I am blogging because I wanted to resume writing. Just to get out of the rut. But..
I am blogging with subdued enthusiasm. I am going through a very low phase in my life right now. Admittedly not the lowest phase. That was when my father died. That kind of grief leaves you dry, void of anything to say. This one is a more aware low. I have battled health issues, terrible, life altering ones for close to 3 years now. How life altering? Not the cancer kind, that make you look back on life and find some point to all of it, though at times it felt like that. Not the kind that make you take stock of your existence once and where you stand with your family, once and for all.
The kind that make you pause in life. Make you review what really matters to you and whether everything you are screwing yourself over is even worth it. If every day of your life's energy is spent trying not to feel worse from your illness, you have new found appreciation for the good days, few and far in between though they may be.
It wasn't like this always. Everyday, for months in the beginning, after I started on this downward spiral, I walked in a numb stupor, crying at the slightest provocation at the unfairness of it. Why me? Why now? I haven't abused my body. Why are the smokers, the drug abusers, the junkies spared while I'm made to go through hell. I am young(ish). I was angry. dejected. Even now, there are days when I can barely muster the will to leave bed.
Then there are emotional lows you hit. A rough phase in a relationship. Or the end or one. Sometimes you don't know where you stand with one. Others simply drift apart.
Moving continents as I did in lure of a better life has its cost. (It reduces your loved ones to a voice at the end of the phone or messages on whatsapp). And I will not say I don't know what this better life I was after to is. There are tangible things that I am thankful for. The overall degree of fairness in mundane aspects of life. The water, the electricity, the safety, better early education for my little one, better workplace, the value of your earnings. Its easy to forget all this when grief overcomes you. Its easy to sway from agnosticism to atheism fairly quickly so that you have something to pin all your life's failings to.
But what my illness and my first stint with hideous grief before this have taught me is that the dearest cost I pay for all this is my health. I have. Already. Irrevocably. My only effort now is to try to stop myself from making it worse. An effort I do fail at on many days. Some days however, I'm actually good to myself. I've stopped taking my body, my mind and the weird tango they are engaged in together for granted. I've been selfish, and I am alluding to a virtue when I say this. Over the last year I have tried, in baby steps to be good to me.
I've traveled, a new continent, a gorgeous land, all by myself (with a dear dear friend, so I still say by myself, because hers wasn't a jarring presence in this idyllic tryst but a beautiful one that made the travel a thousandfold better)
I've started exercising for positivity more than anything else. I suffer from severe anxiety attacks, and the beauty of exercise is the visible balance of hormones that calms me in a way I never new possible
I have a new found appreciation for the healing power of food. I have suffered food allergies and had to go on severely restrictive diets. In the months when my body was most ravaged, good food gave me the strength to battle it. I try not to abuse it now. I still cheat some days. But mostly, I think of its effect on my body before putting it in my mouth. My best discoveries: Kefir, Kombucha and Coconut milk
I stopped living by the perception game to a large degree. In an effort not to alienate people and have some form of a social life or just to avoid being vilified, I realize I sometimes lied to myself about who I truly am. Youth is the peak period for this fallacy. But what I have come to realize is that while the lie might earn me more acquaintances or the approval of those in my life I don't truly care about, I would be making the one I care about most unhappy - me. So I've tried to shed these trappings as much as I can. Its made me more authentic. More weird too admittedly, more uninteresting. But this me makes me happy. I can focus on things I like to do. Stuff I want to say. Without fear of reprimand. Without fear of losing. So it also draws to me those handful who are truly like me or vice versa. As I'm growing old, I have new found appreciation for my family, full of eccentricities. My siblings and my mother are just me put in other life's scenarios. So if I tell them the situation I am in, I can be assured that they'd guess how I reacted fairly accurately. The couple of friends who know the rut I am in. The oddballs. That's it. That's my entire contact space.
Mostly, I acknowledge my habit of being taken down completely by what I think are life's failings toward me. I am aware of the bitterness that engulfs me. I tell myself consciously that I am doing that thing again. And my body will react. And then I stop fighting it. I try to dissociate from the funeral procession that my mind turns into and ask of myself to let it be, to remember the transience of everything in life and that, if I just let it be, if I do nothing, if I just mostly tide through the day, tomorrow will be OK. And OK is good enough.
