a return to myself

do you think jesus, the son of a carpenter, smelt the wood of the cross and temporarily thought of home

When you’re lost in a city, it helps to look at one point of the maze you keep returning to and memorize the name of that street. For me, that’s my age. I remind myself a lot of the fact that I’m twenty-eight. In a way that sets things really in perspective. It works both ways - when someone I like is being inconsistent with me, it’s easier to tell myself that I’m twenty-eight, officially too old to get tangled in mind games. But it also helps when I’m behind on my savings - I’m twenty-eight, it’s two years before this bank account starts looking depressing with these numbers. Right now, I’m just young, of course, I’ll catch up with my investments. 

I don’t bode well in winter. So every season, I allow myself a little fixation as a compensatory gift for suffering through these cruel temperatures. For the past few years, it was a deathly blower - a little white machine that blew vicious hot air at my genetically frozen feet as I sat and worked for hours at my desk, but after catching two colds in a span of 45 days, I ditched that blower for a warm heater. This one is a like tiny fireplace, not viciously throwing warm air like its predecessor, but slowly roasting my feet after an hour. When I think of the last few months, and my life here in Delhi - I think of this heater. You see, I’m kind of processing my way around so many heartbreaking things, that I need something simple, stable, affordable to carry me through this. I have this heater on for the majority of my day - through the work day, keeping me cozy as I send email after email, post a shower when I need the room to be a little warmer as I undress and dress myself, as I finish shows and movies and write late into the night. 

The last few years were a departure from my natural self, but I permitted myself to experience something I hadn’t ever before. I allowed myself to fall in love, be in a relationship, be close to someone in a way I’d never been. Halfway through it, it felt over, but I cared so much for that friendship that I couldn’t quit. I tried to change myself, him, and everything else until it reached a moment where there was nothing to stay for. I still loved this person but I’d voluntarily abandoned myself through the course of this blooming relationship. A part of me knew I had to return to myself, and maybe that it would be too painful, but it didn’t arrive without its lessons.

There were days I could see my life improve by the minute. He’d still be the best friend I ever had, but I was so much better now. I went through trials and tribulations alone. I started solving my problems, taking care of my own emotions, sitting alone on my chair, and thinking to myself - where does this sinking feeling in my heart come from? Is it that work thing, is it that money thing, are we hurt because this person who’s so connected to us let us down in this simple tiny way but our heart couldn’t recover? I discovered that all of these things were true, and I stopped waiting for other people to wipe my tears. I got better, slowly. 

I’m still twenty-eight, seven months away from my next birthday. Seven months doesn’t seem so far, it’s just a little more than half a year. In half a year, so much of my perspective will change. I will be too old for certain things, still too young for some. I know I’ll regret not saving enough, and not learning enough about personal finance. I know I’ll feel better if I swim a bunch, if I go running or yoga, or learn the piano a bit. The hardest thing sometimes is just showing up for the class. Once I’m there, I enjoy the practice. But I detest being in my room, in my life, and having to change and head out and reach the spot and spend time in traffic. That is the time my mind spends alone with itself doubting every move I’m making. It says, it’s embarrassing to be semi-naked in a pool with strangers. It says, what’s the point of learning the piano for god’s sake, it’s never like you’ll be able to afford one. Working out will hurt so much once you’re done. My mind is like my mother, always saying the critical thing holding me back instead of looking at everything good it could do for me. Now I know, I have this problem. So I can tell which part of my mind is my own and which part of it is my mother. 

Someone once told me, that if you’re not sure of how you feel, write a set of facts down first. I’m twenty-eight. I don’t have any real investments so far, but I’m not broke anymore, I’ve been saving up. Last week, I spent two days watching videos on personal finance. I have a job that serves all my emotional needs. I understand books like a carpenter understands wood. I think I’m good at the work I do. I try to apply everything I learned at my first job, from the people who taught me all I know to work I do, even today. I’ve got a few solid friends, but my friendships don’t look like the kind I’d imagined when I was younger. Mine are more complicated, probably the most complicated thing in my life. Part of it has to do with the kind of friendship heartbreaks I had as a child, the ways I didn’t feel good enough, and how I was often abandoned easily. Falling in love is not an area I struggle with. I find it easy to love people, to slowly allow them to love me back. I can collect friendships and relationships quickly because I can be charming and authentic around strangers, but I also lose them easily, like coins in an arcade. I love the sensation that writing gifts me, every time I sit at this desk and allow my mind to sink deeper into the pool of who I already am. I don’t visit this part of me for weeks on end, but I’m always confident it’s hidden somewhere and once I’ve spent enough time alone, I will find it again, almost too easily. I’m twenty-eight, and most days I don’t feel great but I feel more like myself now. I feel steady. Steady in the metro on the second day of my period with all the seats full in the coach. Steady in my big shoes, wearing my big coat and my backpack. I felt so much of last year feeling uncomfortable and awkward and conscious of the ways I wasn’t happy or good enough, but it’s starting to finally fade away. It feels like I’m learning more every day about how to live this life, and it mostly doesn’t feel good but it feels like some of my strange questions are being answered. 

Of course, I want my ideal life too but there are days when I can tell I’m not supposed to be handed everything on a silver platter. You’ve to build it up, slowly, brick by single brick. There are nights I don’t believe in my writing, because I don’t see myself making headway in the real world of writing where people calculate word counts, and grow their social media presence so they can market their work well, but there are days I believe in my writing too. Days when I believe that I can slowly build this, and maybe it won’t look like pictures of other people building their body of work, but it will look like mine, strangely starting to resemble the haphazard and beautiful way in which artists create work that people fall in love with.