A Year Later

I can't believe I'm back home for summer already. Seems just like yesterday that I moved to Bombay, this huge, complex, unexplainable city. What started off as a miserable first two months eventually transformed into giving me a second home, people to love and a new sense of self. I never realized how protected I had been (by liberal parents of a single child and a small city where above a certain social strata, everyone knows everyone) till I was forced to step into a world that was unknown in every way. Where it did not matter where I had come from or what I had done in my life or gone through. New meaning to new beginnings.

The year brought along new friends, the kind I am thankful for every morning when I wake up. A new sense of realization as to how much it means to me to do well academically and to remain focused. New confidence and perspective. I now know that you can never predict the end of monsoons in Bombay and that you have to carry a just-in-case hoodie till November. You can't just walk into Leopold at 12 expecting the kitchen to be open. You can't expect to find a place to sit if you try getting on a local train any time past 5:00 pm. That there are two exits to the Churchgate station and you need to take the subway even though its gives the word "scary" new meaning. That sitting at Marine Drive in the middle of the night with your legs swinging over the ledge facing the ocean, with your best friends might be the most beautiful experience in the city. That walks down Carter road with your best friend while eating chocolate and talking about everything under the sky would make your birthday easily the best you've had.

I entered Bombay lost and completely alone, hating every aspect of it. And here I am today, at home, but waiting to go back to the city to which I now belong.

Normal.

I get the urge to write at all the wrong times. In the middle of the night, when my pragmatism (or laziness) tells me to stay put on the bed, halfway through an International Economics class when I should really just be drawing graphs in my notebook or like now, in the middle of my end-trim exams, when I should be studying at 200 miles an hour to make up for lost time (spent idling away in bed). But here I am, writing.
I am hoping the opportunity cost is not as grievous as my mind makes it out to be. The fact that I am writing these words reflects my indifference.
There is no real "point" to this entry. My life has been more or less...normal. Although my definition of that rather subjective concept changes every few months. Right now, normal for me is a mix of a few very beautiful things. Normal is to do well in my academics. After a long time, I am actually slightly (if I may be as brave as to admit) proud of myself for doing quite well in a subject that is not yet a year old for me. Normal is to look forward to going to college, travelling two and a half hours at times, just because I can spend a few amazing hours with my best friend who I am dating (yes I said it. About time! ). I guess the reason I have been so reluctant in saying the "d" word is because it means so little to me.
What I have with the Delhiite goes so so much further than just going out for dinner (something that we have incidentally not done yet, in these last three months) and talking over our food. Normal (with the Delhiite) is to play FIFA in the middle of the night and nearly falling asleep on the couch. Normal is to go to Candies and buy just a huge tray of dessert and eat all of it in one go. Normal is to simultaneously text each other about how sick we feel after all that sugar.Normal is to make long unending lists of "pacts" and adding to it with shameless abandon. Normal is to end up saying the same thing at the same time, at so many different instances, it ceases to surprise. Normal is to have the best conversations over cheese Maggie and apple juice and dragging out the last few mouthfuls to prolong the conversation. Normal is to getting drunk and being happy and doing the craziest things. Normal is being able to argue and make up and realizing how much this has come to mean to us. Normal is to knowing the lyrics to bad jingles and to having different opinions. Normal is to getting changed into a better person, every single day.
After a really poisonous relationship, you fear commitment. You fear getting close to anybody. You pledge to be happy on your own. And just when you feel thats happening, a random 6 foot 3 goofball edges their way into your life and before you know it, you can be normal again.

Eventuality.

I think too much.

Sometimes you have so much to say but you bite your tongue and say it all in your head instead. Or you type out a long long mail or a text and delete without hitting Send. For a moment, you read the entire thing, reflecting on the raw truth of every word written. That's truth right there, in your hands. Its your every thought in words, uninhibited and unrestrained. You read it, all those words you will never allow yourself to say out loud, and you delete. You erase every evidence of the existence of your insecurity and your fears. You start afresh on a blank page, blocking out what is true. You pretend like it never happened.

