Analogikal

Act 1: The Vanishing

It’s been a while. Words eluded me when I was busy evading myself. I kept telling myself everything was alright. I said the bear wasn’t there — the bear, my name for the quiet anxiety that watches from the corner. It’s not original, but it serves the purpose. I reassured myself that the continuous thuds on the ceiling were not shoes dropping. My resting heart rate told me I was constantly anxious. I chalked it down to low to no cardio.

Not doing things I loved – cycling, football, walking, aimlessly looking out the window of a moving bus – was impacting more than just my resting heart rate. It left me devoid of things I liked, things I looked forward to, and things that made me who I am. In the constant shifting of hats between a partner, a son, an uncle, a boss, a brother, a friend, and everything in between, I forgot to wear the hat that was me. I forgot how to, be. I had disappeared from the lives of the people who just let me be.

I had misplaced the hat and I didn’t even know when or how. That hat had the power of a circus ringmaster — the one that helped me control the chaos, take the spotlight, and face the bear. Enabling me to play with it, fight it, feed it and most importantly, playing dead, till it went away. The ringmaster wasn’t around anymore. There was no space left for him. The bear was loose.

Act 2: The Collapse

I knew sol (the gym we launched in January) would be the death of me. For the longest time, I feared it more than I was excited about the prospect of it. My anxiety had been my greatest asset. But no amount of preparation, monologue, or effort could have saved me. The slightest hint of feedback from a client would send me down a spiral.

I remember lying sleeplessly and anxiously for countless nights, thinking of how my life had been a failure. Sol wasn’t satisfactory to a random client who walked in and shared feedback. I wanted a safe space to have crawled into while I was dealing with all of it. I thought I had found one. Safe spaces didn’t exist. I had never felt more alone in my life.

It was a lot of trying. I didn’t even know whether I was doing a bad job. I was in quicksand pulling at a rope that wasn’t attached to anything. I wished I was sinking, but that evaded me as well.

I hadn’t traveled in more than a year. I hadn’t played football regularly. I hadn’t been able to prioritise myself. People kept asking for pieces and I kept delivering pieces in the hope that they find the peace they need. The burden of expectations kept mounting, and in the list of priorities, mine were at the bottom — because it was the only voice that couldn’t speak up. A voice that was encouraged, embraced and taught to speak up had waned.

Thanks to social anxiety, a strong belief I didn’t deserve better and an inability to seek help. When I did try, the ones who should have helped me piled their needs on my plate. By the time the teeny tiny voice spoke up, there wasn’t much left. Not even the dust of the shell. I had to listen this time.

Act 3: The Questions

1: Where do you go when you want to be taken care of?

I drew a blank. I wanted to say the right thing. But there was no pressure to say the right thing to someone whom I was paying to help shovel shit.

I come to Bangalore to take care of myself.

Then it dawned on me. Everywhere I would go to get taken care of — me — had been taken away over the past 18 months – and some others, even earlier. It looked like an apartment close to a lake with two people who adopted me. It looked like two people who took me to the sky and dropped me to hug me tight. It looked like someone who let me be the version of me I needed to be; not the one he wanted me to be, nor the one I liked to be either, but the one I needed to be. It looked like an apartment in the back of beyond with a pressure cooker filled with sweet potatoes, carrots and beef.

The vague concept of being taken care of dawned on me. It was just the weightlessness of not being expected to do anything. Being taken care of meant exactly that: being. That being had been taken away from me. Replaced with a never-ending list of orders that piled up even before I switched on the damn machine. It wasn’t too much to ask for, but I was constantly reassured otherwise.

2: What function does anger serve?

Without the pretence of having to say the right things, I could say what came to mind. My anger served no purpose. From a young age, I had been made to realise that anger served no purpose. Anger fell on deaf ears, in the form of cold waves from elders. Anger fell on my cheek as the open palms of strangers with momentum and without empathy. Anger fell on the roadside with partners indifferent to my struggles.

Anger served no purpose. So I let anger dictate nothing. When she said anger needs to be acknowledged — that anger serves a purpose — I was as lost as I had been. Anger was my silent protector I had maimed and pacified. It was the knight put out there to fight the bear, but I had managed to forget and relieve it of services. I had been left unguarded, and now, after years of letting the bear run amok, I was finally being made aware.

I am tired. I am guilty. The voices in my head had been louder than ever. I had lost words and the will to write. Between ChatGPT and the inability to sit still, there was no time to find the words to express the feelings that did not matter. It will be a lot of two steps forward and a few thousand steps astray before I get to a place that resembles the safe and calm I had felt three years ago.

For now, I am wearing the hat — the one that lets me dance with the bear. I am learning new tricks and so is the bear. On certain days I am the peanut butter that gets spread thin. On other days I am the sky and everything else is the weather. Thankfully right now, most of the time I am aware, I matter.