The Flow of Thought

Good news first, I got my period today. Now, there is absolutely no logical reason why I would welcome that painful experience in my life, but I do. Because it lays to rest some of the worries I had been having about my health while at university. The whole of my first year, I did not get my period even once. That meant that I went for a period of nearly 4-5 months without getting my period. It really messed with my head because my hormones were going everywhere (this I know in retrospect). So I am merely thankful that my period showed up on time, which means that I can be healthy and fine.

But here’s the bad part about these periods, cramps. I get horrible cramps and this month, I happened to get it on a weekend. What would I do if it came during a weekday? During class? There is so much at stake with the time my period shows up in and also, this is all contingent on my period deciding to be normal and show up every month. Another bad part about periods are my mood swings, they are quite funny in retrospect. but in their peak, they are important (even though I know I should not be taken seriously). I will switch from hating the whole human race to singing praises in a flash, and it is weird to see me spout hate because I generally am a loving, nice, happy person (even though my internet footprint as far as my blog is concerned is quite sad). I don’t really like the hormones controlling my brain like that, they make me feel out of control (which is again, quite weird, so hormones are not part of ‘me’? What?) Okay, enough crisis for a while, this is, but probably my period talking (and the fact that I am awake at 4am to write this blog after sleeping at around 12:30)

I do this a lot now, I wake up at crazy hours to write on the blog. But what worries me is the fact that this is not even a point in the semester when work piles like crazy. There are going to be much crazier points in the semester and I am genuinely afraid for the blog, will I be able to write every day? I probably need to reduce some kind of standard (assuming I have one at the present moment) of what makes a post. I probably will also have to put a check on how long I take to write this. I cannot afford to give myself too much time for this, for that will mean that I shall cut short on others’ times which would probably need to be prioritised. How long I take to write this is also quite contingent on me knowing what I want to write. Like right now, I am pretty much clueless and going with the flow (please get the pun), but maybe I need to start becoming more focused.

Also, I love my friends. They are the sweetest people on campus and I don’t know how I would survive without them at all. Talk about irony, I was just saying I need to be focused and brain decides to say something so utterly random. But I guess, that’s the greatest part, right? Thoughts travel so fast, they are wonderfully complex or simple, but they go everywhere (or can potentially do that). It gives me hope that there is always a chance that an imprisoned mind can set itself free, or can be set free (what is free, what is not, that’s a separate question in itself). Isn’t it truly marvellous?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Common Mistakes

Well, here’s the deal. I screw up a lot, I make too many mistakes because I do not know how to act and react in many situations. Case in point, when a message came from C, I was having dinner with my friends. One of my friends sees it and asks me a perfectly valid, innocent question, “who is it?” and I react immediately. I make a move to take my phone away from her, my face heats up (even though I don’t blush in the technical sense) and I end up escalating the issue enough that now, four other people know about it. And I feel like crying because I never intended for so many people to know and I cannot help but resent myself for my own stupidity and incompetence. In my defence though, this is the first time something like that has happened in my life and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I shall handle this much better.

But aside from that, I also have a tendency to do things I probably should not, all because I think I am doing someone something good. It is a case of misplaced generosity and it almost always comes back to bite my derriere, despite all my preparation to save myself from the inevitable pain in my derriere. But as I said, my interventional skills coupled with an exasperating memory (which can sometimes remember the dumbest things for ages and important things for a millisecond) is a disastrous combination that has left insane destruction in its wake before. Today, another such situation arose and well, I was so close to ruining everything for everyone. But I managed to somewhat control the situation and now, I think I should try my best to keep it there within the careful confines of rationality. Again, in my defence, I have never done this before and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I will handle it much better.

But aside from these completely sad states of existence is the fact that I keep on forgetting the simplest things. It could be something like forgetting my ID card and standing sadly in the mess during mealtime, it could quite literally be one of the so many things I do on a day-to-day basis. In fact, this blog post itself would not have been written had I persisted with my sleep. I have been doing that a lot lately, I end up sleeping as I am writing my post and I wake up much later, reminded of this endeavour I need to see to fruition and then I have to work again.

