The “eulogy” I’d like to hear

We all hear great things about the people that has passed!! We hear praises about how gem of a person they were!! How loving and kind they were!! How their presence made things better!! 

But sadly “they” aren’t here to hear it anymore!! Maybe it’s just the societal way of reminding loved ones of how much a good person the deceased was!!

But sometimes I wished I could hear my eulogy!! Just to know what my friends and folks have to speak about me!!

There are days where I’m filled with self doubt!! There are days when I convince myself I’m just not worthy!! And those are the days I wished someone would just tell me “I’m good enough” or “I am sufficient”!!

I know, I know!! I have enough self love that tells me not to be worried by how the world perceives me!! I know I’m a good person and I intentionally mean no harm to anyone!! So I don’t doubt my worth!! But some times I just wanna have someone say it loud if I make their life any better in any way!! It’s just good to hear it!!

That’s what Augustus did in “Fault in our stars”!! It’s good to hear the last words from your closest ones about how better your presence made their life a bit more better!!

Id like to know if I was a friend good enough for you to share your burdens with me as much as I enjoyed cheering you on your happiest moments!! I wanna know if I was a good Co worker enough for we spent most of our waking hours cribbing, laughing and teaming up to get the work done!! I wanna hear that I was a good sibling enough, that you knew how I loved and cared for you and would do anything in my capacity to protect you!! I wanna hear, just once more (and it’s never enough no matter how many times he tells me) that I’ve been a good mom and have done everything in my power to be a good one!! I just wanna hear my parents how proud they’re of me!!

Well it just feels good when someone notices and appreciates that small little things about you, and without even realising, they just paste a big wide smile on your face!!

Why do we wait for someone to pass on to praise them? Why don’t we appreciate what we already have and realise that every moment we get with our loved ones is precious and not wait for that to pass to appreciate what we had??

So make it a point to notice the good in people and point them out too, you never know, it could end up being the “happiest moment” of their day!! And for me, I’m gonna ask my friends to pen me down a eulogy so that I can bookmark it to serve me as a reminder that I do something good in this world!!

To have loved and lost

People always wonder “Is it better to have loved and lost than having never loved at all?”

Well, I have been in love, in more than one occasion in my life and that probably gives me an insight given my overthinking on the subject!!

The first love happened at 19.. All I set out was with the fantasy of love!! I just imagined a life straight out of the multitudes of novels I’d drowned myself in!! So I poured it all!! Falling in love with my best friend was all I ever wanted and it happened!! So much so that I had my fairy tale wedding with the man I had fallen in love with!! It was beautiful until reality struck in!! But it was naive and innocent and true in every sense!! I felt butterflies with him!! He would make me laugh and I would laugh whole heartedly as I never had known heart wrenching pain before him!! It was sweet, innocent and the purest love I had experienced in my life!!

Well, it unfortunately didn’t last and had the most painful ending, the aftermath of it still lingering even after half decade of it ending!!

Well, obviously then the heart gets cautious of the people it will let inside after that!! But loneliness coupled with “hope” sometimes makes you do things and getting on to the online platform felt like a sensible decision!! And obviously after months of chatting with a bunch of people, I found the “male” version of me (well to a great extent)!! A kind, innocent, full of life and wearing heart on his shoulders, he patiently waited and made me comfortable enough to let my guards down!! I finally had someone care for me, show concern, reach out to me, have my back!! Well, I couldn’t have been more happier than when I was with him!! I finally began to laugh as I used to!! I began doing things I really had enjoyed!! I felt supported, I was guided, I finally had someone to have any mundane conversation with, someone to wish me a “good morning”, someone to check on me, someone who learnt about me each day and made my fantasy a reality!! Well, I lived a dream with him!!

Sadly, not all good things last and this ran its course!!

But I still am reminded of the fact that I had been loved right, and loved deeply, if only for a short while!! And it’s a bliss!! I remember him fondly!! 

Love happened in its own time, it was good and the good times were worth remembering!! And I wish those exes of mine the best because once you have genuinely loved someone, you can never wish anything bad, no matter how they might have hurt you!! Sometimes the pain of loss is too gripping and I wished I hadn’t fallen in love so hard, well, falling in love is never in your control and I can never love half hearted!! So the pain is bound to follow!! But those days when I felt alive, safe and happy is totally worth it!!