Slowly you start doing it more often. Concealing more than revealing. Choosing silence over uncomfortable confessions. Wrong over right. Easy over difficult. Lies over truth.

Till it all becomes easy. Till its not a concerted effort anymore. Till it is hardly an effort. Till it becomes you.

Until you are left a shadow of what you were, and your relationship is just a delicately fabricated web of lies borne out of good intentions. And you are caught up in the irony of living a life entirely manipulated by you, but one you have little control over.

I think too much. That is my excuse.

"Jealous? ME?! No way!"

The jealous bring down the curse they fear upon their own heads.  ~Dorothy Dix


My laptop crashed yesterday. Now I hate the usage of the word "crashed" in this context. Like it is somehow being implied that it met a much gorier end then what was actually the case. And mine certainly did not go hurtling down into a ravine or knife sharp rocks. It just decided to stop functioning. Like it has a mind of its own and has had enough of starting and hibernating and what not. Which is a little exasperating considering the fact that its not even 8 months old. My faith in technology (SONY) deteriorates with time.

The quote up there is interesting in how it sums up a fear within a fear. I am so paranoid of being jealous, when it comes to relationships, that I do everything that I possibly can to not indulge in it, and in the past, defying karmic logic, what I subconsciously feared or possibly foresaw eventually turned out to be true. Cosmic cruelty much? Oh yes sir!

Sometimes I also wonder whether is it just me or have we women, as a gender, unanimously agreed to let go a lot of things in a relationship just so we can avoid that neverending poisonous trip of jealousy we are prone to. The fighting is okay, it can get sorted. The misunderstandings are fine, they can be correctly understood. But what about that which is just restricted to your mind? What about jealousy?

Talking only for myself, a LOT of times, when certain fleeting comments hurt me, I would just pretend to not have heard. Or worse, I'll try to overcompensate for it and end up making it a little worse for myself. Because obviously I can't show the other person that I am insecure! Or that it actually does hurt me sometimes when they make stray remarks. It's like the unspoken Woman-Code.

You don't show it.

You are allowed to do whatever you wish to, in order to make yourself feel better. Anything BUT telling the truth. You can complain about it to your girlfriend on the phone, you can convey your irritation in disguised ways, you can retreat in your shell and be hostile for a while, heck..you can write in your journal about it! But not a word. And those of us who ARE bold/stupid/classy enough to give their *insert relationship here* a good (and much deserved) mouthful are invariably termed as "insecure psycho freaks".

Its a harsh harsh world out there. But its best to treat it like a mouthful of wine. Keep it on the tip of your tongue, swill it around your mouth cautiously, taste it with even more wariness, and finally, because there's not much else left to do, swallow.

The Only Way Out is Up.

Familiarity can give you such a pleasant high. Reading the words written by a very dear friend, seeing your name mentioned there and knowing in a fraction of a second that it is you that she refers to...that instant warm glow it floods you with...safe to to say not many things come closer to making you happier.

This if for you, if you're reading, Thechemicalengineer; those memories are irreplaceable, that time so sublime. If I start to think back, I can't point out a single period of my life before the age of 17 that didn't have you playing a significant role in it. How many people have the joy and the fortune to still know and love the person who saw them on their very first day on Earth? You probably didn't make much sense of what was going on either then. 8 months of existence doesn't equip you with a lot of understanding, especially when it comes to seeing another much tinier baby in a hospital bed. Do you sometimes wonder if our friendship was sealed by fate right then? It is so easy to believe it was meant that way. That we were in fact destined to connect so effortlessly, with an unspoken promise of forever?

It has been much too long. But can I just say that the distance and time doesn't really make me feel any less for you? I love you too.


I got back home early today from college and after a few futile attempts to take a nap (once bitten, never shy), I am here, reading and writing. And even though there are so many times when I crave for some other way to occupy myself, for now, it is enough. It is all I need.


