Thought district

The Best Relationship

May 6, 2022

A relationship may or may not work out for a million reasons. People outgrow each other. Some realize they like themselves better when unattached and choose their freedom. And some work out. A few compromises are what it takes to make it. Some of us are willing to make those compromises. Others aren’t. The idea of a perfect relationship is what it is, an idea.

We believe in the lies portrayed in movies. In books, on social media, or the stories we heard from friends about someone who is the epitome of love. Forgetting, the very nature of any experience is subjective.

Stories help us make sense of the world. And our thoughts and emotions. Stories are what connect us with others. Helping us comprehend, identify and remember more than any other medium. A narrative makes reality easier to process.

But stories also set up unrealistic expectations. We often believe more in the potential of someone, something, making us happier than we could ever be on our own. Perhaps, when I land this job. Perhaps, when I meet the right person. Constantly chasing an elusive state of happiness, or textbook definitions of a home, a partner, security, or emotional support, becoming blind to our own needs. We fixate on the outcome, even if it is someone else’s outcome, and wonder why even after having it all, none of it is making us happy?

It was three years ago when I first realized there was a problem. I didn’t know what was causing this constant state of stress and anxiety. I just knew it was there. All the time. But other things needed my immediate attention – work, commute, daily chores, social media, overdue bills, shopping. I was never good at handling emotions, esp. negative emotions. So, I found an escape and convinced myself that this nagging voice in my head was wrong. That, I was making it up. Maybe I’m just bored. Maybe, I need change. Who wouldn’t, after being together for as long as we had. It’s only natural. Even when I no longer felt any intimacy. I let this go on for two years; before I decided to move on from almost a decade-long relationship.

There are no guarantees. What goes into a committed relationship isn’t quantifiable – not the love, the effort, the hurt, or the pain. You give a part of yourself to another person hoping they will nurture it. Then one day, you realize it doesn’t even exist anymore.

Familiarity also makes it very easy to forget the things we once admired in our partners. Before you know it, a carefree attitude turns into laziness and genuine concern into constant criticism. And without addressing the real issue behind this resentment, we start holding the other person accountable for our frustration. Turning small annoyances into full-blown problems. If something is making us unhappy, it surely must be them. Wasn’t it their responsibility to make us happy? It never occurs to us that we have too many expectations from a single source. For surely one magic potion to all our troubles would have been nice.

And age doesn’t help, along with the dwindling determination to put yourself out there once again. The curse of sunken cost fallacy. But we have been together through the worst. And loss aversion. It can’t get any worse than this.

We were familiar. We were comfortable. We knew each other more than we knew ourselves. Our most annoying habits. Our pet peeves. The part of us that’s invisible to the rest of the world. On exhibit, for one another. It was easier to stay.

Naturally, the strong emotions we feel in a budding romance dial down. We start to see the person for who they are. We see ourselves for who we are. And what we are willing or unwilling to compromise in the name of love in the long run. And this may seem more drastic if we never took the time to get to know ourselves first. I’m not talking about the routine that comes with a long-term relationship. Monotony is not always a bad thing. I’m talking about not knowing what you want because you were too busy chasing happiness outside rather than finding it within. It’s unconventional to defy the idea of romance, coupledom, and motherhood society shoves down our throats. So we’re more likely to put up with a bad situation than walk away.

I’m not a pessimist (not all the time). I don’t think every relationship is doomed to fail. The problem arises when you let it define you. When you cannot identify between your individual goals and your dreams as a couple. Like you don’t exist outside of it. Your relationship is an extension of you. It’s not you.

We fall prey to self-fulfilling prophecies. Stuck in loops; while wondering why things aren’t working in our favor. I researched extensively on depression, memory, and how the brain works. I thought if I could explain what was causing these feelings of unfulfillment in my relationship, I could work through them. I figured, unconsciously, I was conforming to my pre-existing notions about us.

I even took a much-cliched solo trip “trying to find myself”. It’s surprising how uncomfortable it can get to be with yourself. And it’s not what the movies make it out to be. There are no handsome strangers. Only suspicious ones. No epiphanies. No, you don’t have striking realizations about the meaning of life because you took a trip. I wasn’t as carefree as I could be in the company of another person. I visited places I planned for, limited myself to two drinks, and was back at the hotel at a reasonable hour. But I was glad I made the trip. Maybe the next time will be better.

I now understand nothing is worth years of mulling over at the cost of my degrading mental health. As daunting as it may seem, everything eventually turns out alright. Starting over is okay, at 31 or 52. Accepting failure is sometimes the best thing you can do.

The internet is flooded with self-help content, sometimes to a fault, but we are more self-aware now than ever. There’s more access and education around mental health, yet the rates of depression and mental illness are soaring. We have to find ways to help ourselves. Feel whole just by ourselves. Do things that make us uncomfortable. Have difficult conversations, and remember that we are limited only by imagination.

I’m finally learning to be alone without being lonely. I’m learning to prioritize myself. Something I hadn’t done in a very long time. As overstated as it is, the most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves. A person or a state cannot drag us out of our misery. Temporarily, maybe, but for permanent, lasting changes, we need to acknowledge, then address our needs. Realizing that has been freeing.

Maybe it’s the lack of a certain quality in your partner that’s bothering you or a deeper issue you’ve never addressed. For me, it was the fear of being alone. This fear led to frustration and trying to fix a situation that was no longer working.

I miss the presence of another human being. I miss the reassurance. Someone I could turn to when I couldn’t escape my mind. But I still don’t know whether I was happy or just happy to be with someone. That’s the only question you should be asking yourself. The hole you’re trying to fill with things, and people only deepens. The uncomfortable feelings you are trying to escape will catch up.

When I started writing this, I thought it would end in some realization, some big truth, but that hasn’t happened. Things are as simple or complicated as you want them to be.

I’m now trying to figure out what it means to be happy. Sometimes that comes in the shape of my cat’s furry belly. Sometimes while dancing at 2 am for no reason. Sometimes while finishing a post I started six months ago.

I’m finally beginning to unwrap the bubble wrap from the last seven years. And it hasn’t been that bad.

When words fail – Life after stroke

May 1, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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My mother was sitting on a chair when I walked into the house. With the television turned on, she stared blankly into the empty wall. The house looked messier than I remembered. There were strips of pills, test reports that laid scattered on every table. Clothes, thrown haphazardly out of the closets as if everyone was living out of their suitcases. She invited me in like I wasn’t visiting but had been there all along. She didn’t say much after that. Those days she never did. I was just glad she knew it was me.

The tiles of the kitchen walls had turned a dark brown from not being wiped clean probably in months. The maid who helped with the cleaning had refused to come after the one time she had to wash my mother’s soiled nightgown that got mixed up with the rest of the clothes. My stepfather and younger sister juggled between caring for my mother and doing daily chores.

I noticed the catheter tube underneath her nightgown that was attached to a drainage bag. She had no bladder control since her discharge and had lost more weight than I had ever seen. She had gone from being a neat freak to someone who couldn’t care less about taking a shower. Something changed in those two weeks I spent with her. Like a part of my body vanished into thin air.

You don’t notice people as they age. Certainly not your parents. And then one day, all of a sudden, they do. You see the grey hair, the deepening wrinkles, the crepey forearms, and wonder, why didn’t I see this coming?

It was in July of 2018 when I found out that my mother had a stroke. She had just turned fifty-three.

