Today, I’m feeling quite low. The overwhelming thought is the crippling fear about the job situation. I slept at around 3:30-4 yesterday night and woke up only at 12:30 in the afternoon. But I could not get myself to get off the bed until 3. I was just wallowing in bed, desperately looking for suitable jobs on LinkedIn and Naukri. There is nothing. Nothing that’ll at least pay me what I used to make. I am so scared. I could freelance, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust myself with a job either.

Ideally, I would like to just work from home for a while. Maybe there are ways to make a steady income just from working from home. But that requires immense discipline. Which I don’t have. Never had, really. The main reason for the mess I am in today, at the age of 31. This is the reason why I cannot hold a job, I’ve steadily ruined my reputation as a reliable editor or employee.

I have to build my life back up from scratch. I don’t know how the next two months will play out. I am scared, but worse, this time…there is overwhelming apathy and just the need to sleep it off so I don’t have to think about anything. The more I think, the more I panic. I feel helpless against my will to just get up and get some work done. There is sooooooooo much work to be done. I can’t even get myself organized. And if I don’t, I will not survive. I will have to go back home and become an invalid of sorts. I have had this feeling that I’ll either die a lonely, miserable death or end up in a mental asylum. Now, it seems like I’m actively working towards it. Shouldn’t I be running the other way? It is such a daunting task, and I’m so intimidated. I am so convinced that I cannot do it. I really ought to give it a shot before giving up, no?

You know, I really do just want to be happy and normal and have the energy to do the things I need to do. I want to be engaged in a job I love. I want to work, but I’m so scared of competition and falling short that I won’t even attempt it. I have been running for ages…and here I am. I’ve lost a perfectly wonderful job at a really nice company that was very supportive through all my struggles. I forced them to fire me. I cannot continue like this. I am a financial, emotional, physical wreck. How am I going to survive? My parents are in no stage to help me right now. In fact, I should be the one taking more responsibility and supporting them. I have no plan. I feel like I’m drowning and a big part of me just wants to surrender and drown faster.

Off late, especially the past few months, I blank out…I keep staring at the screen, not being able to focus. My brain feels heavy and hazy. My concentration has completely gone for a toss. However, this is not consistent. I have good days when I’m super-efficient and get a lot done. I manage to check off a lot of tasks on my to-do list. But the “dead days” as I call them, are just one long stupor. My eyes glaze over. I can’t take in anything that is being said. I am not in the moment. I don’t know what to do. Actually, I know what to do. I just am not able to or somehow not willing to bring myself to do it. I am not stupid. I am smart. I know. It’s just going downhill, very fast and it’s all very scary. But a little part of me wants to survive and even thrive. I want to one day look in the mirror and be proud of myself. I so badly do want to get there. 

My Dad

I went to a therapist today, for the first time. I mockingly like to say to myself that I'm afraid I'm going to turn into one of those people who begins their sentences with "My therapist says..." I guess I'd been afraid I'd become dependent on this new form of dependency. I always thought of therapy as something for rich people. You pay someone to listen to your bullshit because no one else in your life likes you enough to listen to you sort through your everyday, mundane crap. You pay, so they have to listen.

I thought my depression really just began from the time I moved to Pune, but my therapist said it probably began in my horrifying high school years in the US. Now, a part of me wants to tell my parents this, but I hesitate. I'd been revelling in hurting other people the past couple of years. Especially my parents. I blamed them for being the root of all my problems. And that part still wants to tell them, albeit indirectly, that look...your shitty decision at a crucial point in my life set the baseline for my personality. It would be easy, convenient to continue blaming them....HIM, really. My dad. But I know he's depressed too. I really just ought to start being kinder. He needs help. Once I sort through my issues, I should get him to go to a therapist too, maybe. But that's for later. I am still tempted to call up my parents and tell them about my session with the therapist. I will, but I need to figure out just how and how much to tell them.

I have a lot of resentment. Against my parents, against the boy I was involved with for two years, against guys in general (a lot of it justified, I still think), and the WORLD, of course. And all the pretty women out there, for just being prettier and better than me.

But today, if anything, I think I'll talk about my resentment against my parents. The past cannot be fixed, but I've always been one of those people who wants payback...even if it's impossible. I want it in some form. The more impossible the situation, the more I want and demand it. I know I did this to Bee, and I am doing it to J, and I am doing it to my parents too now. Maybe, I'd been doing it for ages. I don't know.

Coming back to my parents, I expect unconditional love from them. I demand it. Because they are the only ones who will love me. They are contractually bound to. No one else will. No one else probably does. I don't know. I hope I have earned the love of at least a couple of friends. I know there are people who care about me. But no one loves you like your parents do. Despite all your flaws and your horrible character. And I resent that my parents, especially my dad was too muddled in his own thinking and planning to take my future into account. It was mostly circumstances, but I still blame him. Yes, he was in a shitty phase in his career and he was stuck and he desperately wanted to move out and prove something to himself and the world. I remember him saying "If we just stay here, we'll rot." I can only imagine what he'd been going through then and since then. I have thought about it a lot, but not out of compassion.

We are very alike, my dad and I. The same kind of introversion and stubbornness, the same need to cut off from the world, the same ostrich-burying-its-head-in-the-sand syndrome. The same social awkwardness, the same lack of guile and even tact. The vulnerability to hurt because we're too stupid to hide things that really ought to be hidden. The same body language that is a little too easily read. This is why I think I understand him better, even though we hardly talk about anything real. We only stick to politics, finances, social issues...safe topics. He is my father, for Christ's sake. I should be able to talk about real shit with him. My mom has been playing the go-between since my teenage, since I began to register as a person in my dad's head. Before that, I was largely still a child in his head. But I long stopped being just a child.

I resent the fact that he didn't know me. He didn't foresee how moving to the US would affect an introverted, body-image-issue ridden adolescent like me. In the 9th grade! What do most Indian parents do? They put everything on hold when the kid comes to about 8-9th and focus on their education and plan for what and where they're going to study. My dad chose to disrupt my life in such a huge way at that crucial moment. Thankfully, I was fairly good academically. But socially, mentally, I was a mess or there was plenty of potential for things to go wrong. And they did. A fish from a pond dropped suddenly into the ocean. And 18 years later, I now have to learn to fix that damage, on my own.