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nehawriter16 · 4 years

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5.11.19 - my life is falling apart and other updates.

Hello internet.

Just wanted to talk today. I like Tumblr because not many people I know follow me on here. Also there isn’t a word limit, and sometimes a girl just wants to rant.

So this is me releasing all my thoughts into the world today.

1. ACADEMICS

I quit chartered accountancy. Just woke up one day, and told my parents I couldn’t do it anymore. That was a long week at home, and I know they’re disappointed in me. All along I’ve been a bright student, somebody who never disappointed and they could brag about at dinner parties. But this course cut me open. It hurt me, it sent me crumbling and it dragged me through hell. In the movie Dear Zindagi, Alia Bhatt is in therapy and Shahrukh Khan tells her that sometimes we keep doing the hard thing because we think we have to. And we forget that its okay to pick an easy way. I guess that’s what I’m doing. I’m choosing the easier way because the harder way made me unhappy, it made me unhappy to the point where I didn’t want to be alive anymore.

So the new plan is that I will give my GRE and apply to Masters in Finance courses in the US. Preferably in the STEM field, because its easy to get a work visa after graduating if you’re a STEM graduate. Do I think this is the perfect career path for me? No, absolutely not. But do I think it will do me good to finally move the fuck out of home, have a change of continent, meet some new people, and have the college experience I always felt I missed out on? Yes.

So this is what we’re doing. My GRE is in 12 days. I am barely prepared.

2. DRIVE/PASSION

I always had a passion for writing. I knew when I discovered it that it not only brought me joy, but I was pretty damn good at it. Unfortunately being brown, and coming from a family of people who had all built their career from scratch by making practical decisions, because they didn’t have a choice due to their humble backgrounds, I was always told that writing was a futile thing and would just be a hobby, not something to be looked at as a career option. I disagreed. Having made a bit of money from it now, I still disagree.

But I’ve been brought up in the lap of luxury and I have a pretty high standard of living. I like my weekly Starbucks and I go to bars that don’t have happy hours. I enjoy the bimonthly staycation in a fancy hotel, and I hate repeating outfits and thoroughly enjoy fashion, so I’m always buying new clothes. It makes me happy to look good.

So yeah, I agree that since I haven’t had the liberty to pursue writing full time, I haven’t yet found a way to make a living from it. Maybe it’s a risk, and a back up plan is advisable. But all I know is writing is the only thing I feel like waking up to do. Even now, when my life is falling apart, it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

Growing up I was always a hardworking student. And if I wasn’t, my Mom made me that way. She would yell if I got bad marks, and she always encouraged that I at least be in the top ten in class. Even the school I went to was pretty much only concerned with academics. And so due to the environment and brainwashing, I did well. I stayed in the 90 percent lane all my life, all the way up to twelfth grade. In my junior college I had two of the worst years of my life. I was molested by my co caption for months on end, and I couldn’t escape him. It was constant mental, emotional and physical turmoil, more so because I couldn’t tell anyone. Despite how insanely difficult it was to spend six hours every day in the place where my molester showed up every day, I still managed to keep my grades high. I scored 92 percent, and my parents were happy.

I had no passion for finance, but since I had proved to be so bright, my parents said the only thing to do now was four years of Chartered Accountancy. After that, my life would be sorted. I passed the first level by studying for 2 months, while other people attended classes for a year. I passed the second level too. I got into one of the biggest global multiconsulting firms in the world for my internship, and my parents were happy. My life was on track, and it didn’t matter that I was crying in the cabs home from work because I was so miserable. It didn’t matter as long as the plan was being followed. After all, the plan was being followed and I was so goddamn close to the finish line.

Two years into my internship I decided I needed to quit, or at least shift to a smaller firm. The pressures in this one were too much and I was so sad I could barely make it out of bed. So I told my parents I needed to study for my finals, and they got me out of it. My mental health was derailing – but oh boy, was this just the beginning. I moved to a smaller firm and pretended to stay home on the weekends and study. Instead, all I did was lay in bed with YouTube videos playing on loop because I couldn’t bear to be alone with my thoughts.

2017 was the year my boyfriend broke up with me too, so all kinds of shit was hitting the fan at the same time. I was fucked up in every way. I started using alcohol to fall asleep, to wake up, to do pretty much anything actually. To engage in social situations, I’d carry around a quarter in my bag and drink it in the cab. It eased my anxiety and helped me smile at people in a more convincing way.

2018 sucked. So did 2019. These two years are a blurry flatline in my head. I have been drowning like the ground I walk on is quicksand, and the more I struggle to get out, the more it pulls me in. When I look back at my life’s work in the past two years, I see nothing. Nothing that counts as an achievement anyway.

