From a young age, I’ve always felt like an outcast, unable to fit in anywhere – whether it was in school or at home.

My family had its own set of problems and it all began from when I found out I was nearly aborted. Due to financial problems, my family members distanced themselves from each other. My father refused to work, my mother had to juggle multiple part-time jobs, my first sister was chased out and my second sister would just lock herself up at home.

In school, I was bullied in primary school and then I was the only local Malay boy in the express stream in secondary school. There were other Malay boys in the other streams but somehow I found it hard to make friends.

I realised I was gay from an early age but I had to remain in the closet due to my religion and family. That made me feel lonely. I also lived in a lot of fear because of all the issues surrounding my sexuality, religion and family. I had some friends whom I could confide in but I was still lonely and I didn’t know what to do.

To make matters worse, I was molested by an uncle in the swimming pool. It made me feel disgusted, worthless, humiliated and extremely frustrated at myself for being manipulated by someone I looked up to and thought could fill the father figure void.

As a result of the stress, especially with the issues from religion and sexuality, my grades started to slip and I failed my GCE ‘O’ levels badly. That was my tipping point.

The embarrassment from being the only express stream student in my school who couldn’t make the grades to enter a polytechnic was too much for me to handle, and I finally gave up praying to be straight, so I tried to commit suicide by overdosing.

I took every single tablet at home and popped them all. I blacked out for a day and a half, but no one knew I just tried to OD. When I came around, I was vomiting, having severe headache and feeling very weak but my parents scolded me because they thought I had spent the time gaming without sleep and skipping meals.

The next few days after that suicide attempt were spent in bed recuperating – much to the annoyance of my family – because I still felt very weak. I chose not to tell anyone what truly happened because I felt that no one would understand me – not my family, not my friends, not even God.

From that point, I started to only believe in myself and rely on myself.

In ITE, I managed to graduate with a GPA of 3.98 and I was also chairman of the Karate Club and a member of the Student Council. I made it to a polytechnic but I had to stop karate because I had an accident that affected the nerve on my lower jaw. After I stopped karate training, my weight ballooned to 80kg because I just ate whatever I wanted and my self-esteem took a hit.

Whenever I felt upset (about family and friends being difficult for example) or lonely, instead of giving up and trying to OD like I did previously, I started to inflict physical harm. I used knives and penknives to create superficial cuts on my arms, thighs and other parts of the body. The physical pain served as a way of numbing my emotional pain from my problems and strangely, also as a reminder to get up and push forward.

During national service, I began to become more independent. Being in a stay-out vocation, I opted to stay-in and had the entire level in the block to myself at night (bottom floors were for the trainees and upper levels for regulars who don’t have to stay in either). I also saved up my allowance by eating in the cookhouse and doing my own laundry.

Time in there was boring so one night I decided to go for a run to kill time. I only ran 2km but I was so tired I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. I realised it was a good way to pass the time at night alone, so I started running in camp every day – from a mere 2km, I progressed to 10km daily.

All the running helped me to lose some weight and it became addictive. I kept wanting to lose more weight and I started taking extreme measures. I would only eat once a day (2-4 slices of toast for breakfast) and only drink water for the rest of the day whenever I felt hungry – and I was still running at least 10km a day.

Because I was running so often, I signed up for the first Army Half Marathon and completed it in 1 hour 45 minutes!

However, people started to find out how little I was eating and they monitored me, trying to get me to eat more. But because I was starving myself and lost weight drastically, the weight gain bounced back so quickly once I started eating more. It didn’t help that I had a tendency to crave for sweet stuff too.

To counter that, I took laxatives every day and every time I ate something I went to the toilet. Somehow, going to the toilet would help to reduce my need to snack. At times, if I couldn’t get enough laxatives, I would force myself to vomit the food I ate.

All of these brought my weight down to nearly 52kg and I just couldn’t get to 52kg exactly. I kept trying and trying but I couldn’t hit 52kg and I also didn’t get the lean abs of a runner I wanted. Finally my body gave up on me.

Because I was running so often, I got injured. It hurt so bad every time I tried to walk that I was too scared to run, so I stopped running. As a result, I started to gain weight and I tried to hit the gym but I found it hard to exercise alone.

So a good friend recommended ROCKrunners to me – he was never a fan of running but after joining them for a few sessions, I saw how much he enjoys it and he even runs faster than me now! I decided to check it out and I was quite drawn to its message of body positivity.

I joined them regularly and now here I am, as their ROCKstar of the Month. Every training session is fun, with everyone being ‘tortured’ together and cheering and supporting each other. I like how we always wait for everyone to come back from their runs and never leaving anyone behind. It also doesn’t matter how fast or how slow you run either.

I used to hate myself a lot but now I don’t really hate myself anymore. Hearing everyone’s inspirational stories and soaking in the positive vibes have really rubbed off on me.

With them, I’ve done my first Spartan Race and most recently, did my first overseas race too. Thank you ROCKrunners!