I think sometimes..

...and that is exactly when everything goes to hell in a handbasket Alice!

The root of the problems and the core of all solutions, the ability to think and rationalize!

The depth of the tricks that my mind can play with me is astonishing. It can make me feel like everything is going to end the very next moment and force me into thinking and feeling things I would not consider under normal circumstances. Immediately after that crescendo of emotions overwhelms my being and forces me into looking back into my past or go crawl back to someone who rejected me does it start evaporating that fog around my brain. Suddenly, everything is clear again. The lack of clarity that forced me to see limited options and think that the walls around me were caving, that the only way I could keep breathing was if I would go back and text that person that clearly ended things between us. Just as one sees the vastness of nature and the wanders it presents when one is up inside the clouds on top of a mountain, once I send that text, I see clearly that it was all in my head, my imagination. The world wasn't ending. No, she didn't change her feelings towards me. No, she will not come back into my life. All I did was ensure that I forfeited my progress. All I did was give in and my brain played a big part in tricking me into the same.

I am pretty weak Alice, but It was real nonetheless! 

All I was was lonely

Lights out Alice!

I do spend inordinate amount of time dissecting why I felt the way I felt about that person. The questions that lead me to question my stance that it was true are the fact that I have never really had a relationship till date, whereas others have fallen in or out of it more than once by the time they are my age. Hence, I do not have any real data about how to classify my feelings, or whether it is a false positive born out of the desperation to not be alone. Knowing me, sometimes I very well feel that I could have convinced myself of the positive things that I used to see in that person and that I would have cloaked myself into believing things that might not have been there in the first place, the first sign that someone showed me any little affection, to believing that it was more than it actually was, ever.

I never stop questioning, whenever my mind wanders to the topic, whether I genuinely liked her or convinced myself of the same because I was lonely. But then I also question as to what other ways are there that can be called true ways of falling for someone as if it is prescribed and previously confirmed, what is to say that my mind isn't sub-consciously playing tricks on me to make me take that path to believe that answer?

But time after time, internal discussion after internal discussion, my mind keeps playing in a loop those genuine heartfelt moments that we shared, those long night talks, sitting by the fire escape staircase, just listening to her voice, her child-like manners in which she talked about her day and her worries and the ease with which we could just BE in that moment. What was magical about those moments wasn't that my worries would fade away, it was that I found courage to tackle them head-on. Whenever she was near, I found this extra boost of courage which raged a fire inside, a fire that could not be extinguished by any obstacle in the way, but just the never give in attitude that meant that I would not back down from anything, as long as she was there by my side.

I know how cheesy, corny and cringe I sound. I am mostly rational and never able to survive these cringe scenes, even on a screen. Yet, this time I knew I would. I wanted to try. I wanted to improve myself. I wanted to become a better person because of her. 

If this wasn't true, then Alice, I hope to wait for the day when I get to see data or feel it firsthand on what is considered true.

P.S: Don't get the impression that it was all rosy. Far from it, most of the time spend in the staircase was littered with me saying the wrong things and putting my foot in my mouth. But that was the beauty of it. I didn't care. If I was wrong, I would apologize. If I needed to be better, I would try to improve. There was this newfound zeal that drove me that I hadn't felt before/ or in a long time.

Is it okay to feel this way?

Lights out Alice!

I don't think I am okay. I am closer to combustion than ever before. I am discourteous with my replies, snarky when talking to people, hurting inside and hurting a bit more seeing that I am disintegrating my relationship with my parents, something that I try the hardest to maintain and is working the fastest to break at its seams.

The resentment that is festering inside of me following the recent events and the shitty mindset means I am lashing out at them, something that ends up hurting them and pushing me into a deeper state of shit since I regret even opening my mouth. I end up withdrawing further, pushing them away and when they try to reach out, I lash out and end up causing more pain. I don't know how to break this cycle but I can guarantee I am in a downward spiral.

What is infuriating me is that I saw this coming, I knew it would happen and thought I could handle it but I am not. I thought I was better than this but as it turns out, I am not. I am being too self subsumed to even think about the impact my actions are causing to my parents.

