anicekidlikeme

[anicekidlikeme]

Removing the arrows

Friends, it has been a very long time since I have written.

When my mind gets too cluttered, I tend to float away from being connected. I withdraw completely, sometimes with people, sometimes with hobbies, sometimes with greif, and a lot of the time, with responsibility. To do such a thing is greatly painful, and it is a terrible habit that I hope I can one day break.

Drew and I moved in together, which has been lovely, and safe. To be truthful, I have never had a home where I felt safe, where all my needs were being completely met, so it is a huge joy that I managed to create that for myself. Since then, this feeling has emerged. it says, no matter what happens, you can always come home. Our apartment is not very big but I feel it to be brimming with love. Now that I have this safe space, I think my body is finally establishing a connection to the world. Grief has finally decided to set itself down and channel itself in different ways. Because of this, I have been distant in sharing. Friends, my body has been resting.

I want to mention that this isn't a new pattern of mine. This website has been gutted a million times over, but I have a strong feeling I will never completely let go of this little project. Drew and I celebrated our one year anniversary yesterday, so I felt it may be a good time to return, write down my reflections of this past year.

It has been lifechanging, so sincerely that I worry sometimes that if one of you swapped lives with me, you would be able to make more of it. My therapist told me this week to think of my body as if arrows are being pierced through it constantly, and never in a planned out pattern. The first few arrows were pierced at me through life and circumstance. And the next set by me, telling myself that I am this big fuck up almost as a way to keep myself functional and going. She said to me that, interestingly, in the second situation where I am the piercer, she can almost see the hands of my mother guiding mine to the arrow, pulling and releasing right at the heart. Her hands are on top of mine at all times, and I too could see it. I have felt that before too. I don't remember much about my life in India, and that forgetting is intentional. One of my clearest memories is of my mother in a blue work shirt, home at 6pm, when we lived on the outskirts of Mumbai, tired and angry. Tired of having worked her whole day away for a shot at footing our bare minimum lifestyle and angry because I have a resounding physical resembalence to my father.

When I was young, I saw my father as someone who was addicted to causing me pain, and it really confused me when I was made to be just like him in so many ways. I lived with my dad for a few of my youngest years because my mom needed her Mumbai escape. She said to me that she had to build up her career before she could take me to the scary city on her own. Fair.

I did not ever like my father until my teenage years, where I yearned for an escape from my household to one where seemingly, I could be with someone who was just like me. I did not care of the cost it came with; I have never been one to see my body and soul as anything but ruined filthy.

I am the eldest daughter in our big, indian family. I am the lamb who seeks out weird writing symbolisms so that my little cousin sisters felt comfort about this family. I smiled with my teeth when we visited the rest of them like I was told to. I always felt like, for my sisters, I am the fear that exists beween the empty spaces of love we were given, and the anger that is in our parents. They were always angry. The way I felt in that moment with my mother, I started feeling a lot when I was a little bit older. I felt it with one summer dress that never quite fit right no matter how many times I threw my school lunch away. And then eventually every dress. That is the only feeling that comes close to it.

I know that this is all a lot to invite you all into, but it was also a lot to have to set it down. What helps is just trying to feel as connected to the ground as possible. Having a cat has helped. I often observe her approach to things. She is just a young kitten, and it is beautiful to witness someone experiencing this world for the first time. She reminds me of simple things. Today I thought, yes! I don't like when the traffic suddenly gets loud and we can hear it from our apartment. We lean on each other a lot, she needs me and I need her. I think that is the highest level of connecting and regrounding myself I know of. Having a companion does really help, and I have two of the best ones ever.

When I am talking about Drew to my friends or co-workers, I often say oh yeah I've got this lovely boyfriend, and you know, it takes pretty hard work to be me everyday, but ever since I've met him its like I am regressing, thinking, uggggh I dont want to do the smallest of things, like I always need to be looked after. I think its because he is the first one that has requested permission to take care of me. Mostly my lovely therapist's words, but I really relate to them. Now here are some of my own, freshly made as Drew falls asleep in the bedroom.

Wow it is so healing and refreshing. Our relationship had a lot of ups and a lot of downs when we first met, we both at big turning points of our lives and were getting antsy about our place in the world. But despite of all that, he is truly the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. He is so caring, loving, and makes me feel like I am new. I have always felt too loud, too angry, too mean, too nice, too gullible, too evil, too forgiving, too awkward, to unscoialized, too undeserving. But with Drew I feel good. And at home. I don't have to keep making big gestures of love to feel it. It is just there for me waiting.

Friends, I am dealing with a lot of greif right now, and have been more reflexive than ever about my life, and the person I am. There is a lot going on that maybe I will share, and maybe I will not. But I hope that you all will still be by me. My biggest worry is the judgement. I don't want to be the loser of the group. I am filled with gratitude also. So so much of it. It is my reason to turn to this once more. When I hit post, I will go eat some dinner, tell my boyfriend I love him dearly, and fall asleep with my cat. It is possible to take those arrows out, and in the end be okay. It really really is. We will chat more soon.

[anicekidlikeme]

Father's day, mother's day, one of those days.

The expectation of being granted a great love by my parents when I was a little girl, has been lost for a few years now. It feels as though my generous wishes ripened, rotted, then returned to the earth, and I am so upset that I have begun to think maybe where I am sitting that same earth is about to collapse. When I feel this way, I take up so much room. It's so heavy, it's so awful.

It is Father's Day. I hate these designated parental-days, and I hate how grateful you all must be feeling about your dad's today. I hate it so much that I feel like my bones are all broken. Mother's day is no better. I look at everyone's social media posts with beautiful family photos until I can't anymore. I have no relatives, and the closest I come to a loving parental embrace is when I lay on the ground and imagine myself to be a tree. Then, I have so much family.

When I was young I clung so tightly to this fantasy where my dad was a good guy with a strong love for me and looking back I sense I was just being a guardian of my spent love, and in turn a guardian of my spirit. Same with mom. By taking on this role, I also knew I had to preserve all the secrets of myself in faithful silence, and endure the defects that I may observe in my own self. All the times I felt lonely, sad, and family-less, those are all for me to endure. I endured knowing that my father wouldn't suddenly transform to have a gentleness to him, and I knew that I could not change my parents from the ground up to reshape them into a relationship I wanted. Sometimes some people just do not love you.

I know there are many errors to the way I love, and it is a painful and great struggle. It only makes it fucking worse when I am forced to think about that on days like these.

I don't want to be alone.

I wish I could hire somebody who could magically appear each time I felt alone to take it all away, to sit with me, talk to me, so I am not forced to think about this loneliness. They would say, pick a hand, spreading them both out, and then with it, hold mine for as long as I wanted. I have waited my turn to have that happen.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how I like to imagine my sadness as a little child in my heart and caress it gently to rest. The child that lives inside me is so hard to blame right now for her loud crying. Even though really they are just painful screetches.

It is a strange thought, isn't it? A metaphorical child inside me. I like to think that when she cries she is just shouting at me, saying, I have no strong bones, I have no permanent teeth, I have no unique face yet. I am only a couple days old, I spend most my time asleep, and I have not one thing. My human-ness has no liquidity. It is impossible to be angry at me.

Isn't that the catch with a child, and wasn't I once one? Did my mother not think this way? Is it easier to deal with monsters than with babies?

I think yes actually. With a monster, there is only so much consideration to bear. Wouldn't we all treat it the same way if we anticipated its arrival? Put it in the cage, beat it if it gets loud, and understand that their suffering is well deserved, they are only hurtful after all. A child you must love, they are too innocent and need too much protection. I knew growing up that my parents were busy people, so I guess I do understand why I was mom and dad's monster. Convenience, that's all.

I suppose it is also convenient for them that I don't hold out hope anymore or reach out for love. The monster has escaped, but it won't be coming back. Good riddence.

I feel terribly guilty about my obsession with marriage, but I defend it all the time. Breakups, old friendships, and most of all my parents have taught me that nobody is tied to me by anything. They can decide one day to just get up and walk out of your life, it's almost too easy. It is a thought so devastating that I cant move. Since I was a kid, I always thought marriage was the complete assurance of permanence. How could it not be? It is the biggest act of love and with enough of it, there isn't even really a requirement for any fanciness. It's not like I am trying to replace lost love with new love. It's more so wanting some permanent love. Some permanent anything. A foundation. Like a heart house, where I feel home enough to see myself in, a house which I don't have to worry about losing because the mortgage is all paid off. I don't know if anybody else feels this way, I don't know if I want them to. I don't know why I do. I hope you all grew up in a home where you felt at home, without it, the whole thing is the hard part.

