Under Construction

For the longest time, I didn’t mind being alone. I had a tightly knit, secure family unit I could always count on to have my back. I had a tiny albeit very permanent group of close friends, all of whom I could blindly trust. I never had a lot of people to call mine, but the ones I did call mine, I called them thus so ferociously that I didn’t need anyone else. Sure, I had other friends and acquaintances with whom I’d spend time and enjoy doing so as well. Sure there were more people I could turn to. But this bunch of people who were mine, were sacred to me. If others walked out, I’m sure it would sting a bit, but if one of these people did, I would break. Unevenly and quite grotesquely at that.

When I felt secure and comfortable with the people I had in my life, I didn’t attribute much value to what other people thought about me. I would hear their opinions out, and even reflect on whether their suggestions would add value to who I was, but very rarely would I cling to these opinions and analyse them far beyond what they merited. I would always take them with a grain of salt. This is why even when I was relentlessly bullied all through high school, I didn’t really care. I’d feel some temporary disgust and occasionally even pain but I wouldn’t hang on it, to the extent that I didn’t even find it worth mentioning to my friends. If the girl in the bus thought I was ugly, she could. So what? If a guy in the football ground thought my braces were disgusting, too bad. I couldn’t care less. This might sound extreme and even exaggerated, but this was my truth. I had a very clear segregation between my people and other people and the other people side of the world didn’t really bother me.

In hindsight, this was a very powerful place to be in. To be in a space where you truly care very little about others’ opinions of you is liberating. You don’t go out trying to be like-able. You don’t try to seem approachable or ordinary. You don’t make a special effort to change to get people to like you, because you already have people who like you the way you are and these people seem very permanent. You may have odd qualities about you-quite a few actually, yet you have experienced that these can be accepted and even liked. In this phase of my life, I was made aware of my being a little different quite often but I was extremely comfortable with who I was. I was confident beyond what I can even imagine today. Not a loud, in your face, notice me type of confidence but a silent confidence that was directed inwards. It was an all-powerful armour that was light and breezy. You could say anything you wanted and my soul would be intact. I bared my soul only to my tight knit circle and only they had the power to scar or bruise it.

The thing with having a very small circle of people is that each person in this circle has a massive role to play in who you are as a person, and permanence is but an illusion. I still have complete faith that not one of these people would turn their back on me of their own accord, but they are most certainly mortal. When my father died, a lot of things in my life turned upside down, but the last thing I expected to take a hit was my confidence in who I was. I was but a mere spectator as I watched the identity and strength I had put together piece by piece in my twenty years slowly come undone. I watched as I became more fragile, more easily broken. I looked on as my armour fell apart and my soul which had been far too soft to begin with was now absolutely bare and open to more pain. How incredibly frustrating this was. Of what use was a stupid armour if it disappeared when it was needed the most? Right when I was in the most pain I’d ever felt in my life, it just left and left me vulnerable to more.

I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. Things that wouldn’t even have caused my previous self to pause and reflect had me in tears. The slightest offhand remark and I’d be sent reeling. If a shopkeeper talked to me in a rude manner, I’d wonder what I had done wrong.  If someone told me I’d hurt them, I’d just keep my own feelings about the incident aside and apologize profusely, aghast at having caused another pain. All of a sudden, I hated being alone. I didn’t like being left to my thoughts because my thoughts were dark and filled with gut-wrenching pain. If I was alone too long, my thoughts would start out in unfamiliar territory but always wind up going down the same spiral of agony I’d come to know every inch off and hate with all my being. I didn’t care who I was with as long as I was with someone. Someone, anyone who could bring a conversation to the table, moderately engaging enough such that I could loosen the thoughts that had grown to have such a powerful hold over me, at least for a small period if nothing else. Unfortunately, I was left to my own devices for far longer than I would have liked. Books which could have kept me occupied for hours on end meant nothing to me anymore. I would just sit alone in my room, too weak to go out alone, watching cat and baby videos, reality show audition videos day in and day out, to keep the pain at bay. This wasn’t a very effective plan because the moment I turned my laptop off, the darkness would return, the anxiety and paranoia along with it.

Now here’s the thing about life. It doesn’t pause to send more people into your life after taking a couple away. It doesn’t come and ask you if you’re okay and ready now. It just sends them in anyway and you’re left to greet new people and make new friends when you’re just not ready. It is scary to invite new people in to like and respect you at a point where you don’t even know who you are anymore. This is where you falter and stumble and take a few hits when, again, you’re just not ready. Who are these people meeting anyway, because it certainly is not you? Of course my father’s death isn’t the end of the world, or even my world for that matter. With time, I will build myself back up and the process has most certainly already started, but what happens when you receive opinions about yourself and your Armour is still under construction? What happens when your walls are so terribly low that anyone can just leap over and enter the world you’d once lined with fire? I’ll tell you what happens – You let just about anyone in. Anyone who seems the slightest bit nice, you allow too close to a soul you once held sacred. You hand out massive chunks of power to random strangers to wield over you. You do all this as those who have always loved you look on, in both horror and ever-growing worry, because this is a side of you they have never seen before. They watch you allow strangers to walk in and walk all over you from a distance, as they want you to build yourself up by yourself, because they know that’s how you’d want it. Ever so often, they are tempted to interfere and protect you from the world but they hold back. You know you’re slowing down progress by opening yourself to more pain, but you can’t really put up an under-construction sign and hope that people will wait. People will come and go and there really isn’t much more to be said about it.

I think identifying this is still progress. Identifying that losing one of my tightly knit my-people circle threw me so off balance that I invited strangers in far too easily and too quickly to fill a terrible void. I now know I was walking a tight rope to begin with. The balance was just right, with no scope for loss. As I reflect on the past year of my life, it is all too clear to me. I was too scared to express how I felt in many situations because I didn’t have it in me to face any more losses, however small they may be relatively. I would think twice before expressing anger, disappointment or frustration. I’d pretend to be okay with things I wasn’t okay with. In hindsight, this was yet again a terrible idea because in not telling people how I truly felt, I was setting my standards so abysmally low that people began to think just about anything was okay to say to me. Every time I heard someone say, ’You need to teach people how to treat you,’ I’d think it was a rather arrogant and cliched notion to have, but from my own experiences, I cannot say I hold the same opinion today.

While there are certainly people I’d un-meet if I could and there are some experiences I’d rather not have had, for the most part, this has been a great learning experience. In meeting people with my guard terribly down, I’ve learned things I hadn’t in years of more careful interaction. I’ve learned more about people, their nature and tendencies. I’ve learnt to let go of people, even those I like. I’ve watched some people treat me like I’m made of glass, far too aware of what I’ve been through, and watched others invite me into their lives and leave me waiting at the door. I’ve met people who want to get to know me better, and met others who wonder why I’m telling them about myself when they don’t really want to know. In meeting not some, but all of these people, I think I made progress.

I have to wonder, if this broken- yet aggressively under construction, overtly vulnerable version of me is the most powerful version of myself I’ve ever been, because even in my most confident and happy times, I’ve never quite felt this strong. I’ve never felt this comfortable with tears, both mine and that of others. I’ve never been this open to communication. Above all, I’ve never had this incredible ability to forgive and let go, which I have now.