I hate the state I am in and I don't think I am responding to the situation as well as I should. Fairly poorly actually. But then again, isn't it okay to take the time off from the world if it means I can not make a situation worse than it already is?

In the end all this is is me lashing out at others because I believe I will end up alone because I spent far too long inside my books and in my comfort zone and now I think it is okay to blame my parents and circumstance on how I turned out. Yes, I know what I am writing and I know it is entirely unreasonable. What gets my goat is that even though I know this, my body is not ready to accept this. I should not get angered this easily, but I am irritated all the time. I have a shorter leash, a shorter fuse and rude behaviour. My parents are being accommodating by giving me space but I know it won't last. I will get labelled as an easily angered person once again, which will again just end up adding to my fury.

What a shitty loop to be in, all born out of my imagination and my inability to control my emotions and keep my needless rage in check.

Lights out Alice!

I think it is just fear

Lights out Alice!

I have been trying to distill why I have been feeling so low lately and one of the reasons that keeps creeping up is the fact that I think I am pretty lonely in this world. I am closer to thirties than to twenties and having recently completed my masters, for the first time I looked up from my books to realize that I have never been in a relationship with humans. I always had the excuse of studies to ensure that I never had to step out of my comfort zone and interact with people. Too give myself further justification, I could always claim internal problems and also that one failed but mostly mythical and imagined relationship during high school.

The problem is that suddenly due to social pressure I feel like I have lost out on so much time and data, that I am woefully lacking in this field and that I need to rush to catch up. The pressure is so intense that it is giving me the feeling that I am drowning and hence need to start kicking and making waves to stay afloat. I purposely used this analogy, for the simple reason that I don't know how to swim in real life and for the deeper reason that If folklore is correct then the only thing needed when one feels like they are drowning is to not fight it and just work on keeping their head above ground. That is exactly what I need to do but I am failing at.

I am finding reasons to blame people on making me this anti-social of a person. I am blaming my parents for being too strict as the reason I never went out to meet new people. What I am forgetting is that it was all me. My choice. My reasoning where I chose to sit in my high horse and never be bothered with people as I thought I was too cool for it. I thought I could just rock up one day and make it work. Oh how stupid. 

The shitty part is that it is not too late or even if it is, it is fine since not everything in life is supposed to go my way. It's okay. I keep telling myself this, yet every fifteen minutes I go back into the loop again.

I am seriously slipping Alice!

What I need to become

Lights out Alice!

It goes without saying that I am far from perfect and actually pretty messed up. I used academics to get my mind of asking the bigger questions, because they would lead to answers I would not like to hear. While the past few days have been pretty awful in my head, I keep trying to center myself by reminding my volatile head of the basic principles that had gotten me through worse times in previous occasions.

Whenever I am around people and they talk of a specific attribute or a key skill of theirs or even highlight one of mine, I ask myself whether that is what I want to be know for. Whether it is the right metric for conveying my abilities. The answer that I get is that everything that I know can be done better, faster and to a better quality by another person. I just do not possess the innate talent that other do in any specific field. This realization had struck me very early on in school, which I was grateful for, because I was surrounded by innate talents that also worked really hard to get to the places they wanted to reach in life. Seeing these future leaders and visionaries of the world meant that I immediately knew where I stood, which was nowhere. However, bit of soul-searching later I did realize that while I could not reach the zeniths of my peers, I could mould myself to become better than I was through a bit of mindset change.

The key change that I had to bring was perseverance. I don't think I have fully inculcated it in my psyche as I regularly fall into the bad habit of procrastination, but I have seen first hand the magical results it can produce. The complimentary skill that was also required was discipline. Motivation is fickle but ensuring that once I commit to a path, I stood by it without getting distracted, especially given my ADHD symptoms would be the key differentiator in ensuring that I get things done.