I thought that life could be very easy today if I just memorized my day in advance. I spent all of last night rehearsing a plan for what I would do today. The plan was to take a long shower, spend time doing my hair, put on a cute outfit, and sit in the grass taking pictures of myself and reading. We live in such a mechanical time, you get to pick a side in politics, religion, feminism, and stick to those attitudes and principles until a wave of better ones washes them out. We fight over them, we get defensive over them, it is all so extremely functional in a sense that there is no need to question your inner layer of thought. I love the mindlessness of planning, we can leave it all to the scientists and politicians. There is little need for inner consciousness or even a moral code.

But this is still life. There is terror, there is war, there are fights and there is sadness. I thought I had killed my inner critic with my bare hands, I thought I didn't give a shit about my parents. But when it all overcomes you, what is there to do except visit the grave without flowers?

You know I have no idea what my mom's current address is, and I don't think I ever knew my dad's, I thought that would make me happy, and on most days it does. But today is Father's Day, and it's effects are making me sentimental and sad about all the wrong people. I wish I had given myself the perfect day. I began to, but soon my heart collapsed. I didn't do my hair, I didn't put on a nice sundress, and I did not leave my apartment. I spent all day crying in the living room because the windows there felt like the only company of friends I had. Then I put on a lot of makeup, so Drew didn't think I spent my day crying and being pathetic while he had a lovely day with his incredible father.

Mom, dad, I feel so alone. I wish I were a toddler in a playground that could come running towards you as you sit on the park bench. I would be covered in mud and grass and give you hugs and maybe go biking or grocery shopping.

When I actually was a toddler, none of that actually happened. I am not reminicing, I am fantacising.

I wish toddler Vaibhavi could fall asleep in the back of the car instead of being worried that one of you would get angry and hurt me if I let my guard down. I wish I also had a cheesy Instagram story up today or somebody to even send an obligatory text to. My mom called me today and joked about how pathetic today must be for me. It is, mama. I didn't think you would be right. Day to day is easier if I never think any of your words are right.

I hate being in this body in this specific life, but it's not like I can send it back, so I wil eat some grapes.

I don't have a nice ending for you, I'm taking a day off from positivity. But hey, here's a drawing I made on top of a picture I took of a bus stop in Syracuse, New York.

[anicekidlikeme]

It's cold, but I brought your Spartan's hoodie along.

When you feel terrible for a very long time, the world narrows. Currently (and for an awfully long time), my time is distilled into neat compartments of nonsense: Am I a terrible person? Am I a liar? Am I bad for the people in my life? Am I really not a liar?, one drawer for each.

I have been sitting with my emotions for so long that the real world seems like a whole different place. A world where people have lunch, enjoy a sunny day, have silly fights with stubborn partners, complain about how their back is screwed, exercise, talk about the weather, drink too much wine. I have sought many distractions to postpone admitting to my out-of-touch-ness, so much so that I even spent an evening thinking fondly of my mother. How many times had I looked over at her and thought harshly of her methods? Was it all warranted? Almost each day, and yes, but doubt underscores any and all rationality. This guilt is by design. Once my mother made incisions on my body because she hated it so much. I felt like everyone in the world could see but never said a word, yet still when I recall these memories, my brain shrieks Vaibhavi, you are so full of shit.

The only thing that is helping me keep one foot in the real world is my incredibly grounding Drew. There are instances where the things that happen to him are perfect recreations of my past. I don't know why, but it is so much easier to point out the unfairness of life when it happens to the people you love. Terrible words being said to Drew feel so much more terrible in comparison to when they are said to me. I lived so much of my life just trying to not make things worse that I forgot to go back to myself: my feelings needed me then, so did my body. I cry on behalf of Drew everytime I think about all the things that have gone wrong during this awful month, and I refuse to give up my sentimentality. To me, crying is one of the last genuine and pure act of self expression left, because it is inate. The wonderful people I give my love to deserve all the best things in the world, so yes, I will cry when they are disrespected, put down, and under-estimated. I do not want anyone to feel the way I do. But unfortunately, I crave my outward expressions too. I crave large servings of wine, coffee with my friends, enjoying a donut, laughs with Drew, long naps, looking at the trees move with the breeze, sitting in the park, lovely lovely food. I crave it all, I cannot help it, I wonder if Drew feels the same way.

This month, some very cruel things were said about and to me. I haven't been going to bed on time because of this, I think about things just a little too long, long enough to make my stomach hurt. When she was mad, I remember my mother's face going red with anger as she screamed about how I was just like my father. My stomach always hurt hearing that too. Recently, I heard those exact words, with that exact same fury, said by somebody else to somebody else. I threw up. I wonder how someone can say such things on a sunny day so beautiful that you can see the birds eating out their feeders straight from your porch. I wondered that about mom as well. When winter comes, the soil becomes so dry and ugly. When it passes, the soil still must heal while the frost just carries on and waits for it's next turn. What a cold thing to do. It is May now: today was somewhat gloomy, but the sun came up eventually and the soil looked good. I remember now that nothing in life is linear, and my god is it frustrating. I was wondering if it would be better if I were no longer in Drew's life. I keep saying I may be cursed with the ability to cause problems for everyone I encounter. He doesn't deserve that. I kept thinking about it over and over again, because people were saying it to me over and over again. Am I cursed? There is a huge pit in my stomach now. What if he gives in to the noise and there is no more us? It hurts. I am angry. I am angry at people who are making me feel this way. I think this anger is very healthy, I don't want my 11 year old self to think I am alone, despite having the kindest human to love.

I wonder about the last time I felt simple, uncomplicated joy. On Sunday I was at a beautiful wedding. I drank a glass of wine sometime during, and I almost saw the answer. I closed my eyes for a second and saw the image of us in bed every night with my paintings surrounding the room. Drew welcomes me into our blanket, we adjust our feet, stack them on top of one another, I scroll on my phone for a bit and feel him drift off. Eventually I give in and go to bed in the nook of his back. In those moments I am perfectly, uncomplicatedly happy. We do this every night.

The truth is, I never want to leave this relationship. It sounds childlike, but I really don't. And I hope it doesn't leave me. I want to find a way out of this mess so that we can continue daydreaming about homes, gardens, pools, and weddings. Just like the other stupid people in love do. The journey feels so long today, but when I am there at the destination, it will be beautiful and I will be okay. The weight of having a heart is carrying a thousand tiny problems along with your stack of joy. It is a heavy weight. Someone I know is having relationship problems, I cannot imagine the pain of the to breakup or not to breakup dilemma anymore, because there has never been a chance I wanted to leave Drew. To remind myself of that, today I put on a Michigan State University hoodie. Dark green, says the word Spartans across it. I was wearing it for three days straight when we almost broke up. I haven't had the courage to even look at it until today, infact I had burried it deep inside Drew's closet so I am never reminded of those three days again. But actually, I thought about them today, and where we are, and how our love has grown so tremendously from there. We were really able to find ourselves with each other. I thought it would be cold forever. It's not. The sun eventually hits your back, and it feels great. To whatever religious entity actually exists, I can't help but pray that it all works out. I do not want to live in this sorrow and I do not want our relationship to feel conditional on anyone's approval. Three's a crowd, and there is only enough room for the both of us.

What do I do with this pain? for now, I don't know. But I know it won't be cold forever. I have an incredible partner, and the most loving friends in the world. I live for them, and I live for me. So I guess I am giving myself an invitation to take a deep breath. Here is a picture I took of the soil. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. One day my tears will become big rain clouds and my bones will help the soil heal and somebody else can watch the grass grow. The sun will hit their back, it'll all feel so wonderful. Law of conservation.

[anicekidlikeme]

All of this communication, but is it really worth jack shit?

Last week was painfully long, this week is off to a crappy start, and Drew pissed me off today. I don't think it's entirely fair to call this a fight, so, I am calling it Vaibhavi's shut-down time. Shut-down periods usually coincide with the shy little feeling that I am being stretched too thin. I am known to hate it.

I'll be honest, life has been so fucking excruciating recently. I have received an influx of opinions these past few days, more than you could think to count, and they all echo in my head in the form of painful, nonstop voices. Do I not fulfill all your expectations? Am I doing enough? Am I a liar? Do I enable bad habits? Am I the problem? I know the answers. There is a girl inside of me and she is so little and so scared but she knows enough to scream, this is all so terribly wrong. I fail her so many times. My therapist tells me to think of my pain as a little baby who lives in the heart. When a baby cries, you don't think to question why, scold her, or point an angry finger. No, it's a baby. All you can do is hold it tenderly.

