Demons

Ever since I can recall my academic life, from school to university, I have been an extremely worried student. I have constantly been of the opinion that I am not doing well and that I am only destined for doom and nothing less. That is not exactly a wonderful feeling and while I never did cherish those memories where I have vomited or cried or spent hours freaking out about everything under the sun, I also learnt to kind of suck it up and deal with it. I would get extremely stressed about many things, sometimes very much legitimate things, deserving things. I would deserve the most scathing comments I could inflict on myself and inflict them I did with a sadistic pleasure that I still find.

I never had a choice, I had the undeniable pleasure of being a disappointment many a time and being an appreciated success equal times. College taxonomies implore me to define myself in some way, ways that are simultaneously alien to me as they are relatable. I feel like I am an average student at best alongside times when I feel like I am intelligible one (not intelligent, mind you). Actually, that is a lie, I have felt like an intelligent student too at times, especially during English classes in school. At university, I felt intelligent in certain classes that have gone so far away into the horizon that talking about them feels eerily like an exercise in nostalgia. Let me rather not.

I think part of the problem comes from a place of deep-rooted anxiety and insecurity, and dare I say it, hatred and prejudice directed towards myself. That is right, I probably hate myself, for a lot of things, the least damaging of all being my own perceived mediocrity. Just saying it out loud makes me feel like I am creating unnecessary drama, creating a space that legitimises my own demons, just so that I can bask in the comfort of my own misery. It is convoluted, extremely so but the fact is, I don’t think I can say any of it without being reminded of the pervertedness of my own mind. It makes me hate it all even more and wish desperately that I didn’t have my mind, that I (this wonderfully constructed self-identity that somehow is intrinsically connected to my essence) didn’t exist. I don’t think I have, ever in my life, despite a lot of issues and problems, ever wished that I didn’t exist. But recently, it is a thought that comes back again and again, to make me wonder what it is about my existence that I cherish enough (turns out, the answer is nothing, really).

Things I cherish don’t cherish me back the same way, and well, I might wax lyrical about having no expectations but when it came to my own doorstep, I was left extremely disappointed and hated everything (enough to state that I shall cherish those same things no longer). I am easily emotional, a fact that I rue to no end (of course, no one likes to associate themselves with someone who is so prone to tears all the time like I am!). I have never felt quite so emotional as I do these days, tears seem quite ready to flow out at any point of time. Overwhelmed is probably the right term to use, I am most definitely, completely overwhelmed and right now, it is out of my hands that the only thing I can do is shed tears of helplessness. And what a wonderful job I am doing of that, perhaps the best job I have done so far. It is going to turn out alright right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

 

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. 

Womendom

I think I am on the other end of the spectrum this whole of last week. I have had so much work and I have been so uncharacteristically calm about it like I have this insane hope that it will all get done by magic. It obviously won’t but tell that to my brain, I have been procrastinating and not getting much work done and it is definitely impacting me but I am almost cavalier about it, so cavalier that I am choosing to write this blog post right now over getting that work done. I don’t have a “in my defence” ready, because I really don’t have one. There is not a thing that I can say that could potentially justify my own actions except that I have been an extremely lazy and dumb person and I will be held accountable for my actions soon. And it will all be my doing, no one else’s.

I recently read the prologue to a devastating book and it vividly describes, in gory detail, an unassisted delivery and the murder of a girl child by her own mother by choking her neck between her thighs. It was by far the most gruesome thing I had read recently, surpassing even Elie Wiesel’s Night, I might argue. And while reading the whole thing, there was only one thought that kept on circulating in my head. That my life right now, so secure and safe, it is by chance that I got assigned such a life (assuming I believe in the idea of a soul that travels from body to body but remains the same throughout). I could have been a girl child born to be squeezed between her mother’s thighs and killed, I could have been a girl child born and destined (doomed) to a life like the mother’s (suffering under an abusive and controlling husband, forced to undergo labour in the middle of the field after a day of hardwork, already mother to two other boy children and god knows how many other killed girl children). I could have had the life that is the reality for many women, but I don’t.