In all, If I would actually develop the goals that I wanted to develop for myself one day, I would like to envision that my goal would be to reach a state where I can introduce myself as a person who is known for:

• Their ability to adapt : Any situation, any condition, any state
• To persevere
• To grind and be disciplined and committed to a path
• To ask the right questions
• Always being curious, looking for different angles and POVs
• To remain calm, especially in stressful situations when the environment is trying to provoke a reaction out of you 
• What his goals are and what he wants out of life
• Never forgets that growth is the only way to survive

Unfortunately, I am nowhere close to being that person and my repeated failures and shortcomings and outbursts of anger on a daily basis are proof of the same. I am not sure if I am even growing in the right direction or if I am just compounding my misery by spilling over the sorry state of affairs in my mental space onto my real world close family and deteriorating both exponentially.

Ooo...a new emotion wrapped in those same old feelings?

Lights out Alice!

I don't know why I am not mature enough to not bleed whenever I have to talk to that person that rejected me. To be fair, I would not even be mature enough to carry on talking to them. It is the maturity of that person that takes the effort to talk. I am still undecided if it is a good or a bad thing, because I keep rocking back and forth in emotions and hence am not healing properly, or maybe I am unable to pinpoint my feelings exactly.

Today, while in conversation, another person's name popped up who had made the same recommendation that I had, just a bit earlier. I could see immediately that my reaction was incorrect. Instead of focusing on the recommendation and being objective about it, my first bodily reaction was to be jealous. I know for a fact that this is not a healthy reaction, as regardless of the situation, we do not own anybody and cannot be the only source of news, information or advice. That is being possessive and that is enough to make anybody feel uncomfortable. Why should anybody give anybody else the power to lord over them especially when I know I wouldn't want anybody to have this control over me as well. 

Why am I so petty that I get turned off from the conversation whenever somebody else's name is brought up? 

Why am I so insecure in my abilities and my place in people's life that I have to continuously remind them of my existence or remind myself of my contribution because I think if I cannot repeatedly do something for people, I will become irrelevant and will lose them from my life? Why do I think that the only time people will want me around is when I can do something for them?

Why am I so worried all the time? About what exactly?

On one hand, I know FOR A FACT that there are a million people who are better than me in every respect and a billion more who would be better than me in each respective area. But why does my fragile EGO get hurt whenever someone reaches an answer faster or better than me?

Why do I have this underlying need to be the smartest or the most knowledgeable or the wittiest person in the room when I KNOW FOR A FACT that this exact thinking means that I will NEVER be like them, because the smart ones know when to keep quiet and would NEVER feel the need to measure or prove themselves. The really smart people will always be worried about their next growth area and how to improve themselves. The need to show off your knowledge by its nature proves that the knowledge shown is superficial and rooted in insecurity.

The real ones know, the fake ones show. The real ones know when to keep quiet and let the fake ones argue and fight it out on their own. The real ones don't mince words and the real ones don't get impatient. They are quiet, calm and sure of themselves to the point that they do not get dragged into other people's mess. 

These last few months I have fallen from maintaining the basics of focusing on my work, being consistent and disciplined and working towards my goals. I got distracted into superficial actions wherein I was trying to please people and do things that would grab their attention. This meant that I was more focused on being right than finding out and learning the right things. Basically I slipped. The worst part is that I was negotiating with myself during this time thinking I could always catchup since I was cognitively aware that I was not doing the right now. Oh, how wrong I was. Discipline does not care about cognition. If you break the habit, you still have to do the work in getting back on the wagon, which is not easy.

It also begs the question, why was I trying so hard to impress a person? Why was I so willing to bend my morals and principals to get them to like me? Why was I so affected by their rejection? Isn't it normal for humans to not reciprocate or even be on the same wavelength and the reasons for the same can be as simple as being different people altogether to as complicated as timing and circumstance?

More importantly, how can I ensure that I do not repeat this mistake? How do I put guards in place to ensure that I never lose myself in the process? Who do I want to be? If I "adapt" myself to the circumstance, would I even like the person I would become? Is it okay to strive for a idealistic person and values in the real world and would the right set of people ever tell you to aim for something more "realistic"?

The biggest question in all of this remains in finding the right set of people to listen to and even in that, finding the right subset for that particular problem because not everyone would be objective in every situation. It is difficult to objectively identify people or facts or advice when we are ourselves not sure of the question we are trying to ask or answer we are seeking. Sometimes we dismiss answers because we do not want to accept that reality and hence find ways to reject it.

