The ‘Fun’ Part About Boundaries

Wow, the way all therapists and mental health professionals keep encouraging you to set boundaries with people, you’d think it was a matter of redrawing a map somewhere. But none of them tell you that setting up boundaries is a freakin’ painful process.

You’re choosing to hold on to an incident or many, using the learnings to find a point beyond which you cannot go, and you won’t let the other person come. All the while, trying to find a new normal that does not bear negativity. But it’s been years of having a particular dynamic with the person. Years. All your life, in the case of family. Setting boundaries feels like deliberately holding a sharp wooden stake against your chest and refusing to remove it until something shifts. Sometimes, the fear that it would damage the relationship beyond repair, the fear of potential loss haunts you, making you want to throw the whole idea, the whole exercise out the window. Also, the person at the other end reacts so negatively at the change you’re trying to institute that it’s pretty much the equivalent of bench pressing a hundred kilograms at the gym on your first day. And through all this exhausting push back and resistance and friction, you wonder: wasn’t this supposed to make you feel better?

But it’s so easy to do the thing I’ve always done: just forgive and let bygones be bygones, until they’re the present again. That thought makes me ache too. At the end of it, I’d rather try to do something that has growing pains than something that always results in me going around in a circle like a fish in a bowl.

Elevator Pitch

I’m in an elevator with God.

I have a few seconds before we reach the top floor where she gets off. But I’m not worried because I’ve been rehearsing this moment my whole life. Each word, each nuance, each intonation practiced a million times. It’s time to give her my pitch, and I’ve got this. But when I open my mouth to tell her the exact reasons why I am worthy of love, that I, as her product, can sell, suddenly my mind is blank, mute, deaf, dumb, blind. Panicking, I wrack my brain that’s shrunk to the size and quality of a windowless, white-walled cube of a room. There is no cheat code, no scribbled note, I’ve never seen this room before! As I struggle to calm the panic, a projector appears right in the middle of this cuboidal space and switches on to cast a 35 mm film onto one of the white walls. It starts to play memories of all the times I’ve felt that I am deserving of love – my wins so to speak.

Clearly my mind is trying to help because we’re three-four seconds away from the top floor now. But as I watch those memories, it gets harder to find the words for my pitch because suddenly the person in the scenes doesn’t feel like me. I know it’s me, but I don’t feel it’s me. The elevator *dings* to a halt and God steps off.

What is earth and what is sky? What is a direction? Or time? Haven’t I always been here, right at the verge of something…and forgotten it all when it mattered most to remember? If there was a before, I do not know it, if there is an after I don’t have the capacity to imagine it.

I’m just staring at my own reflection on the gold burnish of the shut elevator doors and not recognising the face looking at me.

Anna And Elsa

This not a post about Frozen. Although it’s surprising that I haven’t written about it seeing as my love for the movie rivals that of Boo Bear’s four year old daughter.

This is a post about being tired of writing about sad things, and feeling sad too. There’s not much to be done about the feeling part, but let me write about something that brings me joy, subtle and mellow though it be, like a harmonising voice so low you wonder if it exists. Like sun in the winter, all golden and bright lifting up your mood but not really able to warm you up. So yes, I worked both similes in and now we can move on.

Two weeks ago, on a random whim, I spoke to Mom about going to a nursery. Perhaps it was the conversations with Boo Bear about her trips to the nursery coupled with the knowledge that Mum loves plants and has green fingers that brought it up. For my part, I am not good with green life. I still don’t know what happened to the last plant I had.

The nursery was chilly, the air there moist. A tiny square of land filled with bags of fertilisers, quaint pots – both the usual ones and ones that could be hung placed in sheds around, and of course rows and rows of plants. We walked while avoiding the mulch to have a look around.There was a wet sheen on the green leaves, beautiful babies of a whole other kind. Winter made flowers rare but it didn’t matter to me. They were living beings so different from us, so incapable of hurting me the way humans do every day. They just live in a healthy, vibrant way when happy, that’s all. They also start dying off when unhappy or stressed…er…but again they don’t wilfully hurt others. Apart from fertiliser for plants back home, and some pretty flower pots, Mom bought two pretty Poinsettias in pots. The vivid red leaves atop the green ones, the perfect Christmas plant bought in January. At the time I had no idea Mom would hand them over to me to take care of.

