of.
If I had joined that R&D team in Bangalore, I doubt I’d be here. Losing that job which was my worst nightmare at that time, turned out to be the first domino.
Every loss I once cursed turned out to be a doorway; the universe was just writing a chapter I couldn’t yet read.
Looking Back
I don’t ask “why me?” anymore. When something bad happens, the answer isn’t visible in the moment. The pain narrows your vision until all you can see is loss.
But life has a longer view.
The reason we suffer isn’t always clear. But often, when you look back years later, you see how the detour was the path.
Some losses are redirections in disguise.
Today, when things go wrong, I don’t fight the universe with questions. I cry if I need to. I grieve. But I also keep faith that life knows something I don’t.
Sometimes what feels like an ending is really life showing you where to begin again.
Now that I’ve lived through many losses that once convinced me that everything was over and I now know it was all the beginning to something bigger and context was always larger than what I could imagine at that time.
What I Learned
Pain is temporary, even when it feels endless.
Loss may look like destruction, but it can also be redirection.
Don’t measure life by the moment of suffering but wait for the longer view.
I call it life’s curriculum: you don’t understand the class while you’re in it. The meaning only appears in the exam years later.
And that’s why I stopped asking why me.
Closing Note
Some losses feel like death sentences, but they’re really redirections.
What feels like collapse can be life planting you somewhere new.
And when you finally look back, you realise the universe was writing a chapter you weren’t yet ready to read.
Some losses are redirections in disguise.