The mind is so complex Alice and most days I am not sure if I am making progress or just tumbling around in a washing machine like rinse pattern.

Was it ever true though?

Lights out Alice!

The question that keeps running on a loop in my head is why did I ever get to head over heels over that person in the first place? Was it just because they were emotionally mature enough to understand me and for the first time in a long time I wasn't lonely and someone would be swooned by my actions and was trying to understand me? Believe me, I have asked this question multiple times a day for the past three months and I have failed to come to a conclusive answer as to what was the reason for my behaviour.

I am not without flaws, many of them seriously debilitating in my ability to be a "normal" person and the same could be told for that person, although to a far lesser extent and they were far more normal. But NEVER for once did I find these issues as a hinderance, just obstacles that I needed to work towards and overcome.

Was I compromising too much? How many red flags was I ignoring that should have been considered? Was my optimism misplaced? Was I too naive to think that it could all be worked out?

Am I too attached to let go just because I am afraid to be alone? Was this pulling out all stops level of effort an outcome of the fact that I have never been in a relationship and due to peer pressure and the fact that for the first time someone was nice to me, I extrapolated their nicety to feelings and mistook the entire situation?

I know I will have hope, hope that the person sees my true feelings and comes back to me, but at that point, would that even be a good idea? I know I would still want them around, but I also know for a fact that they are NEVER coming back and you know what Alice...I STILL MISS THEM. This might be an unhealthy problem that might have arose from my lack of experience in this field, which is why I am now keeping quiet and not expressing my emotions altogether, but for now, in this moment, I just picture them and see that it could all be okay...yes, there would be ups and downs but I would strive to be better to be worthy of that person.

Lights out Alice!

Looking back was not a good idea

Lights out Alice!

The past couple of days have been hard because I took the stupid decision of looking back and reopening past wounds. I had barely recovered and this was the last thing I needed. I am again spiralling and simmering in those bad thoughts and a negative mindspace, thinking of all the things that I did wrong and figuring out all the ways in which I could have behaved differently to ensure that the outcome was different.

What hurts is the fact that I am trying to treat the person with dignity and grace, and I am mostly sure that the other person is trying to do the same from their end. But some actions and most statements are most inconsiderate that they make me feel ashamed for feeling the way I felt about that person. I understand not reciprocating the same emotion and not feeling the same way like I did, but then I would try to break ties with the other person so that we can move on in our lives. This person, because they are wiser (not sarcasm) has reached the emotional maturity level where they can still be connected, yet disconnected to the point wherein they did two things that hurt me:

I know I do a lot of things for people, but calling it out and labelling me as that and then using me for stuff and then rationalizing it is something that hurts. A lot.

Next, trivializing my feelings also really hurt me to the core. I understand that you do not feel the same way. But mocking me to the point where I feel like I am stupid for having felt and shown it out loud...that hurts.

I am supposed to go on like this?

Lights out Alice!

Pretty peculiar situation this. I am currently going through a bad phase, wherein I am unable to let go of a person who has clearly stated wants nothing to do with me and has shown no signs of a change of heart. To add to my woes, I am currently between work, having recently concluded my masters and waiting before my job officially commences.

Upon deeper introspection, some of the things that person told was true. I even asked myself repeated times as to why I showed care or concern for that person when we were pretty different people (their words, not mine) with starkly different outlook towards life. Each time, for the life of me, I failed to come up with a rational answer and not wanting to settle for the L word answer,  settled for the superficial answer that it was what I felt in my bones aka gut feeling that we would be good together. In hindsight, this feels more of an answer that points towards the fact that all my life I have been lonely and does not allude to my inclination towards that person. The fact that I had been lonely till date also means that I am willing to compromise on more fronts than I should be doing, even though I did not feel that way. I always had that understanding that for two people to meet halfway or some close semblance of an understanding, there has to be some amount of compromise on each side.

Scolding myself:

WTH SHUBHAM? why are you forcing your agenda on others? Why are you so afraid of rejection if it is so normal, common and the most likely outcome?

Why would I put the blame for my lack of motivation or correct actions on the other person or the failure to get a positive outcome? This should not be an excuse to give myself the permission to slack off and become indisciplined and let go of good habits.