When blood flow to part of the brain is interrupted, and oxygen can’t reach it, a stroke happens. An ischemic stroke, the kind my mother had, occurs due to an obstruction or blood clots within a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain. Stroke survivors may also have right-sided paralysis or weakness.

While massive strokes usually result in long-term paralysis, coma, or even death, my mother had several mini-strokes. She escaped the severe consequences but now lives with prolonged expressive (Broca’s) aphasia – a condition that robs you of the ability to communicate. It is a disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain responsible for language and affects your ability to speak, write, and comprehend. It can also come on gradually from a slow-growing brain tumor or a disease that causes progressive, permanent damage.

In Aphasia, the connection between ideas and words is severed. No one quite knows how. Expressive aphasia, caused by damage to Broca’s area, located in the dominant frontal lobe of the brain, prevents a person from forming intelligible words or sentences. But has little or no effect on one’s ability to understand others when they speak.

People with receptive (Wernicke’s) aphasia can’t understand others or even themselves when they speak.

The speech of people with Wernicke’s aphasia is incomprehensible, as stroke survivors create sentences with words arranged randomly. For example, you might hear a person with Wernicke’s aphasia say: “My door sat through the lamp in the sky.”

Nonetheless, people with Wernicke’s aphasia, feel they should be understood, which is caused by the lack of awareness of their profound language impairment.

Global Aphasia is another type of aphasia caused when damage to the brain is extensive enough to involve both the Broca’s and Wernicke’s language areas. Survivors with global aphasia are unable to understand spoken language or to speak at all.

My mother repeatedly asks if I have eaten even if she knows I have when she really means to ask something else. We give her options to choose from, listing out things closest to what she might want to say depending on the context. She says yes when we’re right.

People with Broca’s aphasia may understand what other people say better than they can speak. They struggle to get words out, may speak in short sentences, and skip words altogether. A person might say, “Want food” or “Walk park today” or may repeat the same phrases to convey a different meaning every time.

As a listener, you can usually understand the meaning. People with this pattern of aphasia are often aware of their difficulty communicating and get frustrated. When my mother can’t find the right words, she admits it and surrenders. Her brain betrays her, gushing out syllables she doesn’t intend to say. Like when a song or a movie is at the tip of your tongue, you remember the tune or the plot but struggle to fetch the name from your brain’s memory bank. Now picture that happening every time you try to say something, anything. Or imagine saying “pigeon” when you intended to say “spoon”.

Naturally, as most diseases do, this came without warning. Looking back, I think it may have been a gradual process. Something I failed to notice during my biennial visits to my parents. My mother had several mild strokes before this one but, the only thing that seemed unusual to me was how she couldn’t carry on a conversation for too long. She seemed lost and kept quiet most of the time. I assumed that it was age and menopause or perhaps a combination of both.

When something is considered minor, you naturally tend to undermine the severity of its effects without any further investigation. Like if someone had a minor accident, or if someone was going through minor surgery, you wouldn’t worry about it too much because ‘minor’ meant that everything was under control. When my stepfather said it was a minor stroke, and the only problem she was suffering from was mispronouncing certain words, I believed him. I didn’t speak to her for nearly a week while she was in the hospital.

During that first phone call, she didn’t seem to understand anything I said. All I heard were words that sounded more or less like slurred gibberish. I remember walking for hours that night and booking the earliest flight home in the morning.

Over the next couple of months, she slowly started to get better. At first, she regained her mobility. She can now walk. Doesn’t need help going to the bathroom. And, also manages to cook sometimes. She hasn’t been able to read yet. But if you give her a pen and paper, she repeatedly writes her name. I also noticed her scribble unrelated words on several pages of a notebook that are not quite legible. Maybe in a failed attempt to write down what she intended to.

It is remarkable how her memory is still whole even if she has no control over her emotions. Everything that happened before the stroke is intact. She recognizes family members from old photographs with every tiny detail about them. Or things that happened in the past. It is the present and the future she has trouble contemplating.

The words in her vocabulary have expanded, but the repetition remains. When she can’t vocalize her thoughts, she says the same thing over and over again, louder, as if it would somehow amplify its effect. She complains about not having enough people to talk to but doesn’t want to see anyone. She has successfully alienated friends and family apart from my stepfather, my sister, and me. And that’s because it’s inevitable. She is now, more or less, a living paradox.

She came to live with me for a couple of months. Everyone thought some change from her daily routine would do her good. They were right. To some extent. She didn’t bat an eyelid on her first flight. Prancing her way through the airport as if she had never been sick. She was thrilled to go for walks every morning or the places I took her to every weekend. My mother loves the theater and did some play-writing when she was young, so that’s where we went. She showed enthusiasm when I bathed her, began to wear nicer clothes, and asked me to fix her make-up rather than sitting in her nightgown all day. She watched horror movies for hours while I was at work and even managed to do some chores. What she needed was more than medicines and therapy. She needed change.

After the first couple of weeks, though, things slowly started to deteriorate. Personality changes, depression, and mood swings are some of the after-effects that come with a stroke. The ones we don’t sign up for. Depression has a way of creeping into our family, passing down teeny-weeny symptoms through generations. Irritability, loss of interest, excessive crying, and the like. In my mother’s case, it was paranoia. She doubted everyone, nagged about everything. Nothing I did could please her. She complained about the food. About the lack of people. About my relationship. Raised her voice and started arguments when I denied her something. Whether it was the lack of sugar in her morning coffee or taking her phone away at bedtime. It didn’t matter. She was convinced we were all conspiring against her. Death was impending. And drowned in self-pity.

There is nothing that prepares you to for the courage it takes to witness your parents go through an illness. But when a disease takes complete control over a person, that’s uncharted territory. You are stuck caring for someone you don’t even recognize.

It doesn’t matter how or the many times you try to convince yourself that it’s the disease and not the person. I never thought I was capable of the aversion I felt towards her. Not admitting the kind of thoughts that flashed through my mind. The constant yelling, the crying, the tantrums are unbearable. Several times, while she was with me, I wished she had never come. I thought about how easy it was for her to slip into a coma. Then one day, she laughed about something silly. I think it was about her mispronouncing a word. Unable to contain her excitement. And it was clear that my mother is still there. Somewhere.

Usually, mild stroke survivors make a quick recovery and regain almost all their abilities in a few weeks to six months. But that hasn’t been the case with my mother. Her failed attempts at complaining about her husband are the only conversations we have had in two years. Nowadays, I tire easily. I snap and am irritable. I avoid taking her calls and limit talking to her once a day. Thinking, the further I am from the chaos, the more immune I am to feel. My patience is wearing thin. I’m not proud of it. I have to constantly remind myself that it’s not up to her. I have thought about keeping her in an elder’s home several times. But get dissuaded by the idea of abandoning her – a heady concoction of guilt, shame and apprehension.

Not a lot has changed in the two years after she left. She can’t be left alone because she can’t find her way back when she goes for a walk in the neighborhood. She listens more than she talks and substitutes one word for another. She cries incessantly over the phone while I try to make sense of her repetitive words. And, sends me texts that look like jumbled Scrabble tiles when we don’t.

A couple of days back, I found an old video clip – the trigger to finally writing this post. My sister, probably about eight or nine back then, practicing being a vlogger on the phone I got for her. My mother, getting ready to go out for dinner. She is pushing my sister out of the way as she looked for what clothes to wear. It feels surreal, almost like a dream. I see the smile on her face and wonder why she doesn’t look like that anymore. Perhaps a part of her body left her too. And I realize the part that remains, that’s what I have to hold on to.

