Malala Yousafzai

actually heard the word PTSD.

You know, people, I had come up, like, I had heard it in a few different contexts, but I thought, you know, okay, I faced a trauma, but I think I don't have PTSD.

But seven years later, PTSD appeared, and

You know, I learned something that when people talk about like a traumatic experience, it's not necessary that PTSD or the mental health issues appear immediately.

They could appear seven years later, 10 years later, like you never know.

And that happened in my case.

I mean, growing up, I had seen many girls lose the opportunity to complete their education and, you know, just their dreams to become a doctor, engineer, because they were married off.

So, like, marriage, that was like the last thing I wanted to think about.

I did not want to get married.

It was like, it was...

It was not a cool thing.

If you wanted to have a future as a girl, you wanted to keep yourself away from marriage for as long as you could.

Because even later in your life, it just meant like more compromises for women that, you know, you had to readjust to the husband's family and you just had to pray that the husband turns out to be a nice, respectful person.

I remember when I was thinking about marriage for myself,

I put myself in my mom's shoes for the first time.

I had never thought about anything from her perspective before.

And I, you know, I would always admire my dad and I wanted to like follow his footsteps and all of that.

But this was the first time I wondered what life would have been like for my mom when she decided to marry.

How did she trust this man?

This guy she had not even known and decided to like move into his house and be married off and restart a new life.