It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all!! Because those moments are memories that reminds you the beauty of life and how it feels to be alive!! And I’m sure someday that love will knock the doors again, maybe this time to stay longer!! But yes, I’ve experienced love in my late teens and early thirties, both were different but both of them has changed me for the better and I wouldn’t want to change anything of it!! Don’t let love slip away, people spend a lifetime searching for it, so once you’ve found it, make efforts to keep it!!

Home

Home is the place you feel safe and comfortable the most!!

The place you can be yourself and not have to have any pretence or mask on!!

It’s the place you come back to, the place you rest!!

It’s the place you find peace!!

And no matter how much you try to make a space your home, there seems something amiss when the comfort and security goes missing!!

No matter how you decorate or what renovation project you undertake, a place can never truly be your home unless you find peace in those four walls!!

People say that you can’t sleep in a new place because it’s an unfamiliar place.. imagine that feeling of unfamiliarity in the place you’ve stayed for decades!!

Then where do you turn to?? Whom do you run to?? When your “home” doesn’t feel like “home” anymore..

Where the place just fills you up with grief and the loneliness haunts you?

Where the place just brings you to the reality of how alone you truly are!!

The place becomes the nightmare you want to numb yourself off!!

The place reeked of laughter and life but now it somehow just got quieter.. 

All because the reason I return home everyday is missing for a few days!!

My home is the person that makes me feel complete, gives me a reason to return, shares strength and brings a smile!! He gives me peace!! His presence gives me fulfilment!! 

And it’s saddening that a 9 year old burdens the responsibility of being the “home” for his mom!!

The cost of “Being strong”

When life puts you to a challenge, you either crumple or get strong to overcome it!!

But you have to pay a life term price for that strength you develop!!

“Resilience” becomes your personality and you are no longer fazed by any challenge because you learn you can overcome it!!

However, it also brings about a huge set of walls that you end up building around yourself as a defence mechanism..

You no longer need anyone because you’ve learnt to only depend on yourself..

The price you pay for this is not having anyone check in on you because you surely haven’t needed anyone!!

It brings along with it an array of emotional challenges too!! PTSD is your arm candy that doesn’t let you overcome what you’ve been through no matter how “healed” you are!! At the onset of a repeat incident, the body automatically drags itself down to the last time it experienced the same emotions and forgets all the healing journey you’ve been through!!

Along comes anxiety as there’s a constant vigil to protect yourself.. it brings its best friend named “overthinking” and convinces your head to make up all the remote possibilities so that you are prepared for anything that comes your way!!

And with all these things there’s the tinge of depression that is always ready to make its appearance when something seems a bit downhill.. and it has such wonderful capacity to build a mountain of a mole hill and ensure you’re crashed!! And it’s friend, anxiety and insomnia, joins hands in tandem in the mission!!

But the upside of the strength is that Resilience ensures you show up back to accomplish your tasks because you have no other choice and also because you cannot make yourself weak anymore!! This results in the complexities of “high functioning depression and anxiety” that ensures you function in the daily life but the insides of you are slowly eroded!! From feeling a lot to feeling nothing, they ensure you’re hollow from the inside!!

But then some friends genuinely put efforts and show up and they end up filling that void and bringing that happiness!! But the price you pay for being strong is that you do not have many of those friends in your life either!!

Over all, you end up having a strong  aura but a plethora of things to fight within yourself to remain strong!!

Single parent

You’ve got to be the fun parent!!

You’ve also got to be the strict one!!

You’ve got to be there for all the events!!

You’ve to also go out there to provide!!

You’ve to also spoil them!!

You’ve to also raise them right!!

You’ve to make life fun and convenient!!

You’ve to also make time for yourself!!

And all this while you’ve to take care of yourself and the kiddo!! 

The guilt of ordering in almost every weekend because you’re exhausted from the week that passed!!

The lack of attention to the kid’s academic since you have no bandwidth at the end of the day to catch up..

The half hearted project submissions since there’s no time on cards to do a sincere complete one!!

The pain deep inside knowing you can’t do it all by yourself!!

The motivation to do “just a bit more” in order to make life a bit easier for us!!

The fear of not being adequate enough!!

