The Last 10 Years

 I felt compelled to write down my 3rd Decade in existence as I heard Miley's Used to be young. It pulled on my heartstrings a little and then some more. It felt relatable. Naina at 20 was different, in some ways I loved her, but I am not sure I hate the change. 

While I don't recollect a lot due to my medications, I do remember things that were important and life changing. 

I was in my final year in my 20's, and lived with my parents in the fifth semester. I had developed a reputation for being someone with sort of a crazy streak and fearlessness. We had our final placement interviews happening, and one memory that sticks to me is of Harshita.

It was a rainy day, and I had chosen kitchens as my specialization. We were bunking college and riding into the rain, and we discussed my need to do Kitchens. By the time we went back to college, I was drenched with one single goal in mind. I am a food and beverage person, and I need to change my specialization.

I was living with Apoorva and Kenson in my last semester in college. Our life in a flat was so basic and yet I still was so bad at contributing. Kenson and I grew closer before Apoorva and I managed to annoy her with our inability to say no to people. 

I had my share of adventures, unnecessary drama, questionable activities in that flat, but boy was it fun. 

I can happily say that I enjoyed every bit of it, however after my final placement in Taj, the time had come to leave Delhi. 

My best friend was Anuraddha, and then there was Saundi, my heart and the only person who seemed to be sad when I was leaving Delhi.

Before beginning my Journey to Aurangabad I remembered thinking anything could change in my life, but my friendships were forever.

Such a naive idea, such a naive me. 

Aurangabad was fun, Ati, Mansi and Kritika were fun roomies. I loved getting up early and being an energy ball to annoy them. Unsure if I pooped that month in the hostel, but yeah that's a thing.

It was great and all of us were finally posted in Delhi, with the exception of Kritika in Kerala. (she chose to be away from home, strange I never asked her why)

The Taj Mahal Hotel New Delhi was my first work place, and also the first place where my demons started overflowing. I can't be thankful enough for the amazing people I met there who finally got me the help I needed. My career was not ruined, just slowed down a little. It didn't feel nice back then, but now when I look back, I think it was important that everything that happened in Taj happened. 

4 years is a long time to be somewhere, and I don't want to get into it. The only thing I will mention is that I had a life outside of work too.

My first serious girlfriend, jeez, mistake. 17 years older than me, lasted for a year, had a kid with me, said the kid was hers, cheated on me, and chose someone else she cheated with over me.

Now when I look back, I probably should have expected it. She was always talking about this pattern she had. But I don't hate her for it anymore. I learnt a lot here, and the fact that she thought I was immature was probably true. I was, I was a child compared to her. Haha. 

Above that I lost my grandfather a few days after my birthday.

It took almost a year of sleeping around, being a terrible person overall, to get over this.

I hurt so many people along the way because I was hurting and it was not okay. The problem is that I had no idea I was that terrible, not till years later, because retrospection is a bitch. 

Meeting Lameeya changed things. I felt like I could be myself, and she loved me. There were no conditions, she just .. loved me. I am sad to say that 24 year old me was not the kindest of people. I loved Lameeya, but I was too selfish in my pain to see what I was doing. 

It's a miracle she and I are together after so many years. 

I changed jobs, worked at Lalit for 2 years, almost died in 2020 (that was fun), was bed-ridden for 2 years almost, decided I needed to shift my career, studied Digital Marketing, got another job, Now am a Marketing head. 

The reason I don't have much to add right now is because I am a boring person with a regular life now, and I couldn't be happier. Lameeya and I are finally in sync, we have 4 beautiful babies, we have a car, we are okay financially, still learning to save. 

I have lost a lot of people along the way, and surprisingly I am still friends with people who I didn't think cared about me. Ha, funny how life is.

I do not recognize the older version of me, but I am thankful for her to have given me all the experiences I have had till now. 

Damn it miley, you had to didn't you.

30's are the best

  I usually have a habit of writing down things when I feel extremely emotional. 

Today I turned 30. 

It's a milestone, and honestly I was dredding it a few months ago. 

Yesterday, I felt at ease about this, and couldn't wait for this to get here sooner. 

My life is good right now, I have a beautiful fiance, we have 4 babies, we have a car. 

Most importantly I feel stable.

I think yesterday evening was a perfect balance, felt small intimate and good. All the faces I knew while growing up have been replaced, but my new chosen family is the best support system I could have asked for. 

Each and every gift felt personal and nice, and the lunch today felt cozy with my parents. 

We are sitting here, having a drink and relaxing telling each other hilarious stories which are embarrassing. I couldn't have asked for anything more. 

I hope this continues and I am ready to spend the next decade seeing it only get better. 

