Strawberry fields forever

Who’s that girl? November 19, 2011

I’ve always been a crabby Cancerian when it comes to dealing with change, the slightest tumult even something small coming in to make my plans for the day falling apart like a pack of cards are enough to take me down, sometimes angry, mostly morose. Its ironic though, especially when I think of myself ten years back, and recount all that’s changed about me. R and I often talk about life even ten years back, how we met in Presidency, our initial perceptions of each other, of other people, people we knew back then, friends, common acquaintances,  and those very people now, what we believed each one of us would turn out to be ten years down the line and if at all that conforms to reality and to us now. These conversations feel very strange, sometimes almost as if I was different person then, and all that was me was someone else in a different tale. How else does one reconcile the various facets of ones life? A certain someone who was straightforward to the extent of being cut-throat, minced no words, had an opinion about anything and anyone under the sun, had a fiery temper, wouldn’t take the slightest nonsense from anyone, and yes stood tall and proud in her stance in any argument. That was me. And yet here I am today, have learnt how to withhold not only anger, my famed ill-temper but hide even the slightest signs of displeasure, in the face of things that may well be hurting, demeaning, claustrophobic maybe even more, often concealing it with a neutral me, till I can escape that moment and have had the time to think, weigh out the different sides and then give a response. You learn so many things as you go through life, don’t you? You learn what’s the right thing to say and where, that one can never expose ones vulnerabilities, that you can trust pretty much no one or maybe very few and that with everyone else you must keep up the guard. I still have an opinion on everything under the sun, though, its just that I’ve learnt through the years with whom its okay to voice them. And am headstrong and proud. Yes I am, but to me it is self-pride, the kind that Scarlett O’Hara describes very nicely when she says ‘…pride goes before a fall’. And while all this is true, there are moments I know, especially living in alien land, when I have gulped that pride and played along, to avoid unnecessary trouble, or simply looked beyond that moment of personal hurt and injury to avoid a professional hazard, a skirmish at the work place.  Nevertheless its disturbing when a completely random comment comes my way, from someone who knows me very little, only at work, voicing his concern about me, saying he worries because I am so non-confrontational, that I might be compromising on what I need. Its true I like to avoid unnecessary trouble but am not a pushover! If I need something, I will make sure I get it, only I won’t be making as much noise as perhaps some others will. And its just that when every cell in your body is over-worked, over-driven, feeding on grief from everything life is not at the moment, focused on things you want, your plans, your goals, it is very hard to keep fighting petty, meaningless battles. And yes sometimes the issues aren’t small, they shouldn’t really be ignored, yet you know its better to let the troubled waters flow over, even as they keep playing behind the scenes, biting at you as you are going through the motions of the day, but you do nothing overtly aggressive, not wanting to step on the wrong toes at the wrong time, because if there’s something you learn in life it is that you never know who you might end up needing and at which juncture. Yet the very fact that I think this, makes me sad inside. I’m glad I’m no longer that girl who maybe you thought was picking stupid fights, unfortunately, I’m now someone who sometimes will let go of the important ones, because I can’t afford it at the moment in view of the bigger picture.

The only possible brighter side of all this perhaps has been the acquisition of a previously unknown ease in dealing with ruffled feathers in personal relationships. So with people who I care about, its now easier to forgo the pride, somehow even easier to apologize when am not at fault, easier to build bridges and let go of the little things, and maybe that’s a good thing. I guess you mellow down with time, realize that holding grudges does no one any good, you begin to value people more, value memories, you wish you could go back in time to the place where that camaraderie was your anchor not your bane. You want to overlook the slights, the disappointments, differences, and remember the best, the best you can. Except at times you wonder if you’re giving up too much, being pushed too far, with folks who perhaps don’t deserve it, just because you are deeply rooted in the past, in associations and because you care.

When I look back, at me, today I can see why I was child. That when I ventured out to life on a separate continent, several time-zones away from any semblance of comfort or sense of home, I did it flying high on the wings of a dream. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t guarded by parents or in the shrines of matrimony, I did it alone, and so those firsts are very precious. All the nights at the internet trying to figure out what I wanted to research on, what is it that I was looking for in a prospective PhD mentor, what departments, what universities, and then of course all the prep, exams, applications, interviews, sifting through the acceptances, the all important decision making, then living alone, managing everything from school-work, research, to learning how to cook, keeping a house, managing money, accounts, paperwork, everything that seemingly maybe so simple and yet actually isn’t quite. In hindsight I wasn’t even fazed by the enormity of it all, and even when I was lonely and sad I wasn’t desperate and needing. Such that even being alone in a foreign country I wasn’t hankering to fill the rooms, the hours, the silences, the darkness with just about anyone, I picked my friends, just as I always had. And so sometimes when I look back at my sheltered childhood, all headstrong, tempestuous with no sense of diplomacy it brings a smile to my face, fills me with a tiny bit of awe you know, at how naive I was and how fearless. And all because of that first mildly chilly August night in Pittsburgh, when I was sleepless, hit by jet-lag, in a bare, sparingly furnished room that someone else from the University whom I met over the internet had rented for me, at the beginning of a long, hard struggle, unsure of whether and how any of this would ever pan out, or even what tomorrow might be like, when life was nailed right to the basics, I think that was my first taste of what a gut wrenching feeling fear can be, what it feels like when everything is at stake. And when you cannot be afraid, cannot give in because you’ve pretty much made your decision, and no longer have the luxury of a choice but to be brazen and stick your head out in the rain, hail, snow-storm, sun or whatever might come upon you.

And so while now I maybe older, hopefully wiser, mellow, and measured in my ways and my expression of what I think and feel, I am glad I was that girl who knew no bounds, and I hope I still am her somewhere deep within, that we will be reconciled someday, and that life will give in, in the face of our will and our dreams.