Finding Myself

I am not someone who updates her status messages on facebook to highlight the different moods of her life. I am not someone who can voice what she feels from within, my tears, my pain, my anguish are mine alone. That’s how it has always been and that’s how I thought it should stay for the rest of my life.  But not today, right now as I wake up to a glorious post by Athira Nair, I realize that perhaps writing it all down may liberate me and bring back that much needed smile as I look at myself in the mirror next.

Before you think I am suffering from a case of wife beating or am being cheated upon by my husband, I’d like to add….no I am happy. Perhaps not in the way that I’d like to be, but in a manner which I never thought I could be.  I let myself depend on a man the moment I got married, I quit my job, left my city and followed him here to Vizag in the search of love. Love I found, but I lost myself in the process.

I allowed myself to be content in the confines of my home, in his arms, in his talks and his love. From a fish in the sea I was soon becoming a frog in the well. I cut myself from the world, stopped responding to messages from friends who had been the most important part of my life and allowed myself to just bask in the glory of my newly found love. From vying from my husband’s attention, to letting my anger out on him when he is least suspecting it, to torturing him, only in ways that he can explain :-)

I had become a shadow of the independent Neeta Nair who never could let her guard down. All along I felt it was wrong, I had to stop being this pathetic version of myself but there was no escape. To my credit I was constantly searching for a job during my stay in Vizag, but a good offer eluded me till yesterday. I didn’t want to share my worries with anyone because I wasn’t sure people would consider what I had as a big problem and honestly I didn’t know whom to talk to. All I knew was that there is something wrong with me.

People asked me to enjoy married life, but honestly waiting for your husband to return from work the whole day and the occasional outings were not my idea of fun. When I woke up in the morning I felt like I was wasting myself, no mission and no light to take me through the day. I seriously lacked a job, I wasn’t used to being unemployed even if it is for 4 months after marriage in a city like Vizag where searching for jobs is a nightmare. The process of getting selected and managing an offer letter from my employer has taken me 2 months. It was a long, frustrating wait. And if there is anything I hate in life, then it is ambiguity.

I am not sure I did the right thing by abandoning my well settled life in Bombay, I am not sure if love is the answer to all problems, I am not sure if I am happy that my life revolved around one man for all this while…. I am not someone who can lead the way; I am more like someone who takes the path trodden by a select few. I need an example to give myself hope. I found one today, thus this post. It may not be the most interesting read, because today I am not writing for an audience, I write for myself and that’s how I believe it should be with life too… live for yourself and no other. …rest is irrelevant.

BORROWED ENTHUSIASM

Liveliness, madness, energy…..few words that I had stopped associating with myself, ever since I quit Times Now. No, I am not going to tell you a life changing experience which helped me escape from the clutches of a mundane life throwing me into a world of high spiritedness… Yet it can be described as a condition where one realizes the need to feel alive, to say in the least 

All the 4 years while I worked for a constantly buzzing news channel, I kept postponing everything that I believed I enjoyed. Be it learning a newer dance form or reading enough books, watching more films, learning a new language or hanging out more with friends. Blame it on TIMES NOW and the crazy schedule, I said in my head over and over again.  ‘I don’t have the time after a 12 hour long working day’ I reasoned to myself categorically. Yet I never once forgot to carry a book in my hand bag. Despite a tiring day, I almost religiously cursed the train for forcing me to alight at my station before I could finish reading that gripping chapter.

At home it was a different challenge, snatching the remote from my father who would put any film buff to shame. Or perhaps reaching home to witness the joy of seeing the remote unguarded with my father blissfully snoozing, while our demigods Mammooty and Mohanlal fought for his attention from across the TV screens.

I admit I didn’t have time to dance, but the spirit of Prabhu Deva’s brother from the video ‘Kya Soorat Hai’ made me do some crazy moves on the road even if half of them were happening in my head. En route home, I had a wonderful time imagining the scandalized expressions of the pedestrians if I played out my dream of dancing in the middle of the road. I am also guilty of adding my friends in annoying Whatsapp groups just to co-ordinate on post work dinner plans. So much so that on one occasion we had three parallel groups co-ordinating on three different dinner plans for the week with almost the same set of people.(I hope Himani is reading)

And now I am supposedly in that ideal situation which I fantasized for years, where I can do everything I want to at my pace, at my leisure…. Deciding to pamper myself before the wedding, I have quit my job, taking a month long break before I relocate to another city and begin a full-fledged job hunt. But all I have done for the past few days is sleep, eat & walk from the living room to my room depending on whether I want to watch TV or access Facebook when I get tired of cursing Sajid Khan after all music channels fire the intolerable Humshakals’ songs at me from all directions. 

Didn’t read a single book, didn’t watch a single film that was on my list, wanted to learn Telugu, got myself a CD (FYI I am moving to the Telugu land of Visakhapatnam), but even that’s lying untouched. Even taking a train or riding my rocketi (my scooty) seemed like too much trouble, so didn’t bother to get out of my bed and make plans with my friends either. 

In ‘How I met your mother’ style, I faced an INTERVENTION, my fiancé indirectly sent across a message hinting that I was acting wasted without smoking up.  Well well…That’s when I realized that being busy in fact kept me happy and not just useful. There are so many activities you squeezed in so little time. On the contrary having an abundance of time makes one delay things so much that you end up embracing them ‘Never’

Lastly, I would like to add that it were the wise words of my fiancé that inspired me to pen down this painfully long post. This is just to let you know whose inbox to spam if you want to kill yourself for stumbling across this particular blog.  His email id shall be provided on request to needy bloggers.