I’m Not Needy, Right?

And other titles for my autobiography. Inspired by this post by Mari Andrew. (Go look at it. Go. I’ll wait.)

• Apologising to luggage – A memoir
• Angst, ennui and liquid eyeliner
• 'Sorry I couldn’t make it' and other lies
• 'But first, Laundry' - A girl’s guide to procrastination
•  How to throw a tantrum to get out of yoga
• Panic (attacks) at the Supermarket
• 'I've already finished this jigsaw puzzle'
• 'Are you going to eat that?'
• Mum says I have other skills
• Tell me I’m not needy

The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains.. (and other things)

Disclosure: The title is misleading. This post has nothing to do with Neil Gaiman. Or what I'm sure is a fantastic book. 

The other day I had a proper deep and meaningful convo with the most amazing lady. We were discussing shared life experiences and I said (*cough* complained *cough*) that one of the biggest challenges in losing a spouse when you’re 25, is that people your age have no idea how to deal with that information. So you learn to never talk about it, not even by accident. I said to her – “I hate that my ‘truth’ makes people uncomfortable and that I’ve had to craft a new ‘truth’. Something a little less intense, a little more palatable and less “feeling-y”.” And she said to me, “You know Sheryll, you cannot expect others to be comfortable with your ‘truth’ until you are comfortable with it yourself."

I really, really did not like hearing that. Because face it, I f*cking hate my truth.

Six years ago, I clung to the hope that by 2017, I would be a strong, confident woman who is comfortable with herself and aware of her self-worth. Someone who has a trailblazing career because she’s not afraid to take risks. Someone who let herself fall in love again because that’s what the truly brave do. Someone who is fit and healthy because she knows how short life can be. Someone with real depth and maturity who does not shy away from messy emotions.

Lol.

My stand-out achievement in the past year was today, when finally at age 31, I got the barista to spell my name correctly. (I’ve been going there every weekday for the past 6 months. And I spell my name out every single time. One time, they thought my name was “Shart”. It was a whole thing.)

Running away from my feelings is literally the only cardio I ever do. I actively move away from any memory of Rajeev (notice how it took me 4 paragraphs to even mention his name? That’s mad skillz, brah.) I don’t have any pictures of him around the house. I have a badge from a hen’s party I went to in 2014 that has “Hoochie mama” emblazoned in pink glitter, but not a single photograph of my dead husband. I have a job that I love but definitely does not require a two year Masters’ degree. My one goal for 2016 was to go on ONE date. Let’s just say, I have had to relax my timelines a little bit.

So yeah, my truth right now is a bit of a bummer. It’s not all bad, of course. There are some positives. But today is 6 years since he died and honestly, it’s ok if my truth is a garbage bin on a hot day. The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that you have one, right?

Man, I hope Step 2 has cupcakes.

Oh Hai

Hello my pretties.

It’s been a while. I know. I wasn’t planning on coming back either. But then I met an old friend over Christmas. She told me her story and another story which changed my mind.  In the 5 and half years since Rajeev, I never ever thought my blog would have any impact on anyone. I wrote for purely selfish reasons. Because I was tired of the blogs I found online. Because it helped me deal. Because I could.  But to learn that my self-indulgent streams of consciousness helped someone else deal with their losses? Wow. That is an honour and something I am so very, very grateful to have been able to do.  

I know it sounds super pretentious, but hear me out.

I find it difficult to read anything about loss and grief. Because the way you feel that loss is so specific. I HATE it when people say they know how I feel. Sure, they may have lost a loved one too- a spouse, a child, a pet, a hairbrush. And I am sure it must hurt. A lot. But to say that they know how I feel? That’s rich. Really? Do you know how it feels to slowly forget how your husband smelled? Do you know how it feels to know that you cannot replicate that combination of soap, hair mousse, Chapstick, cologne and Bangalore pollution? That it is something that is lost forever? That this smell, like so much of your past life, added up to much more than the sum of its parts? It’s hard to relate to another person’s loss. Because like I said, the loss is so specific. But also, that specificity is what makes your relationship special.

So, considering all of that, to know that something I wrote was in some way relatable to someone who is dealing with something similar, is just astounding. Dear anonymous friend. I hope you realise how much I treasure this.