I must not be very motherly, because I seem to be doing all the steps wrong. I fear I am cold, bitter, too mean. I also fear that everyone else thinks so.

I know it's okay to be hurt and I know it is okay to feel this stabbing one-of-a-kind pain when you are hurt by somebody you love. I know it's all okay, but I can't help feel a little shame for being so angry. It wouldn't be such a big deal on any other day, or maybe it would be. I don't know if this is a product of an especially shitty day or me being an especially shitty person. But right now, my pile of life-shit is starting to run out of room, so I am letting myself think that on a blank slate this would be no biggie. But it was. And it was piled up on top of my life-shit.

For his work, Drew has to spend a lot of time outside. I come with him whenever I can, mostly to watch him work but also to look at the grass before it gets a summer's trim. We were having an evening that was so perfect that I had entirely forgotten the million things that have been worrying me. And then it was 1,000,000 + 1. Why? Over absolutely fucking nothing. He said nothing wrong and he did nothing big. I hate when that happens. The most irritating part about being wrong is knowing post-outburst that all your words were just reactionary forces to your insecurities. Here are mine:

I remember how much I treasured my first real boyfriend after it was all official. It wasn't love, but I really enjoyed his company. I had someone who would say nice things to me when the world was shut down and nobody could go anywhere. It was a pretty sweet gig until the pandemic thing blew over, and I had to date him for reals.

When we started having sex I was terrified that it just wasn't enough. In fact, I was one of those post-sex crybabies the first time. The crying absolutely stops, but the feeling lingers. Have you seen my body? Some days I look at myself and think ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. It is unbearable. Of course I cried, I couldn't stand feeling so seen. I thought sex will never be good for either of us because I am just so hopelessly terrible-looking. With how it all ended, I am sure we don't have very many kind words to exchange. I ran into this ex a couple times last year, and it felt alarmingly silent. We both happened to be developing film at the same time. I stole a quick look at his pictures, they were much better than mine. We did not speak. The second time was on the bus. This time I waved. No wave back. Mr. perfect-looking-film, if you are reading, that made me a little sad. I was stressed when you made me feel so seen and I was stressed when you didn't see me at all. I have heard many stories about him the past couple years through the grapevine, mostly about dumb college fuck ups. No words are ever useless, so I hope it's worth something that I never believed any of them.

A cousin who I love so dearly asked me the other day how I did and do this. How do I deal with anger towards my body? When do things get better? Should I start working out? I wish I could give her a blueprint. Instead, I told her to ask my boyfriend for a healthy-non-destructive diet and workout plan. I don't know if I did the right thing. How the fuck would I? The disgust I feel towards my body has been able to journey from there to here: a quiet calm place where I don't think about my stretch marks and my small shitty butt all day, but it took a lot of time. I fucking hate when I disrupt that peace for myself, which has been often lately.

I can make myself feel so undesirable with my what-ifs. What if when someone thought of the perfect body they thought of me? What if I was someone's dream girl? What if I was the first pick when you have to think of good examples of sexy sultry perfect women with perfect butts? It would be nice, big whoop.

I have yet to sort that out, so when the pain comes back, I pick her up, whisper shh shh shh in her small beautiful ears, and wait for it to become easy again. My little heart baby's face is often red from all her tears. But life can only be understood backwards: maybe one day I will write about my happiness and realize that my baby is calmy resting.

My other big insecurity is my mouth. A new, long-term stressor was at its peak recently, and I had to go on a different medication to help my brain work it out. The medication makes my teeth rot. I am so resentful of this stressor, but I never dare say the things I want to. I can never be unfiltered about this one part of my life. But they are the worst. I never want to smile anymore, I am scared Drew will notice my rotting teeth and my rotting gums. It's bad enough that he has to deal with this body.

My dearest novelist Dostoevsky maintained the view that being in hell is simply the suffering of being unable to love. If I didn't have Drew, this loathing would surely feel like hell. I want to be the first option, I want to be the example, I want to be desired, and I want to be so beautiful that there is no room for comparison. I wonder sometimes why it is that we hurt each other so much, often with so little intention to do so. If I am holding my crying baby, who is holding me? I wish my pain was a visible, vibrant color that you could see forming on my chest so that I never had to communicate when I needed gentleness. Asking for it makes me feel so full of shit. I think I needed it the day of Vaibhavi shut down time. I should have said so, but I was static set on being okay. Obviously I wasn't.

I hate my voice most of all.

I once had a father. Now I do not. But when I did, my family would fight a lot. My mother, her brothers, my grandma, and him had a tendency to loudly regurgitate their problems over and over and over till the sun was down. Their most prominent problem was the one childlike child they had, and were stuck with. Those fights were mostly just a blur of accusations about my being, how it was a huge mistake. It began when I was 5. She doesn't even know how to do this! And all she does is beg for help with her fucking voice. She's half you after all. I heard this half-you half-me bullshit until I left, it made me feel like I had no good halves to me.

My father made the most horrifying impressions of my voice. Like it was so ugly and shrill that the only way to shake off the physical discomfort of my sound was through mockery. I remember it well. So punctuated, so loud, so painful to hear. Repeating everything I have ever said. Every "Why?" I'd ever uttered, every excited babble, every discovery I made was always turned into an impression when it was wartime. My voice became a constant reminder of their unhappiness. One day my mother choked me because she couldn't stand my voice. I used to collect tea cups. My uncle shattered them all because he was that agitated by my talking. Even as I write about it now, I feel the familiar ache of my heart shriveling up. It hurts. So now, years later, someone repeating my words in a joking tone (even if it is with the sweetest of intent) leaves me shivering and angry. The fear of their mocking, even in its absence, makes me want to shrink into myself. So yes, leaving India wasn't just about distance; it was about escaping the echo chamber of my ugly childhood. It has happened with Drew a few times, and my words come off much sharper than I intended. I said to him this morning, why are you being so mean? stop it.

Am I? No Drew, you never are. You are so bright, and I am so dimly lit sometimes that I don't know how to respond to your awesome boyfriend-ness, so I get frustrated. My mother says to me, सुंदर ही तो प्रेम करता है (only the beautiful find love). I have been feeling so ugly lately Drew. Inside and out. There seem to be so many reminders that what I am is simply not good. None of them come from you, I know that. They shouldn't matter, I know that too. There's just so many of them. So many. I don't understand it. Why this? Why now? Why so much of it? I hear it all in my head, all this screaming. I have been trying to make sense of the recent days with the Socratic method (once again, the ex-philosophy major never escapes me). True wisdom comes from self reflection, but what if my view of the self today is rooted in every minor criticism? Should I keep self-examining? It seems like I am shit out of luck there. Should I try to find out why I have become this green dumping ground? What the motive is behind these stressors? My candid opinion is that these stressors are abusive assholes with great expectations: for people to stay on the path they have paved. It has to be the only one, because it is the one where they are most needed. Often that means letting them be the protagonist while you are stuck being the fuck up. It's a cruel, controlling fuckfest. And it is quite literally killing me. If one more person mentions to Drew how there are so many problems, me being one of them, I fear I might just pull all my hair out.

But there is no pain that love cannot fix, and there has never been a pain Drew hasn't taken away. I know I will feel pretty again, I know things will slow down. I do. To reach the summit, you have to work through all the yucky shit first. And it is so lovely to share a yucky shit-pile with someone who loves you. So maybe I do believe in the infinite connection we share. And maybe this connection is for all humans, a form of practical liberation. I feel more complete now, and I think it's because Drew might be my good half. Life is half me half him now, and he is a great great great half. It is so relieving to have somebody to love. This feels like a very phony way to end, so i'm going to try to conclude every post with a picture now. It might not stick, but it's a start.

[anicekidlikeme]

All mom's annoy the shit out of me.

I like to read Dostoevsky to remind myself that nuance exists. Nobody writes like the Russians. As I made my way through a shabby English translation of The Idiot, I came across a section that made my afternoon more filled with thought.

"There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.”