Now they sit on my balcony as I fret over them. Did they get enough water? Does it get too cold for them at night? Are they getting enough sun? Why are some of the leaves not okay? Mom told me not to worry as they looked fine. I put them on the balustrade anyway when there’s sun, and put them a little inwards on the balcony floor so they aren’t too exposed to the dew. I was worried that they might have infection so put some turmeric on the stalks and leaves (it’s an old home remedy as turmeric has antimicrobial properties). I also do the cliched thing of singing to them while watering them. For now, for whatever reason I keep singing, “My Girl” by The Temptations. Somehow just seems like the right song. I wanted to name them something cool and yet full of gravity – I settled on Sarah and Bridget – names of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials – women who ought to have their names associated with something lovely and good too. Feeling cool, I just knew my Poinsettias were destined for greatness.

Next day when I tried to think of their names, I mentally stuttered over them. Neither of my plant babies felt like a Sarah or a Bridget. So now they’re Anna and Elsa. The bond that’s in tatters in real life for me could flourish with my plants couldn’t it? They are sister plants, taking care of one another, not tearing one another down.

Consequences Of Absolute Forgiveness

My family’s dynamic is the emotional equivalent of a medieval battle scene most days.

One dimensional portrayal of people isn’t my favourite thing to do. My family members are capable of mind-boggling sacrifice and love for one another too. But that is a post for another day. This one is about how they’re insufferable.

I have in a way accepted that people in general, and especially people like my parents cannot be repaired, more because they refuse to accept that there is a problem. Like if I were to take them to a repair shop, the person at the desk would say, “These are vintage models. We don’t have parts for them.” (I was fresh off being told that for my Mac Air, apparently Apple decided to turn it into a vintage model in just 7 years!). So, at best, I can try to manage them.

Mom doesn’t accept a world in which she could be wrong. I do believe she suffers from low-grade depression. And to that end we did a lot of research to find options for therapists but she also comes from the point of view of therapy being for people who are weak or who are mental. Getting over that barrier has so far proved impossible. But while it exists, what she brings to the house is rage at the smallest things, at the world, at other religions, at anyone who questions things she considers right, even and especially with logic. Her words are extreme, language so toxic that it’ll shrivel up a garden in full bloom. I struggle to create boundaries to protect myself. But what has all of a sudden become incomprehensible is how I just…forgive. Frankly it’s what has allowed me to live without bitterness and anger eating me up, but now, lately, I’m wondering why should I forgive each transgression so easily? Just for peace? Just so I can be loved?

My father has been a poster child for patriarchy, he has gotten much better over the years with us, his daughters, but with mom…my warped view of marriage and men comes from here. I don’t know what his karma leads to, but he has tried to be better in the past ten years. They’ve gotten along better because of it too. Again, I always tell my dad when he is wrong, but I’m quick to forgive. It’s almost like I hold my breath and forgiving allows me to release it. Like my hurt means nothing, like anger expressed in the worst way is a normal thing and that no one needs to work to be better. They may be toxic, but I feel pathetic.

Why this post? Because we’ve now reached my sister. Through the kind of childhood that you can imagine I had, my sister was there. As the younger child she was still a bit insulated, as I was my mother’s confidante and my father’s friend. She had issues of her own of course. As we grew older, we found a bond made strong by the same roots, living with the past that wasn’t so different even with different perspectives. We had the determination to not end up like our parents. And for a while, it seemed to be true when we lived in different cities from our folks. But now, we’re back after years, she has been here a while, I moved back during the pandemic. My sister has become as bad as mom with her rage issues. She hurls the worst words at people when angry, and we fought recently when she was being rude to mom because I can’t see someone, anyone hassling, almost bullying, another person in front of me. It’s not just with family, that’s me as a person everywhere. I’ll mind my own business but if I see something off happening in front of me, I will speak up.