I wasted them while everybody else was putting in the work to get into ivy league schools or pass exams, get their first real jobs kickstarted. I lay in bed and watched every tv show there was to watch with the curtains drawn. I ran through horrible men and gave my body up to practical strangers that I felt nothing for, and the ones I liked left me, like they always do. Yeah, I wrote two books. Made enough money to support my alcohol addiction, my shopping habits, my vacations and staycations. I blew it all off on the temporary ride of whatever would bring me happiness in the moment.

I lost myself. I lost myself to illness and addiction and worthless friends and denial. I’m still lost. I used to have a drive in my body, something that said wake up and get things done today. Instead, I’ve been doing the zombie shuffle through my own life. Sometimes I wake up and my first thought is – “How long till this day is over.” I count the hours until I can crawl back into bed, till its an acceptable time to go to sleep. Because the only place I don’t feel like my brain has a fucking dense fog rolling through it is when I’m sleeping.

I used to be brilliant, and I’ve lost my shine. I’ve lost my willpower, my ability to be the hardest working person in the room. I have gotten self destructive to the point where I procrastinate and procrastinate and then it’s too late for everything. I am so fucked up, you have no idea.

I don’t know what I should do to bring that feeling of wanting to do something perfectly back. You know, the feeling of studying so hard you know everything on the test. The feeling of being the best, no questions asked. The feeling of answering questions in class and submitting assignments on time and just…enjoying the process of academia that I used to love so much. But I guess in depression, your brain sort of grows old and tired. It can’t remember things. It doesn’t want to move, or think, or do anything difficult.

My memory is deteriorating and the moments I’m supposed to remember and the information I should retain? It gets lost more often than not. And I am so scared to assess the scale of this incompetency that I just don’t even try because whenever I do, it’s all so overwhelming and all the trauma from Chartered Accountancy comes swirling back to hit me in the head.

3. BODY IMAGE

As a result of my constant sadness, I had to find ways to make myself happy. The periods of happiness lasted for a short while, but I rode the highs to the fullest because I knew the darkness would be back eventually. I turned to alcohol and marijuana and nicotine, to the point where every three or four days I would need one or the other, if not all three in combination. I would drink every night to be able to fall asleep. In my cupboard there is a special collection of all the wine bottles that have acted as sleeping pills.

I also began to eat junk food, because carbohydrates make you happy before they make you feel like shit. All addictions are like that, actually. Swiggy was my best friend, and my array of lovers : greasy Chinese, McDonalds, any dessert place – just whatever was bad for your skin, fattening, but would be brought to you by a wonderful man on a bike no matter what the weather was, and was easy to eat and throw all evidence of out later and forget that somewhere on my body, this food would settle into another ugly layer.

In the middle I got sick of myself and went to the gym, started going at it hard. My body improved and the endorphins were definitely helping, but a few months in I stopped waking up. My brain said it didn’t want to anymore, and I, the slave to my depression, caved and listened. I haven’t been since. The swiggy orders keep coming in every day and I keep throwing the containers into the trash, changing quickly from one outfit into another so I don’t have to see what I look like naked.

But I know. I somehow hate myself for the disgust I have for certain parts of my body, and then for the part of me that knows it wants to “fix” them all, but is in constant battle with the part of me that says I shouldn’t feel guilty for taking up space or for being a curvy girl. But body positivity isn’t about a number on a scale, its just about whether you like your reflection in the mirror, whether it makes you happy. Mine hasn’t made me happy in a long time. But then again, what the fuck has?

Sometimes I’m in trial rooms with harsh lighting and I just stare at myself and call myself horrible names. I keep the lights off when boys come over and the clothes come off. I keep saying, “I have to lose 10 kgs,” but I keep ordering from Swiggy every time a depressive episode rolls in to make it go away.

I keep setting deadlines, like, “After this month, I will cut out sugar!” and “After this exam, I will go back to the gym!” but then I fuck up and I’m like, oh well. Maybe next month.

The bottom line is I despise my body and the way it’s started to look. It doesn’t help that my Instagram feed is full of women with perfect skin, defined abs, and perky butts with chiselled features. I want all of that. I want to feel beautiful, and beautiful is hard work. Which, of course, my brain pines after, but never actually lets me get out of bed to do.

4. DATING/LOVE

My last serious relationship ended in 2017. I briefly dated somebody exclusively in the beginning of 2019, but he turned out to be the biggest asshole of them all, and “didn’t realise” he was using me to get over his ex-girlfriend. He broke up with me over text, pretty much cheated on me, didn’t even explain himself until I found out from some mutual friends. After that I was done, I couldn’t take love anymore. I couldn’t let anybody in because every relationship I’ve ever been in has ended with me being the second choice or me being dumped or betrayed and left hurt and broken for years.