So what have I been up to in the past few years? Let’s see. I graduated business school. Got a job. Hated job. Left that job. Got a new one that I still love even 2 years later. I’m renting a flat with my best friend with whom I get Thai food every Sunday and hi-five whenever we let out a particularly resonant burp (we’re classy that way). I own furniture that I actually like- namely, a sofa that is as ugly as it is comfortable (i.e. VERY) and a standing mirror that I painted neon orange because #yolo. I lost 15 kilos and went on exactly 4 dates. None of which went past the extremely awkward conversation stage, which taught me a very important lesson – That just because you ‘look’ better, doesn’t necessarily mean that you ARE better (more on that later). I gained those 15 kilos plus a few more, and took up the ukulele (because why not). I’ve become more assertive and yet somehow even more emotionally stunted. I get very weird and unpredictable around March (Rajeev’s birth-month), June (the month we got married) and July (the month he died). I still don’t know what sets me off and what calms me down. In some ways, I’m doing better and in some ways, I’m worse, but hey it’s all about balance, right?

Until next time.

XOXO

Things I know for sure... well, kinda

It’s 3 am on a Thursday night and I can’t sleep. So I decided to get out of bed and start writing. I haven’t really written for over a year so yeah, things are a bit rusty in this here cranium but hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right? 

Yes. So. It’s 2014. I’m 27 (and a half. Shut up Bob!). A lot happened in 2013 and yet it felt pretty uneventful.  365 days of change and yet somehow the ‘sum of my parts’ still feels the same (and no, this is not a fat joke). 

But oh well. The most I can say is that I learned quite a bit in the past few years. Some were monumental and others were trivial but they were all fairly nifty nevertheless. So in honour of nothing in particular, here are thirteen things I’m fairly certain about.  

1. It’s nice to have a passion. I haven’t found mine yet, but I suppose searching is half the fun.
2. It is nice to have a quest. Mine is to find the perfect macaron. I’m not slaying dragons or curing cancer, but I’m getting out of the house which, for right now, is pretty darn good enough.
3. Sometimes people are jerks. They can be mean-spirited, vindictive and spiteful. But not everyone and not all the time. 
4. And sometimes, just sometimes, YOU are the bad guy. But again, not to everyone and not all the time. 
5. Allowing yourself to unselfishly give and receive love is quite possibly the single best thing you can do for yourself. It may last a day, a year or a lifetime, but nothing beats knowing that you have the capacity to care. Sure, you’ll probably get your heart broken. So it’s a good thing that the heart is a muscle with some regenerative ability and not a delicate crystal bird hidden in a cage made of unicorn breath. That being said, I will also have to admit that it isn't easy. I don't know if I'll ever be able to really feel like that again (although I would like to). But whether I eventually do or not, it's nice to know that I once did. And it was worth it. 
6. It’s OK to make mistakes once in a while. You don’t need to have the perfect GPA, the perfect job or the perfect relationship. Perfection is fleeting, but perseverance and resilience? Those stick around. (Heh. Word play ftw! )
7. Don’t let anyone kid you- your past WILL influence your future. But the good thing is that you get to decide how. 
8. When in doubt, pee. You will rarely regret it. 
9. Faith, like love or patience, is not a fragile piece of glass or a well that can be emptied. It’s a muscle. So make like Britney and work... bitch. 
10. Gratitude. It helps. Sometimes when I’m really bummed out, like ‘it’s 2 am and I’m completely out of chocolate’ bummed out, I like to sit down and make a list of things I’m thankful for. Sometimes it’s barely half a page long and sometimes it goes on for pages and pages. I always, always feel better afterwards. 
11. It also helps to have a sense of humour. I don’t always, but I have found that the cringe-worthy times I was able to laugh at myself are the times I don’t mind remembering.
12. There is a fine line between taking yourself too seriously and taking yourself for granted. When you figure it out, call me. I may need a workshop or something. Seriously. 
13. And lastly, family comes first (Hah! Word play part deux!) No one will stand up for your or stick around like your ‘famille’, so cherish them. Plus they often come with cake. And everyone knows- Cake gooood.

One Day

One day I’ll forget how your first step in preparing for a road trip was setting up a decent playlist.

One day I’ll forget that I was the only one allowed to mess up your hair.

One day I’ll forget how handsome you looked in that sherwani.

One day I’ll forget our first ever phone conversation.

One day I’ll forget how excited you’d get by my domestic accomplishments.

One day I’ll forget how you made me listen to Dream Theatre for two continuous hours.

One day I’ll forget how long you’d take in the shower.

One day I’ll forget our mad dashes to Corner House for Death by Chocolate.

One day I’ll forget how we laughed uncontrollably that one night we got lost and missed our exit for the third time.

One day I’ll forget how silky your hair was.

One day I’ll forget that day when you were working from home and I called to ask you to buy curry leaves. It was a hot day so you bought Sprite. You decorated the dining table with the curry leaves, Sprite, and my favourite chocolate. And in the centre was the Bulgari perfume I had wanted for the longest time but didn’t ask because I thought it was too expensive.

One day I’ll forget how you’d stand in that S-shaped slouch.