LATER

And because I cannot seem to properly gather my thoughts before I begin to write, I am back to making my edits. I used to call them just that in my old blog. "Edits". Although for the most part they hardly ever were anything more than a two page long rant about something I had forgotten to mention the first time around.

The last few days have been consumed with introspection. With my best friend away from the city, I am left with hours to myself. Needless to say it fills me with an emptiness I cannot describe. You don't know the true worth of someone till they aren't there, a phone call or a text away. But like I keep mentioning (and annoyingly so), I am in a constant effort to lessen my dependence on other people. Companionship and co-dependence threaten to merge tracks for me all the while, and experience has taught me to be wary. It's hardly ever about the other person too. I honestly believe if you need to find the answers to most things in life, you have to turn inside. That's where you find them. And yourself.

I was talking to this same amazing person, my closest friend in Bombay,The Delhiite (and we shall refer to him as that from this moment forth) last night for a good few hours, and it just got me to thinking about how much I have changed as a person, as opposed to what I used to be. Of course, moving to a new city, living away from family and home and your friends changes you, but more so than anything, I have made a concerted effort to change. I have had more than my share of wake-up calls in the past year, all pointing towards the same urgent necessity; I needed to change. And fast.

The last two years of High School saw me transform into everything I had never imagined myself being, and yet I assumed the despicable role with effortless grace (and I am being as sarcastic as I possibly can here). This was carried over to college where the first few months were spent in perpetual melancholy and a very very profound and deep sense of non-belonging. And then finally after about 4 months of trying to fit in to a niche that was never made for me, and a trip back home for New Years that changed everything. It was one week of recklessness and a complete disregard for sense or safety which ultimately left me with a very loud message;

I was a mess. I had to do something about it. And very fast.


Nothing sets you back on track like faith lost in yourself. Nothing delivers a harder blow than a shame that powerful. And I can vouch for the fact that I am not being dramatic here when I say I did not recognize the person I had become. I was no longer the person who preferred to read in the silence of her living room, who wrote in her blog when her thoughts overwhelmed her, who had any sense of what was ethical and safe and in line with her principles. In the simplest words, I did not care. For anything and least of all anybody. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this kind of attitude doesn't take you very far before your knees buckle and there is no ground beneath your feet. Rock bottom is not a pleasant place to be when you didn't pay heed to the journey down south.

But then there is only one way out, and it is up. You either keep lying there for a while and wait to gather strength. Or you get up any way and take a shot at climbing out. I chose the latter. I couldn't bear to be there anymore with myself. I knew what I was capable of being, both the extremes, and I wanted to go back to being what I was for the first 17 years of my life. I wanted all of it back, along with the flaws and the quirks and the insecurity.

And when I think of it, these last 3 months or so have been a journey back, for me. I can recognize the heavily flawed and yet much MUCH nicer person I am capable of being (and had been) coming back eventually. And I am so very proud. When I told my friend Kaypee about this, coupled with a few dozen apologies for sounding too smug, all he said was that I deserved to be.

Sometimes you do need to look back and give yourself credit where it is due.

And in spite of my strong urge to go back and delete the last paragraph, I think I am going to let it stay. As a testimony for the future, and a remainder, that a lot is left to be done. But I am sure getting there.

Day 2

When you are writing after a long time, properly writing, anyway...you are constantly bothered by the uncertainty of whether it is a temporary creative spurt, or whether it is actually your ability to string words for hours and hours that has returned to you. Considering the fact that you have not written in what seems like (and probably is) months, you would expect it to come back to you tainted. Accompanied by an inferior memory of words and rustiness when it comes to translating your thoughts. This has been my first proper, true-to-the-word writer's block. And I'm very pleasantly surprised to find my writing come back to me intact. Almost like it had been stowed away in some dark corner,  packaged properly in bubble wrap and one fine Saturday morning, it lands on your lap, untouched and so familiar.