Here's to some stability and a decent life. 

Happy Birthday Me.

2022 - The year of self work and growth

 2021 was a relatively good year, and I was starting 2022 with an absolutely new resolve. 

I remember thinking, okay Naina, let's start again. 

I was lucky enough to actually start working towards a new career immediately at the start of this year. 

I met some amazing people along the way, and I think getting back into a course was one of the best decisions for me because everything was just falling into place. 

I also understood myself a lot better this year, and I must say it helped me breeze through the first few months. Studying hard, cracking the first placement, and finally working in a place where people are cool and I feel safe. 

But my career is not the only thing I had to rework, I felt completely disconnected with a version of myself before I was ill. I don't know why that is, but I do feel like a completely different person. 

I also learnt how to be kinder to myself. I felt sad about how 2020, and 2021 was. There were just too many losses, but... 2022.... it was all about starting from scratch. 

I have been able to narrow down a lot of things about myself, including the people who were more harmful for me than i realized. I end this year disconnecting myself from those people, in hopes that I can finally be free of any trauma that had been haunting me for years. 

It's definitely not easy letting go of things that are familiar to you, regardless of how harmful it is. This can come in the form of very abusive relationships. 

I don't want to pretend to be or feel something I don't about people anymore. There is a certain freedom to owning your truth and not care how the other person feels about it. I think sometimes it's important to prioritize yourself and your understanding of yourself over everything else

This year was also about me embracing certain mental health issues I have, alongside the very obvious neurodivergence. I think I can probably say I am mostly okay with it and know how to harness it to be useful for me. 

I am in the process of understanding who I am as a person, and that is one of the reasons I have been mostly disconnected from the world. 

But yes, even with all of this, I also got engaged at the beach very romantically. We have had a hard time, and we worked on our relationship quite a bit this year. 

I end 2022 with a lot of great things, engaged, a new career, a new job, new friends, new games to obsess over, but most importantly, I am ending this year with a better understanding of myself. 

Thank you to everyone who has managed to stick around, even with me not really contacting them, 

but also thanks to those who left, because I would have never known how terrible you really are if you didnt. 

Okay last bit was mean, but why not embrace that I only want to be mean to these folks. 

With this last bit of honesty and embracement of my pettyness towards certain folks, I end my new years note.

May 2023 be even more interesting, and definitely more fun. 

Happy New Year everyone!

AND I AM ENGAGED!!!

 AHHHHHHHH!

Before anything else!

The vacation to Goa was decided because we both realized we needed a break. 

It was an absolute blast. 

We visited quite a few places, and my favourite now, forever will be Morjim. 

Ah, the place of the olive ridley turle nesting, and a beautiful beach that meets into a river. Lovely clean beach, less people, and the perfect visuals. 

She decided to surprise me further by booking us a photoshoot. Somehow she got a photographer in North Goa, who btw was brilliant. 

Then imagine my surprise when this happened, 

Ofcourse I said yes,

and then we goofed around and enjoyed the view which suddenly became so much more and less at the same time,

I am going to spend my life with this beautiful lady, and i couldnt be happier. 

12th August 2022 was the day when August became alright again.

If you do this, you are being homophobic

Now now, before we all get super offended or excited, I want to clarify something here. Recently I have come across some pseudo allies and that is great. I am glad we have some form of acceptance, but I feel like this conversation still needs to happen. A lot of "straight/cis" allies are well-meaning but they do sometimes cross a boundary or hurt us without meaning to. So I decided to write this for those people who are really interested in being a better more understanding and empathetic ally. 

1) Who is the man?

I know I know, this is like such a repeated concept, and I feel tired mentioning this, but the fact is, regardless of the number of times people have been educated about this they still hold this sense and belief that there must be a man and women in a relationship dynamic. Not only is this enforcing gender stereotypes, but you are also being transphobic and extremely non-sensitive to gender. Like if you have done this before, please stop. 

Some people may say oh no we mean who is more dominant/submissive, well to that I say, I don't think what a couple share in the bedroom is your business unless they voluntarily share it with you. So don't ask.

2) Modern Problem Require Modern Solutions

This is specific to people who say gay people are fine but they need to be held to the same standards as people of the opposite sex. 

It's a bit hard to grasp so I will give an example -

Straight Girl to Another girl - Hey girl! You are so pretty! 

Another girl - Thanks! you too!

Gay Girl to another girl - Hey girl! You are so pretty! 

Everyone else - this is inappropriate! You shouldn't be saying that. 

Sexuality doesn't change how you interact with another gender, we all grew up with the same people, observing the same behavior. I am not saying that if you feel uncomfortable you should not speak up, but maybe look into what exactly is causing the discomfort, if it's because the person is gay/lesbian, then buddy you know what you need to work on.

