The longing for belonging

Lights out Alice!

Now before you going harping about how the title is grammatically incorrect, I know it is, but it was done so that it rhymes.

Coming back, let's re-establish some baselines before we begin the brain-drudgery for today.

I am an ADHD. I am an introvert who has never been in a relationship and has been rejected six straight times to which I conclude that I probably don't know healthy habits and end up caring too much and holding on for too long, which shows up as clingy or desperate. I am also weird, but that's just innate me because I don't care about a lot of worldly things and just care about a few specific things which I devote energy to. I also have a lot of energy, coupled with ADHD, leads to hyperfixation and jumping from one task to another with too much enthusiasm and zero completion rate.

Now comes the actual point for today:

Travelling makes you forget. Forget through the paradigm of newness. New places, new scenery. For a curious analytical overthinker like me who needs every detail, it keeps me engaged.

But when there is a moment of stillness, which is always unsettling, where the constant cacophony that is my brain, quietens down, is when you realize that you are all alone in life and there are few people you can share your innermost thoughts with. I am grateful for the people I have in my life, my stakeholders namely, but over time you realize that they cannot be asked to substitute for the other set of people that I lack in life. That deep down, all of us just wanted to be understood. That even though I would like to show that I don't care, deep down, I just want that one person to care. To just walk up to me and tell me that they see me down and would like to know what caused it. To just be by my side and occupy the same space, not always needing to speak to be heard, just being there.

Funny thing, MS pointed out that the last person she expected to be a hopeless romantic would be me and on the outset, given the hard exterior and aloof nature that I put out for the outer world, it would track. But the reality is that we are all pretending, me more than most. I have been hurt far too often and am far too introverted to wear my real emotions on my sleeve so I project it through my idiosyncrasies and general weirdness.

At some point, it stops hurting that much and you start taking every small win as they come for what they are. At some point, you stop and take stock of how lucky you are to be in the position you are, that even though there might be miles to go and you might be here on the shoulders of the support extended to you by others, you are still here. I know that nothing I will do will ever amount to anything tangible. That most likely I will end up being just another corporate slave, that I was never academically significant to make any contribution. But what I cannot live with is not trying. I will try like hell. Be grateful of what I have like hell and hope to hell that something comes along and even if it doesn't, smile for the journey I have had.

Thank you Alice!