Which just goes to show how much the state of your mind matters when it comes to the proper manifestation on your talent(s). I personally regret the fact that I was not born with a natural ability for anything spectacular. When I voiced this out to my parents (in separate instances), my father, the perfect blend of pragmatism and optimism, pointed out that I had a way with words. The gift of the gab, as a friend described it very early in my life. My mother, e possessing the kind of blind love only a mother can, told me I was the nicest person she know, and that was enough for a lifetime.

I wish I could take either of them more seriously. But I'm far too skeptical for that.

How much weight does my mother's claim have, when she is unaware of 90% of the shenanigans I have got myself wrapped up in while growing up?
As for my Dad...I think I can write. But I mostly attribute it to the amount of thoughts in my head at any given point of time. It would be impossible to let them remain that way, and not give them words.

One of the most exasperating feelings in the world is when you fail to convey that your musings are not a way of asking for reassurances. In fact, most of the times, you just want them to be voiced out, since they are threatening to overwhelm your mind. You don't want a reaction to them.

Anyway. I can see an opportunity when it is placed before me. And I am going to write whenever I find the urge to.

I am thinking I should continue my practice of not mentioning names in my blog. Not for any other reason but for the fact that it is at times a little disturbing to find your name written out on anybody's journal, free for anybody to see. So I'll stick to fictitious names instead of initials (something I have done for the last 4 years in my other blog, which got a little confusing after a point of time).

More later (and there is such joy in meaning this)

M


Later.


Irrationality and more irrationality. The lows to which my mind can take me still has a capacity to astound. Day 2 of the Indulgence Pact with myself has been a disappointment, mostly. I ended up spending most of the day reading or sleeping or eating so frequently, I'm actually not even exaggerating when I say I must have gained a pound or two over the last two days.

Somewhere through what was possibly my 5th meal of the day, I stopped, fork in my mouth and everything, and pictured myself sitting the same way, years into the future, a much fatter version of what I am now, eating away my emotions. Isn't that what it is called when eating is your answer to everything? Sometimes I swear that is exactly how it is for me.

How shameful.

The problem with sleeping too much, for me, is dreaming too much. And that is exactly why I never slept in the afternoon while growing up. I would get vivid unpleasant dreams (not exactly nightmares, but equally disturbing) and wake up shaking like a leaf, trying to explain to someone why I was so scared of sleeping in the day. Why I thought any of that would change overnight is beyond me. I am almost too scared to go back to bed now till absolutely necessary.

And then the second I would wake up and pull myself together (As my friend the Goopster would advice) I would be so consumed in irrational, negative thoughts, the only other option would be to shut myself off completely and feed into it some more. Vicious cycle much?

Absolutely.

I'm getting a little tired of stewing around in this perpetual self imposed glumness now and like always, Im going to start working to distract/tire myself till I'm back to normal. Because right now, talking to people would just cause more damage. My best friend texted me a while ago telling me what an amazing day he had and it took me ALL my strength and maturity to reply back with civility. Have you ever noticed how you so promptly snap back against the people you love the most? It's like you have taken them and their patience for granted and given yourself a permanent license to be as moody and temperamental with them as you wish to be.

I saved him some of  that today. Pat back Misha.

Okay. Must study. Need to stop procrastinating.

Today

This new blog does not signify some landmark event of my life. I have not reached any elevated plane of realization, neither have I significantly changed as a person. I am the same accident-prone, overly impulsive, reactionary person that I have been for the last 19 years of my life. This date does not hold any unique significance to me. To be fair, it is just a normal Saturday.

Except for the fact that unlike all other Saturdays, I did not wake up at seven in the morning and rush for my first lecture. I put my phone on Silent and continued to sleep for another two hours. Something told me I didn't have it in me to travel two hours to college today. Something told me I needed to rest myself completely over the weekend, as best as I could. Immediately, my conscience started to hunt for justifications for this sort of indulgence. Because our lives have trained us to not give ourselves any extra care and attention unless some colossal achievement has been made which validates this. And just like that, we live our life hurtling from one task to another, one place to another, stopping for minute-long breathers and then resuming the race again. My conscience lives up to expectations. As soon as I put my phone on Silent and cancel the Alarms, a snide voice in my head asks me why.