My sister hates it when I take my parents ‘side’. She thinks I’m super loving to them and always in their corner and not hers. I’ve tried to explain to her that like with myself, I expect her to be better than them. Because that’s what we’d decided right? To be better people? But none of it is real anymore. She becomes the most toxic, out of control person in her anger and I’m just left wondering when did she leave me here, alone, trying to be the better person while she models herself now after our parents, specifically mom? And while I am rendered the only emotional adult in this family do I add another person to the list of people I easily forgive for hurting me?

I have come to realise that perhaps forgiveness shouldn’t and needn’t be absolute. Perhaps I need a better definition that allows me the benefit of freeing up my mind space from squatting emotions of hate or hurt, but at the same time doesn’t allow me to enable or encourage others’ poor behaviours. Well, this is going to be interesting.

As for my sister, we were supposed to be in this together. Now we’re not. It’s funny because from where I stand, the only one on our parents side, is her.

A Prayer

I watch the hours after 12 am fly by like birds, one, two, three, four…after each bird flies by I tell myself I should sleep. But something keeps me awake, and I don’t want to know what it is. I’m terrified of it. So I watch movies, endlessly surf through social media, fill up stacks of things in between that something and my vision.

Tonight sounds like the strains of a violin. Letting go of something is hard especially when it’s been all you’ve had for a while. It’s like waking up from a deep slumber to a disorienting reality. Soft darkness gone, distraction taken away. Life is staring at you with a gaze that is all steel. And you have a few seconds to decide, are you letting it take you along with its current or are you determined to find another way, on the bank? Or upstream? I think when I decided to leave no matter how painful it is, I decided to go upstream.

It’s the connections that ache at the point of ingress right? At those points specifically, where they enter – near the heart? It’s beyond self indulgent I realise to think of my sadness at this point when someone close to my parents is battling for his life in a hospital, his family watching, dying more than him each minute. So, let me instead write out a little prayer for him:

Dear God, whatever shape or form you exist in, I have a little prayer for you to listen to: if it’s his time, help him be less scared. Let him know, just know, that his son and daughter will find their own way in life. Let him know that his wife is much loved by her friends and family and there will be people to take care of her as well. Help him to know he did his best and that it’s okay to let go, because you are waiting for him beyond the letting go. He won’t be lost. And if it’s not his time, please help him come back stronger, give him the strength to fight this, help his family to hold on while he does. And please shorten the suffering either way.

Jenga Tower

It is rather sudden, the idea that I am unloved, not needed. Right in the middle of playing Ludo with family. For no other reason than tiny incidents stacked together one on top of another like a Jenga tower, finally ready to topple. Incidents that mean no more than a look or a certain vibe, nothing concrete, everything inchoate. Shocking my dormant insecurity awake and hyperventilating.

Eyes brimming, I tap the colorful pawns on the screen. It is irrational. I struggle against the rip current. Struggle, struggle and then it is tiring, so okay, let me see this trip through.

Let me stay here at the bottom of the ocean, holding my breath, here where the riptide brought me like a friendly sea creature to show its collection of rusting trinkets and bones of people long forgotten. Here where the water weighs like a mountain. Here where I want to stop having eyes, or a nose, lips or arms or legs, not a heart and definitely not a mind. Here where I wish to not be, but still am.

K-pop Jail

I am trapped within the world of K-pop, without really even being into K-pop! If you read my previous entries in this category, you already know that I had the same intention of being on K-pop stan Twitter as Donald Trump has of exiting the White House gracefully: basically none. But well, here I am, a year and a half later, running a fanbase, driving a humanitarian project to help the starving children of Yemen in the name of the idol I stan for her birthday. I have never done a humanitarian project myself, I mean sure I’ve donated to causes I care about, but not like a lot.

