Stability Crisis

This post, I write, not from any of the normal comfortable zones I have inhabited all these days and in all of these posts. I write this while I sit on the train, on the way back to Chennai from Coimbatore. I cannot post it now, obviously, but I shall post this as soon as I reach my house. House, I say, because the last few days have been alight with many realisations, the key one being I no longer view Chennai as home. Yes, I spent 16 years of my life there—from when I was 10 months old to when I was 17 and had to leave for college. But that hasn’t made Chennai home for me and so I have to deal with a special kind of loss—one where it never had been to have been lost. 

At first, there was a sense of guilt I felt over ‘betraying’ the city that had so wonderfully taken me in and had cared for me. Most of my experiences have centred around that city, it has shaped a large part of my childhood. It came from the locality I lived in, the school I went to, the kinds of people I was accustomed to, the language I grew to learn and love– everything that surrounded me was surrounded by the city. I cannot ever divorce my persona from the city, I can probably never be someone “different” (and is there even a necessity for that in the first place?). 

But now there is a weird kind of acceptance of my own situation, which is quite peculiar I must admit. My family is split in different directions, different continents, even. I don’t know where it is I lie—right now, I am somewhere, where will I be later? Who is to guarantee anything at all in my life. Yes, I find some stability in wherever I am right now—in my university, “in the arms of my friends,” in the presence of my grandparents—but how long is this all going to last? These questions plague my thoughts and I cannot help but fear what I have in store for me. Maybe I don’t need to be thinking and worrying about all this right now, maybe I just need to relax and calm down and “take a chill pill.” But I am worried, scared, afraid, sad because this one week is just a bunch of realisations that I have no one I can be dependent on. I am on my own, I need to catch up and take charge, I need to. 

It is all quite ironical because all my life I wanted nothing more than to be independent and self-sufficient, to be able to take care of myself by myself. I think that desire is still there, I want to be independent, but I realise that even for that, I need some stability at first, that is quite severely lacking in my life. This is the crises I desperately wish I wasn’t facing at the moment, but I can’t help but face it. My whole existence is at quite a questionable position and I do not relish the loss of control. I am throwing words around at this point—independence, control, all good keywords, all of them. But useless, because they can do nothing at all to alleviate my current situation. Maybe I should just quit with the dramatics and actually do something and save my life?

And that’s my memory for the day. 

Slacking Breaks

I think one of the elements of allowing myself to relax is the realisation of exactly how exhausted and tired I am. I don’t think I ever properly realise my own exhaustion during my time at university. I don’t have time for such frivolities, I have more pressing concerns to attend to, namely studying and doing important things for my own education that cannot be put off for longer than absolutely necessary. And I justify it to myself by saying that I am at university to study and study I must do without slacking. Everything I do is in a bid to not slack and call to question the use and legitimacy of being at university. I am there with a purpose to learn and I shall work myself and apply myself to that process, and when I fail in that purpose, like I have done a lot this semester, it takes a toll on me because I cannot bear the thought of being like that.

But I have been really sleepy the whole day today, my head is aching right now as I type and I want nothing more than to collapse on my bed and sleep until the end of eternity. I am also worried because half the semester has gone by so fast and in another half, I shall have my finals and I am absolutely not confident about it at all. Part of it is probably my own insecurities coming into play about my own estimate of my intelligence (which is not very high, to be honest, because I have allowed myself no reason to believe otherwise). But that being said, I think this break has allowed me a time when I could properly take time out for myself, to be with people who love me and who I love back. Of course, I also miss university and the people there with a strong passion, but I am going back there and I also most definitely needed and wanted this. This breath of home and grandparents, of one of the very few things that have been quite stable so far in my life. Surely the quest for this was worth the general slacking I have been doing this break?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Attached For Your Perusal

The best part of travelling alone is that I get my thoughts alone to myself. I am free to think, to exist on my own terms. But of course, that comes with the risk of my thoughts running away from me and flowing away into crevices I don’t want it going into. There are thoughts that have become so ingrained inside of me. They have become “the usual” and, I was telling this to a friend today, it has become that one thing on the menu you will order regardless of what you are going to be eating that day. There is a difference you start to draw between the different thoughts, familiarity belies seeming comfort and acceptance but is actually all the more sinister. But again, familiarity is what we all stick to, so there comes an acceptance of the sinister (?), I don’t know, I probably am making as much sense as the next lunatic on the street.