Sometimes I wonder how better my life would be if I were not obliged to write a blog post every day. But I also tell myself that we are near the end, almost, of this year. There are not many more months left, I have crossed a majority of it. Maybe I won’t continue this next year, or maybe I shall experiment with themes and things like that next year. But again, next year is still quite far off, nearer, but still far enough. And sometimes, I think, that is something we need to remind ourselves of. Sometimes boundaries are so thin, they can be non-existent. But that doesn’t mean the boundaries don’t exist. It is a very easy mistake to make, something I have made too many times, that has led me to quite a few situations, including the ones that happened today. Maybe I can take this as a lesson and move on?

And that’s my memory for the day.

The Normality of Stress

It is getting late at night and it feels like sleep or a collapsing for a few hours is the only good thing that shall help me. This is especially depraved as a logic because sleep would only make the work pile up bigger than it already has and leave me crying and bleeding. I would have to work doubly hard if any of that happens and the fear of that work is the only thing keeping me alive and moving on right now. It is scary, how much of my life depends on this work, from food to mental health to sleep schedules. What is even more terrifying is the fact that it doesn’t seem to have an end, has become normalised and hence has potential to indefinitely continue in my life.

Anyway, aside from that is the stress of thinking of whether I can do a semester abroad next semester. It is not a simple thing, it involves quite a bit of money and the added fact that I shall not be close to the support system I have built at my university. Right now, I have friends who ensure I take care of myself and have provided me with support, much more than I thought I deserved. So I would essentially uproot myself from what I would believe is the only concrete thing in my life right now. It is quite saddening when I put it that way, but the lack of anything solid and reliable in my life is true. I don’t know where I stand with a few people, I don’t know where I stand by myself, I don’t know so many things and it isn’t even funny anymore. It is just sad, hopeless and sad. So the somewhat sense of reliability I get from my friendships at university is about the only sense of reliability I get here.

I am also plagued by the dwindling relationship with the crush, but maybe it is a good thing. Maybe I can take it in stride, and move on, without wondering about what-ifs and so many other things that have destroyed hearts for centuries. There I go, I am ticking the boxes for becoming a lovesick fool in the literature of all times. Except that most of the time, this lovesick fool is male while I am a female (as far as I know I identify). But that is not to delegitimise my ‘lovesick fool’ness, in fact, I would say I am a better lovesick fool than a lot of male protagonists in contemporary novels. It is a pity he is not one, he probably does not care for my existence at all or even if he does, maybe not so much as I do. I am the one who is a little too invested in this whole thing, a situation I aim to correct as soon as physically and mentally possible. But aside from that, there has also been increasing stress in general, about life and academics and a thousand other things. I might very well be losing my mind a bit, especially if the story I wrote for a class today is any proof. So, overall, it’s been a good few weeks and maybe I just need to find that inner strength and start again?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Sleepy Words

How does one draw the line where they become desperate and clingy and when they give the other person the space they need? It is actually something I am struggling with at the moment with the status with C and so on. So a friend of mine tells me that I should not respond to messages immediately, belying a sense of eagerness. I should instead be keen on giving an impression of being slightly aloof, not enough to seem like I am not interested, but enough to not seem like I am obsessing over the person (and well, it is quite common knowledge that I am obsessing over the guy so much) and being too eager. It is a tricky conundrum no doubt, one that definitely left me feeling extremely confused over where I stood in the bigger picture.