Oscillate

April 20, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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poems

Found an old clip from when your words still made sense to me
Surreal, as if that part of you never existed
The smile that lit up your eyes
We could be twins, they’d say,
But my eyes don’t smile the way yours did.

Does it feel like that life was ever yours?
Without the repetition,
The angst and the cries
Time has been standing still like a photograph,
As I wait to choose between dream and reality.

Why is the past bittersweet?
Fluttering between extremities
In the tunnel of memory,
Perhaps a pendulum oscillates without purpose or meaning
Back and forth, back and forth.

Illusions

April 5, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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poems

Unbearable stillness fills up the vacuum that is my mind
Hesitant gestures loom for what seems like an eternity
My body, still here
My heart, still beating
Life is what I miss
The life I had, the life I never had

I tried to understand love through the silences
Some loves are different, I thought
I reached down your throat and pulled out your soul
A shriveled carcass is all that I found
Desire going up in smoke
Like the years I don’t remember

Do people mourn the dead or the part of them that dies
Is it the final blow or the culmination of prolonged decay
Through the rubble, can life remain?
Illusion is a funny thing,
It doesn’t spare the dead
Or the living.

The Test

February 15, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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Short Stories

“How do I trust you? How do I believe everything you’re saying is true? It’s been a year and a half since we’ve been apart,” Ram said, trying to sound convincing, pacing back and forth simultaneously. “It’s not that I don’t, but it’s been a while, and we’re only humans, you know. Things happen. People change,” he added, running his fingers through his hair as he continued to pace.

“It has been fourteen months to be precise”, Sita said looking up, and paused for a moment, “…and three months after that from the time we started seeing each other again”.

“Yes, fourteen months,” he said without lingering on the tiny detail. “But how do I know for certain you didn’t meet anyone when you weren’t with me?” Sita didn’t like the way Ram’s face looked at that moment.

“And you’re only realizing this now? After three months, to be exact? After I told you I’m pregnant?” she asked without getting up from the bed, her voice getting louder with every word that was coming out of her mouth.

“It’s not about the pregnancy, Sita!” he almost yelled.

“What is it about then, Ram?” she screamed as if competing with the sudden rise in his voice. “Could you please explain to me what exactly this is about? Because I’ve just lost all of my comprehending abilities just like you seem to have lost your reasoning abilities!” she tossed away the sheets that covered her body while looking for her clothes underneath.

“I just need to know. I need to be sure that we aren’t making a mistake.”

“And you didn’t think about it all this while? It was all very romantic until the consequences of casual sex caught you off-guard, wasn’t it? Because that’s what it looks like to me.” She didn’t seem to be keen on finding her clothes but kept searching hastily, without actually making an effort at locating them.

“I don’t know…What if you met someone and you’re just not telling me? Don’t get me wrong, that’s not at all what I’m implying, but there’s this voice at the back of my head, and I just can’t shake it,” Ram was now crouching by the bed where she sat. She was still searching for her clothes. “I wish I could read your mind so we could save each other this argument, but I can’t,” he said, reaching for Sita’s hand. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he stroked her palm as if trying to soothe her growing anger.

“Well, you don’t get to know Ram, you’ll never know!” Sita stood up half-naked, trying to get in her dress that she just found. The unzipped piece of clothing fell off her shoulders. “Guess you’ll just have to believe what I say, don’t you?” and shrugged mockingly, as if to enrage him on purpose. “That’s how a relationship works! They’re built on trust and faith!”

“You don’t understand. I love you, you know I do, but the people, the society, I can’t deal with their filthy minds, their contempt.”

“Wasn’t it you who didn’t care about the society or your family when we met after all this time? Or was it the rush of hormones, the heat of the moment?” Sita felt like her heart was beating faster, blood rushing to her face. “Then you didn’t seem to care about the bloody society or this contempt that you’re so obsessed about all of a sudden!” she was screaming now, louder than Ram.

“You’re getting it all wrong, you’ve been so patient with me all this time”, he followed her and tried to help as she struggled to zip up her dress. “Can’t you do this for me one last time? So…so we can be done with it once and for all?”

“No, I can’t. I can’t deal with you anymore because it was YOU who couldn’t make up your mind,” she said jerking his hands away. “Because YOU weren’t sure whether you even wanted me, Ram! Because I don’t have to justify the fact of being pregnant with your child!”

“Prove it then.”

“Prove what?” Sita looked at him in equal parts of rage and disbelief.

“Prove that you didn’t meet anyone.”

“You must be out of your mind!”

“No, I’m serious.”

“How the fuck am I going to do that?”

“I want you to do a prenatal DNA paternity test, I’ve done the research. It’s expensive, but it’s safe, it’s non-invasive. It will shut them up.”

“Shut who up? Why are you doing this? You could’ve just walked away. You could’ve just told me you didn’t want to be a part of this, that you weren’t ready,” she sank on the couch, not having control over her body, and covered her face with both her hands, resting her head for a minute from the pounding, unable to face the reality.

“I just need to know. You know, for my peace of mind.”

“And what about my peace of mind, Ram? How is your insecurity my fault? I waited for you to make a decision, wasted all these years so you could finally make up your mind, even after we broke up. And just when I thought you did, you don’t trust me anymore? Isn’t that what you’re saying? Is this some a joke to you?” she wanted to say so much more but struggled to find the right words.

“No, this is not a joke. And that’s exactly why I want us to do it.”

“It’s not us, WE aren’t doing anything. It’s going to be me. I have to do it. Not you!”

“I’ll have to be involved too you know. I’ll be there with you. They’ll need my samples too.”

“Thank you so much for your kindness and consideration, Ram. But I was referring to the humiliation of having to prove my godforsaken devotion to your highness!”

“Can we not be so dramatic about this?”

“Or what? You’re going to leave me? You’re going to do that anyway, Ram. Whether or not I take this test!”

“I don’t know. I just need you to do this”, he kept repeating. “Things aren’t going to be the same between us if you don’t, that I’m sure of.”

“What makes you think they are going stay the same now anyway? What makes you think I’ll even consider going through with this?”

“Please, for Ma and Papa, do it for their sake. For both our families, I just want to prove that they are wrong about you.”

“Which archaic era have you emerged from? I don’t care what they think of me! I’m in a relationship with you, not them. Correction. Was. Was in a relationship.”

“But, when we get married, they’re going to be a part of our lives too. It’s not just us who are going to be married. It’s our families too…”

Sita couldn’t hear what Ram was saying anymore. His explanations, his clarifications weren’t making sense. Nothing made sense anymore. She felt hot, extremely hot, and felt her temperature rising. Like she was burning, inside and out. She felt a tingling sensation in her fingers that went up to her arms. Then slowly to her shoulders and down her back. Her ears were ringing, and her legs had started to tremble. She forced her legs to stop the shaking, pulled her hair up, and tied it in a bun. She grabbed her bag lying in the corner, made sure her dress was zipped up, and started walking. She felt as if she was walking on burning embers. The soles of her feet hurt, her ankles hurt. Her knees too, but she kept walking. She didn’t know where she was going but kept walking anyway, away from Ram, away from his mindless chatter. Away from his reasons. His judgment. His opinions. His insecurities.