I am blogging with subdued enthusiasm. I am going through a very low phase in my life right now. Admittedly not the lowest phase. That was when my father died. That kind of grief leaves you dry, void of anything to say. This one is a more aware low. I have battled health issues, terrible, life altering ones for close to 3 years now. How life altering? Not the cancer kind, that make you look back on life and find some point to all of it, though at times it felt like that. Not the kind that make you take stock of your existence once and where you stand with your family, once and for all.
The kind that make you pause in life. Make you review what really matters to you and whether everything you are screwing yourself over is even worth it. If every day of your life's energy is spent trying not to feel worse from your illness, you have new found appreciation for the good days, few and far in between though they may be.
It wasn't like this always. Everyday, for months in the beginning, after I started on this downward spiral, I walked in a numb stupor, crying at the slightest provocation at the unfairness of it. Why me? Why now? I haven't abused my body. Why are the smokers, the drug abusers, the junkies spared while I'm made to go through hell. I am young(ish). I was angry. dejected. Even now, there are days when I can barely muster the will to leave bed.
Then there are emotional lows you hit. A rough phase in a relationship. Or the end or one. Sometimes you don't know where you stand with one. Others simply drift apart.
Moving continents as I did in lure of a better life has its cost. (It reduces your loved ones to a voice at the end of the phone or messages on whatsapp). And I will not say I don't know what this better life I was after to is. There are tangible things that I am thankful for. The overall degree of fairness in mundane aspects of life. The water, the electricity, the safety, better early education for my little one, better workplace, the value of your earnings. Its easy to forget all this when grief overcomes you. Its easy to sway from agnosticism to atheism fairly quickly so that you have something to pin all your life's failings to.
But what my illness and my first stint with hideous grief before this have taught me is that the dearest cost I pay for all this is my health. I have. Already. Irrevocably. My only effort now is to try to stop myself from making it worse. An effort I do fail at on many days. Some days however, I'm actually good to myself. I've stopped taking my body, my mind and the weird tango they are engaged in together for granted. I've been selfish, and I am alluding to a virtue when I say this. Over the last year I have tried, in baby steps to be good to me.
I've traveled, a new continent, a gorgeous land, all by myself (with a dear dear friend, so I still say by myself, because hers wasn't a jarring presence in this idyllic tryst but a beautiful one that made the travel a thousandfold better)
I've started exercising for positivity more than anything else. I suffer from severe anxiety attacks, and the beauty of exercise is the visible balance of hormones that calms me in a way I never new possible
I have a new found appreciation for the healing power of food. I have suffered food allergies and had to go on severely restrictive diets. In the months when my body was most ravaged, good food gave me the strength to battle it. I try not to abuse it now. I still cheat some days. But mostly, I think of its effect on my body before putting it in my mouth. My best discoveries: Kefir, Kombucha and Coconut milk
I stopped living by the perception game to a large degree. In an effort not to alienate people and have some form of a social life or just to avoid being vilified, I realize I sometimes lied to myself about who I truly am. Youth is the peak period for this fallacy. But what I have come to realize is that while the lie might earn me more acquaintances or the approval of those in my life I don't truly care about, I would be making the one I care about most unhappy - me. So I've tried to shed these trappings as much as I can. Its made me more authentic. More weird too admittedly, more uninteresting. But this me makes me happy. I can focus on things I like to do. Stuff I want to say. Without fear of reprimand. Without fear of losing. So it also draws to me those handful who are truly like me or vice versa. As I'm growing old, I have new found appreciation for my family, full of eccentricities. My siblings and my mother are just me put in other life's scenarios. So if I tell them the situation I am in, I can be assured that they'd guess how I reacted fairly accurately. The couple of friends who know the rut I am in. The oddballs. That's it. That's my entire contact space.
Mostly, I acknowledge my habit of being taken down completely by what I think are life's failings toward me. I am aware of the bitterness that engulfs me. I tell myself consciously that I am doing that thing again. And my body will react. And then I stop fighting it. I try to dissociate from the funeral procession that my mind turns into and ask of myself to let it be, to remember the transience of everything in life and that, if I just let it be, if I do nothing, if I just mostly tide through the day, tomorrow will be OK. And OK is good enough.
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