But anyway, moving away from ponderations of this kind, I have increasingly been falling asleep while doing my work. It has been happening much too often now that I am once again reminded of the time last semester when I would fall asleep in the oddest of positions, at the oddest of hours and then wake up and write my half-finished blog post and fall asleep again. I remember feeling perennially tired during that time and that is somewhat similar to what is happening right now. But I am hoping I don’t push myself to the lunatic limits I employes last semester. But going by how early in this semester it is and how I am already losing my mind over everything, I will not be surprised, if this semester ends up stressing me out more than I ever thought possible. I dread it, but I am also weirdly resigned to it and of the opinion that I shall cross that bridge when I get there. In retrospect, that is really not a great survival strategy but it is one I shall reluctantly adopt at the present moment.

When I read the last few stuff I have written, I can visibly point out the places where I sound similar to the theorists we have been reading in our Literary Theory course. This is not a good thing because they write in the densest language I have ever seen. They could use perfectly comprehendible words but still make as much sense as an old lady without her fake teeth. And if someone were to ask me why they did that, I wouldn’t know. I am only influenced by their style of writing and unconsciously aping them, I don’t understand the mental processes that created that. Moreover, it is a little too much to ask of me to explain that, when at the most basic level, I cannot explain myself and why I am aping their style. Now, one can also be extremely mean (or teasing) and come up with a convincing case for why the way I have written is not in a style similar to those theorists I have read. I shall only nod my head in agreement, sing a little tune and buzz away to do something more worth my time, which is, at the present moment, sleeping. After all, sleep trumps all, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Sickness and Disappointment

I have fallen sick and I feel completely horrible about it. It is making me forgo my readings, my drowsiness getting the best of me even now. I can feel my eyes drooping and my whole body feeling sick and tired as it desperately tries to heal itself and bring me back to normal. Aside from this is the general thoughts about a certain person that has been plaguing my psyche. I don’t know what the deal is with him, what the deal is going to be, either. He has been quite a no-show and well, I am just going to use that as definitive proof of his having forgotten me. It does not exactly sit very well with me, this having been forgotten, or worst, ignored. But well, as my parents tell me often, you really cannot help your own fate sometimes. So if my fate decides that I shall live a lonely life and continue to live my life in such a way.

The thing about falling sick and falling asleep through writing about it is the fact that I can close my eyes right now and fall asleep and know that I shall be weirdly taken care of by my roommate and anyone else here. And that actually helps me feel a lot better, a lot less lonely. I think that is the one aspect I miss about the guy, his friendship and general presence, that has now stopped completely. That is what kills me from the inside (aside from this sickness that has already cruelly made its way through so many young students), that I have lost a friend, more than anything. That is quite disappointing and sad, but well, I cannot really help it if my life has always been a series of disappointments. What I can do now is maybe try and contain those disappointments in a particular set rather than let them loose?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Breakdown and Heal

I lost too many things today, too many that I cannot count. Too much has happened, that I am overwhelmed, despondent and a thousand other things all at once and I can do absolutely nothing about it. Everything seems to be going wrong, I do not know how to handle anything, I have skipped too many meals, I have completely and undeniably lost myself. And it is not the good kind of losing myself, it is the kind which makes me panic, makes my chest hurt, my head hurt, my throat to close up and make me unable to breathe. I can already feel the physical effects of everything that has been happening around me. Even during my hardest times, I have never felt like there was nothing at all that happened in a day that made me the slightest bit happy. And that is scary because I have never been that hopeless before.

I have a presentation tomorrow that I am terrified about, the thing that has been bothering me the last few days reared its head once again and this time, reared its head and promptly jumped off a cliff and took my heart with it. And well, the pain is not just mental but also very physical and even though I may not have broken bones to prove it, the pain I felt was very much real. The worst part for me though was the fact that I allowed myself to be vulnerable to such pain, to indirectly cause myself that pain. That I had shamelessly cheered myself on undertaking this journey. So now, it is back to bite me in my derriere, that I allowed myself to be carried away by the foolish fancies of my whimsical mind. If there’s anything I have known until now, foolish fancies are just that, foolish. They don’t deserve the importance or hope that I harboured for them, they took that hope and used it to suck the remaining hope from out of me. The dream of the orphanage and the loner life seem much more plausible right now. Maybe I am underestimating myself, maybe I am not. But of all the things I know, I know I at least deserve that dream of an orphanage.