"Do you really think you can afford to take so many breaks in life, Misha?"

Well...no. And haven't we been taught to fight that monster called Laziness and tide over adversity on the grand old boat of Might? But is this laziness really? Last night was terrible. I came back home to find a package of my favorite kinds of chocolate from my Mom. A random gesture of affection, to remind me how much they miss me back at home. A very close friend texted me around the same time to tell me he had reached home (he has gone back home for a fortnight for his sister's wedding). And all of a sudden a tidal wave of melancholy crashed into me. It took me completely by surprise. So much so that I landed flat with no time to break my fall. All the familiar thoughts of loneliness and non-belonging and home-sickness swirled around me. You know when you are fighting a lost battle with your mind. And I did not have the strength to shake this sudden low off and distract myself with anything. I just knew I needed a break. A proper one. Spent just doing the things my instinct told me to. Not what I ought to.

And so I made up my mind to resume working on my very first New Years Resolution. This was made somewhere in early November, about a week after my ex boyfriend broke up with me without so much as a word of explanation, automatically taking away from me the biggest and only security blanket I had carried with me to this new unfamiliar city. I lost the person I considered my best friend and confidante. In the process of settling in and getting accustomed to college, I had stopped trying to make any new friends since I took it for granted that I had my closest friend by me. Not to ramble about this more than necessary (self pity loves a good chat), I was thrown off completely by shock as to how lonely I really was. This was about the time I went back home for Diwali and somehow managed to hold my bearings, giving way only a few times, that too in seclusion. To be honest, I was broken. True to the word shattered. Not because I did not have a "boyfriend" figure anymore. I doubt I ever had that with him. We had the most abusive, violent, poisonous relationship, to be honest. But he was still my closest friend. I still spent 80 per cent of my days writing/talking to him. And it was all gone in literally a matter of a few hours.

My friend P was with me every second of this, talking to me for hours on the phone. Chiding me and urging me to pull myself together. I took my first proper break late October, two days after the break up. This was after staying up through the night crying and finally throwing up because it was impossible to cry more. Getting out of bed was not an option. I called her up at 6 in the morning, not bothering to consider if she would be sleeping. I just needed some validation. And she told me exactly what I wanted to hear. She said- "Take a day off. Completely. Don't worry about college, don't worry about your studies. Just make yourself breakfast. Eat well. Watch something on your laptop for the entire day till you fall asleep. And switch your phone off."
I watched Friends reruns for 9 hours that day, interrupted only by trips to the bathroom or kitchen. By the end of it, I was not crying. I was exhausted, every cell of my body was crying for some rest. And I slept. Fitfully. After more than 72 hours, I slept like a rock.

When I woke up, I made a resolution. I promised myself that I would pick up all the pieces and start fixing my life properly. I resolved to do whatever it took to love MYSELF and be content with my own company and not look outwards for love and reassurance.

Its been 4 months. I don't talk to my ex anymore. I went out and made an actual effort to meet people and ended up making a bunch of amazing friends. And although it did not happen overnight (none of these things do), I was happy. For the first time in Bombay, I could smile for no reason. I could come back home as late as I wanted. I could sit on the ledge at Carter road and have 2 hour conversations about everything under the sky. I could go get a drink with a very special girl friend and talk without inhibition about my darkest fears and hers. I could play video games (and suck at it), I could write Inboxes to people without fearing someone reading them and fighting with me later. I could stop justifying my character.

This break is of a different kind. Today I felt the need to remind myself of my resolution. Of how I'm getting there but nowhere close to the end. Of how there is so much more to be done...its a constant process.

And more than anything, what sets today apart from every other day the last four months...I woke up with an intense, unexplainable urge to write. I'm too scared to scroll up to even see how much I've written, because I have been incapable of doing so for months now. My dearest friend, writing, had taken what seemed like a permanent vacation from me. But turns out I was a little too hasty in my assumption.

And thats why the new blog.

That's why; Today.