3) Laughing at someone making you go through another gendered line

So this one is a bit personal to me. I have massive gender dysphoria when I am asked to go to the men's line based on how I express myself. The unfortunate part is, that it's not even about the expression. But I will get to that.

Since this happens very often to me, I remember it hitting me really hard when I was hanging with my friends and these guards asked me to go through the male line. My friends who were ahead of me heard this and started laughing. Sure I played it off like a funny thing, but it really isn't that funny. 

People assuming my gender is not something you should be laughing at, because for someone like me who has been struggling with gender their whole life, it's not helpful when mainstream society puts you in certain boxes, especially when you belong to neither.  

4) Ewww please don't talk about your sex life

Alright so we all are adults, and we all are sexually active (Barring the ace people out there). It's totally alright to be uncomfortable talking about sex. It's not okay when you are comfortable talking about straight sex but not queer sex. 

I know imagining other people being together can be a little uncomfortable, but if someone is sharing something so intimate with you, and this person is close to you, and you claim to support them, there is a way to put it forward. If the fact that it's two women/two men who are sleeping together makes you uncomfortable for whatever reason, then you are being homophobic. Please stop doing this if you are doing this now, it's really not cool.

5) If you like a butch woman or a femme man you are probably straight

I am moving back to this topic because this one makes me really angry. I just spoke about gender stereotypes a while back, and I want to highlight it again. Come on, say it with me - 

A FEMM WOMAN IS A WOMAN

A BUTCH WOMAN IS A WOMAN

A TRANS WOMAN IS A WOMAN

A BUTCH MAN IS A MAN

A FEMM MAN IS A MAN

A TRANS MAN IS A MAN

I am purposely not mentioning non-binary folks here because people still struggle with the above concept, however, I do want to know an ideal mantra for non-binary folks (do drop a comment and DM).

6) Stop hooking your friend up with the opposite gender

If your friend tells you they are gay, please don't make it your personal responsibility to ensure they are 100% sure. It's their life, their choice, and most importantly their journey. Believe me, when I say this, with the life we have, nobody wants to be gay as a choice. It's a lot of hardship, so please for the love of god stop trying to hook up your friend. 

And hooking up a friend while they are in a relationship with someone of the same gender is just you being beyond homophobic. So don't do that either. 

I know I as a person keep saying I want to turn people gay, it's mostly a response to the above attitude I have faced over the year. I cannot turn people gay as much as you can turn people straight. So take a page from your own reaction to me saying I wanna turn the world gay, and laugh off this weird notion you have about turning the world straight. It ain't happening, buddy.

Moving forward, I know a lot of you would probably say but oh I didn't mean it like that, but it was a joke or anything. But please understand some jokes can be offensive to other people, and we can all keep getting better. 

Peace out goiz.

Do not repeat your patterns (some positive affirmations)

 I have always been a very focused person. If I do something wrong, I used to get massive anxiety and get completely distracted from what I was meant to do. 

After a few difficult years, and having another chance to start again, I had decided to focus on being more mindful and not let anxiety get the best of me. 

Positivity + Optimism = Goals to last through life. 

I really do believe it, but these days with all the stress I find myself falling back to similar patterns. The need to be perfect, the need to always be on toes, going beyond what I can mentally tolerate, to reach that level of perfection. 

I have finally managed to identify the fact that I may indeed be a little harder on myself than I need to be.

Time to take a step back, take a deep breath, and not let small hiccups be the deciding factor on how the universe is functioning. 

Hiccups are a good thing, it means I am in the right direction. I am making mistakes. Mistakes are good. They help you learn. 

The universe will do what's best for me. 

The universe knows what's best for me. 

I trust in the universe. 

I will continue to learn and grow. 

I will continue being who I am. 

I will be successful.

I am successful.

So stop moping around, pick yourself up again, and don't let this be your deciding factor. 

Your problems don't control you, the way you deal with them does. 

And I will be just fine. <3

2021 - Closure. Thank you Didu.

 Before I started writing this to wind up my year, I decided to look back on what I wrote last year. 

Some of it was hilarious, some of it was too technical, and some of it came from a very delirious mind.

When this year started, I felt like I had finally woken up after a long nap. It wasn't the most pleasant feeling. 

I woke up to a dystopian reality where there is a pandemic going around. I woke up to the idea that I may have lost all the people who meant something to me during my sickness. 

I was halfway into recovery when 2021 started. I had no sensations on my legs, needed a walking stick, looked like a skeleton (when I look back at the pictures I'm terrified of what I had become.)

