Tag: Life

One Year Without Him…

Leave a comment

[Trigger warning: Death and grief]

I am restless, unfocused, and all over the place. I find that I need to keep myself occupied, and yet I can’t quite. I’m in chaos, cleaning obsessively and yet haphazardly. 

I think to myself nonstop that last year, he fell asleep on June 4, never realizing that he’d never sleep another night. That in 24 hours, he would suffer for an hour before he took a deep breath, never letting it out. 

It’s traumatizing. Heartbreaking. I wasn’t there, but I remember every detail the way my Mom described it to me. I visualized it, and now the images in my head are so clear. I called the doctor two days later, asking about his last minutes, unconscious and almost gone when he arrived at the emergency. I needed to know. 

It was fate when we walked into the emergency room for my Mom a few days later. I saw the bed he died in. I put my hand on the foot of it, and I could see it all happen all over again in front of me. The night of horror she described was right there. I could feel it if I put my hand out.  

They say he looked peaceful. Like he was asleep. I constantly feel like nobody knew him at all. Because if they did, they’d know. 

They’d know he wasn’t ready.
They’d know he was worried he didn’t set life up for his younger daughter the way he wanted to.
They’d know he looked grumpy when I walked in 10 hours later.
They’d know what he looked like, peaceful, happy. They’d know what he looked like, grumpy and annoyed.
They’d know.

They’d know, like I did. 

It hurt seeing him dead. It hurt more feeling in my gut, he wasn’t ready.
But maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t ready.

I wish he saw how much we loved him. How much I loved him. He shaped everything I was and everything I became. I am so proud to be more like him.
His instincts. His authority. His insight. The things I am sometimes resented for, but I am proud of.

I wish I could’ve learned more from him. More about his thoughts. More about the world.

I often tell Mom, I don’t miss his presence in the big things. It’s not the massive emotional phone calls. It’s not life updates. It’s not those things that seem to matter to the world.

I miss him in the little things. The news cycle I can’t rant about. The movie I can’t describe. The philosophies and entirely overthought ideas about the world that nobody else will relate to. 

He was my person. 

Yes, my husband’s my person too. He and I talk about so much under the moon. My Mom is incredible. My sister is the shoulder every time I need one. But it’s never the same.

Because they didn’t watch me develop these thoughts. They weren’t there when I said God doesn’t exist. They weren’t the ones who told me to wait until I became an adult. They won’t understand the transition between “Why a temple?” to “I felt goosebumps in front of God.” 

But it’s beyond that. It’s the alignment. He understood everything I said and everything I didn’t say. He knew me better than I knew myself.

The conversations I had with him about me, my world, the world in general, him, his thoughts, culture, religion, politics, career, life, relationships – these were so unique and aligned. I have moments when I have a rush of thoughts and I realize I’ve got nobody to share it with. Not because they won’t listen but because they’ll never get it like he did. 

It’s a lot to lose a parent. It’s a lot more to lose your favorite one. It’s worse to lose the only one who’ll ever truly know you. 

He loved that I never changed my name. I told him my husband showing up doesn’t erase the fact that I am my father’s daughter. 

He loved that I called him for advise. “Your husband’s going to think, what is this wife, calling her Dad for life decisions while I’m here.” I told him I could be 60 and I’d still need my Dad for life decisions. My husband’s only my age. Can’t expect him to have the wisdom my Dad does. 

I remember I got a temporary tattoo early last year and called to tell him, “I don’t like it. I don’t think I’ll get a tattoo.” He said he was proud of me. Not for my book. Not for my career. For finally admitting what he hoped I would. 

He said he named me Poornima because I was round-faced like a full moon, and he hoped I’d have a full life. My last call with him was June 4. I sent him a photo from my trip to Bondi Beach in Sydney. He said, “Wow. Round face. Happy smiles. Good.”

I’ll regret hanging up that phone that day. My adult life needed me and I didn’t know I would never speak to him again. But I wish I hadn’t hung up that phone. I remember thinking to myself, “I should buy him something nice when I go home next month.”

I was home in a van on the way to a cremation room 48 hours later. 

I don’t know how we get over this. How we move on from losing a parent. 

They say grief is permanent. The heartbreak comes in waves. A part of our soul lost and never to return again.

It’s been a year. I’m in grief therapy. Every session, I remember more and more about him. About growing up with him. Memories long forgotten.

The person I want to reminisce with after each session is him. 

I want to call and ask if he remembers. Hear him tell me one more story that I used to roll my eyes at. About my childhood. About his life. About what it was like to be a dad.

Every little part of him feels precious. His phone. His clothes. His scent. 

Maybe in a year, it won’t feel so raw. I won’t feel the cuts my heart is struggling to heal. 

Maybe in a year, I’ll be able to smile when I think of him and not hurt. I’ll be able to throw the small pieces of paper his wallet held, which have no significance except the fact that he held them at one point.