When the test results came in after ten days, confirming Ram’s paternity, Sita mailed them to Ram with a note that said she didn’t want him to be a part of it and that it was over. She asked herself repeatedly why she wasn’t surprised, even slightly, at Ram’s reaction to her pregnancy. He was never sure, and he would never be. She had been fooling herself. She knew that all along. But how could one give up on the sliver of hope? The hope of making the impossible a possibility, the hope of changing the course of destiny, the hope of reversing an irreversible tragedy? That night was a mistake. Their relationship was a mistake. Seeing him after they parted ways was a mistake and her expectation that it would be anything more than it was, was her mistake. She was sure that she didn’t feel any sadness, just indignation towards her stupidity. She knew she would get over it. It was just a matter of time. How much time, she wasn’t very sure.

On her way back from the post–office, walking upstairs to her apartment, Sita met Bhumi. Bhumi had been her neighbor for almost five years now. He had been living in the building from the time she moved in. Bhumi, who kept looking for reasons to talk to her. To knock on her door. To deliver her mails, despite her asking him not to. He checked on her every other week to know if she was doing alright; if she needed anything. She realized how she had never noticed him throughout the years. How she never paid attention to his enthusiasm every time he spoke to her. Or how his face lit up when he looked at her. His smile never seemed to fade when he was around her. She wondered if he was in love with her. Wondered if he had always been in love with her and what it would be like to have been with him. Even if just for a night. Not that she would now anyway, but she needed the distraction. She still had complete control of fantasies, if not her life. She lay on her bed and thought about his perfectly rugged frame. It didn’t look like he worked out a lot though, he wasn’t chiseled like most men were these days. But rough like he was involved in a lot of physical labor. Maybe even construction work. His eyes, however, were that of a poet’s or even a painter’s. Like they had a lot of stories to tell, just waiting to be spilled of the dark secrets he kept locked away safely, in the disguise of his exterior brawniness. She thought about the uneven texture of his skin and the scar on his chin, wondering where he got it from and what it would feel like to run her fingers through that scar without feeling even the faintest shred of remorse or shame. She thought what it would feel like to have his arms around her or to nuzzle his neck. What it would be like when he gently threads his fingers through her hair, slowly tracing downwards from there, across her face, her neck, the rising and falling of her chest, mapping the deep grooves that lead in up to her navel. She imagined what he would look like underneath the grey T-shirt that he always had on. The T-shirt, that sometimes clung to his torso when he was working, glistening in sweat, giving away the hardness of his core. She thought about the night when he stayed at her apartment to keep her company when the power was out. She knew he wouldn’t hold back if only she had approached him. She remembered the way his eyes grazed all over her. Not in lust but in painful longing, a longing that burgeoned with time, only making it insufferable. Maybe she should have approached him, and that would have proved Ram right. She laughed at the thought of his dumbstruck face, but she didn’t want to think about Ram. At that moment, she wanted a whiff of the yearning in Bhumi’s breath. She wanted to taste the aching desire on his lips. She wanted to be consumed by him. Consumed by Bhumi, slowly and then all at once.

This story was an assignment to subvert a myth in a modern setting from a creative writing workshop I took a couple of years back. According to the Ramayana (one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India), after being separated from Sita for many years during her capture by Ravana, Ram is unsure of his wife’s fidelity. To prove that she has been faithful, Sita willingly undergoes an ordeal or trial by fire. Prehistorically it was believed that the innocence of an accused criminal could be proven if they survived extreme physical punishment such as burning or drowning. Sita survives the trial and descends into the womb of her mother, the Earth, for release from a cruel world as a testimony of her purity. Bhumi in Hindi means the earth.

Trees in a storm

February 12, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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Short Stories

She felt something brush against her, pushing her, as if getting closer and closer, rubbing on her tiny little frame, engulfing her whole. It wasn’t something. It was someone. Trying to slide their hands underneath her cotton camisole, touching her soft, bare skin, lifting the only piece of clothing she had been wearing on that summer night to cope with the heat. A hand went up against her back as fingers slowly tried reaching the slight bulge on her chest from behind. She remained stiff and pretended to be asleep or dead, whatever would trick the man into getting away from her, but nothing did. She shifted her weight and turned around, this time trying to let him know she could wake up any moment, believing this would probably make him go away, but that didn’t either. She slowly opened her eyes and held on to the wandering hand with all her might that searched violently underneath her camisole. Not knowing what he was looking for, she finally asked, “What are you doing?” One hand now pressed against her mouth, the other wrapped around her waist, squeezing her little body as she gasped for air. “I’m going to scream”, she said frightened, trying to free her mouth from his grip. It was too dark to see, but she knew who it was, “You’re doing no such thing!” the unapologetic voice whispered.

Indira jerked in her sleep and immediately forced her eyes open. Staring at the ceiling, she realized where she was. She sat up straight and wiped a drop of tear that escaped from the corner of her left eye. She got down from the bed, pulled out the curtains, and opened the windows, letting the warm sun rays come in, waiting until she could feel its warmth soak into her flesh. She looked at the boxes that lay all around the bedroom, under her bed, on the floor, carefully packed, taped, and labeled. Boxes that made the entire house look like a conveyer belt with unclaimed baggage, and felt satisfied. Soon this was all going to be over. Soon.

It had been about two years since Indira started working full time for a small NGO called ‘Asha’ in Bangalore. They held workshops, training, and counseling sessions for sexually abused children in remote areas in and around Karnataka. Her therapist had encouraged her to volunteer. She said it would help her come to terms with the reality, accept the past for what it was, and move on. Indira wasn’t too sure though, she didn’t know whether she did it for the kids or herself. But what started as volunteering had turned into a job over barely six months. She sympathized with the kids, of course. But didn’t know if sympathy alone was enough or even right. All she knew was she had to get away from it all. Not the kids. But the city. She had been saving up for years now, about five to be precise, and the loan could cover for rest. She had it all planned out. Cranebrook Academy of Art had accepted her application, and her visa was approved. The only other source of funds that remained was what she inherited from her father. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Her therapist had asked her once if she thought running away was going to help her. She shrugged, saying she didn’t care if it did.

Indira got into the auto-rickshaw and plugged the headphones into her ears. With the music blaring, she could no longer hear the thoughts inside her head. She watched shopkeepers open up shops. School kids getting on their school buses. People sipping on tea as they inhaled smoke from their cigarettes along the sidewalks and began preparing for the day yet to come. Oblivious to its upcoming events, but continuing anyway. She wished she could do that, take each day as it comes, but she thought being prepared was always better than being vulnerable. To anything. Passing by the busy traffic, she got lost in thought, making the same plans over and over as she did in her head.

“Hey Meera,” Indira greeted her colleague as she walked towards her desk getting into the office.

“Hey Indira, Good morning,” Meera said automatically, stressing on the ‘good’.

“So what do we have today?” she asked and placed her bag on the table.

“You don’t waste a second, do you?” said Meera complacently.

Indira shook her head. “We can’t afford to do that, can we?” and smiled.

“Here you go”, and handed her a folder.

“What’s this?” she asked as she flipped through the neatly filed documents.

“They rescued a nine-year-old. All of the details are in that folder.”

“Who did? A girl I’m assuming?”

“The school teacher. And yes, a little girl,” Meera paused for a minute before speaking again, “She ran away from home and managed to find the class teacher. Prakash I think he said his name was”.

“And?” Indira waited in anticipation.

“She had been raped by the uncle. Multiple times. She ran away because they stopped sending her to school.”

“How did she manage to escape?”

Meera raised her eyebrows and pouted her lips in uncertainty, “You should talk to this guy Prakash. He has been calling non-stop.”