One day I’ll forget how we both wore black and listened to old DT songs that day Mike Portnoy left Dream Theatre.

One day I’ll forget how much you laughed when you found that hideous dragon t-shirt of yours I was trying to hide in the lower shelves of your cupboard.

One day I’ll forget how you’d watch the Kardashian show with me even though you hated it.

One day I’ll forget how your eyes curved upwards at the ends, just a little, like your mother’s.

One day I’ll forget how much you loved that electronic drum kit and how frustrated you’d get with the lag.

One day I’ll forget how much fun it was to go grocery shopping with you.

One day I’ll forget how good you always smelled. Like a combination of soap, deo, hair gel, Chapstick and that perfume I got you for Christmas.

One day I’ll forget your tiny, tiny canine tooth that made your smile so perfect.

One day I’ll forget how we watched Pink Panther on your phone that Christmas in Pune, huddled on the most uncomfortable metal beds ever.

One day I’ll forget how you always carried Chapstick in your shirt pocket.

One day I’ll forget how much you laughed at my ‘Kabootar’ story.

One day I’ll forget how we’d slow dance to Foo Fighters.

One day I’ll forget how you pretended to be surprised with the birthday cake I baked at 6 that morning.

One day I’ll forget how we’d always forget to take sweaters to the airport and then huddle together for warmth.

One day I’ll forget how you always made the best tea and Nutella sandwiches.

One day I’ll forget how you believed that I could do anything.

One day I’ll forget how much you loved me.

One day I’ll forget how much I loved you.

But not today.

Not today.

Random Ramblings II

Hello my pretties.

Today’s exactly four months since I first arrived in Sydney. Sometimes I feel like I've been here forever and sometimes I feel like I've just landed. But it’s been a great 4 months. I never knew you could fall in love with a city, but I sure did. We have two weeks to go before the semester officially ends and our finals begin. Assignments, deadlines, and a general lack of income aside, college life is just grand.  Much has happened in the past months but it is 1:45 in the morning and I'm lazy. So here are some stray observations:

1. The weather in Sydney is crazy. It supposed to be spring now but I'm not really sure. It was 34 degrees on Sunday and then 9 degrees on Monday. It’s fun to see people be so stubborn about the weather though. Two months ago, in peak winter, 9 degree weather meant thick coats, stoles, boots, and cap. But this week, all we wore was a light jacket. (Coz its spring foo!)
2. The women here are GORGEOUS. Tall and slim with beautiful Blake Lively hair. It was first quite disconcerting to me especially since the best thing you can say about my looks is that I have a nice personality.  Then I chopped of my hair so now I look like crap on purpose. Wee.
3. The entrance to the Central Station tunnel smells like manure. Not pee. Not poo. Manure. I don’t understand. Are they trying to grow vegetables in there? 
4. I've started saying ‘Jeez’ a lot. I really should stop. It’s not pleasant when I suddenly blurt it out when I'm talking to people at church. These guys are really “on fire for the Lord”. I'm there for the free soup. 
5. Darling Harbour is quite literally my most favourite place on Earth. It’s barely a 1.5 Km walk from my place. My perfect evening involves walking to the Harbour and watching the sun set. I'm usually accompanied by a Starbucks Caramel Hot Chocolate (it tastes like liquid Quality Street chocolates!) and an awesome playlist. (In other news, I have not lost a single kilo.)
6. I have accidently ingested octopus. Note to readers: When asked about what’s in Takoyaki, do remember that people are more interested in the octopus part than the tofu part. I'm not the biggest fan of either. But I do like sushi. And of course, by sushi, I mean cooked tuna and avocado rolls.
7. In August, we had this Clubs Day, where different university clubs put up stalls and you could sign up for whatever you liked. I joined the Chocolate Society and Amnesty International. Mainly because they had a chocolate fountain and a goodie bag. I also joined the choir and the book club. Then I quit the choir. For now at least. 
8. Postgrad studies is not a joke. We have 3 hour lectures for each subject once a week. So with only 4 subjects a semester, you’d think this would be a breeze. But nooo. We have 16-30 page papers to read before each class and then we have 15-page essays to write for each subject. When we whined about our essay topics in class, our professor just said, “Welcome to post-graduate education”. It’s rough, but I love it. My favourite professor looks like Santa and swears like a sailor. On the plus side, I can now appreciate proper literature. On the other hand, I rarely have time to read anything.