There is no good reason for me to let go of my long term goals, habits and skills that I need to build over the course of the next six months?

Why did I suddenly start believing that my growth is over? That this is all I will ever be? Just because my dad mentioned it once? Just because there are imposed "responsibilities"? I am pretty sure I did not shun away from responsibilities before, although I could fail and wasn't liable. I don't get the intrinsic implication in this world that we are not allowed to fail. 

Musings enroute to Delhi on 11.04.23

Lights out Alice!

Why is travelling through hills and farms so mesmerizing? 

Why does observing humanity from a distance and deriving knee jerk conclusions from a distance, which is practically judgmental and almost always wrong, pique such interest in me?

The ability of the mind to be set free, while travelling, albeit inside of a train, to get soaked into the different microcosms of society and life, across cities, villages, clusters.

I always feel that coming from the city and watching villages and farms roll by is a grim reminder that we know nothing of how work is done at the ground level. People, who are toiling in the brutal sun, their skin burnt to a crisp, toiling away day and night for crops like wheat and maize, something we take for granted. How bizarre it is that that person in a farm toils for 10 hours under the boiling and burning sun and gets to barely make a living whereas people in the cities sit in air conditioned spaces, work using their fingers, that also not all ten of them, and get paid at least a hundred times. The comparison is not to highlight the income disparity but what humanity takes for granted and what it values. Compensation is meagre for what is such a essential activity for human susentance. It does not even afford a decent quality of life. Although, this is me looking from the outside and comparing according to city standards without taking the time to figure out if it is actually the case. Maybe they are content with what they have and are satisfied with their life, something that eludes most people in the city, regardless of how successful they are in their careers.  

#How and Why I like travelling:

I like travelling because it gives me a glimpse of the different ways people go about their days and the different ways they live their life. It gives me a chance to observe humanity, the good, the awkward, the different rituals and semantics. What is important is that it is always a wake up call since my mind has a habit of coming to the conclusion that there are only a few right ways of doing things and anything otherwise would be less efficient or incorrect.

But I have also observed that the best learning and observing adventures are had when I am travelling with my parents. They are more socially outgoing, I am a social recluse, so, by myself I would have never interacted with anybody enough to generate these conclusions about norms and practices. 

In short, to effectively travel, I need extroverted people to accompany me, ones I feel comfortable with of course, who can go out and interact with the world and get me data that I can observe and feed upon.

#Another bad habit:

I don't get why I try to control my parents' behaviour in public. They are behaving normally, but for them I seem to have a shorter leash than usual. I get easily embarrased or angry at their actions, which is sad, because they did their best to show patience towards me when I was a kid. Sadly, after growing up, I lack the humility to show them the same level of grace. This is such an infuriating habit, because intrinsically I know that I should be behaving better, but yet I lose my calm trying to force my opinion. I think that I am trying to be too controlling and am trying to force other people, or my parents in this case,  to conform to my views or way of acting.

#Where do I go wrong with my interactions with mom:

It’s not like I want to force my agenda on people. Given my mom’s intrinsic nature of being socially anxious, I understand the need to rely on someone who would be more likely to be there, which is more applicable to my dad than me. 

What ends up happening is that I come on too strong putting across my point, wherein I try to force her to go out to an unknown situation, with me, a situation which would already be putting her in an uncomfortable position because it involves a lot of unknowns and a lot of variables. 

Feeling like shit

Lights out Alice!

Sorry for off-loading on you again. It just sucks that I am back in that negative space and everything seems futile and I just don't have any energy to work on my long terms goals at all. It just sucks that I knew this would happen and I thought I had prepared well for it and yet here I am, breaking at the seams.

What gets my goat is that for the outside world, I can hold it together, pretend, put a mask and act all jolly and okay. When I come back home or talk to my parents, I am a bum, a sore, a prick and all the other sad synonyms given to an ungrateful and rude child to their parents. I don't understand why I am unable to pretend and put on a mask with them or just behave better. They don't deserve to bear the brunt of the baggage that I am carrying needlessly. This actually enrages me further and makes me even more angry and easily ticked off at any slight deviation of the course of things from the rational norm. Given the fact that people are creatures of their own understanding and are rarely govern by logic for their actions, it takes all of 2 seconds for me to get back into the anger loop. 