Maybe in a year, I will finally change the fading strap on his watch. The one I smile, and hold close every time I wear it. Maybe it won’t feel like him holding my hand. 

I don’t really know how this ends. This post. These emotions. This moment in time that feels so excruciatingly painful to process, but life has left me with no choice but to endure. I don’t know how I continue to grow my family, my career, switch jobs and never ask him if I’m doing it right. Never hear him talk me through my fears.

But I also know I hear him in my thoughts. He’s there in the decisions I make. My instincts are shaped entirely by his words, his advice, his slow push that has taken me through this life for 32 years.

When I negotiate salaries, I hear him say, “There is nothing wrong in asking for what you deserve. Don’t undervalue yourself.”

When I second guess myself, I hear him say, “You’ve made the decision, that’s it. Move on. Don’t go back and forth once you’ve decided.”

When I cry from how this hurts, I hear him say, it hurts him too. “I don’t want to see you cry. You’re my happy child.”

He prepared us for this. A lifetime of telling us, “All those who are born must one day die.” Yet, I feel more unprepared than I ever have for anything ever.

Maybe I’ll be okay. In a year. In ten. In fifteen or twenty. Maybe all these emotions will subdue, and I won’t remember ever feeling this way. Maybe his voice will fade, the instincts more experience than him. But I know that no matter what, no matter when, no matter how life takes on, I will never stop knowing in every inch of my existence and being in every second of my life, a daddy’s daughter.

Forever his first daughter,
P.

TO THE GIRL IN HER MID-30’S

4 Comments

I said girl, not woman. Because it doesn’t quite fit, does it? The mom jeans and the extra weight and the heaviness of the world on your shoulder. But somehow, none of it makes the word woman quite right just yet.

And still, our lives are nothing like when we were just girls. There’s so much pressure. Of life. Of love. Of living. Travel, friends, health, and babies. Marriage, if you’re married. Marriage, if you’re not. The people that never stop telling you how you’ve failed them. The disappointment of not living up to someone else’s imagination. The disappointment of not living up to our own.

Realizing earning a few million isn’t as easy as we thought. The house they had us draw as kids comes with a cost. You can have the house, or you can be close to home. It’s exhausting. And don’t even get me started on loss. That’s a thing now. We’re old enough. It happens and it just feels so rushed, doesn’t it?

I remember playing Barbies and running around the apartment like it was a few years ago. I’m a 90s baby. Wasn’t it just 2005?

I hear you. I feel what you feel. I am you in so many ways. And when people tell me, “Stay positive, it’s gonna be alright,” I want to grab a glass of wine and roll my eyes.

So this letter’s a little different. This isn’t a ‘don’t lose hope’ or ‘life gets better’ letter. Because let me be real – I don’t know jackshit about what life gets. But here’s what I do know – “fuck it, what can you control?”

Your client is driving you insane? Fuck it. You can’t make stupid people smarter.

The “elders” troubling you for a kid? Fuck it. They don’t know how good wine tastes in the middle of the day.

Society asking you why you’re not married? Fuck it. Why would you repeat one dish when you can order from the entire menu?

Career not quite there? Shitty boss? Shitty work? Shitty pay? Fuck it. The system, it’s problematic.

No hate to the girl who wrote a letter full of hope to the girls in their mid-20s. She needed that to get through that decade. But that’s not this decade. No, this decade is not for hope and stars and glitter falling from the sky – if it does, please hide as it may be hazardous.

But no, this decade is for us dreamers. Actually – This decade is for those of us who’re realizing the dreams they fed us isn’t quite how the world works anymore. I think the word for it is…. bullshit? So we’re really the anti-dreamers? I can’t tell, but you catch my drift.

This decade, that’s still got a few good years to go, is for those of us who want to laugh out loud, think out loud, speak out loud. It’s for us to be ourselves, messy buns and a messy home. Or if you’re like me, messy buns and an extremely clean home. Whatever works for you.

But really, it’s for us to learn to come into ourselves. To embrace the quirks, the little nuances that makes us who we are. To let toxic people, relationships, and things go – Unless it’s paying you good money to fund your life. This decade is for us to be unapologetically ourselves. Bold, abrasive, silent, introverted – whatever the heck makes you feel like you’ve come home to yourself.

So let the noise drown out. Let people with loud opinions be who they are, wherever they are, in their own ignorance. Coz you know what? Fuck it.

Put on your favorite clothes. Turn on your favorite show. Read your smutty books. Get on OnlyFans. Roll your eyes at the Karen at work and fake-smile until it hurts. And every now and then, treat yourself to something a little nice. A dinner. A bag. A great bottle of wine as you tell Karen to go fuck herself? Actually, no, don’t do that.

Because here’s what I’ve learnt as I’ve found love, doggos and a home away from home while dealing with loss, anxiety, depression and a permanent state of existential crisis – Fuck it. What can I control?

