33.

What about it?

I ain’t perfect. So?

I learnt a new word yesterday – Candling. It is the act of taking a pause, every year, on your birthday and analysing where you are in life. It is about moving your hands around in the dark to find some anchor, some semblance of shape and structure.

When I sat down to do this last year, what came out on paper was a letter of gratitude and relief. I wrote about being comfortable with chaos, about embracing uncertainty. Now that I look back, all of it seems to be a lie.

Was I truly there or was I just trying to imagine things to force them into existence?

In fact, everything that I have experienced in the last few months feels like a lie – a dream that isn’t real, like I have been living inside a foggy head, not being able to see things clearly.

It’s been a year of being torn apart, being pulled into opposite directions. A year of finding my assumptions being ruthlessly challenged, of holding onto things and seeing them slip away. This year, I realized that the idea of home is more complex that I thought.

“Who do you relate more with – the people who have a strong sense of belonging, or those who feel displaced?” a friend asked me recently. We were talking about partition and what it means for people like me, who never had to live through its atrocities, but are a product of its history.

I knew instantly what my answer was. I knew that home was something that existed only in my imagination. I kept trying to find it in people, places, and experiences. Yet, I was always trying to escape from what lay within – a deep sense of longing and terrifying loneliness.

And, so, this year I let go of a lot. I let go of places I had outgrown. I let go of ideas that kept me chained. And I took a plunge into many unknowns. I tried. And I failed. And I tried again. There was a desperation to it all. Yet, it gave me some control over my narrative. I had a thread to weave the many stories that my everyday life was.

I made plans and abandoned them. And I made plans about plans. I filled excel sheets, google notes, and word documents. I read books that taught me the art of designing my life. I downloaded apps to set reminders, to plan finances, to track feelings and emotions, and I trashed all of them.

Where was the perfect remedy to confusion? What was the path to consistent progress?

33. What is it supposed to be like? Are we supposed to have it all figured out by this age? Because, every year, it feels like I have missed the figuring-out goal. But not every year I sit down with all my unfigured, unsolved selves, and look them straight in the eyes.

And so, for the first time, I gave therapy a sincere try. Four months in, I am losing myself into something that is too alive to resist. I hate it, but I know its working. Its working by teaching me that not everything in life is going to work. Life is always going to be messy. I am always going to be messy. Still, I can discover joy. I can hope. I can give myself a chance, every day.

This year, I tried hard to fall in love. It was honest. It was stupid. What I didn’t factor in was that love can’t be planned. It doesn’t fit into that carefully curated to-do list. And so, it crumbled before it even found some strength. This year, I learnt to be comfortable with aloneness.

And I wrote. I wrote terribly. I wrote beautifully. I wrote to feel seen. I wrote to give words to my insufferable self. I wrote with the awareness of shame – shame that I am not good enough. I wrote with the awareness of fear – fear that I’ll make a fool of myself. I wrote with the awareness of calm – calm that filled the open space when words tumbled out.

It was also the year of courage, clarity, gratitude and perseverance. I started projects I am going to continue working on. I chose paths I am going to continue exploring. I allowed bitterness to melt away. I embraced the rogue this-is-itness of life.

I don’t know what changes from today, but I know that I want to be more shameless, more fluid, more spontaneous, more confident, and more kind. I am going to start by putting this write-up out into the world. It is speed written, unedited, rushed, incomplete and perhaps shitty.

But who cares? I am 33 and I am allowed to be all the things, including shitty.

Cheers.

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