I have been thinking recently about the importance of communication, and I've concluded that I have too hedonistic an approach towards this whole "reaching out" bullshit. I am constantly neglecting people explanations and communication so as to maximize the pleasures of my life. It took me such a long time to realize that when you become an adult, the amount of explanations you owe are absolutely zero. And I fucking love it. But it wasn't always like that. I have this memory from when I was young. My upstairs neighbor had come to visit to share that her son had gotten engaged. I think she was a math teacher or something. Some sort of teacher for sure. My grandmother entertained her until my mom came home from work. I was silent. I remember my mother entering through our brown door. I remember how she used to wear a button-up and trousers with her long hair and her black glasses. And here begins my pondering. I always loved how my mom dressed for work, I truly thought she was so fucking cool. But I never did tell her. I know I focus a lot on nitpicking the negatives of my mother, but actually there have been an overwhelming amount of times in my life where I completely admired her and felt it wasn't worth the explanation. Even if it was something so basic as her outfits. I admired how she would never smell bad, and how her hair was always perfect. I admired the way she would travel solo, and the way she would fight with my father, and every so often, how she would get the courage to stand up to her own mother. It would never stick, but it was something I admired. I never told her. I find giving appreciation to your abusers to be an overrated sport, and my mom knew that.

I am sure my mom had positive remarks about me at some point that she never told me. I like to think she isn't entirely bitter and cold. But sometimes, you just do not communicate out of fear that one little positive will cause resistance in your established relationship. My mother and I for example, we have a bad relationship. It's not good. And the relationship wouldn't be bad if we talked about the good. So, you just do not let the nuance exist. It is better to say I have a bad relationship with my mother than to say yeah, I don't really know what we have. I like definite, and I love no fallacies. Anyway, that same day the neighbor visited, my mom sat down and talked to her about my independance. I remember she said Majhya mau la kaditch madat nahi lagat. Ti sagla swataha karte, ani mi vicharat pan nahi (My daughter never needs any help. She does everything by herself, and I never even ask). That is the only compliment my mother has ever given me, and the first time I heard it, I had a fucking breakthrough. I realized that while I was spending all this time analyzing our relationship over and over, she had never even thought about it. I was doing all this emotional labor for my parent. My primary caretaker. But I was never able to admit the hurt I felt each time I heard that phrase leave her mouth. Why on fucking earth do you gloat about your un-involvement? I wanted to tell her often just how much I wanted her to be involved, but I never wanted to show that I needed her, because then the only compliment my mother has ever given me would no longer be true. So I watched her live her life and lived mine independantly.

There are so many fucking things that remain unsaid about my independance. I moved to the US all by myself, I left India with two suitcases. I did it. I am so lonely, and it was hard to leave my mom. And we had built our life centering just us two. I felt like I was abandoning her. I didn't know if I could do it. Ir's not as simple as good and bad. There is so much fucking nuance.

I have accepted that for the next few years I will not have a home and I will not know the feeling of having a bad day, and just coming home. I can never just collapse on my couch and let out a deep sigh of relief. I can never just express how happy I am to be home. Because I don't have a home. I have a dorm room, and I have these weird in-between places. I really miss it. I miss having a couch, my own bed, and just a safe, consistent space that I can rely on. But I love my life here. It's so nuanced. Growing up we moved so much that the security of a home was always threatened anyway, but I still somehow know the feeling of coming home. I know it, and I wonder where it came from. I would like to say that it came from my mom, and that we had made a home together in each other's company, but if that were true why the fuck would I be across oceans?

No. That one unfortunately is not so nuanced. I think I first felt the feeling of home when Drew cried to me about being tired. When he talked about just how exhausted he was, I felt so seen. I had ever felt comfort to that degree before. I never told him. We hadn't even had sex yet, how could I? But I knew I finally had a home. And it talked and walked and hugged and made me orgasm so many times with such minimal practice. Here's the un-communicate-able part: Meeting Drew has created a pit of relief in my life. But at the bottom of that very beautiful connection there lives worry. I sometimes doubt that I am Drew's home. It kills me, but it's too weird a thought to tell him. Luckily, he doesn't read much, so here's my analysis of the situation:

I believe Drew and I have been dealt a very similar parental hand. I won't say if it is shitty or not, but make of my opinions what you will. Before I begin, I want to state something that seems to be a very obvious fact. You cannot hate your mothers. They may have a hold on you, they may make your life unlivable, they may make you move far-far away from them, but no matter how hard you try to resent them (which you will), you will always have moments where you think, shit, at the end of the day, that's my mom. You can't escape it and distance is the only answer. I learned about distance at the fresh age of 17 and have spent my whole life since dedicated to making it happen. I cannot help but love her, but it would hurt less to do it from afar. So, I moved. We had a fight right before I boarded my 23-hour long flight. It was over how I had eaten too much candy. She screamed at me, and I didn't hug her goodbye. I like to say it has been three years since I felt the touch of my mother. Hard as it is to swallow, I have never felt it before either. Distance helps you realize that. I am afraid to admit it, but the only touch that has ever felt good is Drew's, who might be in the same situation I was in a few years ago.

As you grow up and really do the being alone gig, I think you start to realize that you never stop needing the support of your parents, you just stop needing the killer methods of support your emotionally abusive parents have drawn up for you. When my boyfriend is depressed, the only thing that does not help is talking about the severity of his past actions, which also occurred during a time of heavy depression. It causes a big magnitude of guilt and an even bigger magnitude of self-loathing. Fucking naturally so. When you hear about all the inconveniences you caused to the people in your life during a time of illness, you ought to feel sorry for that time the next time you're ill. And there is a devastating multiplier effect to this. For all the time people spend woke-ifying the world on mental health, there really isn't much fucking turnout. I find that to be the magnum opus of fuck up's that moms make. So obsessed with mental health but so mentally abusive. Oh, i'm going to make sure you have very limited joy, but oh my god, I just cannot bring myself to understand why you are so depressed? It's a paradoxical error, and it's always the moms who make it.

These cycles of self-haterid, as I have learned, are not innate. Rather, they are built structurally by the people in your life. It's rather simple really. You do not just come to hate your personality unless someone expresses discomfort with your being. Then, they reinforce. Every time my mother saw me struggle, she went silent for about two hours. Then after that began the restlessness. She'd get all worked up about the sacrifices, about the kindness, about all the things she has done for me without getting much gratitude in return. Then came the actual physical abuse. I would think to myself then, fuck, she's so fucking right. She did all this for me, and I cannot stop being sad. That makes me way more sad. But now i'm sadder than when the sadness first began. I am pathetic. My mom has thrown closed-fisted punches at me at times, she has controlled every hobby, every friend, and every social experience I have ever had. She has told me multiple times how she wishes me to die on the street, how nobody could love someone so pathetic as me. Those phrases echo in my head with her exact sound. I can hear them clear as day. That was the structure she built to abuse me, and it was all I knew of life. I worry that in some ways, Drew is in the same shitty boat.

I love her. I love her like she's non shitty and I miss her like she has never done a bad thing in her life. But she did. And she slapped me and burned me and made me. And it hurts. And it makes me cry. And that is part of my magnum opus. These fucking motherhood romanticizers who put on a big show about their parenting, but really are just very angry 50- somethings who control you to feel productive. They make twisted and senseless rules, then break them down, then punish you, then make new rules. Structure! Being a mother is an incredible, selfless feat. You just have to care. I don't think I could do it. So, what do you do when you have these big shoes to fill, but you can't help be a narcissist? And what do you do when that narcissist has been through a cheating-filled divorce and now resents you because you are quite literally the embodiment of that failed relationship? I don't know, ask my fucking mother.

I don't know how many hours of my life I spent hearing about all the similarities between my father and I. I'm not sure how many Drew has spent either. Vaibhavi, don't lie like your father did (i'm not), don't have a drug problem like your father did (mom, I don't), don't be an alcoholic like your father was (i'm not). And the biggest one: do not manipulate me like your father did. My mom could never move past the fact that I was half her and half him. The half him part ate at her. So we had all these ways of life. I had the legs of my father, so I always had to cover them up. I had the nose of my father, that's where the first punch would always hit. It was to ensure I was turning out to be the most un-fatherlike daughter ever. What else could she have done? The woman got cheated on. I can't give her that kind of grace now, but I used to. But really, when you are ill, your methods become harsh, and the crime becomes irrelevant. I never had a drink until I was a sophomore in college. I never did anything bad. Teenagers tell lies, sneak around and hang out with their friends. I didn't even do that. I was too afraid of how lonely she would be that night. Do you know what the funny thing is? It was all for nothing. The crime does not matter, at some point these fucking moms just get addicted to the thrill of having a problem. I am sure that had I been drinking and smoking during my time in India, I would've gotten the same punishment as I did when I snacked too much in the days my mom "banned food". She would still hit me, scream, cry, tell me to go kill myself. God, at least it would have made sense then.