Losing you, losing me

Leave a comment

Death is such a funny thing.
One second someone’s here and suddenly they’re not.

I’ve learned a lot about death in the last year.
From dogs to humans. I see them.
Breathing alive humans. I know them. I love them.
And then they’re not them anymore.
There’s a body, a vessel, a person long forgotten.

I think to myself, the one I loved is still out there.
In a soul.
In a feeling.
In a spirit.
In the air.
Around me, thinking of me, blessing me.
Cursing me, perhaps.

For moments I didn’t spend with them. I could have, I didn’t.
I made choices for me and today I wish I’d made those choices for them.
I tell myself every day to not judge myself.
For yesterday’s actions
With today’s knowledge.
But is life ever that simple?

Is anything ever that simple?
The complicated concept of existence vexes me.
So their soul lives on?
They will follow me around?
The people I lost? The pets I want back?
Does that mean they never existed or does that mean they never leave?

Do I process the grief then?
Or did I not really lose them?
Just their bodies? Their vessels for their soul?

But then, what am I really missing?
Because their voice belongs to the vessel and I miss their voice.
I miss phone calls.
I miss silent groans.
I miss the smell of cigarettes and soap.
The stink of grass and mud and thick fur.

So did I never love the person?
Was it a marketing thing,
Loving the packaging?

When do you stop missing it?
When does it stop hurting?
When do they come back?
When do you stop hoping they would?
When do you no longer look at the door, aching
Wishing.
Praying.
For one more sight.
One more hug.
One more conversation.
One more puppy lick.
One last bark you can admonish lovingly?

Death is a funny thing
Because there is nothing quite as painful as it.
And if you don’t learn to laugh at the pain
And the loss it causes deep within,
In your vessel, perhaps your soul,
It will laugh at you.
At the power it has over you.
How it wrecks you.

A little bit every day
Until suddenly
You’re only the vessel.
There’s no soul left.
None that will haunt those who love you after you leave.
Your body will exist.
It will function.
Your spirit won’t.

So you put on a smile and you go on
Like death didn’t matter.
Like all of it was a blip in your moment.
Like you never loved.
You never lost.
It never happened.

Because – if you don’t
And you start to let these things become real
You’ll have to start living.
And goodness gracious,
who wants to do that?

Hamster On A Wheel

3 Comments

In conversation with one of my closest friends, I told her about my life. The routine and the things I hated that have become part of the new-normal. She interrupted, “Like a hamster on a wheel?”

Nothing had ever made more sense to me. 

I was that teenage rebel who swore she would never live a life where two days felt the same. It’s been two years of the same day every day. A few breaks every now and then, but I miss so much about life before all this. Surprising even to me, it’s not the fancy vacations, the trips to Paris for “work” or the drunk stumble home. 

I miss the little things I don’t get to see anymore. The different people on the train every morning. The ones with earphones, wet hair and a lost stare. The ones in a suit, hoping to be more productive today than the day before. The familiar face that worked in the same building, a small smile of “I see you even if I don’t know you.” I miss elevator rides. You never know if you’ll be in time for your best friend or your boss. The walk to get a morning coffee, not always because you need it. It’s more for the conversation, the steps, a loud sigh about the people we had to deal with as we waited for a latte we all knew wasn’t worth the money.

I miss walking into the office, turning on my computer and knowing my day has begun. The random knocks on my door for “Lunch?” “Second coffee?” “Walk?” or “Yay you’re here. I need help!”

The moment I walked into my house at the end of the day. I knew the day I’d had the moment I dropped my bag – productive or procrastinated. Did I spend too much on Starbucks? Do I continue to feel energy to pre-make lunch for tomorrow? Am I cooking? Netflix and instant noodles it is.

There was a joy in knowing I would wake up and see a whole new world of people the next day. A different train, different passengers, different barista and a different routine.

I miss familiar moments with strangers. Getting ice cream at McDonald’s as I headed to my apartment. A little treat to myself. Her stories of a boyfriend that refused to respond as she swirls the ice cream cone perfectly. I’ll never know her name but I’ll always know she’s annoyed at him. 

I miss long nights at my parents’ house. It was in the dark that our laughter was at its loudest. Past bedtime, dogs curled up at our feet, talking about our day, our lives, the people in it and the many memories. A sarcastic comment from my sister that sends us into fits of uncontrollable laughter. A remark from my dad we tell each other we’ll remember forever. Unafraid, unbound. 

I miss the feeling of there being no end to my physical world. If I took a plane, I could go anywhere. I could get in my parents’ car and we would drive for hours. We’d pass fields and towns, windows down, music loud. We had a destination but if I chose to, I could drive on for days. I could see nature at its purest. That stretch of sunflowers I notice every time. The group of old men sitting together smoking and talking as cars fled past them. I look out the window, observing. Knowing I’ll never see them again. I’ll never remember their face or that exact place. But in that moment, they were there, and they were part of my journey to a destination my parents were taking me to.