The point is, I am way too invested, and these people, these kids and peers I’ve met there, are friends and they count on me. And all I want to do is leave.

It’s the validation and the illusion that they require my expertise, my strength, the heady feeling when they praise me because goodness they’re just young people, kids, who don’t know better yet. Fighting on Twitter with trolls or other people who ‘dare’ to hate on ‘my’ idol, and being hailed a hero for…words, harsh words upon an account I sometimes forget is a human being.

Even with my own guard rails, I find myself thinking, “This has to be a fourteen year old kid. Why am I fighting with an angry teenager online?” Agreed that the teen is lashing out in a base way, dehumanising a celebrity as though they have no feelings but…even so, my role in this entire thing is what exactly? Especially knowing trolls and kids like this spewing vile shit online are suffering awfully in real life. But then I’m here too aren’t I?

You’re reading this, looking in from the outside at a culture, a system so remote from you or how you function that you think this is truly something you would never do. Just remember the last time you got addicted to something, anything – drink, drugs, a toxic person, food – you’ll understand.

Let me break it down for myself as well, what are the ingredients this entire situation is made of:

1. A ‘worthy’ cause – a talented idol, but defenceless, no way can she save herself, so I shall save her and stand up for her – she needs me.
2. A sense of belonging – there are others like me applauding me for my devotion to her, positive reinforcements for a behaviour. I feel a sense of kinship and form friendships and attachments.
3. A sense of power – my fandom is large and we can bully the evil people. But we aren’t wrong, we are crusaders, our way is right and anyone else who tries to come for our idol or us, shall perish. We run this town, don’t mess with us.
4. Struggle for power – even within the fandom, having my opinion heard, making people believe my opinion because I am the best person for it, and through that conviction I set up accounts and fanbases that I’m become responsible for.
5. A sense of being needed – now I have friendships, responsibilities and an idol who just needs me in her corner. And each one of us reinforce this for one another. We have only each other, the idol only has us.
6. A distraction – from the perceived emptiness of my own life, a channel to let out my frustrations, enough emotions and drama to keep me occupied, each notification serving a dopamine hit.

These are usually the things that make up a lot of situations that aren’t healthy for us. Actually, this is pretty much how religion works. A lot of it makes me feel pathetic, even though it’s human to want to be loved, to be needed, to feel in control so you feel safe. But I have arrived at the point where I need to leave.

Now the question remains, how do I say this, without making it seem like I’m abandoning people?

If I Tell You

You will call me “too into my head.”

If I talk of things that whisper: you die.

If I tell you that an angel of truth

Is the same as a demon.

BaeBae-ism

I slept at 4:30 am last night.

Needless to say sleep was like snorkelling on the surface of rest and not the dive it ought to be. Woke up at 11 am to grey light, it had been raining, backed up by grumbling thunder since morning. Winter rain isn’t like Monsoon rain, it doesn’t bring me joy. Plus having stayed next to the sea for a while, temperate, pleasant chill was what I was used to, not this brooding, intense cold. The temperature also seemed to have an impact on my recovering ankle that seemed to squeak up more pain on taking weight. Plus the second day of my period. And the nagging worry of where am I going in life, my joyless job, inability to actually do the things that make me happy, wasted time on social media. All in all, things were looking not chipper. So I decided to numb my brain by watching ‘Bridgerton’ which is basically Pride & Prejudice meets Downton Abbey meets Gossip Girl. Easy watch.

But by afternoon I had a piercing, hot-iron-through-the-skull kind of headache. Unable to find medicine in my room, I went to Mama who not only furnished me with it, but insisted I sleep in her room as it was cosier. Although I am a light sleeper and did not want to be disturbed, she insisted and promised absolute quiet. It did help, even though she eventually left the room to let me sleep undisturbed. However, each time I fell into that dark, soothing zone of rest, and the fall was like a slow gradual sinking, something jerked me back up and out of that state. It happened once, twice, I don’t know how many times. Even so, I woke up feeling marginally better, but still gloomy.