That hit me hard, I am extremely lucky to have been alive and survived so long and to have been given the sort of freedom and autonomy I have right now. Which makes it all the worse, because I should not be lucky to be alive. I should be alive, I deserve to be alive, I deserve to live life on my own terms, I deserve things and the right to ask for them. Maybe I am the only person who thinks about it but surely there must be some woman at some point of time in her life who has wondered about how close she would have been to having a painful, marginalised life or no life at all. It is not an easy thing to digest and that angers me, that these things have become so normalised that no one spends time thinking about it. Women should not be thinking about how lucky they were that their parents didn’t murder them as they made their appearance in the world. But somehow that is something I think anyway, because it is all scary, all the possibilities, and I don’t know what to make of it. Can someone tell me how I can stop thinking like this, please?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Hope and Worries

So I did a risky thing today and may have sent a message asking someone out on a date. It is one of the guys from camp (one of the two I had a crush on) and we had kinda been in touch all this while. Well, I do like him and I think he is cute and totally my type and well, it just happened and I have sent a message. I hope that we can be able to set up a time to meet (and that we will want to). But we live too far away from each other and I don’t really have much scope for hope. But that’s the funny thing about hope right? It sustains even when it has absolutely no reason to. I don’t know him that well, and in my head at least, he is way out of my league. So I don’t necessarily have many things to fuel my hope with, but hope still burns bright. And I am hoping that even if he rejects me or my offer, we can continue to be friends because I don’t want to lose that. But wait, have I jinxed it by putting it here? I don’t want to, I have enough obstacles and problems already.

Anyway, that part of my life aside, I also have been drowning under the workload, which is insanely high compared to what I experienced during my summer abroad course at King’s College London. I think it is all amplified by the fact that I have had a huge break and this feels like I am dealing with a hangover of sorts, that I have become so accustomed to inactivity that suddenly it feels like there’s too much on my plate. It doesn’t really help I am also sometimes daydreaming about certain people, and then I break out of it and then I admonish myself for giving in to such cravings. Well, right now, I am in a mental space where I find joy and this kind of beaming happiness when I think about it. This kind of butterflies in the stomach feeling and I do enjoy this feeling. Maybe when it all goes down the drain and I am left heartbroken, I shall tell myself that at least I had that feeling of happiness. Nonetheless, let’s not talk about it anymore because it makes me nervous beyond what I can explain.

I am also considering trying a semester abroad or something because I feel that would be really useful for me. I had initially rejected it because I was sure that I could not handle my family and my studies at the same time and moreover, the costs would be insane. But London is a wonderful city and I would really love the opportunity to study there for a significant amount of time. I am terrified though and I don’t know what to do. My mother has been bugging me to consider a semester abroad and I had told her that it would be difficult because I wanted to be an RA. But when I think of it, I don’t think I want to be the person chaperoning a bunch of second years and first years on my floor. I would much rather interact with smaller kids and children and well, I would much rather study in a place like London. Well, I have messaged my mother about it and told her that I am considering it. As an added perk, I would also get the opportunity to see snow (I hope, I don’t know really). But as of now, I am, once again, not fuelling much hope into myself. I have a lot of things to worry about already (one of them definitely being today’s message fiasco) and I shall wait until at least some things are cleared up before I do anything else. And well, I guess, sometimes, waiting is all you can do, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Worries and Negative Feelings

I don’t know what it is about this set of songs I listen to, called sacred chants, that I found really soothing and conducive to working. It happened yesterday when I was trying to arrange my room and I put the music on and I started work immediately. I got done with quite a bit of arranging my stuff when due to some other work, I had to switch the music off. I didn’t get the will to start the music again and so I left it and tried to arrange the stuff I hadn’t put away yet and I failed miserably. I dumped the stuff on my bed in the nearby bed and called it a night. But tonight, even right now, that music is playing and I got done with the rest of my stuff, I just need to wait for my luggage to arrive and once I have put those things away, I shall be good to go. But my luggage is taking an unholy amount of time to make it here and I am losing patience. I just sent an email to the Kuwait airlines office in Delhi, hopefully, they will forward it to the relevant people. Right now, I am in extreme anger and disappointment.

