It will be okay
as long as we have ourselves and each other
On Aug 11th, we completed 6 years of our immigrant life. After a certain age, milestones feel perfunctory. I tell my husband that I will complete six years in December which is when I moved after rage quitting my job. It gives me a few bonus months to tick off a few boxes from my to-do list. I am grateful for surviving the pandemic and two years of severe depression. I started feeling better towards the end of last year. The earlier years had phases of feeling that I had got my act together only to fall apart in a few days.
As novelist Pico Iyer once said, "The immigrant's heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland." This resonates deeply with my experience, as I navigate the complexities of my new life while holding onto the essence of where I came from. I think most of my essays have this unconscious layer of moving that comes alive when I write.
As I write this, I feel the strangeness of the world and its conformity. I am trying to put timestamps and obligatory disclaimers even when I'm trying to express my true, deep, and honest feelings. I feel brave writing as Irene and not through one of my pseudonyms. I funnily recollect my first blog which I started in 2000. The name I had chosen was cutie_giggles. Haha, like what was I thinking? But jokes apart, I've found moments of understanding in these corners of the internet before the trolls raided the internet.
In these six years of living here, I've garnered both, sympathy and questions. The sympathies have been around their assumptions about how I didn't land a full-time job after being a bring kid. The questions about how bored I must be sitting at home all day. To be honest, I have always wanted more time that could help me manage doing everything that I wanted to do.
The realisation of six years without mimetic growth of promotions and hikes sent me into an anxious frenzy of trying to locate the list of accomplishments which will not be relatable to most of the folks I know.
To avoid spiralling into agony, I ended up moving around every nook and corner of the house after reading about how the direction of my work desk could cure my bohemian spirit. Well, jokes apart, I went into the Indian vaastu rabbit hole. After spending the day moving around my plants, desk, and a host of other furniture, I felt rejuvenated with newfound energy to pursue my goals.
I remembered my dear mother who had the habit of moving furniture around every few months. I used to laugh and tease her about the frequent descent of madness on our humble abode. I'm sure she's laughing at me now because, believe me, moving stuff is highly gratifying with or without vaastu. My friend recently suggested I get an ADHD diagnosis because the number of things I'm interested in and my general traits are good indicators. The unofficial diagnosis confirms ADHD. I'm on the waiting list for the official diagnosis. We will see when we get there. I am working with the premise that this is a new addition and trying to manage life with this awareness.
But you know what, it seems that moving furniture does help calm the mind. So you know what to do next time you feel unhinged :D
Author Azar Nafisi beautifully captured a sentiment I often feel: "You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again." This encapsulates the bittersweet nature of the immigrant experience – the constant feeling of leaving and becoming, of loss and growth.
Back to immigrant life, I think I have survived after a wild ride. I'm starting to feel at home with myself. I understand myself better than what I did when I arrived here with dreamy eyes. I feel I can finally say that I've become friends with all the parts of me. It's going to be okay.
Despite what's happening in this world, I know my heart is in the right place. I know there are things I'll mess up and it's okay. My grief for everything I lost, will lose, and keep losing will come and go in waves. It's okay. I'll have days of immense hope and pick myself up again. I'll be a nutcase and trouble my better half with my mood swings. I know we'll be okay. I’ll be okay as I am learning to get independent again.
I know that maybe next year, I'll have another story about how I feel about the years spent away from home. It will still be okay. There's a tiny sprout of awareness that I carry that the journey within is to be okay with everything within my sphere of control and everything that will not be. I know I need to learn to surrender the outcome of my efforts and widen the surface area of my faith. There's this beautiful thought by Alan Watts that I'm trying to carry as a core belief:
to understand all is to learn to forgive all.
I know I'm always going to go all in on everything I choose to be associated with in this life. There will be days when my heart will break, but it will be okay.
I just finished reading James Hollis on learning to navigate the second part of life, and I think this quote by Jung sums it all up. I highly recommend the book to anybody in their 40s and beyond:
"This apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is only half a life, or else a life in the Beyond which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels."
I need to remind myself that I am an utterly fallible, mad yet tender human being. A half -life as me is still better than a full life as somebody who’s not me.
We're all going to be okay no matter what stage of life we're in.
Keep going and remember everyone is part adult and part child. When the adults wear you down, forgive them as it's the child acting up. When the child wears you down, be the adult and forgive.