And living with this heap of emotions all at once is what makes a single parent!!!

Someone

In those long hours of night when I can’t catch a wink, I wished I could call up on someone to just vent it out!!

In those days when I’m elated, I just wanna celebrate it with someone!!

When the day is exhausting, I just want to curl up and have someone to pamper me!!

When the long weekends arrive, I just want to have someone to make plans with!!

When I’m in my wits end and I can’t think straight, I just need someone to calm me down!!

When I’m overwhelmed with all the talks that never stops inside my head, I just want someone to hug me close so that the chatter quietens atleast for a bit!!

It’s just the basic need but it feels good to have someone just know that you’re alive and you’re going on about your day!!

It’s just the basic need to have someone have your back!!

And yes I do, before all the “you’ve got friends” thing, I do have very close friends that do these things for me!!

But sometimes, you just want to have “your” person, a go to person that could be there!!

And then with years you begin to be fine by yourself enough to not look for anyone because everytime you felt someone could be there, they end up breaking your heart again!! And the heart learns to protect itself by shutting off people so that nobody can hurt you again!!

And then again those long hours of night happens when you can’t catch a wink; and the heart hopes to have “someone”!!

Travel

While growing up, we didn’t travel much except back and forth from Mumbai to Kerala during the summer vacations.. the only good thing about it was all of us cousins being there at the same time so that was frolic.. I used to spend the entire vacation on borrowed comics from neighbors and books I bought during the train ride..

But beyond that, we’ve had a couple of trips through Goa where I was introduced to the beaches and fell in love instantaneously.. But yeah, it’s even more memorable because I ended up losing an earring and a chain each on those trips during the beach dips..

But after ages of nagging and complaining, dad finally made up for those missed trips by taking us all to Europe!! A good 2 week, 10 countries trip and I ticked off most of the things I have wanted to see!! From dressing up for Eiffel to walking the pavements at Venice to celebrating the kids birthday at Pisa to playing in snow at Swiss, tulip gardens at Holland, Swarovski factory, cruise ride, seeing the pope at Vatican and seeing the roman structures, enjoying a Belgian waffle along with drive through Germany n Austria!! That was a beautiful trip with amazing memories!! Although the highlight for me would be rummaging through the streets in the hopes to spot a McD or KFC since my then 3 year old was tired of the Anglised Indian meal..

Then other priorities set in and covid happened so travel was on the back foot until the friends of mine ditched the usual Goa for a trip to Aurangabad and that’s when it brought of the wanderlust in me.. again, I didn’t plan anything just went with the flow!! Thoroughly enjoyed the sightseeing and the company even more!! Ended 2022 with a decision to travel more!! 

And lo, the first trip of 2023 was spontaneous because it was a long weekend and a friend at Bangalore casually told to drop by and I didn’t think twice before booking the tickets and showing up at her place!! And the kind hostess she is, she and her husband entertained us and took us around!!

The next one again was a quick decision since it was a solo trip to Mysore to meet a friend and he took me through the historic city of Mysore and showed Tipu Sultan reign and the magnificent Mysore palace.. inspired by that, had a two day trip in Mumbai too to cover the iconic places.. 

The year ended with finally exploring my own state of Kerala.. travelled to different cities, saw some famous landmarks, witnessed the beauty of nature at Munnar, found the beauty in Kochi.. 

The resolution of 2024 included travelling more so ended up with a trip to kerala for a family event and going for a touristy boat ride which is a must do.. it’s more of a weekend getaway to be with family but a well deserved break!!

The little planned trip is the one that I just bid adieu to!! Never have I explored north of Mumbai so beginning the year with a visit to the capital city of the country, check off the iconic buildings here, walk through Mughal dynasty and ruins, awe at the Taj and get some cool clicks for the gram, see the Pink city and feel like a royal amongst the beautiful palaces!!

The one thing travel did teach me is that until now, I had someone doing the planning part and that is the most taxing thing!! Planning the schedule, trips, being responsible for the people involved and a bit of fear of being in a new land amongst strangers brings about some internal growth in yourself.. after this trip, I feel like a bit more grown up and responsible person!!

Travel is rightly said to help you discover yourself a bit better and it’s a very liberating feeling to find yourself in a new place and explore new things!! Well, time to save up and plan the next one for the next break!!