That’s the hardest thing about the last two years. The feeling of being walled in. There’s no endlessness to my physical world. I can try all I want, there’s only so far I can go. It wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t travel for my ‘gram. But it matters that a plan I’ve been making to go visit my parents at the end of this month is yet again in jeopardy. I feel like I have yet again been caged in.

Repeating the same day over and over again. The same emotions, the same processes, the same people. Wondering when the groups of 5 will turn into groups of 2 again. Wondering when the imaginary walls of the country I live in will open to let me be free again. Wondering when travel to see my parents filled with fear and agony of infecting myself or worse, them, will change again.

I miss knowing my parents are healthy still. I miss not being afraid to lose people before I could spend enough time with them. I miss existing in a world where I don’t feel terror when hanging out with my best friends. Not having to wonder every minute of every day where every person I see on the street has been to over the last 14 days. 

I miss breathing. Not the “say no to masks” kind. The emotional kind. The calm as I took on the world kind.

Every morning, I wake up and for a brief minute, I imagine being somewhere else. Head out the window, driving for hours past fields, towns and cities I’ll never remember. Wind in my hair, nothing to think of but the stillness of my emotions. Calm and happy as I breathe in a world without walls.

I get out of bed and go repeat my day. A hamster on a wheel again.

Chennai: Never just a city

1 Comment

I’m that girl that crossed oceans to sustain myself. I live a few hours away but it’s been a while since I’ve been home.

I hear about a possible third wave. I read about carelessness. A city unmasked and unafraid. It scares me all the time – I have parents and in-laws that are old enough for me to be worried. Two dogs I haven’t cuddled my weekend away with in a really long time. A flight to Chennai is almost impossible. And that small chance of maybe? I can’t take it because it all sounds so scary from where I see.

But in the chaos of the news that feels like my worst nightmare, I miss a lot more than just loved ones.

I miss home.

I’ve been talking to my sister about it – What makes us so special? Us adults from Chennai. It’s this tie that we can’t break. In a foreign country, when everything seems different, “Chennai-ah?” is all the connection you need to be best friends.

I miss that home.

That feeling of stepping out of the flight and getting into my mom’s car. The ever-familiar road that leads you away from the airport, “Wow. So much has changed. Traffic alone doesn – epdi poraan paaru.”

You know you’re home when travel is a musical experience – radio or roadside dialogue, to each their own.

The incredible food. Gangotree pani puri, Saravana Bhavan ghee dosa, Ratna Cafe sambar idli, New Woodlands full meals. I’ve never visited without a list. I’ve never left unsatisfied. Street corner akka or Shree Mithai aunty, I miss the friendly banter with total strangers. The extra mile they always go to ensure you enjoy your meal. I often wonder how the aunty and uncle with the delicious channa samosa stall opposite SIET are doing. I wonder if they had enough saved for a rainy day – or year. The bajji akka outside Giri Traders in Mylapore. The chikoo seller outside Ratna Stores in Pondy Bazaar. So many more like them.

The helpers who walk to multiple houses. The tiny arguments our moms always have with them. “Paavam-di ava,” is how the day ends. Have they remained employed? Do you still pay them through the lockdown? There’s so much uncertainty from where I see things.

But one thing remains.

This feeling. If you’re from Chennai, you know what I mean. This particular emotion that makes you play cheesy Madras songs on a cozy Sunday evening. You’re not sad, no. You’re wishful. Longing to be back in those streets. Amongst the colours, the energy, the people.

Unmasked, maybe, but unafraid we are. The news terrifies me, I won’t lie. But I’m hopeful. I’ve seen the Chennai I can’t stop thinking of. The one that saw trouble and didn’t wait for help. The Chennai that wasn’t afraid of flooding water, rising waves or an Earth that shook. The Chennai that rose to the challenge, together. The Chennai that risked themselves to save their neighbours. The Chennai that is proud, brave and resilient.

The Chennai my husband is tired of hearing stories about.

A Chennai we won’t get to be in until – for a change – we distance ourselves and stay indoors.

A Chennai I miss, every day of my life.

I’m that girl that crossed oceans to sustain myself. Years may pass, lives may change and roots may form, but Chennai will always be home.

And the music, the movies and the million keepsakes I can’t throw away will keep me wrapped in warm memories, until I return…

To Find Meaning

Leave a comment

I’ve been reading this book called Ikigai by Albert Liebermann and Hector Garcia. If you haven’t read it and belong to the generation that does not understand stress-free life, I would strongly suggest giving it a go. It has made me admit to myself something people have said to me before (while I constantly denied it and called them insane).