The problem with problem-seekers is that whether it is 10 cigarettes or 10 pieces of jolly ranchers, the problem is always there. The problem is the way they control you. They love the problem, and luckily, it doesn't go away if you control it enough. The problem is relying on you for food and shelter, and it is in their best interest to keep that dynamic alive for as long as possible. Sometimes I think my mother's freakout sessions were just her ways of reaffirmation. Yes! Look at me! I'm parenting right now! I'm selfless, and this is all for the good of my child. Problem-seekers always disguise themselves as solutions people. Mama, why couldn't you have been better?

So, here's where Drew comes in. I fear that he's too deep in the cycle of control. I fear what it does to him. I fear for how long it will take for him to get out. It is the most genuine and earnest feeling I have ever felt. This feeling of fear for a boyfriend I just met. There are so many things I want to say to him, but don't because I cannot stand being that girlfriend. But, I'll speak candidly now. This is my space.

Drew, I know what it is like to constantly be the bad guy. I know how much it hurts to always feel full of inadequacies. I know what it is like to feel so distanced from your good times that you can't help but rely on your parents for a touch of reality. I know they are supposed to have your best interests at heart. I am also well aware of how confusing it can be to feel like your parents are an unreliable source of judgment. I know how it feels like to never fully believe that there are good parts in your machine. I know how love can be witheld to gain control, and how affection is always conditionally based on compliance or performance that week. I know your emotions are trivialized. I know the fear of inconsistency when parents start swinging between affectionate and abusive behaviors unpredictably. I know. I know how it leads to isolation too. I know why you sometimes feel discouraged from forming healthy relationships with others, including friends and girlfriends. I know sometimes bad things feel like the only escape. I know it all, and guess what Drew, ditto.

I had the hardest time getting out. I had to realize how dependent I was on the abuser for meeting my social and emotional needs. Your compliance is how they fuck you up. I fear that you are making all these decisions you think are good for you, but they aren't your own choices at all. I fear that you can't distance yourself, and I worry. But the only way out is through. Make meaningful relationships, and understand your needs. Find your normal, and do not feel any fucking guilt in doing it. Drew, I know it isn't possible for you to get yourself out of it now, but I hope one day you recognize that you cannot keep going along with this pattern. I want to shout each time at you. If I could, I'd scream don't fucking take it. Don't take it! Enough! Stand up for yourself. Imagine a physical wall around your self, and resist when somebody tries to enter it when you don't want them to. Protect yourself. Shout! yell! stand up for yourself! fight. It kills me. It hurts, I get so angry. It just kills me. I think of how long it took me to stand up for myself, and I know how long it might take. Drew, I don't think I am your home. I think it is your mom. And I have never told you, because you'd laugh at how ridiculous it sounds. But consider why it is so hard to leave. Not financially, emotionally. Consider just how much it hurts each time. And think about why you just keep coming back and letting it happen over and over. Why do you never explain yourself when you are so evidently right? Because you grew up like that, because this is your normal. I know this because it used to be my normal too. It is home, and it is familiar. I just can't fucking say that. There are some things I can never say to you.

But I'm here. And I understand. And I hope you know that it is so beautiful how two people so similar found each other in this great big world. When you are ready to get out, we can get a small, shitty, cheap home. Split the rent to a shitty room. I know I said at the beginning how I can be hedonistic. I maximize pleasure, and seek to minimize pain. It was hard to point a finger to what was causing me this much pain, what it's roots were. You're not going to like finding out either. But now I am with you, and I am here. And the truth is, there is so much pleasure in my life, even amidst all my mistakes and lies. I have practically cut my mother out of my life, and I worked like hell to do it. When your pain is minimized significantly, you'll find slowly that there is no need to rely on addictions anymore. But i'll admit, I fucking hate all moms. The bad one's make me frustrated, the good one's make me jealous.

[anicekidlikeme]

I wake up next to you, and also our lovely morning mess!

It's been a few weeks now that Drew has been sleeping over in my tiny (tiny) dorm room with me, and while I have no straight explaination for why this has been happening, I can't deny myself the happiness of our little living arrangement for the time being.

We have a pretty solid routine: We both spend our days getting all our work done, and he drives here after work. We both take our end-of-day showers, watch a stupid show on my tiny computer, eat dining hall food, and then fall asleep talking in my twinXL bed. I know in writing none of this sounds very appealing, and if the universe magically were to hand us a nice apartment to live in we would both pounce at the opportunity, but for now, there is nothing I would change about our little love-bubble.

Maybe this is a symptom of the honeymoon phase, but it makes me wonder how life would be if we could keep doing this every day, long after I graduate, long after I have a mid-life crisis, and long after my visa expires. Because of our shared messiness, every night we go to bed amidst a pretty substantial pile of trash. I am looking around now, and I see my makeup everywhere, his shirt on the floor, a whiskey glass full of pistachio shells, a single lonely sock wondering where his friend went, and a whole bunch of tissues from my boyfriend's very very snotty nose. My floors are so dirty, and there are pizza-crumbs everywhere I turn. I wake up to some vague arrangement of this clutter everyday, and God do I love it. I would never admit this out loud in fear that germophobia will quickly be discredited, but looking at last-nights mess every morning reminds me also of all the last nights we've had. It doesn't take too long into knowing Drew to reallize why a girl could be so happy to have so many last-nights with him.

I get accused often of gushing about him too much, and admittedly I am always guilty, the part that scares me so much about this with our recent arrangement, is that I have noticed myself growing fonder of Drew with each day. We often talk in hypotheticals about moving to South Carolina once I graduate. He's visited a few times and has been gushing about how I would love it there ever since we first started dating. In my head, there rests a big beautiful box with a collection of my dreams. This one is the sweetest (maybe in part because it is one we share). I have a few other dreams too, and they've all changed shapes to fit into my life with him. That is something else I have noticed. I've been trying to think more about how life would be if those hypotheticals did one day work out. What if we actually moved, got a shitty apartment, and raised cats instead of breaking up in a year like everybody in their 20's does. We could have so many plants, and a nice big couch. What if he proposed and we got married? Gosh, we've only been dating 6 months. How did I get so ballsy?

You know when you date somebody for so long you convince yourself that this may be the luck of your draw? I have known that feeling for so long, without even really liking any of the people I've been with. After I broke up with Peter, I had a long honest conversation with my friends about why I only date men I don't like: it always felt easier that way. You just get through it, and on occasion share a nice cuddle or two. Dating was just something I did because the idea of attachment and emotional intimacy and all of that shit feels so amazing. It's harder to like somebody, and it is so much harder to love them. You have to really let them get to know you, trust them, share your interests with them, be vulnerable with them, think about them, be with them, and worst of all, have meaningful sex. Although pretending I was in love and having meaningless sex with long term boyfriends was very easy, the real deal sounded like the hardest thing in the world. I realized I had thrown away even the most remote possibility of loving Peter after one specific fight. His friend was rude to me, alarmingly fucking so by the way, and I was mad. Boy did I let him know. I remember all his exact words. He said, "Vaibhavi, although I trust that this is your version of the truth, it's not mine so I dont feel comfortable standing up for you. I think it's fine". I know, what kind of fucking liberal bullshit was that? We dated for two years. I loved his family, I loved his cat, and I loved how spending the summers with them satisfied my craving for a perfect nuclear family. They ate together, had movie nights, and kept each other updated through an adorably full shared-calendar. I think that was reason enough to stay. I would sit and think to myself, I've already gone so deep, backing out now would be crazy. What will his parents think? How will they react? I asked those same questions to Peter the eventful morning of our breakup, and he told me not to worry because the truth was, they did not care. He was awfully good at honesty, and I guess he just couldn't understand why someone he thought existed only in the context of him could matter to other people. That was the part that hurt the most, and then 5 minutes later it was fine. I called Atharva, then I called Fawwaz, then I called Will. I cried and I cried (they were tears of joy, actually). I finally got out. I had finally done it. An hour later, I downloaded Tinder.

It turns out, love is the easiest thing in the fucking world. As much as I was dreading it, I have been flipped into a sappy sucker now. With Drew, I feel like I have so much space. He makes space for me to be 100% Vaibhavi. I am allowed to feel shitty, to cry, to laugh too loudly, to eat whatever I want, to be tired. It's amazing. Sometimes I feel as though when I am with Drew, there is a huge big sky that has newly opened up around my heart. It turns out the emotional intimacy thing is not so hard either. Rather naturally, Drew and I quickly fell into a comfortable pattern of being each other's first people whenever there's a story worth telling, or a bad day worth talking about. Love is very very different from anything I have ever felt before. It exists in abundance, and you just kind of do it. As far as meaningful sex is concerned, that shit is the real deal.

