And what are you grateful for?

I am grateful for a million things. I am grateful for every breath I take, each moment that I am alive and healthy . I am grateful for the unconditional love of my family, Mommy, Bonu, Aunt, Uncle and Great Aunt. I am grateful for the friends I have, the fun, the laughter shared when are together , the sheer joy of having been together through some of the best and worst years of our lives, the friends  who always stand by me through the self made disasters and who shake me up from my slumber.  I am grateful that for each fall I have had I could get up, shake the dust away and walk on.  I am grateful even for the inconsequential friendships at work because though they might not be playing a pivotal role in my life but during the lowest times they gave a semblance of sanity to my life.  I am grateful that I can sing along to songs happily on my way to work every morning. I am grateful that I am able to dream and work towards them without the burden of negativity that had encompassed my dreams some time back. I am oh so grateful that I can be happy on my own, for the peace and calm inside my head. I am grateful for the cheerfulness within me, for only 2 years back all I had inside me was bitterness and cynicism.  I am grateful that I can spend the half an hour after lunch just writing this and that after all of this I still love to write even if its gibberish.

Love Someone Like You are 8

 Inspired by Love Someone Like You Are 6 by Stephanie Georgopulos.

Love someone like you are 8. Go play in the part of the park that is right in front of his house every summer evening  or cycle right past his house time after time, just to get one glimpse of him, hoping he’ll come out and play with you. Share story books with him, borrow his Hardy Boys and lend him your Enid Blytons.  Bitch about how Nancy Drew Case Files are too grown up for the likes of both of you.

Love someone like you are 8 and make him confess his feelings for you on New Year’s eve in front of his younger brother who happens to be 7 years old. Taunt him all evening till he actually comes out with his childish love for you sharp at 12 at night.

Love someone like you are 9 and one winter night manage sneaking out of a party at the army mess to spend some time together away from the prying eyes of the elders and the other kids, when you ask him all bashfully yet seriously “So why do you love me?”  and he looks back at the bespectacled you with that boyish smile and says something as simple as “I suppose the liking part.” and melts your heart.

Love someone like you are 9 and have a water fight with him in his garden when he sprays water all over you and both of you are laughing and giggling and fighting over whose gonna take the hose from whom not realizing that both of you are dripping wet,  looking like a pair of bedraggled crows until his Father comes and instructs both of you to stop it.

Love someone like you are 9 when you accuse him of winking at the new girl in his school, jealous in your heart of hearts that both of you ain’t in the same school anymore and watch him defend himself saying he can’t believe that you think he did that.

Love someone like you are almost 10 and say Good Bye to him at the train station when he looks into your eyes and at your sad tear streaked face and consoles you saying “Don’t Worry we’ll meet again.” And you never meet him again.

Bump into him at 25 at a bar, where you are sitting with a bored look on your face, sipping a Bloody Mary, smoking a cigarette and thinking of ways and means to get out of the gathering and all of a sudden see that old familiar face, now grown up to be a handsome, dreamy eyed version of the boy you used to love at 8, 9 and 10.  Notice beside him, his fragile,  china doll of a girl friend who screams bohemian chic. Pretend you don’t recognize him and walk past by him, blowing smoke rings in the air, in defiance of all that you will never be.

Dedicated to GK  who was actually and truly the only Childhood Sweetheart I ever had. Because you won't remember any of these incidents. Because the first time we spoke after 18 years was on Skype and you called me by my real name and not my nick name. Because you apparently have no recollection of me now. Hahaha! What fun!

Just so you know I won't give it up no more. I promise I won't. :D

28 going on 40

                                          Image Courtesy:www.GJanisseArtist.com

I am not scared of 30. No I am not and that is also because I don’t really have an option. I can’t possibly be scared of turning 30 when it is scarcely 2 years away. Somehow 30 doesn’t sound as formidable a number as 40 does or am I over thinking and under estimating the power of 30 is it? Lemme see. How did I see myself at 30 back when I was 18. I can’t really remember and I am quite ashamed of the fact that at 18 I hadn’t envisioned what I might be at 30. It just shows how I didn’t know where exactly life was taking me and to the 28 year old now, the 18 year old me then should have been more motivated  about life. Damn it I do not want this to be the story still at 40. I have the next couple of years still to do what I wanna do. Make something worthwhile out of my life and at least some of those dreams should come true. Actually one of them should and I don’t wanna be chucking that one dream further and further away each time I meet some loser of the opposite sex.