I am a workaholic (that wasn’t the admission but we’ll get to that in a minute). I love working. I can complain about my job, my pay and even toxic environments but when you ask me to stop working, I’ll only come up with reasons why I can’t. I can’t stop. I was in a meeting until 7pm today. I was dragging my feet to the train but my ego was flying. I was so busy, I had to be in a meeting until 7pm. Like that makes me feel really good.

And there’s nothing wrong with it. We all like different things and I like to be busy working. It makes me feel important and productive and like I’m doing something with my life.

Now let’s get to the thing people complain about that I don’t like admitting – my work defines everything I do outside of it. I was on the train at 7.30pm and told myself, “Don’t check your emails. Shut it off and focus on the music and the words on your Kindle.” You know what I felt? Not anxious, not peaceful and definitely, not focused. I felt guilty.

I feel guilty when I don’t respond to emails beyond work hours. I feel guilty when I turn off at the end of the day. I feel guilty when I take a day off because the doctors thought I might have cancer. I feel guilty when I am not working for not working because my work defines every other aspect of my life.

Before I read Ikigai, I had read Man’s Search for Meaning – thank you Abhishek, if you ever read this. Viktor Franckl talks about logotherapy which is mentioned a lot in Ikigai. The core concept of both these books are the same. (Can I please mention I didn’t go looking for these books? It came to me through suggestions and surprisingly they had the same messaging.) That when you have a why to live, you’ll do so no matter how. So I spent time thinking about my why.

I often tell people I want to be really rich. That’s the purpose to my existence. Money. I want the kind of money that people I grew up with can’t even imagine. To be so rich and yet so humble. To buy the things I see and I see a lot. To own my own place – massive with floor to ceiling windows and a view you would kill for. I don’t want to inherit it. I don’t want to be married into it. I want to earn it. My work will bring that money that will be mine.

Except, I’m beginning to wonder if that isn’t really true.

I work at an amazing place in Singapore. It’s great. I get to go to these incredible events with speeches by amazing human beings. One such event in October addressed purpose and stress. She asked us to look at the person next to us and talk about our purpose. My answer was easy. “Money.”

Then the person next to me mentioned, “I want to do good through my job.” I stopped and realised that it’s what I really wanted but didn’t like admitting because it doesn’t offend my parents as easily. I wanted to do good for the beings on four legs that can’t speak for themselves. I couldn’t admit it to myself, I wasn’t going to tell her that. So I said, “Cool.” But I kept thinking. I always told people I wanted to start a rehabilitation zoo. For abused animals. To recreate a forest in a closed environment so they were home without being subjected to hunters or abusers.

That carried into Viktor Franckl’s explanation of logotherapy. I continued to think about the things that really make me wake up to that insane alarm at 6am. And now as I read Ikigai and they repeatedly talk about the thing that keeps you going, the meaning, the reason and the purpose behind my need to keep existing in this seriously not-so-great planet, I am realising the truth and I don’t know if it’s the wine typing or really me but…

Remember how I mentioned that I got very used to answering “Money” because it offended my parents? Imagine my surprise when I realised the purpose to my existence was really them.

It didn’t matter how much money. It mattered what I could buy with it for them. It didn’t matter how big an apartment. It mattered how successful it made me appear and how much prouder it made them by default because…

I wasn’t an easy kid. I was smart that wasted the smarts and emotional that made stupid decisions based on those emotions. And my life, this incredibly weird thing I didn’t ask for that they gave to me, I spend working like a mad person because it gets me closer to making them look like they birthed a fricking genius – a result of which makes them stand taller than the others in any room – something they deserve.

Yeah, I wasn’t expecting this post to get so real as well but I just wanted to put this out there.

Sometimes, it’s good to find the meaning behind the things you do. It may make them that much more worthwhile.

So, yeah, I’ll say it. I’m a workaholic. I chase after success and I will slave my soul away until I reach it. My purpose is money. But there’s a meaning behind it.

Find yours.

My Lighthouse

4 Comments

 

I’ve been kind of lost for the last six months.

My life went through a drastic change and as I tried to find where I belonged in this new phase, I feel like I lost who I have always been.

When things end, they say it gives way to new beginnings. I thought my new beginning would feel free. Like I could do anything without ever having to worry about how it affects another person. But the thing was, there wasn’t much left to be done with that freedom because the things that controlled me remained. Money, exhaustion and just life, in general.

So I began to cling on to anything that felt new. Maybe a new person, maybe a new role, maybe a new dress or a new passion. Maybe I should focus on myself finally. Or my job. Or maybe I should look for a partner. Maybe not. Maybe I look for the old me. The teenage-me. The care-about-nothing and just-have-fun me. Something had to give because my life had to change drastically. It had to.

But it didn’t. And I couldn’t accept that. I turned frantic in my search for something that replaced what I had lost, not realizing that as I tried to walk towards something else, I was walking away from myself.