The weather outside was the weather within. The day felt like the future, the past and the present. A whole thick mass of a cloud into which anything that holds definition or meaning was disappearing. Its weight was on my heart and my head and my shoulders. My sister, BaeBae, found me thus, sitting against the backrest in the warm blankets, sadly staring into the cloud.

“What’s wrong?” her voice was full of love and concern.

I rattled off the list of things bothering me as she came to cuddle next to me.

“You must have low serotonin in your body today,” she said, “Wish I had a way of injecting it into you. Imagine that, you’d feel fine then.”

“Hell nah,” I said, “I don’t want external help like that.” A little disclaimer, while I am slowly opening up to the idea of taking medications if needed, it is still a barrier for me.

My sister shook her head but then furnished me with the earring she had bought for herself and me from Mt. Abu. Pretty silver danglers with a little mirror in them. I marvelled at them for a bit.

“Did you get some sleep?” BaeBae asked.

“I did but something kept jerking me out of it every time I tried to sink into sleep. It was so weird,” I pouted and in a flash of nutty inspiration said, “You think it was a ghost?”

“You know there are four levels of rest: sleep, dream, meditation and dying,” BaeBae said seriously, “Maybe something was preventing –“

“Yeah, a ghost,” I said nodding sagely.

“Maybe, something kept preventing you from dying?” my sister said sombrely.

“I was DYING?!”

She looked at me and said, “Don’t listen to BaeBae.”

We dissolved into giggles then. The rest of the conversation was pure nonsense figuring out who resides in a country called BaeBaeStan, what are the six major tenets of BaeBae-ism and apparently everyone in BaeBaeStan is called BaeBae. If you, dear reader want, I can tell you the tenets as well in another post. Can’t believe I’m putting all this up here but I felt much better after the dose of silliness and nonsense we conjured out of thin air.

Tomorrow is the first day of work in 2021. Enough to get me feeling blue and grey I suppose. By the way, that reminds me I do love this track called Blue and Grey by BTS from their new album, composed and written by one of their singers Taehyung (stage name V). Another song I really like in their new album is Stay written by another singer JK (Jungkook). And with those random music recommendations, I say bye! Hope you all have a decent Monday, if not a happy one. I’m sure the prospect of returning to work isn’t joyous to everybody, and for those who are in love with their jobs, don’t talk to me, you lucky bastards!

First Day Of 2021

So, first day of the year. A lot of pressure to start it right. Except, it’s literally just another day in sub-divisions of time that we ourselves have created to assign meaning and value to the passing of it. But I did wonder what I ought to do on this day. My ankle is still off so I can’t work-out after the vacation. It’s too cold to lounge about anywhere except in the bed so essentially you’d find me somewhere in between the blankets and sweaters, if you dug hard enough.

It’s been a day of meh-ness. You know when you don’t really know what to do with yourself? Like hours slip away but not fast enough, although weirdly, before you know it, it’s night. The mind is in a gelatinous state and surfing on social media makes everything duller than it already is. Everybody is saying the same thing and despite knowing that you’re saying the same thing too, you say it.

It feels purposeless which is funny to think of right now, especially since we recently saw the movie ‘Soul’. A lovely flip on the whole ‘what is your purpose in life?’ and what if you don’t have one? I feel like it could’ve been made clearer, but perhaps it is how it was meant to be.

This blog entry feels like when you force a conversation, so am going to quit at these three paragraphs for my own sake, and yours. But I do hope all of you know that 2021 is going to be better for us by default as we’re finding ways to live with the situation 2020 brought to us. Although like my sister said, the years have nothing to do with it, we did it all. Hope we make a new normal out of it and own it.