This is not to say my relationship is perfect (although I do believe it is perfect for me, I know better than to make bold claims of objectivity). I would never want to minimize the complicated-messy-dirty-ugly parts of our relationship, because they make us so whole that sometimes it is important to sit with them for just a minute. Once Drew and I broke up. I understand why we did, I understand what caused it, I understand why we are back together, and I understand what we must work on. Despite my new-found maturity about that situation, it did still suck, and I almost never really talk about it (although I will make one or two foul jokes about it to Drew). It's like one of those glass jars on the top shelf that you put there because it's not of that much use to you. As time passes, you never do take it out, probably because of a new, more dire fear that it may break if you don't do it just right. Gotta be careful when dealing with glass. But here I am, taking the jar out.

The night it happened, I was wearing his green sweatshirt (that I can no longer even look at), and some stupid leggings situation. I stayed in those clothes for the three days that we were broken up. Atharva told me it was so important for me to shower, but I was scared that if I took the sweatshirt off, then it would mark some definite end to our relationship. Our lovely warm love. The first thing I did after Drew left that night was call him. And I cried. Then I called my friends, and I cried and I cried. I had never felt such pain in my whole life, and I was so confused by why it was that I cared so much? I have been through endless breakups without a scratch, and for some reason my little tinder fling had my heart shattered like I have never witnessed before. I got no sleep, I couldnt eat. I was just so confused by how a person I had no reason to believe would ever leave my life would leave. I had no reason to believe we would not move to South Carolina, and get two cats, and do all this white people shit that we had planned on. And then it was gone, and I couldn't understand. On Valentines day, Drew had given me a card that I treasure more than anything. I had stuck the card to my wall, and saved the envelope it came in, tucking it neatly under my textbooks.

Without disrupting the secrecy of Drew's feelings, the sparknotes version of the card said I love you way more than I have shown, and we have all the time in the world. One day, when I am king of all the lumber, I will give you that same world. The night we broke up, I took the card off the wall, and read it over and over again. I was thinking about how we actually might not have had all the time in the world. Infact, everything around me had started to feel un-ignorable and worryingly finite. Then I cried some more. I was angry, hurt, and understanding what it means to really care about someone. I wasn't perfect about this break up at all, but he was always there for me. I texted him, a lot. Please lets just forget about all this, I am sorry. I cant bear it any longer. I love you. It hurt just to send it. The whole time in my mind I was begging him to please run into me, please come over, please change his mind, please spontaneously decide to make some grand-gesture and come right back. What about the cats we were going to get? I often wonder how it would go down if I was ever the break-upper. Would he stop me? I am too scared to ask him, but a girl can hope.

Unfortunately, I am not wise enough to admit yet hey, this breakup was actually good for us. It helped us realize we need to communicate, and then all our problems seemed silly. It hurt a very deep attachment of mine, and I think it is actually important to respect that. Turns out you are allowed to be hurt, both of us are. I will say though that shit like this happens. We figured it out, and we found our rhythm, and its okay. It hurt, it sucked, it worked out. Talking about it feels like a huge relief. Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author, and I like to revisit Slaughterhouse-Five every once in a while. “All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” All this happened, and here I am now, picking up used tissues from my floor. Loving every moment of it. I wish I was able to vocalize my love more. I wish there was a way to say out loud, I am so in love with you, you bring me back to life. But there isn't, not without being entirely embarassing atleast.

Here's what I will say, I actually do not know what is going to happen, but if we occasionally have to find ourselves out of a dirty, gross, complicated, achy feeling mess, I am more than happy to do it with you Drew. It is nice to sometimes float in a pool of my dreams. It is warm and the water feels good on my skin as I think about us being flabby-fourty year olds, or an annoyingly sloppy couple of 20-year-olds who desperately need to get a room. Whatever time we have left, I deeply cherish it. It completes me, it makes me feel like old Vaibhavi. A pre-daniel version I'd say.

It has been six months. I can hope for 6 million more.

[anicekidlikeme]

My life is a fucking squiggly line.

Today I woke up feeling some unusal optimism about my life. I had a very busy day: studying for my exam, going to therapy, taking the exam, going to class and then office hours. It was all laid out, and for reasons that I won't dare question, I was really excited about today. I put on a rushed outfit. One with jeans. I was wearing jeans. I hadn't for weeks, and I was proud of myself. I go into therapy 10 minutes early, and situate myself in the waiting room, next to my former-campus-crush, who also happens to need therapy every Thursday at 10am. It was all going well.

You'll have to forgive me for any typos I make while writing this, I am devastated, teary eyed, and not a very elegant writer. Eventually, I walk into my therapist's office and start telling her about this sudden happiness. I had my truth conversation with Drew. I'm so proud of myself! The RA knocked on my door again yesterday to see if I was "mentally okay". It was so frustrating!

It took me a very long time to give therapy a chance, and even when I did, I wasn't convinced any of that shit was real. How could I? Growing up, all I heard were pretentious quotes about how mental health needs to be a bigger focus in Indian culture, and all I saw was people doing the exact opposite. It feels so weak to even say the words mental health (it may be the only thing worse than saying I'm depressed out loud). Because of the finite-ness of every emotion of mine, I always logically concluded that everything must pass. And once it has, I just thought you become some sort of happy-prototype (how american-dreamy of me).

But the awful thing about everything is that it never passes. The places I will never go back to are still unchanged, and they just stay there while the grass grows. All these feelings I have too never really go away. They just stay hiding in the back of my brain waiting to jump out when I am not looking. So, I went to therapy. I learned how to get comfortable talking about my feelings, I learned how to resolve them, and I learned how to trust someone with a degree to help make me better.

When I start feeling familiarity, I often do so in the context of surrounding objects. In my therapists office, I had started to feel safe with the trashcan near my chair, with the footrest that was right across from me, and the two paintings right above her brown leather chair. It really is a very comforting space, there's plants everywhere, and it just works. Back to the paintings, the first is of a tall leaf-less tree in the middle of nowhere, but with a strange two-toned gradient of a blue sky. The other is of a flowering cactus of sorts. I am usually very focused on them, and I like them. They help bring me back to my body on days where I am only 11% Vaibhavi. So, here I was, feeling familiar, feeling comfortable, and talking about my feelings.

I signed a confidentiality release last session so that she can reach out to somebody from my college staff to help me with details of my academic and financial life that would only bore you. This session, she brought it up. I know that my therapist too is a person, and I know that she herself has feelings about this confined relationship of ours, but the way in which she approached this hyperspecific fucking situation made me feel like the room had just shattered like glass. I felt confused, alone, accused, and very very unsafe. I wanted to shout at her. I notice as I am writing this that actually I want to shout at a lot of people, but never do. I wonder how it would go if I did, or even if I said I wanted to. Anyway, I wish I would have said to her, what the fuck? I have spent weeks coming in here, learning to trust you, telling you the smallest details about my life in the most truthful way, and here you are, feeling lied to? Just trust me! I really need you to. I did not say that, and instead I cried. A lot. I think a part of why therapy works so well for me is because there are many things in my life that are still waiting to be categorized. Vaibhavi, what happened here was wrong, and I feel for you. Vaibhavi, your body is having a completely normal and healthy response to stress. Vaibhavi, it is okay. I had never heard those sentences until a few weeks ago, and it felt like these labels were making things feel more resolved, more closed-book-ish. Validation is very healthy when you've never had a fucking clue about anything your whole life.

However, as we were talking, I felt a click. A click with which I could feel myself withdrawing. A click with which I could feel like maybe I gave too much of my trust to somebody who is just doing a job they are obligated to do. I don't think therapy is going to work anymore. I don't think it will feel good anymore. I felt for some reason, really really betrayed. I wish I could explain more in detail how everything went down, but if I am being honest, it was too confusing to remember anything besides these leftover feelings I am now writing about.

