Still searching...

I'm 35 and single. So you can imagine that I walk around with some amount of emotional baggage. I'm glad norms for check-in don't apply to emotional baggage. I don't think I'd be able to afford. Not to say that the burden is too much...I seem to quite happily be carting it around.

While once upon a time the idea of embarking upon a relationship (the best part according to me) used to make my heart skip a beat, lately it makes me gasp for breath at the very least, that is if it does not hit like a very bad episode of PMS. I have often felt that it's also a bit like vertigo. In fact I have a lot of analogies that can be used to depict this specific life situation. I'll go over them one by one over the course of this series. Yes, this is going to be a series, a very long series. And I'm glad that I have all the time in the world for myself. I am my only possession. I'm sure if you have followed the thought process till now, you will appreciate that I have already spent a fair amount of my life and time analyzing this. It's assumed a great deal of importance for me over the years....not the process of analysis alone (though I do admit that it can get addictive at times), but the hope that the analysis is going to lead me to doing it right. I want to get it right once. It means a lot to me. So much so that I fear that the person is now incidental to the process and to the hope of getting "it" right. [Must regroup on this...later].

Frankly, where I come from, we are staunch believers of rebirth, so I am not going to be spending sleepless nights over not getting it right in this lifetime. But, yes it would be nice if it could happen in this lifetime. Hopefully, I should be able to move on to more meaningful and pressing matters in subsequent lifetimes. But make no mistake, I'm in no tearing hurry. But yes, it would be nice to get it right, just once.

Getting back to why it's practically like vertigo. I believe (where my belief could be misplaced or outdated), vertigo is not so much the fear of height as it is about you wanting to cascade and spiral down to the bottom when looking down from considerable height. Yes, this analogy definiely rings a bell. I think as far as sustaining relationships go, I suffer from mild vertigo. [I'll regroup on this analogy in the subsequent write-up].

Well, even apart from relationships, I think I do suffer from vertigo. Nothing that I have ever got verified clinically. Just that I can't look down from heights. It makes me dizzy, queasy, and disoriented, and I practically have to fight the urge to just jump and get it over with, but only when the height is considerable. For smaller heights, for example ditches (yes, even ditches can get to me), I tend to get a liitle imbalanced while walking past them and sometimes feel a suction-like force dragging me into the ditch. It takes a lot of mental and physical effort to keep going straight. It feels like a fairly strong magnetic force doing an auto pilot on me, while I'm fighting to stay on manual.

Here I have completely digressed into talking about vertigo, the medical condition, and not the analogy .There is a reason. But I'll get back to it, a little later.

At the very outset I would like to say that I do not want to accuse myself of the string of failures. While it is true that whatever happens to us is in some way of our own making, I think it would be unfair to accuse myself at the outset. If it is the true cause, I'd like to get to it with an open mind. And not start with putting the blame squarely on my shoulders. Having cited the above belief, I am also a confirmed fatalist. I believe that the reason could completely be out of the realm of logical cause and effect. And I am equally open to that possibility. As of now, the reason eludes me. God knows I think about it, a lot...but nothing, yet.

But why do I think about it so much? I guess I'm hoping that if I know it, I might be able to do something about it. Juvenile? Maybe. Maybe not.

Sometimes knowing is not enough. There is a certain helplessness even in knowing.
Most of us have been there, right? But I'm still going to be hopeful. And I'm probably going to start with a lot of rambling, I know. But I have a feeling I'm going to walk into the light with this.

And this thought process is not entirely without a reason. Recently I met someone. So there's been a catalyst. But I would not like to put the burden of this totally on this person, because right at this moment, I have no idea what it's worth. At one level it makes me smile in my sleep (yes, the feeling is tremendous), at another level I can almost feel the pressure build. Just the possibility...of loving and losing, and being out there, puts the fear of god in me.

Normally i'm not someone who is actively looking for love anymore. I mean I'm looking for love, but not really looking for anybody to fall in love with. I don't make the effort, not just now, never have. Lets just say I'm not your typical go-getter. I'm a sit-wait"er". And believe me when I say that I am deeply obligated to life that it sends along beautiful opportunities and moments every once in a while. Rather frequently, considering the effort I put in. I repeat, only to convey how much it means to me, that I am very grateful that it graces me with its presence every now and then. But it would be nicer if it stuck around a little longer. Here I stopped myself from saying stuck around for a lifetime....it still feels like asking for a little more than is perhaps possible.

Not a thread of thought I appreciate for myself, but having been eluded for so long, it's perhaps reasonable to think it's a little out of bounds for me.

Will regroup on the vertigo (I think) in the next post...

My first post...

Quite an impulse decision this...putting myself out there...to be read, understood, misunderstood, perceived, interpreted and mis-interpreted (I'm feeling compelled to cover it all in one list). Complete strangers are going to walk up to the blog, read my thoughts, know the kind of person I am, and form an opinion. And there will be people I know (provided I lead them to this space) who will take this opportunity to re-look and perhaps re-think of me as some one/thing other than what they had bargained for.

