Okay. Breathe.
A couple of years ago, this time of the year – I took my first therapy session. The reason? 11 months ago from that time, we had lost Anya, and the grief was catching up. I was interning at an NGO, and the work was fulfilling - enough to keep me busy during the day, and at night I could spend time researching space & time. It was a fairly comfortable situation to be in. But picking up the research work after I had to drop it 3 months ago, upon receiving my grandma’s diagnosis, brought up a lot of difficult emotions, leading me to book therapy.
Good thing, we worked our way through it. Also led me to realise I needed to end my 4-year-long relationship. And this time, I had to grieve the living.
Cut to last year, I’m booking my visa appointment, preparing to attend the concert of my life.
But over the years, I kept losing faith. When Anya left, I lost faith in God. When pursuing my interests led to anxiety & the feeling of overwhelm, I lost meaning in my work. When I liked someone and wanted him to stay but he didn’t, I lost my faith in love. Given the state of the capitalist world we live in, I lost faith in humanity. And the travel, was just a way to add loud music to the static noise I was living through. I enjoyed the journey, I really * lived * through it all. But now that I’ve grown up, or so I think, the calm and quiet is leading me to places I couldn’t even see under those waves.
I used to believe that even if there is no God, there is a higher power that is above us humans. The way we operate at a subconscious level, it is beyond our capabilities to comprehend. Being in this shitshow of the corporate world, maybe there’s no such thing as a ‘true calling’ at all and everyone is just trying to hang by the thread.
As engineers, our brains are trained to find out the ‘why’. To understand the events logically that lead to a situation occurring. Now that the most recent wave of grief has subsided, I can see what was missing. And it is faith.
Faith that makes me believe. Just believe.
Maybe there is no larger meaning to life. But at the end of the day, faith will bring me hope to believe that tomorrow can be better because today was good, and we made an impact on the people around us and on ourselves.
And why am I sharing this on here, you ask? This is my cope lol. But in all seriousness, it comes from the need to be seen and being understood. Because I was young and Anya was younger. And I can never understand why we had to go through all of that that happened.
I’m doing okay, I mean yes, I feel sad and anxious shedding my old skin at 25 to allow new people, new adventures, a new job or a new career to be in but I’m writing this from a place of compassion for myself.
And if any of this resonated with you, do me a favor and tell me how you rebuilt your faith? We cannot just possibly be mere blobs of stardust floating around. What is the thing that keeps you going?
~ IB