At 40 I’ll have no excuses left and I wonder why but at 40 beginning life all over again and inspiring myself some more would be an arduous task. Now is the only time I have. After all these disasters, most of which have been self made, some which have been inflicted upon me and the rest being plain destiny one thing that stands out the most is that I needed something like this to happen for me to realize I don’t really care as much as I thought I did. It doesn’t matter to me that much. I am fine on my own inside my head.  I was such a nitwit all this while, all this fickin’ while.  How many difficult pictures have I tried to paint time after time and it has got only more difficult after each stroke of the paint brush until I give up and break the picture. All my energy, all that vitality was being spent in that one direction. God I can be so tiresome sometimes or most of the time.

I went for a jog last evening as I have been doing the last couple of days but yesterday I actually jogged a really long stretch. Living in the army cantt has its advantages and how I feel at home in this place. Haha! I am staying with family friends I met after 18 years.  I grew up surrounded by these people or my first decade on this earth was spent around these people.  They didn’t blink an eyelid before they asked me to stay with them as long as I wanted to and as long as I was comfortable.  I accepted the offer after my initial trepidation and I am so glad I did. Life has been so full of melodrama the last couple of years that I could write a book on it.  Sometimes it gets entirely too exciting and borderline melodramatic.  It must be me, has to be me who does this to herself time after time.  Some tranquility and serenity please.

 

Guess what I did! I almost burnt my thumb due to an overdose of the nail polish remover that was being used by me so that I could remove the then ugly dark green nail polish and paint my toes pretty silver. The skin came off in bits and pieces because this darned nail polish remover was so strong and the end result being I am unable to sign into the office fingerprint impression register and mark myself as present. Hmmphhhh! The damned machine refuses to accept the fact that this thumb belongs to me still. It might be burnt with new skin growing but it is still mine. Hmmphhh! Officially I have been absent for  4 days now.

A deal that went awry

I am feeling extremely headachy these days. Every alternate day and I have these blinding headaches. Maybe it’s the stress of the last couple of months manifesting itself in this fashion that I am incapacitated all day.  Now that I look back there were so many little signs showing that this isn’t the way it is supposed to be and that constant feeling of tiredness and sleeplessness that refused to go away.

I want my normal, mundane ordinary life back. I want that carefully structured routine to be back in its place.  Yesterday after a longtime I was PMSing and I tell you it just felt so regular because to PMS and to feel moody and angry for no reason is ordinary and I haven’t had that luxury the last 4 months because there was always so much to be livid about and all my bad moods had a tangible reason to it which could be pointed out to the very crux of the matter.

I think I finally had a restful night’s sleep after Monday when everything including my gorgeus engagement ring was returned. It hit me that now I can refuse to take the calls and shall not be forced to entertain those familiar numbers. There was no reason left whatsoever anymore. Or else in Cal all of last week Mum and I would cringe every time the phone rang and an unfamiliar number or an all too familiar unwanted phone number flashed on our phone screens.  God I can be such a scaredy cat I tell you. I guess to cut away family ties has been as difficult as I thought it would be and in some aspects it has been surprisingly easy too.  There was nothing emotional about this, nothing at all.

I don't feel empty or hollow from inside that I probably have felt before nor do I miss anyone and I so don't look back at those times fondly or wistfully. To have spent so much time with  a bunch of people and not to blink an eyelid when its over,  well that does speak volumes. Its like a deal that went awry and you know what it was never meant to be a deal and that is what was twisted about this whole thing.

Thank you but no thank you. That is that. Oh and I didn't want my wings to be clipped. Maybe the realisation hit me too late besides the others that were staring back at me. I love my life too much you see. That was gonna be no life at all and not the way I see myself living it at the least. This has been such an eye opener. I came soooo close to losing it all. Narrow escape indeed.