I travelled today on the train, alone, for the first time on the train and it was a weirdly liberating feeling. Well, it was also accompanied by an almost crippling sense of loneliness because there was no one to talk to, not on the phone or in real life. So I read a book and well, I also suffer from mild motion sickness so I felt nauseous for a while after I was done with my book. But I didn’t regret the book, it was probably one of the best I have read in recent times. It was simultaneously heartbreaking and it is the story that I am better off knowing, the story I didn’t know I needed but once I read it, I cannot get over it. I have no doubt that it will feature in some form in my dreams today (if I dream, that is). I have been having quite a few dreams recently, sometimes I wish they were true because they are beautiful and I wish my real life were that way. But again, familiarity, right? My dreams, the ones I like are ones that have an element of familiarity, a reliability that is probably all the more sinister because real life does not provide me with that anyway. Real life is not as stable as I would like, and it is probably time I made my peace with it.

There is always the search for stability, I search for it everywhere. I search for a place to call “home” and right now, it seems like nothing shall fit the bill. I think I find it in a place but turns out I am not as stable as I would like to be over there. I am a traveller, but I don’t want to be, I want to stay somewhere (again, random fun star ‘fact’: Apparently Taureans hate change and always search for that solid ground, owing to their ‘earthly’ nature). I probably am never going to find that stability anywhere or with anyone, no matter how desperately I want to. And that devastates me because I realise that I relate so much to a character in that novel and I can almost envision my own raging emotions for the character take over, but this time for myself.

There are times when I wonder if maybe I am searching for stability only because I am told by everything around me that I need to have that thing in my life. That place, that person, that thing that keeps me stable and alright and ensures that I don’t go spiralling out of control like a kit whose tail has just been cut. Or if there’s something inane in me that is looking for all of these things. And regardless of the cause for the search, the search is still legitimate and it makes me wonder if maybe, in my misguided haste, I am looking for it in the wrong places. These are all just questions and I am an overthinker by profession, sometimes and heartbreak is real and it is painful and I would prefer to not have it. The thing is, attachment is scary, it is tricky, it is familiar but sinister, it is stable unstability. It is the thing on the menu I know shall happen, regardless of what other thing happens. And unless I remove it from the menu altogether, or change my restaurant, it is going to continue to happen. And well, it is probably not a bad thing, but it is still scary in its familiar unfamiliarity (there, I have officially reached levels that I would have made fun of a year back, almost). Talking in abstractions is actually quite a fun exercise, I should do it more often. What do you think?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Stable Beauty

I am finally back in Chennai after quite a long while. I had not even realised that I had unconsciously missed it quite a bit, the different sights and sounds inside my own house. I think I am also consciously holding myself back from proclaiming it as my “home” because I know that right now, I probably don’t have a material interpretation for “home.” But that is not to say I don’t feel at home in multiple places, just Ashoka, for example. I feel comfortable and at home there, like I belong there (which is sometimes hard to find even within my own family). I live and thrive in the material space, I am very earthly in that way (also, fun star thing, I am apparently a Taurus and this is how they are supposed to behave, apparently).

I think one of the deals about quite a bit of travelling like I did today is that I am left completely exhausted to the bone. But my brain is still running fast inside my skull and I feel completely out of my body in a weird weird way. Today was an extremely fun day and I absolutely enjoyed it. Moreover, I put an effort to look pretty and I think it paid off quite nicely, I did feel pretty. And it felt nice to feel pretty because that is not something I feel very often. Especially not recently, and well, I don’t have anyone else to blame but myself because I let things affect me and make myself feel things. There are times when someone might say something because they don’t necessarily know that it could affect me. It could be a completely normal thing for them to say, something they have said before, but I could blow up for that because I don’t like it or it pricks a part of me that I am not very keen on getting pricked.