Indira nodded, dialing the number on her phone that she found in the contact sheet within the folder.

“Prakash? This is Indira from Asha,”

“Thank god! I thought you people would never call,” the man sounded like he was in a hurry.

Indira waited until he spoke again, giving him time to catch his breath.

“The girl is with me but, I can’t keep her here very long. Her family is going to come looking for her.”

“Could you please explain in detail?”

“I can’t explain everything. Not now. We’re wasting too much time. Can someone pick her up? I gave the address to another woman I spoke to earlier.”

“Can you come to Bangalore?” Indira asked instead.

“I don’t own a vehicle. If I go to the bus stand now, people are going to notice. I can’t promise, but I can try. My friend has a car. You have to help her or, this is going to be on your hands,” he begged and accused at the same time.

“Fine, we will wait till the evening. If you can’t make it, I’ll send someone over to Bellary. But you’ll have to bring her to the city.” The line went dead. She assumed he heard what she said.

“What did you find out?” Meera asked from the edge of her seat, noticing when Indira got off the phone.

“He is trying to bring her over. If not, we will have to ask Mohan to pick her up”.

Meera nodded, and Indira took a deep breath. She started going over Childline’s legal guidelines on runaway children, rape victims, and adoption on her computer. All of them applied to this child.

“Here take this”, the man handed her a five hundred rupee note. “Now, you can’t utter a single word,” he said, placing a finger on her lip. She looked at the crisp note stuffed in her fist, and before she could say anything, the man walked away. He came again at night, but this time Indira was prepared. She placed her hand carefully under her pillow where she hid the knife, and as he got closer, her grip got firmer. She pushed the bottle on the bed stand hoping, her aunt would hear it fall and wake up. But she didn’t. She drew out the knife from underneath her pillow and pointed it at the man. It almost cut his face. “What have you got there? Are you going to kill me?” She shivered at his smirk. “I’m going to scream. I’m going to tell everyone”, she managed to say. The man got out of her bed and left. She was shaking like a leaf after a storm.

Prakash didn’t make it the previous day, but he reached Bangalore the next morning. Indira noticed the little girl sitting on the bench at the reception, curled up, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees. She had the most beautiful eyes that sat within the deepest hollows Indira had ever seen. Her clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in years, like the rest of her body.

“Come in please,” she invited them both into one of the cabins. “Please take a seat,” and pointed towards the chairs.

“You have to help her,” he pleaded without caring to sit or wait for her to ask another question. “And I can’t be here too long. They will find out I had something to do with this. It’s not safe for her back in the village.”

“What do you want us to do?” she said hesitantly, looking at the little girl. Gooey mucus nested in the gap between her dirty nose and cracked lips. “We don’t shelter rescued kids, we only…”

“But you could, you could keep her with you,” he said, expectantly, before Indira could finish her sentence.

“I can’t do that. There are going to be legal altercations.”

“Just for some time, maybe a week? I can’t keep her with me, nor can I be found missing from school. I have to go back tonight”.

“I’m not even here this week. I’m moving out of the city. Out of the country, if that matters. But that’s not the question. Anyway, the point is I’m not going to be here to look after her”.

“Please…” he urged, his hands folded like he was on a church bench.

“Fine, I’ll see what I can do. We will have to figure something out.”

Prakash smiled weakly, his eyes gleaming with hope.

“Thank you!” he said, reaching for Indira’s hands. She pulled away instantly.

“What about her parents, her mother or father, aren’t they going to be worried?”

Prakash shook his head, and Indira concluded she had no one judging by the despair on his face. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, his gaze fixed at the little girl, and walked out the door.

Indira looked at the girl who didn’t have an expression. Just pure hopelessness or, that’s what she assumed. As if she didn’t care what happened next.

“Come here,” she said, extending her hand in invitation.

The girl walked around the table and stood next to Indira, looking away, towards the open window.

“You don’t have to be afraid. We are going to take care of you. Prakash sir is going to make sure you are fine.”

She didn’t seem to believe her.

“Now, are you going to tell me your name?”

“Indu,” she replied.

This must be a sick joke, Indira thought.

“Well Indu, my name is Indira. You can call me Indu if you like. My mom used to call me that,” she said, wiping her nostrils and wrapped her arms around Indu in an embrace.

She snuffled, then nodded.

“Are you hungry? What do you like to eat?”

“Some milk please.”

“Milk and cookies it is then.”

Indu didn’t seem to understand the second word.

Indira walked towards Meera’s desk, invading her privacy, leaving Indu to eat in the next room. Like her, Indu didn’t seem to like company while she ate.

“Meera, I need you to keep the girl for a week,” she announced.

Meera looked surprised, “You know I can’t do that, I have my in-laws living with me! You know very well they aren’t going to understand”.

“Well, I can’t keep her either. I have to leave in five days. You knew I was leaving.”

“Then why did you let her stay? You should have sent her back with the teacher guy.”

Indira didn’t have an answer to her question.

“I just couldn’t,” she didn’t bother to explain.

“Postpone your tickets maybe?”

“The fall batch starts in two weeks, and if I don’t make it now, I’ll have to wait until next year to even apply!”

“I don’t have any advice if that’s what you’re hoping to get out of me,” Meera said bluntly.

“No, I understand”.

“There are thousands of kids like her. You can’t expect to save each one of them, Indira.”

“Well, at least I can save this one.”

“You didn’t like the cookies?” Indira asked the little girl, noticing the half-eaten biscuit, just when Mohan, the office boy, walked in to clear the plates.

“My stomach hurts,” she said in a whisper.

“Does it hurt anywhere else?”

Indu didn’t say a word, but Indira understood her reluctance.

“Show me where it hurts?”

Indu straightened her legs and let them hang loosely from the chair. Her feet couldn’t touch the floor. She looked down without pointing at anything.

“Mohan, can you please get an auto? We’re going to the hospital,” she said lifting the child.

“Yes, madam,” Mohan left the plates as they were and ran out the door.

Living with Addictive Tendencies

January 6, 2021

by Kritanya Onzima

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I had always been an awkward kid. A little nervous and eager to please, I could put on a show just to be liked a little more. I was the first to offer help when somebody needed a favor. I would go out of my way to fit someone else’s schedule. I could never say no – to anything. The temptation of being appreciated for my enthusiasm was far greater than feasibility. I was okay as long as I thought people liked me. It didn’t matter why – it only mattered that they did. Approval meant I wasn’t invisible. Since I wasn’t bold or outgoing enough to make friends and had no siblings, I was glad when accepted into groups. I would change my mold to everyone’s needs and was happy not to have an opinion.

I gave myself extra credit for doing well in school. I thought I was better than others since nobody I knew had to deal with a broken family. My problems were “serious” because I started at a disadvantage. My under-developed brain couldn’t grasp the idea of subjectivity. Where I am from, the concept of divorce was objectionable twenty years back. And if for a moment I were to forget of my familial discord, people’s concern about me reminded me of the distinction – a dysfunctional family was disgraceful sure, but it also inspired pity.

During my late adolescent years, this translated into seeking comfort in relationships – a fix for my emotional vulnerability. A teenager, acting out due to raging hormones, with undertones of a victim mentality. The only way to remedy that was indulging in bad relationships. For several years this continued, and I slowly started to use alcohol to suppress all of the negative emotions I felt. It didn’t help, of course. What I thought would pull me out of my rabbit hole was only pushing me further down. There were times when I woke up with no recollection of the previous night and got into verbally and physically abusive fights. I wasn’t doing very well in school either and graduated two years after my classmates. I worked at a call center to support myself till I earned my bachelor’s degree. Yet, somehow, none of it was enough for me to stop.