Of course, then there’s the guilt. That I am here because Rajeev never will. That part sucks. I miss him. I miss home. But if these past few months have been anything, it’s therapeutic. Here, where no one (or very few) knows what happened, I can be anyone. I can cry when I want to (and I have) and laugh when I want to (done that too) without having to think about how it would affect anyone else. This freedom is both exhilarating and terrifying. But I can’t explain how grateful I am for it. I can treat anniversaries of events as regular days instead of scary milestones. It doesn't always work though, I’ll admit. But as a friend told me recently- Every minute you dwell on the negative is 60 seconds of your life you’re never getting back. And that’s true. I do not want to repress any emotions. Not any more at least. But I've also begun to understand the need to strike that balance between suppressing your emotions and wallowing in them. Like all extremes, both are easy but neither is very  helpful. I need to remember that what happened in July 2011 was lousy but it was not the only thing that ever happened to me. Good things happened too. Like June 2010. Like the 365 days that followed. Like so many, many other days. I can’t let one event define who I am, even if it was the single worst thing I could have ever imagined, even if it is so darn easy to let it take over my life. I'm more than one event. 

There’s this one quote that my favourite professor often mentions. It’s by T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and I absolutely love it. Here goes:

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

P.S. Thanks to some wonderful suggestions from some wonderful people, I’m considering making a new blog about my “shenanigans” here in Sydney. With pictures and everything. Stay tuned! 

One Year Later

It’s the 27th of July. A year since Rajeev died. One whole year. And a day. Sometimes it feels like so long ago. And sometimes it feels like yesterday. To be honest, I don’t know which one is worse.


Most of Rajeev’s family and friends consider the 26th of July as the worst day of their lives. But not me.  Mine was the 29th of June. The day he got sick.  How do you describe that one moment when you realize that nothing is ever going to be the same again? That irrespective of how it turns out, you’ve still lost the man you married? As terrible as the past months have been, for me, they are still better than that one month he was sick. Sometimes I wish I was not so stubbornly optimistic then. At some point, I even stopped listening to the doctors because I was so convinced that Rajeev was going to get better. Even on the day he died, when the doctors lost all hope, when they called the pastor to anoint him, I was still convinced that he was going to wake up. I remember standing there, holding Raja’s hand, as the pastor anointed him.  And I was so angry with the pastor. “How can you anoint him??” I screamed in my head. “He’s going to wake up any moment now!” Like some lame-ass soccer mom, I was coaxing, encouraging, even daring God to make his miracle already. But then again, considering the extent of Rajeev’s brain damage, perhaps death was the miracle. 


It still sucks though. 


Today I’m literally half a world away from everything I know. I’m sitting at my desk in my apartment in central Sydney waiting for my family to come online to Skype. A lot has happened in the 13 months since Rajeev got sick. I often wonder what life would have been like if he never had that tumor. I can just picture us in the brand new apartment that we were so close to buying, with one maybe even two kids in tow. If nothing else, I wish I could just ruffle his hair. I was the only one who was allowed to mess with his hair and boy, did I abuse that right. He made my life so infinitely better. That one year we were married will always be the happiest year of my life. I know I spoke about wanting to be extraordinary and what not earlier, but truth is what I would really like, is just to be happy. Sometimes I wonder. Will I ever be that happy again?


Maybe not. 


Maybe.


I believe that happiness is more a choice than a circumstance. I’m grateful that it’s a choice and I’m grateful that it’s a choice I am able to make. I know that the way I have been in this past year hasn’t been very widow-y. I haven’t been curled up in some corner waiting for the Dementors to arrive. I’ve done more new and different things in the past year than I have in my entire life. That’s gone over well with some. Not so much with some others. But then I remember something my dad told me just after Rajeev died. He said that while Rajeev was super close to a LOT of people, no one is going through what I am going through. (Which, of course, does not mean that what the others may be going through is in any way better or worse than what I am, it just means that it’s different.)  It’s a wildly liberating concept, I tell you. It pretty much changed my life. And then I saw this TED talk about a snowboarder named Amy Purdy.  She got sick and had to have both her legs amputated and then had to get prosthetics. After months and months of depression, she suddenly realized, “Hey. I can have any size shoe I want!” It made me think. “Hey. I can have ANY life I want!” And so here I am. One year later. Halfway around the world. Waiting for my MBA classes to start. 


In this past year, I’ve read a lot about how people handle grief. But the best one I’ve seen so far is from Genesis 43: 30-31 “Deeply moved on seeing his brother and about to burst into tears, Joseph hurried out into another room and had a good cry. Then he washed his face, got a grip on himself, and said, "Let's eat.”


At the risk of sounding super corny, all I can say is that Jesus did not die so that I become a victim. 


I will always miss Rajeev. And I will always love him. And yes, I will always feel awful when I think of what could have been. But when I do feel sad, I (like Joseph) will hurry into another room, have a good cry, wash my face, get a grip, and move the heck on.