So I started to add pressure – to me and to the people around me. I watched others’ lives change and began envying them because mine wasn’t. But it had. It didn’t feel that way because my routine hadn’t necessarily changed. Nothing I did every day changed. It was only an emotional disruption and I didn’t know how to process that. I didn’t know how to point and say, “This is why it’s different. Even if nothing changed around me, my emotions are in disarray. So that’s what I need to focus on.”

I searched for a solution to my emotions in the physical world and failed, consistently. I tried to throw myself into work, but it didn’t feel enough. I tried to balance work with life so I could focus on myself but when the day drew to an end, I was left feeling unsettled again.

Maybe this was my way of grieving. This frantic search for something, anything, that made me feel like my life had gotten better. Maybe this was my way of going through the emotions that come with separating yourself and your life from someone. Maybe this is how we all feel at 27 and it’s nothing but a mid-life crisis. 

The problem was, until three days ago, I didn’t understand any of this. In my frustrations with the world around me, I never realized that perhaps the reason I couldn’t find what I was looking for was because it wasn’t in the real world. 

I haven’t painted for over a year. I’ve given myself a lot of excuses as to why I don’t have the time – to be creative, to draw, to imagine, to clean up after. And on a very busy Sunday, I was just done with the excuses. I always imagined painting a lighthouse, Van Gogh style. There was something about it, standing next to the ocean, alone but surrounded by the beauty of the world that made lighthouses seem so fascinating. They reminded me of the wind against my face, sand between my toes and the sound of the ocean. Far above the land, almost touching the sky, just a little bit shy. Lighthouses reminded me of home.

It’s amazing how art cures the most complex of your problems. As I slowly began painting something I’ve been wanting to for so long, I found what I had been missing. Why I had felt so out of place. What I had been searching for since July.

Myself.

I smiled for the first time in a while. From my heart. It was like standing in the rain, every drop taking you closer to yourself. I painted my happy place, finding it within myself along the way.

Maybe this blog isn’t the right thing to post at this point in my life. Someone recently told me that if I were to get married, blogs with so much honesty cannot exist when they google me. Maybe they’re right.

Maybe you’re not supposed to know how I’m trying to find my place in this world. Maybe we’re all just supposed to pretend we’re put-together and perfectly fine with lives that go through nothing at all. But I’m not going to take this away.

We all go through changes. Some are obvious. Some aren’t. You know they happened, you experience the difference even when you can’t see it. Those may be the most difficult ones to process. 

In the process of readjusting my life to a new reality, I lost myself.

It took me six months of searching and one painting to find. And I know this could happen again. Another change I don’t know how to handle could make me lose sense of who I am.

But when it does, I’ll know better. I’ll know the patterns and the emotions.

I’ll know to breathe deep and close my eyes for just a few seconds.

I’ll know to look for my lighthouse.

If you’re out there reading this and you’re not sure where you’re headed, what you’re doing or why you’re acting a certain way – this is your reminder.

Breathe. Imagine your lighthouse. What does it feel like?

Lighthouse painting

I’m Depressed

18 Comments

There. I’ve said it. It’s not the first time. But I don’t want to say it again.

I’m depressed.

Not your milennial kind. Sitting at a cafe, rolling my eyes at the girl I don’t like and complaining about singledom, “Ohmygod! I’m so depressed!” No. Not that kind.

The real one. The emotional kind that people tend to treat lightly because they don’t understand how serious it can possibly be. So, welcome to my world.

I’m not an actress. My life isn’t a Bollywood movie. I’m not sitting by the window, staring into space and nothingness. I don’t have a single tear running down my face as I lose sight of what’s happening around me. I’m not snapped back to reality. A hug isn’t going to heal me. A boyfriend cannot fix me.

This is real.

I’m right beside you. I’m not in hiding. I’m everywhere I need to be. I’m talking to you when you’re talking to me. I sound like I do everyday but I care a lot less. You just can’t tell. I show up to the event, dressed like a dream. You can’t tell it took me effort to put it all on. Not physical. Emotional. To get out of bed and prepare myself to smile with a world I can’t connect to anymore.

I can’t tell you I’d rather be at home. Not listening to you talk about problems that don’t affect me and having to give you comforting advice when I can’t even think. I can’t tell you I’m two seconds away from breaking apart even when I seem to be laughing.

You help me. Sitting across the table, as a best friend. You help me. Knocking on my door for a small conversation. You help me. A distraction for a few seconds. But you can’t take it away.

I want to confide. To tell you how I spiral. To tell you how this is all too much. I think I’ve taken on more than I can chew. My overthinking has taken me by my hand and led me back to my dark place. I was depressed a few years ago. I think it’s back for me. Or maybe it never stopped at all.