But I don’t want that negative energy in my life, I already have too much that I am worried about. One is definitely my crush, I don’t know exactly what’s happening, does the person want to stay in touch or not, am I being very eager/clingy, should I step back a bit and be cooler, there are too many questions really. Another one is me and preparing for the upcoming academic year. I am scared of the year, about how I shall fare as a student of literature, I am scared of whether I shall be good enough for the department. I am apprehensive of my own skill in literature and I don’t know how to tackle that self-doubt. It doesn’t help that I am surrounded by brilliant people who just make literature theirs. It is not exactly a good place to start the year with, but I mean, if I am not worrying about my luggage, I am worrying about something else entirely. On another note, I managed to fix one of my worries, that of arranging my room.

I had a plan for my room, somewhat of a plan, and now I have managed to separate my stuff and keep it in their places. Hopefully, when my luggage makes it here, I should be able to put the stuff inside in their places. I have planned spaces for all the things, but I am not prepared for wildcards or a miscalculation. But right now, I don’t want to think about miscalculations yet. It would take me down a horrid memory lane of failures and disappointments. But I guess, disappointments are a part of life and you just learn to take it all in stride and learn to move on. That does not, by any means, mean that I shall be ready to get news that my baggage won’t arrive until much later, or that it has vanished. I have too many important things in there, things that I shall be devastated if I lose.

But I don’t want to go down that route, put myself through unnecessary worry and stress. Right now, I have done all I can, called them a thousand times, explained my situation, mailed the airlines, made my mother file an official complaint. There is really not much more that I can do at the moment. And I hate that because it leaves me feeling helpless and well, I hate feeling helpless. It is a very sad state to be in, it makes me feel down and disappointed. Added negative feelings that I could do without. This semester has just started and I have already been skipping so many meals and being a very indisciplined person. Part of it is probably the jet lag too but hopefully, I will get better. I will, won’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Back to Square One?

I think the biggest challenge for me with regards to this blog right now, is to find the energy and motivation to write here. But that is stupid because I have made myself write through my most difficult times and I am not going to let a few days of circumstances out of my control, take away my drive to keep this blog going and to write every day. Of course, my classes have not even started yet but I have got through one semester before this and I shall try my level best to do that again. But I feel like I am back to square one, like I used to feel on the first few weeks of starting this blog. I was apprehensive if this blog would continue and if I would be able to write every day. But Yashasvi surprised me, she went through hell but she still remembered the blog and for me, that is the most important thing to reassure myself with. Just the fact that I am writing this post right now is something I think I deserve to be proud of.

I have been on campus for a whole of two days now and it has been a good few days. Slightly weird a few times, but mostly nice. My luggage still hasn’t arrived, I called the airport today morning and they had said that it had been dispatched and should reach me “soon.” When that soon is, only they can tell me. But anyway, I managed to bring the thousand things I had from inside my locker and it proved to be a treasure trove. I have clothes and toiletries, stuff that I need to sustain myself for the next few days. I am grateful to seventeen-year-old Yashasvi for the presence of mind she displayed in keeping behind these things because they shall sustain me for a while at least.

Yesterday, I met a girl who had come to my university from rural Tamil Nadu. Her story was remarkable, the amount of trouble and problems she faced and still the bravery and grit she displayed in just being there at university, was inspirational. She had made it past too many difficulties, amidst much opposition from her family and I told her that I would be very willing to help her write her story in English, or if she chose to write in Tamil, to edit and translate her work for her, to help her submit it to wherever she saw fit. I think her story is really worth telling, especially to the people here at university because I don’t think people truly realise how privileged they are to be sitting here. I think it would be really wonderful for her story to be told and heard and read because it is a very important story, a very hard-hitting one at that.

Aside from that, I have been quite disoriented because of the number of unfamiliar faces on campus. It is magnified by the fact that most of the second-years are not on campus, which means I don’t have quite a few friends on campus yet and that feels weird. I cannot imagine an Ashoka without my friends and yet here I am, without them. I think my experience these last few days has left me craving a bit of alone time for myself, without anyone around me, which has made me withdraw a bit from my friends. It is truly not their fault, just that I have too many worries at the moment and I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with people before my worries are solved. Right now priorities are luggage arrival, email complaint, setting up hostel room, cleaning the room, and then figuring out work for when the academic session starts next week.