I wrote myself this note today in the morning when I woke up. I told myself that these were going to be my basic postulates, that I was going to follow them, ingrain them into my psyche and keep as true to them as possible. Well, I do feel nauseous now because I have too many things that I am worried about and also because I have not had proper food since morning. I also broke down and while having a breakdown is scary and preferably avoided, I think I needed the breakdown for release. I feel much better after the break down because it helped me get some of the bad thoughts out, some of the negative emotions out. And while I am not exactly proud of having a breakdown so early on in the semester, it was not something I could have avoided. And for me, I think I need to understand that this does not pose a judgement on my resilience and strength. I am strong, I am brave and I am going to get better. Starting with now, so I am going to get some work done and get to bed. Sleep is important after all, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Complicated Ordinariness and Extraordinariness

Today was probably one of the most unproductive days I have had in the recent past and that is saying a lot because my whole summer was a case study in unproductivity. But nevertheless, unproductivity is more starkly noticed when you have something to be productive about but you fail at that. I had a lot of work that I had to get done today but I did not get it done and now, I am quite obviously paying the price as I sit here, trying desperately to fight sleep (though I don’t know why I am this sleepy despite the fact that I slept a lot) and try and get something at least done. But I think that is going to fail, so I might as well just sleep after this blog post.

Which brings me to another thing that I worry about, this blog. I am afraid of how I shall maintain this blog as the semester progresses. It is just the first week, one of my professors is not even here yet so her class hasn’t started yet, and I am already drowning under the workload. I am not exactly very confident of the fact that I can do this, but I do know that I have gotten through this (if not exactly, but still a form of this) before and I have the strength within me for that. All I have to do is find it and channel it properly and pray that I become a great person as an added bonus. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything I can do to make me a great person and not generally meh. I don’t necessarily think that being ordinary or average is bad (regardless of the baggage that the terms generally come with). But I cannot help but wonder how different it would have been if I were not so, if there was something extraordinary, if you will, about me. It is not exactly a very great doubt to have because it throws my self-esteem into jeopardy almost all the time. And my self-esteem is not the greatest anyway. So you take something that was already at level -1 and send it on to level -6 or something.

That reminds me, I have still not received a reply from him and well, I don’t know how to deal with it, to be honest. I don’t want to give myself hope only for it to come crashing down, so right now, I am focussing on not thinking about these kinds of things. Because when you like someone or have a crush on someone, you do tend to become quite obsessed with them. For me, this physical distance means that I have to try and not let that obsession anywhere near me because it is pointless and shall never achieve fruition. I am just really afraid because I have never really dealt with things like this before. The one time before this, I had too much going on, too much was at stake. And well, as I had written, I moved on and maybe that’s what will happen with this one too. But right now, hope is the cheeky thing that continues to flutter here and there inside my mind and well, as pleasant as the feeling is, the after-effects is something I don’t think I want to put myself through (they do say that romance is intoxicating).

But anyway, aside from that, I have been sleeping a lot lately. I don’t even know why I sleep so much or why I feel so sleepy all the time. The last couple of days, I have not been able to sleep properly because there were too many things running on my mind. As they continue to do, even right now. There are too many thoughts that are fighting for attention, to be called to be typed out onto the screen. I am afraid of my classes, if I will be able to do good enough in them for my professors to like me and think of me as a worthy student. Does that make me ‘brown-nosed’? I don’t really know, because I would not equate wanting to be liked by professors to stupidly slaving away for them and saying a ‘yes’ to everything they say or do. I don’t think that’s how I want to be liked by them. I would much rather have them like me as a consequence of my smartness. But I am ordinary after all, so there’s that dilemma. Why is everything in life so complicated?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Flutes and Sound

