Saturday, January 05, 2008

work, old friends and the last year

i dont know if anyone has really understood what has been going on with me over the last year or so. im struggling to understand it myself - and thats very unusual for me; i usually ask myself many awkward questions and however i may feel, im usually quite honest with myself even if im not so with everybody else. oh and it sounds terribly dramatic to say "oh there is something wrong here, i think i need help". i've always been one for dramatising! but this time.. things felt very different. very personal, very .. interlinked with who i had come to become. so it didnt feel right to talk about it.
i did though expect a few people to understand it themselves; admittedly unfair on them, but when im under pressure it usually comes out on the people i love and the people i know i can take for granted (and the two catagories dont always include the same people).

a very close friend of mine came to delhi last weekend. she and i have a slightly unusual relationship, in terms of how i am with my other friends. we dont talk very often, maybe once a month or once in two. but we've always connected on a very basic level.. and whenever we meet i just love her a little bit more :)
i remember in my last year of hostel spending many many nights with her talking philosophy and literature - oh it sounds terribly pseud now :) she is one of the very few people who actually exemplifies the lsr brand - one of the few who actually is what all the brochures say about lsr women!
anyway. she did her masters and wanted to take her civil services exams. she tried last year and didnt make it. now she's trying again. she's at that awkward stage i was at at exactly this time last year - when you've hoped and tried and it hasnt worked out, and you're trying to gather the strength to give it another shot.
felt funny that i could give her advice: she's a year older than me and that coupled with her mothering instinct has always made me the one going to her for help.
but then again, it wasn't advice, more like a very genuine conversation, the only conversation i've had with a friend in weeks that i felt i could genuinely connect to. cos you see, through all this.. i've found myself drifting further and further from everyone i used to be friendly with. my true-blue four loves stayed where they were, but everyone else it seems receded into the background; i just had nothing to say to them anymore. (well there was an exeption but i dont think that's turned out very well.)
so when this girl and i started to talk... it was like meeting someone i'd been waiting for, for many many months.
she and i, we talked about ourselves and who we'd become, who we wanted to be, what other people expected us to be. and the whys of everything. and how its so easy to be someone you're not.

do you know what its like when everything you've always assumed yourself to be gets turned on its head?
i do.
i thought i was lazy. but i've worked this year like i've never done before, and with genuine passion.
i knew i was stubborn, but i didnt realise exactly how stubborn, and how much i was willing to take up for what i believed in.
i didnt realise i could survive so long on so little, or that i was (am?) so strong.
oh, im proud of myself. but its been a long time coming.

it so easy to give up on something you thought you wanted, when its put to the test, and especially if you dont know if you want it for the right reasons. but there's something to be said for sticking it out, and not listening to anyone at all; sometimes not even to yourself.
i'm only beginning to understand what i'd given up, without even realising it, for what i have right now. but what i did, its made me who i am, and i've never loved myself more or respected myself more. i know i can look at the mirror and like what i see, that i can say i've lived my life, made mistakes but i've been true to who i am. and i've lived my life and not, not done something just because i was too scared.




oh i know this post has been quite.. badly written and messy, and most of you have know idea what on earth im talking about :) but thats what blogs are for, isnt it? so that i can get away with that :)