This year I lost someone who meant a lot to me. My grandmother. It's hard to write about this, because I have difficulty in showing grief. 

In 2020, during my raging sickness, my grandmother used to sleep with me. She helped me clean me vomiting every night. She took care of me. She was also the only one who actually understood and sympathized with me during this time. My mom and Lameeya my other two care takers also ran out of patience(understandably). But not her. 

She was always great at taking care  of people. That's what she had done all her life. I regret not learning cooking when she tried to teach me as a kid. And oh my god she made the most amazing food. 

Didu was traditional. She knew I was gay, and she never ever ever stopped loving me any less because of it. If anyone knew her, everyone would say that's amazing because Didu was very opinionated. When I say this, I say it very very fondly. 

Last year, i remember her making jokes and laughing about how some of my other family members expect me to date a dude/marry them. I think towards the end she had become way more accepting of how I chose to live life. 

I used to keep talking to her after I came back home, asking her food stuff, and her sending me bengali script information and asking Lameeya to read it for me. 

This sounds so eerie, but I had a dream in March about Didu passing away. I remember waking up and telling Lipi about it. I put it off because Didu was healthier and happier. 

A few days later I got a call from mom, saying that she had a stroke. I went to visit her, and the thing was she still insisted she sleep with me. Didu had good motor function, and was cognitive about what we were saying. She even took care of herself, she just had difficulty with language. 

I remember her rubbing my back in the middle of the night while she thought i was sleeping. Giving me some love.

Once she seemed okay, I went back home. On 12th April, Lameeya said she will take an off the next day and we should go visit Didu and my parents. The next Morning we were just having breakfast and were about to leave, when my mom called. 

Mom said it doesn't look like she will last long.

We reached and we saw Didu on bed, still breathing. But the moment I saw her I knew, it wasn't too long. I had my lunch sitting next to her holding her hand. Telling her all about how my appetite is back, and how I really want to eat her food again. She passed away, took her last breath while I held her hand. 

One thinks it's very scary losing someone, seeing someone die. It was a bit different for me. Didu left me no space to be angry at her or at god for dying. Something about how she passed away was very calming and beautiful.  

I'm glad she got the ending she always wanted for herself. I'm glad she didn't have to suffer. But I really do miss her.

These days I find myself wanting to eat certain things with nobody to call for a recipe to. Didu was always my go to person when it came to food. No more inappropriate jokes. No more Didu. 

If she were listening, she should know that she was very loved.

Ha, look at me taking up all this real estate talking about how much I miss someone.But there is a point, i swear there is. 

I remember when Dadu had fallen ill, I regretted not being able to spend time with him, or be there when he passed away. It was a great loss, and I feel like Didu gave me closure. Just like how she helped everyone with closure (That is their story to tell), she gave me closure on all the regret I had for not getting enough time with them. 

Didu also happened to pass away 1 day before the second wave of covid took over the country. So basically she left very conveniently, without causing us much trouble, again showing how much she cared about us.

I'm bawling my eyes out when I writing this, because I know I will always miss her, and I will always love her. 

I feel like Didu passing away was like a path for me towards more of a spiritual growth. 2020 was a mess, and I don't know, maybe because I saw comfort in all of that, I felt like I needed to reflect a bit.

I also feel like a completely different person. I don't know what it is, but being close to death yourself makes you analyze things. Reflect on your life. Reflect on your state of mind. 

I find myself caring less about things that seem superficial, but more about my personal bonds with people. 

I feel closer to my mom. I don't know what it is, but Didu passing away might have something to do with it. I value our relationship, irrespective of whatever personal issues I have with her. 

My dynamic with Lameeya has changed too. We are somehow more intimate, because of everything in the past two years. 

I found a new career path, one I seem to enjoy a lot, and I have an awesome mentor too. I'm studying a bit to sharpen my skills, but this is good. I like this very much.  

Yes, I do have some regrets from 2020, but this stupid self growth makes me think that they didn't deserve me anyway. I can not chase people who didn't understand what I was going through. 

I got a chance to finally redefine certain friendships I have, and pre-illness Naina was not the person I wanted to be anymore.

I can't say I am mature now either,  but I think I'm on my way there. 

This year is again ending with another lock down, and well now that I'm present it really sucks. I mean finally when my feet are able to walk just a tiny bit more, covid hits again. I guess since I missed the experience the first time, this will be new to  me. 

I hated and loved 2021, and for a lot of people it seemed like 2020, but for me 2020 was me living in an alternate reality, so maybe it got rebooted because I needed to see this too? 

I don't know, but I know I'm coming out of this year, stronger, and ready to face the world again. 

Happy new year folks!

 

(Sorry if I made you cry)