Today was the first day that I learnt to play the flute. Now I have a flute in my room that I have borrowed from the professor and I have been trying really hard to produce sound from it. This is the Carnatic flute, a flute made completely out of bamboo and is extremely different from the western flute. Anyway, regardless of all that is the fact that the flute is an extremely difficult instrument to play. It took me the whole class to produce some sound at all from the flute. And the worst part was after I produced the sound, when I could not reproduce it because I didn’t truly know what had worked differently. While the professor was extremely nice and showed us and corrected us, corrected me quite a bit in particular, I was extremely bad at it and did not even produce sound until the very end. And even then, the sound that came out was part my breathing and part the flute sound. And that’s a very embarrassing proposition to be in, at least for me.

It didn’t help that there were others around me who were doing absolutely wonderful and I was feeling like a dumb person. But anyway, I have it in my room right now and I have been working on it and while I still don’t have a 100% guarantee to produce sound, I can produce sound at a higher success rate than during class hours. I have nothing but my own practice and determination to credit that achievement to. I also managed to play Sa, Re, and Ga on the flute. Of course, it is contingent on the fact that sound first initially makes its merry way out of the flute. But I have a much higher probability of blowing into the flute and it producing some sound right now than befSelfore. That is good progress, I would say. I also asked the professor how long it generally takes for someone to be able to produce sound without much issue. he said it depends, some people take days, some people take a few minutes. It does not do well to formulate the mean and figure out the average time taken. I think I shall just let myself take my time with this. Practice as much as possible because this is truly an exciting prospect. I am in love with the flute and it makes me feel happy when sound finally gushes out of the flute.

Today’s class was also filled with me making inappropriate jokes and innuendoes on the flute. We had quite a few gems, which, for the sake of this being a public space, I shall refrain from sharing. I don’t want to “blow” things out of proportion. Anyway, I am simultaneously extremely afraid and apprehensive about the course while being excited whenever the tiniest of sounds makes its way out. It is getting very late right now and I desperately feel myself falling asleep through everything. I have had a good day, a very scary day and hopefully, as the days pass by, it shall get better?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Disappointment Luggage

My luggage finally made it today morning and I was excited to unpack all my stuff. But my Kindle is missing, one of my suitcases had been tampered with and doesn’t have a lock now, and it has a broken zip. My Kindle had been inside that suitcase and now it is not there. I cannot help but think that it had been stolen. I had very specifically mentioned the Kindle to the airport staff, I had told them that I needed my Kindle for my work, but it evidently did not make a positive difference. It made a negative one instead, I don’t even know where it could have been taken out of my bag. the bags also came covered in plastic wrap, which I had been (and I am ashamed to admit this) impressed by. But I did not anticipate that it would have hidden such an insidious secret.

I am done with unpacking my stuff, I have put them all away quite neatly in my room. What remains is to decorate my board and walls. My chocolates were mostly ruined and that really broke my heart. I had been talking about disappointments yesterday and today, I faced a high level of disappointment. I mean, this was probably higher than seeing my grades in a course I had honestly wanted to do well in, for which I really had worked as hard as I could. But anyway, what’s done is done, I have written an email again to the airlines. I had called them and they were extremely unhelpful, they had no answers and asked me to write an email to the email ID they provided instead. The only thing I can console myself with is the fact that they at least gave me the email ID. If they had not given me even that, I would have been extremely angry.

I had finished unpacking and arranging the stuff from my locker yesterday, so when my luggage finally made it, I already had an idea of where the new things would fit in. And when my luggage came, I was able to fit the stuff in without much ado. I had only slept for three and a half hours that night because the airlines courier called me at 6:30am in the morning to inquire about my address. I was shaken out of my slumber (I am glad I woke up though because I have a tendency to sleep through literally anything) and in my sleepy state, I understood even lesser Hindi than I otherwise would. But I was able to make out that he wanted directions and I told him to give me ten minutes while I go to the gate and have the security bhaiya speak to him instead. I am forever indebted to the bhaiyas at the gate because they really helped me. My bags finally made it at 8pm.