But regardless, coming back to the question of feeling pretty and putting an effort. I have always been a very materially rooted person, I define a lot of things in my life based on material and physical terms and ideas. I love photos, for example, and I love the small things that people might do unconsciously for me. It could be a simple thing as getting my phone for me when I leave it somewhere by mistake, moving without even thinking about it to accommodate me in a particular space, a hug, an unexpected text message, and so on. The concept of beauty too, in my head, has been strongly rooted in this material and physical world. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean this in an “I condone the idea of objective standards for beauty or I only accept conventional beauty standards” way. I mean it more in an “I believe that a person’s beauty comes in their physical self” way. This beauty is not objective, it cannot be defined. So, if I find someone beautiful, I find their physical self beautiful and if I know them well enough, this beauty I find on their outside and on the inside converge and become a concrete whole that I cannot differentiate between. This happens with me with almost all my friends, especially those that I grow close to.

So, for me to find myself pretty today meant a lot of things. But the most important thing for me was that I found what was inside of me beautiful too. I was surprisingly happy with myself, I didn’t hate myself (as I tend to do at times). That is a strong feeling, to be able to smile at yourself in the mirror (and no, let’s not get into the whole image/real, other/self question). This didn’t have anything to do with an objective view of my own prettiness today, it had to do with my own response to what I was seeing. I could have looked hideous to anyone else’s eyes, but if I found myself pretty then that was key. Am I even making sense? I am in a terribly sleepy state and I feel like I am not making as much sense as I would like. But then, if we all made perfect sense all the time, then we would be doubly critical of people who make mistakes. And honestly, I don’t think they need to berated more, not when they probably berate themselves for it more than others do. We all make mistakes, forget where we are rooted and lose our footing, but then, at the core of it all, there does exist the stability we crave and maybe one day, I will find it for myself?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Sickness and Being In Control

I am sick today, it is perhaps the only thing on my mind right now. I hate being sick, it makes me feel out of control. And I like being in control of my situation, to be ready and prepared. But no one can be prepared for a sickness and when you do fall sick, you end up having to depend on other people for comfort. I don’t like being dependent and clingy, it makes me feel like I am out of control.

Being sick reminds me of the times I fell sick during my childhood. Both my parents are doctors, they always had medicines in the house. Things like fever and flu were not uncommon in my house, but we almost never had to go to a clinic because my parents took care of it by themselves. I grew up learning about medicines and dosages, so much so that it became quite natural for me to spout out drug names while my friends looked at me in awe. I always had paracetamol with me, courtesy my parents and almost always had stock of medicines.

When I came to college, I obviously came with my mini pharmacy and also my 24/7 videocall doctors. The two times I fell sick here, I only had to call them up and their words and two days of medication would have me up and about. Even 4000 kilometres away from me, they still know how to solve my problems. As a kid, growing up with dust/smoke allergy and wheezing came with its own challenges. I had to go around being prepared with the inhaler and I had some scares, that left me wiser, of course. And I guess, no doctor from outside can know me like a doctor who gave birth to me.

Being sick also reminds me of how I really need to have my work done properly and if possible, well in advance. It is an advice I make to myself but one I rarely follow and I end up regretting it when I fall sick. I realise that I put things to the last minute sometimes and when I fall sick, I end up not being able to complete that work. It puts me behind, something I hate being, again. I hate feeling inadequate and being sick makes me feel like I am not there 100%. Kind of understandable but I do not like it, one bit.

Being sick also makes me whiny and complaining. I will go on and on about how I dry coughed, how I puked, how my head is heavy, how my nose is runny and how I feel cold. And I won’t stop because I honestly have so much to talk about. It also makes me realise and gain an appreciation for why I plan on never touching a drop of alcohol in my life. Alcohol is much like being sick, it makes your head kind of woozy and makes you blabber and lose control. All of which I despise. I tolerate being sick because I did not bring it on myself. But alcohol, I mostly would bring it on myself. It is a decision I would rather not make.

In retrospect, I realise that through my life, there has been this obsession with being in control of my situation. It makes me quite negative to change and uprootal, traits I do not know what to make of. In some places though, I love the unstability that change brings me. An example is with respect to thoughts and feelings. Is it a good thing to be stable and in control or is there a charm in being free and spiralling out of control? Is it even necessary that one must choose between the two options?

And that’s my memory for the day.