I behave like an eye-sore, my parents call me out for my rudeness, I get further enraged on two fronts, first for them not understanding me or my situation. Then, the rational side of me argues that they could never understand, not because they don't want to, but because they don't know about it. The second dose of anger then kicks in, for behaving incorrectly and I am pissed off at myself for not keeping my behaviour in check. All of the above then leads me to conclude that it would be better if I isolate myself to keep things from getting worse. Which is also bad since walking off from any conversation is a bad look on me and lets people conclude that I am being pretty rude.

Writing this down made me chuckle and realize how easy it was for a small incorrect behaviour to spiral out of control to the point where I am just plain frothing with anger over the injustice of the situation while everyone around me concludes (incorrectly) that I have an anger issue.

I know I like living in mystery and concluding that "nobody really understands me", but I did not mean that I wanted to be misunderstood and in a downward spiral Alice!

It's now a ritual of sorts

Lights out Alice!

What a ritual to develop. A longing that becomes a habit. I know Alice that you are terribly bored of my ongoing incessant laments about how she was someone I did not deserve and I am sorry that she had to go. But, this longing does not seem to go. What is worse, now the mind also muses if the longing was all but born out of the need to not be alone. I am old, closer to thirties than twenties and till date, never connected with another human being on that level. I always had an excuse, more like I was always afraid of rejection and being called out for my general weirdness, and somehow, being different and not trying to find someone made me stand out and eventually, part of my personality and this faux image of myself that I had created that helped me being a shell without feeling emotions which meant I was quickly in a safe zone devoid of all the bad things that come with human attachment, aka emotions, but also meant that I never had a sense of belonging. I was always pretty much alone. Friends, if any, were only there as a means to get something done and rarely, if ever, took the time to get to know the real me. This was made worse because the outward social image of being a stoic personality who always hides his emotions and is not really a human put me in a box that I was too proud to get out of. 

The sad part is that I know that she would have moved on, most sane people would. But what I realized is that I like sulking and brooding too much and get attached and feel too much on the inside to recover quickly. Hell, the last not-really-a-relationship (just one sided) took me more than a few years to actually recover from. I was always of the belief that these things will magically happen if you wait long enough. Now, I am old, and surprise surprise, nothing has happened. Obviously, if you don't put in the work to meet enough people, you would not have met enough people to find any to tolerate you. Now, traditionally these things would not have bothered me, but the time spent with her made me realize that I was missing out on real connection with another human. It is not like that hole was never there before. But just like a stain on your everyday shirt that you get used to and forget about, over time, you just get used to the hole and forget about the void in your life. You cannot really miss something that you never had in your life or not have had it for a long time.

Still not in a great place

Lights out Alice!

Still in somewhat of a torrid mind-space. What I have figured is that I have found out enough things to do, but am procrastinating on creating a schedule to do them, because then it will be set in stone and then the guilt will shift. Currently, am just wasting away time and the fact that I am doing very little productive activities and just wiling away my time binging shows on Netflix that contribute absolutely nothing to my life adds to the frustration. I end every day being more angry at myself for procrastinating and wasting away my time, even though I know I am wasting a golden opportunity to upskill myself and ensure that I am not going backwards in life.

What is funny is that at every step of the way and every moment I know that I am procrastinating and that the choices that I am making are wrong and just wasting my time, which will end up contributing further to my bad head space to make it even worse. Yet, I can't stop. Or I choose not to. I choose to be mediocre in life. I choose to not work hard enough. I am currently choosing to fuss over trivialities and materialistic and societal issues that don't really matter. Yet, I have strayed off so far from my principles and core values that I end up not even utilizing 5% of my time for the past two weeks to do anything remotely useful.

It shames and pains me to see myself having fallen so far. I thought I had gotten better and made progress in overcoming my procrastination. But life just reminded me that discipline was always the key and because I stopped working on it thinking I had full control, I am now being reminded how little control I ever had to begin with.

Sucks that the choices that I am making for myself right now would mean that I will never amount to anything in life Alice!