Before I leave, I want to write about a dear friend whom I met in 2008. I was in the deepest abyss and by sheer coincidence through work, I met this very intelligent individual with whom I had a conversation about something related to management. My memory is dodgy now. 2008 was the most difficult year of my life as I was grieving the death of my mother and walking out of a difficult marriage. I was travelling to my home and this individual called me knowing I was navigating this part of life alone in Bangalore without any family around for support. I was in an emotional quagmire slipping into a mess with each hour. He called and consoled me. He waited until I got on the flight to my hometown. I have forgotten a lot of our memories together but this part is still alive and fresh.
I consider him a mentor, friend, confidante, and one of my important anchors in life. We've funnily gone through our journeys together. We belong to two different worlds. He's someone well-established and reputed in his world. Our connection grew because I was unfazed and am still the same regarding the material reputation of my friend. I'm proud that I never took his name in vain or asked for help or favours from him. To me, my friend, the human was more interesting than everything he has amassed in life. We had built the best of friendships where we could talk about anything under the sun without feeling judged. There are a few people in life who feel like you know them from previous lifetimes. I always tell my husband that I'm sure I need to repay something to this friend, which is why we met.
But the truth is that my broken brain hasn't functioned well in this sphere. At a time when I was losing grip on my reality, my friend pushed me to think big and see that I could do well on my own. He even helped me get an opportunity that helped me find my faith and confidence when I was losing it all. I think that exchange sort of breached the no-materiality sanctuary that we had built. We both were rebuilding our worlds. I failed to see the struggle that I easily recognized in earlier days, and he didn't have the emotional bandwidth to withstand my childlike meltdowns. Upon reflection, I realised each time I shared something that seemed negative around his public persona or work felt intrusive to him. The reality is that I wanted the best for him but forgot the receptivity of a message is dependent on the circumstance. A normal circumstance would have invoked a conversation of curiosity to understand my take. Curiosity is so important when going through difficult times. I failed at being curious too.
I don't have too many qualms or regrets about these six years of immigrant life, but this breaking down of my other-world-like friendship has been hard. It's the big milestone bday. Intergenerational friendships are fun. I tease him about how we have a generation gap.
I know despite my meltdowns and fights, we'll be friends forever till the end of our time. I will wish, pray, and cheer for him every single day of my life. He's one of the angels I've met in life despite me hammering him on the need to improve our communication and nurture curiosity. May the distance of these years rebuild and restore our bond.
Dear One,
You've been an anchor, teacher, mentor, friend, a punching bag, and so much more. I hope this year and every year ahead is full of light, happiness, abundance, and love. I hope you find peace and joy in this new year. May you find your way back to the woods of our friendship where I will always be there for you.
Happy Birthday, my precious friend <3
The idea of perfection is so ingrained that we expect ourselves to be perfect all the time. It's okay to fall short and mess up.
WE WILL BE OKAY. IF WE AREN’T OKAY TODAY, WE WILL BE OKAY SOMEDAY. IT’S OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY AT TIMES. HUG YOURSELF IF YOU NEED TO AND REMIND, WE WILL BE OKAY.
I hope you like these two poems that sort of sums up my emotions.
Immigrant Blues by LI-YOUNG LEE People have been trying to kill me since I was born, a man tells his son, trying to explain the wisdom of learning a second tongue. It’s an old story from the previous century about my father and me. The same old story from yesterday morning about me and my son. It’s called “Survival Strategies and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.” It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,” called “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.” Practice until you feel the language inside you, says the man. But what does he know about inside and outside, my father who was spared nothing in spite of the languages he used? And me, confused about the flesh and the soul, who asked once into a telephone, Am I inside you? You’re always inside me, a woman answered, at peace with the body’s finitude, at peace with the soul’s disregard of space and time. Am I inside you? I asked once lying between her legs, confused about the body and the heart. If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not, she answered, at peace with the body’s greed, at peace with the heart’s bewilderment. It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,” called “Loss of the Homeplace and the Defilement of the Beloved,” called “I want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.” Instructions on Not Giving Up - By Ada Limon More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
With everything that is going around the world and my timeline, I have decided to go off-grid for a month to focus and rebuild myself for the millionth time. There are so much of surprises and difficult news surrounding me as I write. I remind myself that life is too short, I need to give it my best shot and radiate more love. Our collective needs love and tenderness amid everything that is going wrong today.
Wish me luck and patience. Hope to get back to writing more when I am back after September 22.
Love and Light
xoxo
"I want to sing, but I don't know any songs." - These are such beautiful poems and this is a touching reflection on what these poems mean to you.