Maybe therapy is not a sustainable option for me, because I cant shake off the feeling that the more people get to know me, the more definite becomes the timeline of when they will have had enough of me. My social wealth, I have realized, goes through a very specific graphical pattern. Consistently upward at first: this is the stage of discovering new people, loving them, and thinking I will spend the rest of my life being their friend, lover, or I guess client. Then, consistently downward: this is less autonomous. This is when people start getting frustrated (maybe at my antics, maybe at my mindlessness, maybe because I am just too fucking sad all the time), and put distance in our involvements. After this little withdrawal stage, they leave. Walk right out, like I have just been fired from my long term job without warning or compensation. If you were to use these as data points for my life, you would graph a fucking squiggly line.

My life is a fucking squiggly line, and it sucks on days when I am painfully aware of that. What a confusing feeling, to think that your therapist believes that you are a bad person.

[anicekidlikeme]

My mindlessness, my fat nose, and my floppy boobs.

In Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas said that extravagance is impossible (Of course, he meant this in the scope of loving God, the context in its essence, is that there is no moderation to which one can be virtuous. We can never love God too much).

While I am willing to take Aquinas' word for it, I do think of extravagance quite often in the narrow sphere of my life. Maybe I dropped my philosophy major because my interpretation of text is far too simplistic: I tend to think of everything in my own terms, and I can guarantee you that I have some pretty lavish feelings (ones that I am constantly struggling to make less extravagant). I wish everytime I felt something grand, and everytime I thought no, this is too much. These feelings are far too big for my heart , I was able to scream into a void without any shame. I want to fucking reclaim all my feelings (doing it on the internet is a very strange way to go about this).

Today was one of those days where I did not get out of bed until I absolutely had to. Ten minutes before my 10:00 am therapy session, I was rushing to brush my teeth and then bolting to her office. Therapy went well just incase it fancies you. So well that after I was back to my little dorm, I cleaned, showered, and put on my blue sundress. It doesn't suit me, my boobs look too floppy. Remember when everyone in high school made fun of you for that? I thought. It was an extravagantly insecure feeling. After an hour had passed, I walked back into my communal college bathroom to pee, and I saw on one of the sink counters, my green cup that I use as a toothbrush holder.

I forgot my toothbrush in the bathroom, and I realized it hours later. That is all.

But it wasn't all. Infact, it felt like the end of the world. I am so fucking mindless, I thought to myself. It was an extravagantly disappointing feeling.

I first heard that word from my mother. Mindless. I had forgotten to do something, I think, or maybe I got a bad grade on my Chemistry test, or maybe I didn't clean in a way that was upto standard. Who knows. All I remember is her saying Vaibhavi, how can you be so fucking mindless all the time? Do you think about anything? The first time that happened, I cried and I cried. That was my usual strategy. Everytime mom would throw a new insult my way, I'd allow myself one day of preparation. I had a terrible fear of crying because it felt like confirmation that I had been affected by people's actions.

There was never any space for alone time when I grew up, there was always somebody in every room, and always somebody everywhere I went. I was never fucking left alone. So, everytime I found an empty room with an open door, I would run. I would run to the room and slam the door shut as quickly as I could. I would close my eyes and just fucking enjoy being alone. No screaming, no problems. Usually this safe-haven was the bathroom. So, I would turn on the water, and just cry. But there were rules to this crying thing. After the bathroom-cry moment, I could not shed a single tear, and I fucking stuck to it. With every punch my parents threw my way, with every time I was compared to my father, with every crazy screaming session, I would never fucking cry. I've had a few close calls though. Sometimes it would feel like my throat was on fire because I just wanted to scream cry.

I wanted to sob like a little girl back when I was a little girl, and for some reason that was the most embrassing fucking thing in the world.

I remember this one time my mom privately reached out to all my friends from high school and told them not to talk with me anymore because she was worried I was making up lies about my home life after a very serious breakdown. My friends listened to her, and it was the worst I have ever felt. I came back home and as the fight began, I just couldn't fucking help it. I cried. I cried in front of my mother. I just stood there stiffly, no movements, no expressions, and I cried. Cry now, with your fat fucking nose, was what she said to me. It was an extravagantly painful feeling.

I am always fearful while speaking about her, because I do not wish to negatively simplify the very complex person that mom is. She is smart, enduring, angry, sad, conflicted, and in her own ways, caring. I would never wish to reduce her to just our relationship, which as it stands, is very shaky. But she is good, and I can't help that I am protective of her sometimes. She is a good person, just like everyone else is.

I do think sometimes that I am very mindless. This whole moving to America with no money and no backup plan thing is pretty mindless. Maybe I would never lose so many things if I weren't, and perhaps I could focus more on my work in one sitting. Maybe I would never have gotten sexually assaulted if I weren't so mindless. Maybe I would be more careful with my words. Maybe I would be more careful with my actions. It might be too unproductive to think of what would happen if I did not spend all that time practicing heavy emotional control, and just let myself cry in front of my mother all the times I have wanted to. Would she feel regretful? Would her face soften? Would we both try to sit down and talk it out calmly? Would we realize that we have each other? I never protested to any accusations. Back then, that is what felt too unproductive. But it caused me an extravagant amount of rage. Rage that sometimes feels like it has lived in the bottom of my belly for years.

But here I am, with my weird floppy boobs, and my weird fat nose, and my mindlessness still at full force, so maybe it never fucking mattered. I decided when I came to this country that I would drop the act. All of it. But sometimes remanents of the person I used to be resurface in bits and pieces. It sets me back. I wish this didn't happen. But it is okay, atleast I cry now. And while I do still care a lot about who gets to see me cry, I will never try to resist it again. Being sentimental, needing alone time, being angry, being in love, being stupid, telling white lies, they are all part of me (just like they are a part of my mother), and I don't mind myself at all until somebody else does. I am trying not to do that, but it will probably take years. God I wish I was rich and done with this finding-yourself-stage.

Remember Aquinas' theory about the first mover? Nothing moves by itself. To him, the first mover is God (to me it is not). I am probably my own first mover. I am moving around all these old shitty feelings to give them space, acknowledge them, and then hopefully have some new space for happier shit. I think perhaps your parents are supposed to be your first movers. Fill you up with values, lessons, habits. They adjust you into position with comfort and security. They are supposed to move shit around for you so that you are equipped with stability. If my mom saw me in my blue sundress, she would say she hates it.

I strongly dislike feeling sorry for myself. So I will say that doing shit myself feels much more rewarding, and Lexapro totally works.

[anicekidlikeme]

Do you know how I grew up?

Back when I was dating Peter, I was always aware of just how much he would talk (about his accomplishments, about his friends, and different annecdotes). His stories would go far back as elementry school. I hated it. I know that is a horrible thing to even think as somebody's girlfriend (I knew that then too) but at the time getting myself to like the person I was dating felt like a crushing expectation. How am I supposed to love you unconditionally? How am I supposed to love you at all? Your friends are mean, your music taste is okay, and I cannot stand the way you refuse to walk alongside me.

There was a moment when we were walking to Target to buy Kombucha, and holy shit was I pissed off. Peter would walk ahead of me, constantly, and turn around in tiny spurts to tell me to speed up. Could you please walk with me? I know now that love is definately not supposed to feel like that. It is the easiest thing in the world. Drew walks next to me, always. Even if it means having to slow down his pace (often, also emotionally). He grabs my waist everytime we have to cross a road, or everytime I walk into a room I've never been in before. He has incredible patience. I could hear Drew talk and talk for hours, and just keep wanting to listen to even more stories of his. He teases me about how many times in one day I ask him How was your day?! But I just want to hear you talk!

Anyway, a year ago I would think a lot about Peter and I's out of sync walking. It felt like he was ahead of me often. Especially when he told stories. I would sit at the dinnertable with his family and just listen most nights to him sharing annecdotes. About Sam, Adam and Holden, about Miss Gurb from Middle School, and about going to house-shows with Isabella. I would think holy fucking shit, how can you remember all that? How do you have so many happy stories to tell?

The earliest my memory goes to is sometime before 3rd grade when my mom was texting my father on her Nokia, and my uncle had been bugging her all day about selling their Dad's house. I realized then how easy it is to just block out undesirable moments out of your memory. Forget about them completely so they are never to be spoken of, and better yet, never to be remembered. After that, it is a blur. I don't have any stories to tell from growing up, all I remember is how some days felt. There was never enough room where we lived post-divorce, always too many angry people, always too many bugs, and always so many fights in this tiny one- bedroom apartment we shared with 8 other people. My mom told me that I was once in the hospital for 6 months. I had no fucking clue that happened. I still dont.