I was not an alcoholic, but I wasn’t casually drinking. My otherwise mediocre life didn’t seem so mediocre in bouts of reckless bingeing. With every additional drink, I was louder, friendlier, braver. Reveling in the thrills of acting on impulse. I became this person I liked – uninhibited and bold enough to say things I wouldn’t in a thousand years. I was coolness personified and believed it too. The more the drinks, the longer the night, and my need to keep it going for a little bit longer. I failed to notice how the intensity of this callousness disguised in personal freedom grew with the number of drinks I had for the night. But I couldn’t stop. Because when the alcohol wore off, I was no longer my ideal self.

When you use a substance as a social lubricant to quell your nerves, it backfires. Extreme low moods followed the charade and bravado. The thing about addiction is that it doesn’t just affect one part of your life. It affects all of it. Cascading down to your work, your family, and everything in between. The polarity in my behavior was evident in every aspect. I was pulling all-nighters one day, then cooped up in my room for two or three days straight out of the guilt. My dependency on a substance, a person, or an emotion kept me going. I had learned to drown out my sense of self to be part of the herd. Every day was just like the last, and I leaned to the bottle in a desperate attempt to keep things just a little more interesting. I felt more myself when I was a little tipsy. The conversations I had with people that otherwise felt too shallow to keep me intrigued started to feel genuine. I was evading all responsibility under the pretext of being out of my senses.

I could go on about the adverse effects alcohol had on my anxious personality, but enough has been said about it already. The stories are mostly identical – extreme euphoria and then hitting rock bottom. I was either –

Turning to alcohol in happiness, misery, and boredom while I reasoned my lack of self-discipline with procrastination because temporarily, it felt good. It was such a significant part of my life that everything else had started to feel small – every major and minor event enriched with a glass of whiskey.
Living in a bubble of denial, numbing myself to everything – except when the repressed emotions started to show up in my drunken stupors. My issues were only addressable in the absence of sobriety. And I had learned to self-medicate through the shame of the morning-after with even more alcohol.
Letting things happen to me than taking charge of my life. My addictive tendencies showed up not just in my relationship with substances but with friends, family, and everything I truly cared about.

Not everybody is in a love-hate relationship with alcohol. Most people I know are perfectly fine with a couple of drinks every other night or even occasional binges. But I’m not one of them. Some are more susceptible than others to fall prey to these cyclical behavioral patterns. Chasing meaning in everything but themselves. If you are genetically predisposed to alcoholism, or even depression, if there is a history in the family, it doesn’t take a lot to give in. I’m not saying that is the only reason. But it’s an element to factor in. My parents didn’t have a strong presence while I was growing up. Maybe that helped aggravate a pre-existing condition. Maybe it didn’t. I’ll never know. I tried to deny it too. Several times. I blamed it on hormones, on my childhood, or some external entity that worked against me, making me act the way I did. But I got sick of that too.

I haven’t given it up yet, but I’m slowing down. I can’t vouch for the positive changes of being alcohol-free because I’m still learning to be a social drinker – hoping I will no longer need to – even in socially awkward situations. I tried drinking just on the weekends, but that doesn’t help if you don’t know when to stop. I now drink with friends. If we’re celebrating and stick to wine mostly. Also, the physical symptoms of a hangover in my 30’s have effectively helped dial it down. So, it’s not all downhill from here. I know moderation is not the answer to addiction but one step at a time.

If there’s anything I have learned in all of these years; is the clarity of thought I have now is unparalleled. I don’t try to soothe my wounds using the bottle as a crutch. I drink at a pace where I am not gulping down a shot and three drinks in an hour. I am learning to enjoy it than seek comfort in it. Not waking up to debilitating hangovers has been life-changing too. Taking a step back hasn’t been exhilarating, but you have to realize you are much more than the effects a substance has on you. If you could relate to anything I have mentioned, ask yourself why you’re reaching for that glass. There are better ways to deal with a crisis than numbing your senses. We have one life – thanks to the spectacle that was 2020 – that phrase is now more relatable than ever. Your past doesn’t define you. A chemical definitely doesn’t define you. If not others, prove it to yourself. Yours is the only opinion that matters.

How you could be sabotaging your progress

December 26, 2020

by Kritanya Onzima

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A couple of weeks back after, two months of rejection emails, I finally got three interviews lined up. A technical test followed by three rounds of virtual interviews for two of the openings, and I didn’t make it through the first round for the third. Feeling pretty good about my options, I was almost sure I would land a job. It was only a matter of time. It has now been two weeks; I still haven’t heard back. A week of waiting, followed by another week of self-doubt and thinking in negative loops.

Was there a gap in the hiring manager’s understanding of my job role?

Was it the way I tackled a trick question?

Or was it my salary expectations?

There are a million ways in which things could have gone wrong but, just one reason they probably did. And we aren’t good predictors of that. Not unless someone calls you back to tell you what exactly you did wrong and, it is more likely that you’ll never hear from them. Trying to come up with reasons why I may not have gotten a call back was futile. It only set me back by couple more days as I wallowed in self-pity. I assumed since I had been working pretty hard for the past two months, learning new skills and practicing to be more confident, it would pay off. Or, I wanted it to pay off but, life isn’t fair. It’s just life. When certain situations play out in our favor, we tend to feel responsible for them. When they don’t, we are more likely to blame the other party. We flavor our experiences with what we think is right or isn’t, and that shapes beliefs.

In an ideal world, hard work pays off, but this isn’t necessarily true if there are no opportunities. What we see, or rather, information that is made available to us, are of the successes, not the failures. So we tend to dote on success and idealize it. We often expect results too soon, falsely believing in the potential of our efforts. But what some may call luck or the right place and time, I like to call probability. Maybe someone worked hard to earn a degree but has no luck finding the right fit when it comes to a job. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are any less capable than the next guy/girl who did land a job. Getting hired does not just depend upon skills and expertise. Chance, coupled with other factors like the availability of other candidates, the hiring manager’s assessment of your capabilities, etc., is more consequential than we realize.

When we look at things from a single perspective, we are only setting ourselves up for failure. It is no surprise that handling rejection is hard. So let us try and be kind to ourselves without baseless assumptions or blaming ourselves for every misfiring. Here are a few cognitive distortions that even the mightiest of us may have suffered from at one point or another. Identifying these errors has helped me recognize the flaws in my thoughts, and hopefully, they will help you see things for what they are:

Polarized Thinking: the tendency to think in terms of polar opposites, without accepting the possibilities that lie between extremes. When convinced that we are either destined for success or doomed to failure, that the people in our lives are either angelic or evil, we engage in polarized thinking.
Catastrophizing (also Fortune Telling): to exaggerate the negative consequences of events or decisions. Catastrophizing leads us to dread or assume the worst when faced with the unknown. This thinking error quickly escalates ordinary worries.
Discounting the Positive: a faulty thinking pattern that can contribute to negativity. Instead of acknowledging that a good outcome is the result of skill, smart choices, or determination, we assume that it must be an accident or some anomaly.
Emotional Reasoning: the false belief that our emotions are the truth — that the way we feel about a situation is a reliable indicator of reality.
Labeling: a cognitive distortion in which we reduce ourselves or other people to a single — usually negative — characteristic or descriptor, like “drunk” or “failure.”
Mental Filtering: paying undue attention to one negative detail instead of seeing the whole picture. Interpreting circumstances using a negative mental filter is not only inaccurate, but it can also worsen anxiety and depression symptoms.
Mind Reading: believing we know what others are thinking, failing to consider other, more likely, possibilities, and making no effort to validate our perception.
Over-generalization: making a sweeping negative conclusion that goes far beyond the current situation.
“Should” and “Must” Statements: having a precise, fixed idea of how we or others should behave and overestimating how bad it is that these expectations aren’t met. These thoughts are often rooted in an internalized family or cultural expectations, which might not be appropriate.
Maladaptive Thoughts: Problematic thoughts that do not contain logical thinking errors. These thoughts may be rational. However, dwelling on them makes us more anxious. And may interfere in coping with the challenges and stresses of daily life.