I wake up every morning. I walk out the door, that takes a lot of effort. I look through my checklist, ticking off things that pay my bills. I eat my lunch to Netflix. I come back home, turn the lights on, find my corner of the bed and suddenly I’m lost. I switch between streaming platforms. I grab my phone and get on Instagram. There’s nothing to watch. Nobody to see. I don’t care about any of it. But I have to. Because if I’m not watching Mike Ross fight with Harvey Specter or Lorelai and Rory Gilmore fast talk their way through Luke’s coffee, I’d want to slam my head against the wall, crying.

I ask myself everyday. Is it the end of my relationship? Is it the amount of work? Is it the personal woes? The inability to give back to the people who gave me everything? Is it the drowning debt? My answer is the same every time. No.

Someone once asked me what depression feels like. “Is it a state of mind? Can’t you change your state of mind?” I tried to tell her.

It’s like an empty room that hasn’t been lived in for decades. It’s hollow, your voice echoes multifold. So your worries echo multifold. It’s dirty, not the sexy kind. It’s broken windows and rusty doors. It’s haunting without the ghosts. It’s a feeling of sinking. Like something bad is always going to happen. But it’s not. You know it’s not. Yet you feel like it just did. You feel like you’ve lost. Maybe it’s the loss of life in that room. Or the loss of happiness. The loss of light. It’s a dark room. Maybe there’s light. All it takes is the flick of a switch. But you’re stuck. You can’t get up and turn it on.

She asked me why. I didn’t have an answer.

My depression doesn’t need a reason to cling on to. My emotions don’t have to explain themselves for sinking again. I can’t write down why I’m not okay. But it’s the truth. I’m not okay.

How do you ask for help when you don’t know what you need help with? What do I say?

“Hey, I’m depressed. I don’t know why. I don’t know the fix. But help me?”

What do they go on with? What solution do they give to a problem I can’t describe?

So I try what I always have. To smile. Maybe if I smile enough, the happiness will become real. I try to giggle. Perhaps the silliness will help lighten up my heart. I try to create. Art helped me once, so it should again? I try to live. But as I sat there at that boardwalk, staring at fireworks, my sister turned to me, “Are you crying?”

I had to say no because I didn’t want to explain myself. But the truth was… Yes. The fireworks made me cry. I don’t know why. They always make me happy. And I was happy. But something within me made me cry. Because I wasn’t really happy.

How do you explain that?

Things that bring me an abundance of joy cannot lift me out of this dark hole I find myself stuck in over and over again. Maybe we’re all depressed and we just don’t admit it to each other. Maybe as you’re reading this, you’re relating. But you can’t tell anyone either because when they ask, “Your life is amazing. What do you have to be depressed about?” what do you say?

What do I say?

So I shrug my shoulders, look down in guilt and swallow my tears. I look at them, a lump in my throat and softly say,

“I’m not okay.”

 

Living In Contradiction

Leave a comment

photo-1526133066955-2b6a24bfda49.jpeg

I am the girl you’ll see on the streets, smiling at strangers, forever cheery.

I am her, nose in the air, uncaring, uninterested, just a little bit snooty.

 

I am loud, to you, maybe to her. You’ll hear me from the other room, laughing and making jokes.

I am shy and anxious. Timid when I see them. Afraid of my voice, terrified of the crowd.

 

I long to be free. To be rid of the Louis Vuitton dreams.

“Find me a corner and my old computer. I’m in the mood to watch TV.”

To be rid of my wants, focus on the needs,

To buy less clothes, to save fewer links,

To return my credit card, to live debt free.

 

I am the ideal consumer. Have something pretty? Does it smell luxury?

“Bring it to me, won’t you please?”

It’s not for show. It’s not for them to see.

It’s for me. It’s for the way they make me feel.

Powerful. Rich. Just a little bit snooty.

 

I suffered. A childhood that left me broken. Insecure and sceptic.

I’ve had days where food wasn’t real, when home wasn’t existent and life was on hold.

Yet, here I am, spoilt. Like a kid in a candy store who won’t stop crying. 

Not because I’m sad. Because I want what I want when I want it. 

 

I love people. The closer I can keep them, the happier I feel.

I hate company. Leave me alone, don’t want to speak.

 

I long for a partner. For someone’s arm to hold.

To smile, to flirt, to laugh. To hug when I’m cold.

I am his woman, in love, smitten. 

“Where’s my ring? Can’t wait till I marry him!”

 

I imagine a world, my company, I’m Queen.

There’s no king, no man. Just me and my employees.

It’s an empire. It’s mine. It’s hard work, long hours, no sleep,

But when I stand at that window, overlooking a world that I can finally touch and feel…

I would be invincible… but wait, that’s not it.

 

I want more. Out of this life, this world.

To have it better. To fight for more. 

A better job, better salary, better rights, better government, 

Better love, better laughter, better people,

I just want…

 

I want to be content. Happy with what I have. 

Accepting of others. To have the ability to say,

“You are your best version and that’s okay.”

To them, to him, to me…

 

But I just don’t agree.