If I told somebody that I slept most nights of my childhood on a purple straw mat (yes, no bed. not even a mattress), they would probably be so fucking confused. But it is true. And it happened, and it is not a very tell-able tale. Not like Peter's atleast. I am trying to think of other things that happened but I am noticing myself getting fatigued. It's too hard, and there is a big lock on that door. Let's not bother. It is much easier to say Im doing well now. Oh, she sucks and he's dead.

So if you were to ask me how I grew up, I would tell you I have no fucking idea. I dont know how I grew up. Bitter and scary and mean, is probably what my friends from high school would say. Unfortunately, as a result of me changing as a person, I had to quit talking to them. I couldn't find it in me to say, hey guys, I'm in America now so I've decided to be a completely new person. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be this person I was anymore. It's not their fault, and it is not mine.

I am now very emotional (something I was very very afraid of, and am still coming to terms with), very silly, not obsessed with being smart anymore (I'm surprised by that one too), and very very Vaibhavi. Everyone calls me Vai, and I hate it. I want to shout at them, and instruct them to call me Vaibhavi. That is who I am! I am intensely focused now on the memories I make, even if they are bad ones. I dont want to forget anything. I don't want to forget my fights with Fawwaz, or my sick days with Drew, or my secret-spilling sessions with Atharva. I dont want to forget when I had awfully pink hair, or when I was friends with people I hated. I want to have stories, and I love the stories I have now. I am obsessed with getting engaged, because then I will have a family. A family I like, a family to tell stories about when I am asked so, tell me about your family.

A family to love, a family of two. Definately not one with Peter, but I wish him luck. I really do. We are both good people with so many differences, and my hope is that he finds someone to cherish them. I know I did (and god, is Drew a sight for sore eyes).

I have no idea how I grew up, but there was a tent in a balcony. Don't know which one, we have moved too many times.

[anicekidlikeme]

Marina Tsvetaeva, from Epitaph, Selected Poems (trans. Elaine Feinstein, with Angela Livingstone) [ID'd]

[anicekidlikeme]

not to be the guy who stops and admires the flowers but when I go outside. they do draw me in fr fr

[anicekidlikeme]

Fuck you, Mr. Ireland.

What I am about to do feels like opening the biggest box in a storage room full of neatly packed items. I am going to be embarassed, and teary, but it's okay. Telling stories and retelling stories is such an important impulse, and I must set her free. For whoever is able to find this atleast.

I used to laugh so much that my throat would get sore. And I feel like i was a different woman then and I am a whole other one now. Everyone makes such a big show about being sexually assaulted. They call you brave, they say it is not your fault, and whatever else is in the manual of saying all the right things. Touched, ruined, decreased in value are more like the words I would use, but fuck, sexual assault survivor works too. I still cant find the courage to tell my mother, but it is nice to daydream of a reality where she finds out, holds me tight, says its okay and its not my fault. I want her to say she likes me. But that won't happen.

Therapy helps. It's evident. I have come such a long way from not being able to shower for days, not able to leave the home of my then boyfriend, not wanting to eat. God it sucked. I learned nothing from it. And I want to honor that. I left my friends behind just to run as far away as I could from what I thought was a big danger sign with a bomb on it. It's not so graceful wishing ill on someone, but jeez, I cannot fucking help it. You know he's in Italy right now? Or Spain, or London. Im not sure. He could be fucking anywhere and he'd be standing high and mighty, with so much power over me. I truly believe that if you wouldnt wish the worst on your worst enemy, you need worse enemies. This man is my worst enemy, and sincerely, fuck him. I wonder if he thinks I won. I wonder if he did win. My brain fucking trots every day thinking about that. I get so used to feeling bad sometimes I wish I could just lay down and watch everyday pass. Not reacting.

You wouldnt believe how many hugs I have gotten from my friends since that day, but not one felt comforting. It didn't make me go wow, it feels like im ready to put this past me. To start fresh. I set such a strict deadline for myself for when i should have been fully healed, but oh my god was that a stupid idea and a giant failure. I will probably have moments of grief for the rest of my life, and you know what, I want to fucking honor that too. My boyfriend and I were joking around the other day about what the worst crime ever could be. Of course he went with murder, and its no shocker what I picked. I told him so casually, atleast you get to die and it’s all over when you're murdered. With Sexual Assault, you are a victim forever. Sorry, I meant "survivor". Fucking bullshit word.

I am working on it, and everyday is better. But if anyone would like to hold me all day, wow would that be awesome. I could use a full day of being held. For the longest time, I felt such shame asking my friends for help just for me to be able to function normally. They are truly the most patient, loving and generous people in the world. They protected my heart with such gentleness.

I wish sometimes that I had so much money that I could make everything work out for me just the way I wanted. I choose to go back to New York and live in a large large apartment with plenty of windows. I'd ask Drew if he wanted to come. We'd live close to all my friends, and host dinner parties. Enjoy the city (which you can only do with 2 mountains of cash). In a few years, we'd have a kid, and move to the suburbs. I would love to make babies with Drew. They would be so smart, kind, gentle, loving, and talented. I have never felt that way before for anyone (Sorry past boyfriends). We'd start a cute coffee shop together, and live out the rest of our days with no worry.

Im not even close to having that kind of money, but thats okay. To have people in your life that make you want to imagine your whole future with them is so special. There is no way he won.

Fuck you Mr. Ireland.

[anicekidlikeme]

What's a nice kid like me doing here?

What I want to do today is be mad.

I am sitting here full of anger- I feel my feet on the floor, the painful arch of my back, and all the discomfort it causes me when I sit in stiff chairs. In a moment, I know I will start noticing the intensity of my breath. The space around my skull and neck feel like they are filled with hot lava ready to be poured on the first person i talk to, and I just want to cuss somebody out. Fucking shit. fuckety fuck.

Today, I am mad about having no time. I got cranky at my boyfriend this morning because he asked if he could go play golf (which felt extremely bitchy by the way, especially in the presence of his lovely blue puppy-dog eyes). I wanted to shout at him, and say, its a SUNDAY! A Sunday that you promised to spend with ME! Today is your Vai day, and I want Vai day. But I did not. I instead said he should do what he wants, while my little heart was screaming so loudly I want you to want to be with me!! Please don't leave me alone!

After years of focusing negatively on my sentimentality, I have started to find comfort in my moments of anger. That is how you create space for new, happier shit. I used to never let myself feel that, complaining is easier. Whats a nice kid like me doing here? In this fucking shithole I'd think. I know Drew and I will be okay, and I know all this anger will instantly work its way out the minute I see him smile and tell me about how his game went.

Trust me, if you saw how much he works, you would share my desperation of wanting to spend one entire, interruption free, work free, relaxing day just laying with him. But I don't get that this weekend. Although I know we will have so many more weekends together, moments like these cause a sharp spike of pain in my chest. Time sometimes feels so limited. Like, something could happen at any moment and I could lose this warm love we share. I want as much time with him as I can get, and when I dont, it feels like time being wasted. So, I am choosing to waste it on this silly online journal that I have had since 2018.

I don't know if I will ever tell him that, although if I did, he will say Babe! Why are you worrying about that, we have all the time in the world!

Ugh. It hurts, it sucks. I feel bad and lonely. Its alright. Feeling angry is a perfectly normal bodily reaction. I should let myself feel it. We just might have all the time in the world.

I spent the past two hours making sure this little blog got a clean-fucking-sweep. Years and years of feelings, and thoughts, and oh my gosh horrible songs, deleted. Just like that. Gone with fucking time. But it didn't feel so bad (finally, my fear of someone finding a vault of my teenage feelings has been resolved. Now begins a new fear of someone finding a vault of feelings from my 20s).

Drew is the perfect partner for me, and I do not tell him that enough but I sure wish I could go outside and scream it sometimes. DREW!!!! YOU ARE THE PERFECT PARTNER FOR ME!! But I don't usually do the screaming thing, so this is better.

Anger is fine. Fucking duh. My life is filled with so much love and such great things. I can admire how the grass grows, take pictures of silly things, drink a hot matcha, drink an iced matcha, tell my friends I love them, and then go home and have a secret blog. With the way things have been lately, ive been thinking shit. What's a kid like me doing here? In this wonderful fucking life.

Wait till you fucking hear about how school is going.

[anicekidlikeme]

“What is to give light must endure burning.”

— Victor Frankl, from “The Doctor and the Soul,” published c. 1946 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[anicekidlikeme]

“I feel myself shutting down, closing off, like I should tell people, ‘No, we don’t use this heart anymore. It’s too fragile.”

— Courtney C. Stevens, The Lies About Truth

[anicekidlikeme]

“How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five