Sources:

What Are Cognitive Distortions and How Can You Change These Thinking Patterns? – healthline.com
Panic Disorder and Negative Thinking – verywellmind.com
apa.org

We are programmed to think in patterns, see trends even when there are none. We create stories based on our past experiences. Get influenced by the opinions and views of people around us. External factors like our physical environment, the society we live in, our beliefs and biases are crucial in forming these patterns. Almost always, more than our liking. But this process of hypothesizing is not helpful. And especially when we aren’t dealing with concrete facts. A correlation between the rise of job losses and extended lock-downs due to the pandemic may be valid. But not between the efficacy of a vaccine and the return of those jobs. Chances are, companies may adapt to a whole new ballgame when it comes to recruitment and working culture in general. But we wouldn’t know unless that happens and at least for a certain period, considering there isn’t a fourth or fifth wave or a mutation of the virus. Unfounded relationships between unforeseen variables often lead to setting up expectations and disappointment when things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to.

The next time you find yourself caught in a negative thought loop, remember the following:

Your judgment of a situation is not always accurate – you cannot read minds
Consider your biases about an outcome – you cannot validate the accuracy of your perception
Getting demotivated far too often – beating yourself up for everything only slows down any headway you have been making
What you consider as slow progress is still progress
Waiting for some event that will change your life – it won’t unless you do
A false belief that your effort will pay off after a certain amount of time – it may take longer than you think
Making comparisons with anybody about anything
Results depend on consistency but also probability – so hang in there
Focusing on the end goal and not the process will only lead to a distorted view of reality

What we generally believe to be predictors of success are often fallacious. We assume financial stability is directly related to our mental well-being or that our professional status indicates our intelligence or signifies social rank – they don’t. Period. Nobody was given the wild card to success. We work with what we have and try to improvise. If that’s not consistent, we fail to see results. Simple. Do not base your happiness on a single source or the list of your achievements. Enjoy the process, get to know yourself a little better, be present, and let the rest take its course.

Coping with Uncertainty

November 18, 2020

by Kritanya Onzima

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It has been over a month since I lost my job. And while hearing about the massive amount of job losses and businesses shutting down all over the world did cause some anxiety, I couldn’t relate. Not until the moment I realized I didn’t know where my next paycheck was coming from. You can empathize, pray that it doesn’t happen to you, or plan if it does but, there’s no way to predict your actions when you find yourself out of a job amid a pandemic. Everything I had swept under the rug to keep functioning as a regular adult is crawling back out. I have all the time to watch my thoughts stray from one vicious circle to another. How I hated my job, how I was unsure about my seven-year-long live-in relationship, or how with every single year, I was turning a little more into my mother. Like mosquitoes buzzing right when you are drifting off to sleep; only now they’re latched to your ear. Add to that the precariousness of landing a job while the rejection letters stack up. If only motivation came as easy as despair.

I have spent half a decade working for a paycheck and, even if it was not the most soul-sucking job like most corporate careers turn out to be, I wasn’t happy. It was a practical choice at the time. I went to college, got a degree in business to land a job in the city that would gradually equate to the amount of investment made in my education – things we do to in the hopes of securing a future. But as I hunt down every open position on the ten different job portals where I have my resume listed, I become more aware of the fact that if not for the money, I wouldn’t be doing this.

I’m one of those people who spend year after year in the daily grind due to the lack of a better opportunity or over-familiarity. People who weren’t brave enough to follow through with whatever it is they were passionate about. I lack ambition in equal proportion to foresight. I’d rather sit in a corner and contemplate the meaning behind it all than to come up with ways to make a sub-optimal process more efficient to gather some professional brownie points from the boss. Like the succulent you keep on your desk because it survives with the least amount of sunlight and water. The only thing that has made me happy in the past couple of months is the satisfaction of finishing a book or a piece of writing that I struggled with for days. And I don’t even consider myself a good writer.

At a time when uncertainty is synonymous with the normal, even a minor setback can feel impossible to overcome. The severity of a job loss or a lurking relationship issue is intensified by the “COVID situation” that under usual circumstances could have been dealt with little to an adequate amount of grace. The questions get louder, bouncing back and forth off the walls of your mind. Do I go back to live with my parents? Do I go back to school? Is it even possible to make a career change at 30? What about the last seven years? All those years of overthinking and procrastination felt amateurish in comparison to the emotional roller-coaster I’m on now.

It’s unbelievably easy to fall into endless cycles of self-loathing followed by even more endless cycles of self-loathing. And it takes a deliberate effort to stay positive. But if you want to get somewhere, anywhere, you have got to get out of thinking in repetitive patterns. Every day I wake up surprised by the increasing level of my anxiety. And I tell myself, it exists because I let it. Keeping your sanity is crucial. If you aren’t vigilant, negativity has a way of creeping in.

First, give yourself time to grieve. I’m not saying you should spend months overthinking every step that may have lead to the situation you’re in now. I did and, it’s no good. But give yourself time to acknowledge the facts. Whether it’s a job loss, financial troubles, a relationship issue, or just a rut, take time to understand where you stand and what you want. Do you want to keep looking for a job while learning a new skill? Is there a way to make money from something you enjoy doing like, writing or photography? (I still haven’t figured this one out but, it doesn’t take more than a couple of hours of online research to weigh your options against your skills) Do you want to invest the time in going back to school? Can you afford it? Do you want to work on your relationship or, are you ready to move on? Obsessing over my problems has slowed things down but, it has also made me very sure about what I want. When we live every day checking off items on a to-do list, sometimes we lose track of their significance.

Journal. We all have our form of journalling. Maybe a list works for you or, perhaps you prefer writing as the thoughts come to you. Whatever you chose to do, what’s important is to grab that pen and notebook (I like the old-fashioned way but, you do you) or maybe your phone or laptop and write down whatever it is that you’re feeling at a particularly anxious moment. Do this daily so you can keep track of any progress or lag in the way you’re feeling. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have done this in the past but making it a daily practice keeps you grounded. You can also practice noting down what you want to do for the day. It helps keep your focus on the present.

Exercise. You know it’s good for you so, stop making excuses and find 30 minutes to get moving. I watch free workout videos by FitnessBlender on YouTube and have been for years. If you haven’t heard of them, then definitely check them out https://www.youtube.com/user/FitnessBlender. They are the reason I still work out after years of having a toxic relationship with the gym. Physical activity of any kind helps de-clutter and organize your thoughts. The difference I noticed on days where I skip my workouts from the days I don’t are drastic. Instead of slopping around the house when I begin my day with as little as 10-15 minutes of stretching, I am a lot more prepared for the rest of it.