 

 

Laugh Like Her

7 Comments

screen-shot-2019-02-01-at-11.00.57-pm-e1549033311631.png

I’m a 26-year-old living in Singapore working a job that takes me to different countries. I buy clothes every weekend and complain about how many nights of wine and cheese my colleagues throw in lieu of a party.

I post pictures of me with large groups, great food and brilliant surroundings. I spent an evening in Paris at an apartment one street away from the Eiffel Tower with women who are so strong and brave, it’s unrealistic. You saw the champagne, you saw the image, you never saw the truth.

Welcome to the facade of us happy working women.

“I met the CEO of a fancy company. He introduced himself to me.” – I saw the CEO of a fancy company. I stood around awkwardly while he spoke to my boss because I was too embarrassed to introduce myself and so I just stared for a half-hour and he ended up being really nice and introduced himself to me.

“I went to Paris. My office sent me.” – I went to a small town that’s a one hour drive away from Paris where I didn’t realize things shut down on Sundays and has very limited vegetarian options all 7 days of the week. I lost a lot of weight and developed severe ulcers when I came back.

“Oh my God! I feel so bad. Are you okay?” – I don’t know how to care. Sometimes, I think it’s a flaw. Sometimes, I think it’s normal and we’re all like that.

Because, come on…

When someone falls down, do you actually care? Do you rush out of reflex because society has taught you to ask how they are, let them know you can help and pretend you give a fuck about anyone but yourself or is it because your heart actually hurts when you see someone fall?

I don’t. Not unless I really truly care. Which is so fucking rare. Because I’m in constant competition with everyone I know since I was in first grade. “I have to be better. I have to score higher. I have to look hotter.” You know what? Fuck that shit. Here’s the truth.

I have high-functioning depression. I see a therapist once a month. I fight with my friends every other day. I’m jealous of girls and their laughter even though I know it’s all fake, just like mine.

I spend endless hours staring at blank pages. I travel one hour in two trains to reach eight hours of work before I travel one hour in two trains to come back home and cook. I haven’t slept for 8 whole hours in a very long time. I don’t think I’m drinking enough water anymore. I don’t know if I’m eating the right things. I think I’m weak. I’m scared to check. My eyes are tired. My body is sore. My heart has been breaking in pieces for months. I’ve been staring at a draft of a second book that I can’t bring myself to edit.

I want to get married. I can’t admit it. Because it’s weak. Women don’t need men in their lives. Women are strong. Women can survive alone. But holy fuck, how desperately I want to live under one roof and play house.  Sometimes, I think it’s the companionship. Sometimes, it’s because, fuck you strong and independent, I want to be a wife.

I’ve been studying GMAT. For months. I suck at it. I want so badly to get good at it. So I pick up the book and my phone rings and I try to spend time with human beings in actual conversation but my emails go off and I want to be a good employee who responds to my boss past midnight and I remember my book that I would really really like to edit but then it’s past 1am and I have to be up at 6am and I want so desperately to sleep.

So I do none of it. I turn music on and slowly cry.

Sometimes I stare at my Instagram. Sometimes I stare at hers. I don’t know whose smile is fake. Whose laughter is painful. I don’t know whose life is a lie.

But we all want to say, “Mine.” Because I cried when I went home but I bet she laughed and loved.

I sobbed alone into my pillow but I bet he shares hers.

I broke down every night but I bet she partied forever.

Her life. Her travel. Her hair. Her nails. Her boyfriend fiancé. Because didn’t you see that ring? Didn’t you see his proposal? I did. They’re meant to be together. Maybe we’re not. They never fight. Oh, you should hear us growl.

So here we go. I’ll try this again.

I’m a 26-year-old living 3000 miles away from the people I love on a routine that leaves no time for me. I work a job that takes me to countries I can’t explore because I’m always broke. I buy clothes I can’t afford, credit card bills ceiling to floor and that free wine? It’s my one true lifeline.

I love my job. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.

But that’s the only thing you’ll ever hear me complain about.

Because, that’s the new normal, right? We’re supposed to have perfect lives and shitty jobs but it pays for the perfect life and so it’ll be yet another thing I continue to lie about?

I have a messy life.

I have shitty interpersonal relationship skills.

I have one best friend.

I’m worried sick about my aging dogs that live with my aging parents.

I’m worried sick about my aging parents.

I want to be rich through my capabilities as a creative thinker in the world of writing and advertising and marketing.

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m anxious 90% of my existence and you know what I do when I am?

I log on to Instagram. To look at lives I am not living. To look at lies we’re both saying.

I follow a lot of happy looking women on Instagram. Because my inspiration is not their clothes or their face or their bodies. It’s that laughter.

And so I go…

In a crowded train, early Monday morning. Staring at my phone. I find myself wonder…

What an incredible life it will be… if only I could laugh like her.

And I post yet another fake picture.

Welcome to my lie.