Do people get here by advert or do you have to herd them to this place and point in time...OMG! maybe everybody who mails me on my linked id will now get a msg that I have posted something, and there's going to be a cheesy scripted automated invitation to come see my post and comment on it. That way it would work out more than what I'd bargained for. Or maybe I could just relax.......I think I'm blowing this out of proportion (must ask someone....casually). But let me just begin with a (very) brief background on why I'm so paranoid. And why despite the paranoia, I'm still willing to be "out there".

For as long back as I can remember I have wanted to write - where this expression does not mean that I have always wanted to write, it just very literally means that since my memory does not serve me very well, and since I cannot and will not be able to remember what point in time I developed an inclination and then an obsession to write, literally and by default it really is as far back as I can remember. As I see myself, under normal circumstances, I am a socially controlled and inhibited person. I don't really go out there for anything. OMG! this is a profound moment. Come to think of it, I'm really not out there for anything, ever. I only respond to things that come and drop maybe millimeters away from me - and that too only if there is no place to escape or turn to.
[This can go somewhere...must regroup...later].

I guess on a one-on-one level I'm good with expressing myself, superficially and maybe just a little under the surface also, at times. When it comes to the really emotionally explicit and vulnerable stuff, I am quite the artful dodger. So while I would be very squirmish about saying all of this to a community (which ultimately might sum up to not even one individual, since I'm no Susanna Tamaro), I'm very explicit and explosively expressive in my thoughts to myself. And I talk (not just quietly, out loud - just as you would talk to someone, maybe across the planet). But now, suddenly, I am compelled to put it out there. I want my thoughts to be posted.

Do I want people to look at what I think, or do I want to express what I think - I'm not sure, yet. But yes, i want it out there, for sure. There is no middle path for me, never has been.
[This too can go somewhere...must regroup...later].

Not to say that this is not accompanied by absolute fear and humility. It's possible that I be (very soon - maybe even with the first post) faced with my creative fraility if someone were to point out that I'm perhaps not as good as I imagine myself to be. What if this is just something I have a burning passion for, but absolutely no talent for? This wouldn't be a first. What if I'm not even mediocre at it? What could the possible fallouts be? Maybe it'll make people falsely and passively appreciative. They've decided they're going to block you anyway, so what have they got to lose. God knows this would be well deserved. I've done that to some people I know (the false and passive part). Maybe it'll have them in splits. They'll lap me up and pass me on - I'd be famous overnight, in a Bheja Fry kinda way. What if they feel sorry for me - sympathy or empathy (which one's worse, by the way)?

It won't be the first time its happened to me you know....I mean the part about passion being so far removed from the talent. I remember (and here memory does serve me well) all through middle school, high school, college, and the early years of my career, I was passionate about singing. And for years friends and family all rallied around me, hearing me sing out songs for them. I also vaguely recall a request or two coming my way (could be my imagination here...not sure). Deeply involved in the singing process, only at the end of a particular rendition would I get to lock eyes with the audience. And without fail I would see a wide smile and possibly even a twinkle in the eye (I wouldn't bet my life on the twinkle though...I could be imagining this part...what do they say, you see not what is there but what you wish was there - actually I just thought this one up, I haven't heard anybody else say this - but now that I think about it, it seems like common wisdom). The smile would often be accompanied by "aah....why don't you take this up seriously...you know, get trained professionally". My happiness knew no bounds - passionate, talented, appreciated and widely acclaimed (in my own little circle). What more could I ask for. I had found my calling in life.

All this till the time my little Pari came along. Pari is my niece. Yes, the name says it all. She angelic. That makes it very hard (at least for me) to ignore what she thinks, feels, and says. She was barely 4 at the time - still not able to stitch legible sentences together in a coherent manner. One day I sang to her. All through the song she kept looking at me - incredulously, big beautiful eyes (getting bigger by the moment) staring right through my eyes and into my soul. And then abruptly, in the middle of a particularly high note, she said "you're a bad singer". That's it - just like that - you're a bad singer, she says. I paused. Looked at her indulgently, gave her a squishy hug and let her go. She's so adorable. But then what does she know about singing...in fact she's pretty bad herself. Quite off-key even with her nursery rhymes (fine one to comment!!).

But this stayed with me for a while. It was getting harder and harder for me to shake this thought off. So, one day, I recorded myself.
And I played it back.
And then I stopped singing.

My point being that sometimes (if not most or all of the times), you are so blinded by your desires and wants, that you really can't see things for what they are. You see them as you want to see them, as you wish they were. And that's not always nice. I should know. Because this happens to me........a lot. I believe, for me, it comes with the territory. I am from the field of communication and creative design and strong visualization powers are a bare necessity for the job that I do. Sometimes, it all makes up for a very good joke, but some of the times it's sad, to come to the end...where you see things for what they really are.

Must regroup. Later...