Once I got my stuff back to my room, I first checked my stuff, spoke to my parents and then threw my stuff back inside the suitcase and collapsed on the bed to sleep. I was tired, as I am right now and I wanted nothing more than to just sleep. I planned to wake up in an hour and get to breakfast, but I slept for two hours and could not get to breakfast. But nonetheless, I was able to get some sleep, much like what I need right now. I am exhausted beyond words at the moment, but I take heart from the fact that I have unpacked my room and there is not much work for me left to do. Only a day more for the first day of classes. I shall do fine and not be disappointed, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Ponderings on Womanhood

As my summer break draws to an end, as the day of my departure looms threateningly on the horizon, my brain is progressively turning to mush and disintegrating. I am panicking about my packing, about university, about this new crush (honestly, why now? Why couldn’t I have had a crush-free existence?) and so many other things. My brain evidently works overtime sometimes and I spend a few nights not being able to sleep as easily as I used to. Part of the reason is also probably my period hormones which have left me feeling really dumb and bloated and a thousand other feelings that I am extremely annoyed by. I wish this were a thing that every human went through, because honestly, why is there so much inequality at a biological level? I don’t think anyone would willingly choose the painful life of having periods or undergoing childbirth if they could have it otherwise.

The Bible says quite clearly that this pain is given to a woman because Eve sinned and so ta-da, welcome to a world of pain, all daughters of Eve. And I am not even Christian, though I must agree this is a very convenient argument. But in my very limited experience, I have absolutely never ever seen any mention of why women are the ones to undergo all these painful biological processes. Of course, there are mentions of sons and children, but no word of what brought them out into the world. Sex is mentioned, the child’s life is mentioned, but the bare minimum is mentioned about childbirth. Which is probably not surprising because, for the longest time, the men weren’t present near their wives during childbirth. So the men who wrote their stories (because they did write the majority of stories we find today), didn’t even understand what had happened, except that a prince was born, or a princess.

In fact, in India, to this date, I believe the father is generally not present inside the delivery room. My father wasn’t inside the room for my brother’s delivery, I haven’t seen it anywhere. All I have seen, even in movies, is a husband who leaves his wife in her mother’s house a couple of months before the due date, or a husband who waits outside the delivery room. It is only quite recently that I have seen a couple of movies where the husband is present in the room with his wife. Of course, there is still a long way to go before I might get to see a man in the delivery room (which is what the room is called here, which is funny because a delivery room is apparently where the mail comes in other places) with his ‘partner’ and not his ‘wife’. But well, small steps, baby steps.

When I first read a childbirth scene in a novel, a rom-com, I had been shocked to find the man inside the room (as if I ‘saw’ it, but you get the idea) and not pacing outside. My brain just went kaboom at this new information and my first thought was that “now men shall know what it takes for a woman to give birth, they shall respect her properly”). It is quite funny, because we still seek validation and respect from men, even in a world where empowerment and feminism are much talked about (and very much needed). It is a curious paradox really, and as a woman, it is more confusing to deal with all these questions. We are told we can do anything, but we are given a menu from which we have to choose. If that is the case, are we even really empowered or free?

My brain seems to be protesting against this pondering, I am feeling sleepy by the second. My hands are actually shaking a bit because of my sleepiness, which is funny because my brain is still running from one place to another. One of my juniors from school is coming to Ashoka and I am excited to have him there. I don’t know him really well but I am hoping I get to interact with him a bit at least, which might difficult considering that he would probably be running in circles way different from mine. But I would finally like to have a good senior-junior relationship with someone, and a part of my heart wishes it were him. But if it isn’t going to be him, I would like to form a bond with at least one freshman. I need it to soothe my own ego. I also cannot wait to see if the next semester or year shall bring about some new changes that I cannot predict, but ‘good’ changes nonetheless. I can’t wait to get back to learning and the tree of knowledge. I am a daughter of Eve after all, aren’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.