Rabbani K.
Photography by Nathaniel Villaire
Before reading this letter, we'd like for you to know it discusses Rabbani’s experience with eating disorders and suicidal ideation. If you think that reading about this will be triggering for you, we encourage you to take a pause before reading this letter, center yourself, and prepare any resources you may need to access after reading it. If you'd rather not read this letter, we encourage you to read a letter on a different topic, such as this one.
If you're reading this, your feelings are valid.
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If you’re reading this, I want you to take another breath and take another step forward.
Life’s tough. There’s no sugar-coating it. And it’ll come out of the blue and hit you from all these different directions, sometimes even beating you down more when you’ve already had enough. But I promise you, that no matter what, there is always that light at the end of the tunnel. Your story will have a happy ending no matter what you may be going through now, you just have to push through. Push through by taking another breath and another step, even if it’s a baby step.
Some people know my past and some people don’t. I’ve always been an open book sharing what life has thrown at me, but I’ve never been one to express how life made me feel in those moments. I lost my dad unexpectedly when I was 9 years old. I lost my grandma two days before he passed away, while she was on a holy trek to pray for him. I moved to India immediately after and lived there for five years, which wasn’t easy when my whole world just flipped upside down. I was then leaving the one place i’ve ever known. I lost faith in God and became an incredibly angry child- the most angry you’ve probably ever come across.
I’ve had anxiety since I lost my dad and never even knew what my ‘breathing problems’ were until I talked to a healing specialist many years later in life. I’ve struggled with an eating disorder that ended up affecting my physical health. I’ve had depression and thought about what ending my life would be like. I’ve struggled feeling any sort of emotion after my dad passed because of the numbness.
Despite everything, I am still here. Standing and breathing, because I want to.
Facing everything was tough, and it’s still tough because the pain never really goes away. Because I became numb so fast when I was 9 and anger consumed me, I still have trouble feeling certain emotions especially when it comes to letting myself cry. This isn’t exactly the best problem to have when you’re in the acting industry. Moments from that time will come back like flashes of a memory, and only now, twelve years later, I have started allowing those memories to stay long enough to let me feel. My anxiety and depressive episodes which I thought were just my ‘off days’ until it started to turn into ‘off weeks’ didn’t necessarily get better as I got older and went to college.
I have many days where I can’t breathe, my hands will slightly start shaking, I can’t get out of bed or I just can’t get out of my own thoughts. My eating disorder has gotten better, but it’s a battle even almost three years later. Food constantly dominates my mind and I can’t look at myself in the mirror sometimes. I also think about death more than people would think I do. That doesn’t mean that I would act upon anything. It’s just having been exposed to it suddenly at a young age. I don’t fear it, and that does scare me sometimes to be quite honest.
Now, if you do look me up after this, as everyone does nowadays with anyone new they meet or read about, I’m an actress and model. My social media does look somewhat glamorous, because it’s just all the highlights, but there’s so much more going on underneath. As is the case with many.
I’m mainly stating all of this because I am that person that’s known to always look put together and constantly be on the grind. Which I am, don’t get me wrong. I am ambitious and extremely driven, constantly pushing and working hard towards my acting career. I love working out and eating healthy, which involves cooking for myself and working out at six in the morning because I genuinely enjoy it. I show up for my friends and we go out and party or do fun things together. I’m a huge foodie with the biggest sweet tooth, and I absolutely love traveling! I’ve also fallen deeply in love and felt the worst heartbreak. Above it all, I laugh and I smile till my jaw hurts.
I keep moving forward. I keep moving forward because there are so many good parts to life that I don’t want to miss out on. I want to take another breath. I want to take another step. There’s a happy ending to my story as there is for yours, and there’s so so much more that we all have yet to see and achieve. Life is short so do live each day with no regrets for the past, but don’t forget to keep moving forward. You have all the strength you need within you, I promise.
With love,
Rabbani K., Virginia Commonwealth University
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