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.