This semester looks like it is going to be a tough ride and I am scared of the infinite possibilities. I am scared of academics, I am scared of handling my time, I am just scared. And I know me, I know that I hate being afraid, I try my best not to be afraid. Fear makes you dependent, it makes you fall back on others who shall reassure you and have to hold you up like crutches. Some amount of fear may be necessary, but fear as a concept is something I endeavour not to have, not for these kinds of things. But it is difficult–when you are alone, but you also want to be alone, when you sit in your room, your door locked, to stop others from coming in but you also low-key want others to walk inside and pull you out of bed. It is a very difficult place to be in and I don’t want that to be my semester. This semester, I have quite a few jobs to get done and I am going to ensure that I learn to prioritise and make sure I do what needs to be done to the best of my ability. I can do this, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

More About Sleeping

Today was highly unproductive for me. I slept for four hours in the evening, from 7pm-11pm, missed three meetings and ended up waking up hating myself for my own carelessness. I should not have slept, but I collapsed, in a way. I slept on my bed in the opposite direction, without using a pillow or blanket, just collapsed in a weird position and stayed put without even the minutest turning or tossing.

I am normally a very deep sleeper, it is not easy to wake me up. I remember how when I was younger, we used to have early morning trains. My parents used to be awake before my brother and me and used to wake us up only at the last, while they prepared our food bag, last minute packing, etc. Then they used to wake us both up and I remember how my mom used to say (and also my grandparents) that I was a “Kumbhakarni” (female Kumbhakarna) because it was so difficult to wake me up. They used to call my name a thousand times, shake me before I finally would wake up and then lie down again. My mother used to tell me that I was the most frustrating sleeper she had ever met.

Kumbhakarna in a hindu mythological character, known for his sleeping. He would sleep for 6 months straight and then eat for the next six months. And to wake him up in the middle of his sleep was a near impossible task, and a task that came with heavy consequences. So to call me a female Kumbhakarna was a teasing remark, a remark that stays till today whenever I go back home too. I am normally a less-fussy sleeper, I sometimes sleep-talk, have sleep-walked before and don’t have many dreams. As soon as my head hits the pillow (what a cliche!), I am out. The world ceases to exist for me, most of the time.

I know I know, people might be like ‘for someone with so much angst (or at least as you portray yourself that way), how do you sleep so easily?’ And honestly, that is a question I have asked myself so many times. people say that they lose their sleep over things and here I am, sleeping through everything. Does that mean that my worries don’t plague me as much as they do for others? Gah! I go down these routes a lot, questions questions questions and more questions. And they say that the Ashokan education model makes you question, it teaches you to be inquisitive, curious, motivated individuals. But all this questioning does make it seem like I have a screw loose (another cliche!) somewhere.

I recently had auditioned for a voice acting role in some college play. It was a very new experience for me. I have always dreamt of doing some form of voice acting. It was my eternal fascination to see these dubbed characters speaking, it made me wonder how it would have been for the dubbing artist. Sometimes these dubbings would be painfully obvious, the mouth would move at completely different speeds than the words. And I would wonder and look closely, trying to find out what the actual person was saying. All in all, a pretty fun exercise to do. I would then wonder how it would be to record a dubbing myself, to give voice to these characters on screen. Never got the opportunity to try it but I had googled about auditions before but never brought myself to go and try.

This was precisely why I was a nervous, awkward wreck at this audition. It is a miracle they chose me and I constantly worry that maybe it was a mistake, especially since the results were out yesterday and they haven’t got back to me yet properly. I wonder and fear that maybe they realised that they had, in fact better people or maybe that the person they thought was Yashasvi was actually someone else. Or maybe when they do get back to me and we actually get down to business, they realise that they made a mistake in choosing me. But then I am full of these ‘conspiracy theories’, it is actually quite comical at times. Sometimes I fear I am sleeping my way through everything and that outside, there is someone or something great that is trying to wake me up. But I don’t. Scary thought, isn’t it? But is it true though?

And that’s my memory for the day.