Meditate. This is a tricky one. Sometimes it has helped me relax while; at other times, it has made me more anxious. Especially if I was pretty stressed out already. You can either start with 10 minutes of mindfulness mediation where you simply focus on your breath or, you could use a guided meditation app. There are tonnes of them out there (I have tried Calm personally but, I prefer the traditional way). If you cannot keep your thoughts from lingering on your problems, skip meditating and watch a rerun of your favorite comedy sitcom. Anything that keeps you from overthinking helps detach from the ongoing issue. You will look at things more objectively when your brain is not on auto-pilot.

Read. One thing I’m thankful for with the pandemic and all is the TIME. Instead of spending long hours commuting to and from work, I have all that extra time to read. I’ve crossed my yearly target in less than six months, thanks to the book store that lets me exchange used books so; I don’t have to spend a fortune buying new ones now when money is tight. Reading opens up your mind and broadens your perspective. To me, it’s like meditating. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, reading even ten pages every day gives you a break from the routine at the comfort of your couch.

Have Goals. Make a plan and stick with it. It doesn’t matter whether your goals are big or small, short, or long term. It can be something as simple as choosing an apple over a bag of potato chips or something with clearly defined steps like working on your blog, a portfolio, or learning a new skill. The only thing that matters is showing up and doing it over and over again until it becomes second nature to you.

Play with your pets or take a walk. I was very lucky to find two adorable kitties from the local shelter. Even watching them just be kitties calms me down. Let your inner child out while productivity and efficiency take the back seat. If you don’t have pets, go out and take a walk. We have been indoors for close to a year now. Over time, that gets to you. Make sure to breathe in some fresh air every day, of course, with your masks on.

Get disciplined. It takes work, but it’s doable. Keep the promises you make to yourself. Every day. If you have decided to send out 10-job applications every day for 3-months, do it. If you would like to spend an hour learning every day a new skill, take out the time. It’s that simple. Here is one of my favorite quotes by Dostoevsky from Crime and Punishment, “Man gets used to everything, the scoundrel.” And you will too.

And finally, remember to take every day as it comes. This has always been difficult, even if I’m aware I control nothing. We are wired to make up stories in our heads when we look back; and when we look forward. If living in the moment were easy, there would be fewer cases of heart attacks in the world. I miss the financial freedom. I miss hiding behind the veil of my “fulfilling career” whenever my dad throws the “30 and single” card at me. But if I hadn’t lost the job, I wouldn’t have time to learn anything new, let alone write. There would be no plan B. I just finished another online course on a data management tool that is bound to become obsolete in a year or two. But, but, but… the next time an employer asks me whether I have used the latest version of some new visualization tool that’s hip at the moment, I can blatantly overstate the significance of my work and say I did. We are mere mortals and have no salvage value so let’s accept our very flawed, very imperfect selves and get cracking.

Recognizing a downward spiral

June 14, 2020

by Kritanya Onzima

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We are in an age where nothing is relevant unless it is socially acknowledged. Exhibiting is the new norm. Those of us who find it hard to express or even keep up, fall into the trap of seeking validation. Social approval can inflate one’s self-image, but it can also distort reality. People who are never too sure about themselves, to begin with, perhaps suffer the most. Overthinkers. Perfectionists. People prone to depression. There are a lot of us out there. While seeking validation may be necessary for progress, it can do more harm than good if it turns into mania. When lines of self-esteem start to get blurry, finding a way out of the negative self-talk loop can feel endless. Fixating and overemphasizing the bad while turning a blind eye to the good is only too easy. The need for validation overpowers any opportunity for self-improvement. And a sense of guilt over not having done the work because you were too busy honing your inner critiquing skills becomes a downward spiral.

There’s also the assumption that if x happened you would be happier. Let’s call it the future of an alternate past. The many roads that you ought to have taken but didn’t. Things you could have done differently. Regrets, remorse, the whole package – I pick this as my poison. I thrive in knowing my failures are repercussions of my ignorance. Stir this in with a little bit of self-doubt and hurrah! You have the recipe for disaster.

Photo: @tinymosquito at Unsplash

Depression and anxiety stem from a myriad of things, in several degrees. The world definitely doesn’t fall short of the nuances of human tragedy. Disease, destitution, childhood trauma, unemployment, or a failed marriage among others. But while you can’t control the uncontrollable, you can adjust the lens you see it through. As cliched as it may sound, the grass can look greener on your side if you let go of your definition of hues.

We want more success, more meaning, maybe a little more appreciation couldn’t hurt either. Humans are programmed for dissatisfaction. Otherwise, how do you define progress? But can you really base an outcome on fantasy alone? I say this because a lot of us tend to dote on a rosy view of the end result. We set unrealistic expectations but don’t do the work. We envy the people who made it or shun them based on our insecurities. We fail to admit that our judgments about others are only a projection of what we lack internally.

When a child is neglected repeatedly, they start to identify it with love. Some may even seek comfort in it. Likewise, when you feed your mind with nothing but backtalk, you train it to adapt to a defeatist mentality. Believing the only thing it knows. Our brains are not wired for chronic stress. Every time we are in a stressful situation, we activate what is known as the “fight or flight mode” – our body’s response to imminent danger. Now, imagine activating this stress response for something like a credit payment or your fears of starting out on your own, rather than a life-threatening event. Do you see what you’re doing? Putting your body through a constant state of worry – what good can come out of that?

Professional counseling along with drug therapy may be what some of us need but I’ve also found, slowly but surely, a deliberate shift in perspective helps. Now, every time a negative thought starts to take shape, I acknowledge it and try to reason why. An exercise cognitive behavioral therapy involves. Identifying triggers and altering your response. Instead of giving in to the inner monologue, try questioning it. It takes practice and can be hard to keep your mind from drifting towards a certain repetitive pattern; but not impossible. Conscious repetition helps in forming new habits and thought processes while unconscious or compulsive repetition has a crippling effect.

You may read all of the self-help books or watch every motivational talk there is on YouTube. But unless you deal with the bigger issue of figuring out the root of your anxious thoughts, all your efforts will prove to be futile. Unresolved trauma and unexpressed emotions are dangerous if repressed. In one way or another, they show up. Masking themselves in the colors of anger and resentment. Sometimes it can even manifest itself in physical pain.

If you notice certain thoughts resurfacing, again and again, address them. Dig deeper into whatever it is that keeps trying to break free.

Every time I try to write, I expect words to come pouring in. Like water gushing from a broken pipe – unrestrained and free. They don’t. So I sit there, staring at the blank page for however long it takes. Hours, days, months, it doesn’t matter. When I type in that first sentence, I am one step closer. Wishes, when locked away in some corner of your room full of excuses, start to rust. Then decay, with little or no chances of restoration. Time doesn’t give you the liberty of second-chances for the millionth time. Coupled with shame, time will only bear bad news. But you already know that.

I’ve learned acceptance deserves more recognition than it gets. True acceptance can pull you out of the need to please. Approval from others has its temporary highs but until you accept yourself with all your strange quirks, there’s no getting out of this shipwreck. You need to be okay with who you are, who you were. You need to be okay with momentary lapses of judgment. You need to be okay with what the future may hold – whether or not it’s in your favor. The goal should be to live in the moment so fully that the consequences don’t make a difference. If we stopped trying after one or the hundredth failed attempt we would be denying our basic instinct – survival. You owe yourself the benefit of the doubt. You owe yourself honesty.

Thoughts are transitory. And life goes on faster than ever. Make it a good one. Make it count. You steer your mind, not the other way around.