The trauma is too much. So I decided I was never going to let anybody leave me again or enter my life and find a permanent place in it. I became the biggest fuckboy of them all, despite my conscience that has always been a good, kind and sensitive thing. This player thing really isn’t for me, but it was fun for a while to trump boys and play mind games and make them feel inadequate about themselves, to stand them up and never call back and ask them to leave my house after I had gotten what I wanted, to only call when I wanted it again.

I purposely picked out the worst, baddest ones. Then I tamed them by being even worse than they were. In May I began speaking to somebody who was fun and hilarious and good looking and well off and who made my brain feel alive again. Every time he texted me I caught myself smiling, and all our conversations consisted of saying witty sarcastic things to each other. We went on one date and he kissed me in the car, but for some reason in real life his life was so different from mine, that I declared the kiss good (he put his hand in my hair and grabbed, in a non hurtful but very I’m-super-into-this way, ooofff) and the date a disaster. I don’t know whether I was just in denial of my now strongly sprouting crush, or whether I actually hated it.

As the months passed, I tried to get him to go out with me again. I’m not much of a pursuer, because I have always been the one who gets pursued. But this boy was different. We would talk a lot over DM and we would make fun of each other and his life was fabulous and exciting and I watched from the outside, and built him into a much grander version of who he is in real life. I do that. What made him even more attractive was that he didn’t want me, and I couldn’t figure out for the love of God why not. I thought I was the whole package, and I even started to act out a little bit in the psycho way he told me he liked his women, which is SO TOXIC but I had actually felt something for somebody after so long that I didn’t even backtrack. Anyway, it soon became clear that it was not going to lead anywhere because he just disappointed me, didn’t show up, and my ego took a hit. I let it go, mostly. Or I will, as time passes.

I think I deserve love. Not the makes you feel good and carries your bag when its heavy kind. I deserve the love that I am ready to give – the grand romantic gestures that would be so dumb, but somehow he makes them work. The cant live without you love. The we’re best friends and teammates and nothing, not even distance, not our past demons, will keep us from making it work. I want the kind of person who is so sure of who they are, so internally confident, and so absolutely sure that I am their soulmate that I convinces me. I don’t want to meet a lot of wrong boys, goddamnit. I’ve done my fair share of the wrong boys, I’ve paid my dues for the amount of hurt one person is supposed to have. Now I just want the right one.

Deep down, I know he’s not here. Not in this city, because that would just be a cruel joke. Imagine meeting your soulmate and then having to go to college in six months. Fucking shit. If the universe even pities me a little bit, it wont do that to me.

I sometimes wonder if my life only stays on track if my romantic life is going well. I mean, when I dated my last serious boyfriend, I had it all – I was skinny. I had a prestigious internship. I was passing my exams. The writing was flourishing. This is a very scary thought, because I don’t want to depend or co exist on somebody else for my happiness in any way. But I cant deny the fact that my entire life fell apart when that last boy, who I loved with all my heart, broke up with me. It hasn’t been quite the same since.

His life is going spectacularly well, though. Lots of women and a great job and enough money to buy plane tickets to different cities to meet these women when he wouldn’t even drive down three hours to see me in a neighbouring town. I hate how unfair life is. He’s found some amazing people that he has feelings for, that like him back, even though he’s the one who broke my heart. And I still haven’t found a single person who even makes it to the second date, and the only one who did was just using me as a placeholder while his cheating ex girlfriend took a vacation from their relationship. So how the fuck is that fair? Am I being given the worst kind of experiences because my broken heart produces a special brand of my best writing? If yes, then I’m tired. I’d rather be a mediocre writer, but I cant spend my whole life being abandoned and cheated on and dumped and taken for granted, especially when the kind of love I can give is loyal and abundant and pure.

That’s it. Those are my issues, or some of them. Honestly I’m tired of typing and want to retire to my safe space that is my bed, and the deep dark comfort of unconsciousness. I just thought I might feel better if I could release this into the world, before I feel a little better and write another post manifesting what I envision my life to be next year.

If you made it to the end, you truly love me and care for me. Thanks for sticking with me, I guess. I hope things get better. I used to say that the good thing about rock bottom is that there’s nowhere to go but up. I wish there was some kind of tracker that told you when you’d actually hit rock bottom, because all I do is keep on fucking sinking deeper and deeper.

#personal #life update #writing #fucked up

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