Two thousand fifteen is such a difficult year for me to describe. It has taken me five whole months to find the courage to document it. But it is one that I have been most eager to write about.
Early last year I quit my job because it was sucking the soul out of me. Not that I was stuck in a mindless blood-sucking corporation, but something inside me just did not feel at peace. It felt great when I left, when I realised I did not have to wake up in the mornings and drag myself out of bed. Sunday evenings felt so much better because Monday mornings I could spend doing the things I actually wanted to.
The remainder of the year I spent doing multiple things, volunteering in schools, working with my ex-students, travelling, sleeping, cooking, and mostly, trying to regain joy in my life.
Since I would spend time at home alone, I had a lot of time to myself. There were weeks I didn’t want to get out of bed till I was forced to in the afternoon because I was dying of hunger. Somewhere in the first quarter of the year I got a bunch of medical tests done and realised my body was completely out of it. During the last few years, I had let my mind and body rot and reach a place I did not think it would ever go to. Life was great, but the excitement of my new life had camouflaged everything else that was going on with me.
So in a lot of ways, I had reached some of my lowest points in life last year. And that realisation actually made me feel good. I had taken time out to really assess things and see things for what they are rather than pretend that all was well. Nikhil and I talked for hours and hours everyday, armed with this new found acceptance that things needed fixing and made elaborate plans to fix ourselves and support each other. They were some of my most favourite moments of life, walking till 2am outside in the quiet and privacy of the night, shaking with excitement as we decided to immerse ourselves in things that we loved, fix our minds and bodies, do and achieve amazing things, and just be an absolutely invincible team!
So in a lot of ways, it also became one of the highest points of my life last year, when I learned to accept and acknowledge things I sucked at, and build on things that made me great. I will whole heartedly accept that all of this was also so easy for me because of the rock solid support I received from Nikhil, and his unfazed-in-the-moment-of-crises attitude. Not everybody has that, but I hope everybody gets to experience that at some point.
By the end of the year, 2015 clearly became of my most favourite years. I was the most comfortable and confident in my skin than I had ever been before in life. There were lists of things to do and accomplish. We had a plan. I had a plan.
Highlights of the year:
Travel
This has to be the biggest highlight of the year. Since I was free of a regular job, time was on my side. During the year, I got to do three big trips. The day after I quit my job, we were off to Malaysia to spend 10 days with close friends. We found out our friends were expecting a baby, so we quickly booked tickets just a few weeks earlier and were off. It was a beautiful and relaxing trip. Our friends stayed in probably the best part of KL, in a beautiful house where we spent lazy long days talking and laughing. We did a road trip to Cameron Highlands to the tea estates and strawberry farms, we spend time around glitzy Kuala Lumpur and had street food at Jalan Alor, and the four of us went off for a weekend to Kota Kinabalu where we walked in a rainforest and did scuba diving!
A month later I was off to Kolkata and Sikkim with Nirupama, where we caught up with old friends, went to our old hangouts in Kolkata, I saw snow for the first time in my life at Nathu La (!!!), and had a glorious trip in such a clean, pristine part of the world.
But of course, my favourite travel of them all was our absolutely spontaneous plan to spend a month in Europe. It was such a liberating and exhilarating moment in our lives, seeing how far we had come together. At the initial days of our relationship, we would roam around malls for free AC and eat McDonalds because we were so broke. Over the last six years we have built our own individual lives and our lives together to reach a stage where we had the luxury to quit our jobs and spend our time in another continent for a month. This was the most time the two of us had continuously spent with each other, day and night for 30 whole days. We reestablished our priorities, bonded like never before, shared experiences together, found our own comfort zones in life, made goals for ourselves, apart from seeing and doing things there. By the end of the journey we decided that both of us would start our own ventures, immerse ourselves in things we wanted to do.
The months to follow have not been easy. We have made immense sacrifices, undergone weeks of high stress, and do not enjoy the financial stability we once did. But we keep reminding ourselves that if not now, then when. But none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t crashed and burned in the first half of the year. We wouldn’t have been able to make the decision to travel, or I wouldn’t have had the guts to start something of my own if not for that trashing I went through.
Health and Fitness
After years of deciding it was time to be fit, last year I finally started some action. Though I am still at the worst health I have ever been, there is a better understanding of priorities, what my body needs. I no longer shun these things aside and accept that I need a change. At least the motivation is there, and hopefully the action will soon follow!
Food
Cooking had taken over such a major part of my life last year. I love it. On days I feel blah and want to just curl up and not move, the only way I get out and about is by cooking. I would resort to something ridiculously tasty like a Dense Chocolate Loaf or comfort food like soup, make batches of chicken stock or roasted tomato. These things gave me joy like nothing else.
And the biggest source of joy and excitement in my life…
Mia.
In an effort to make like happier, on one low day, I decided I needed a dog. Not wanted, needed. I have lived with dogs for most of my conscious life and the sheer happiness the presence of a dog brings to my life had been vastly missing in the last few years. I decided that the next female puppy that I would find up for adoption, I would bring home. And within three days there was an ad for a little puppy, and sitting next to my dad who wholeheartedly encouraged me, we brought Mia home.
This little thing is one of the best beings I have ever met in my life. She is so ridiculously happy in life that her attitude is something to envy. She loves people, all kinds of food, other dogs, women on the street, running behind squirrels, watching birds, digging mud, eating my lemon grass plant, splashing in the rain, jumping on peoples heads, playing with her toys, chewing neem sticks, snuggling in bed with us, going to my parents place, and the list in endless. Her tail does not stop wagging, and it is impossible to be stressed or unhappy with such a ball of joy around.
It was a difficult decision to make because we wanted independence at this stage of our lives, wanted to travel for months, unsure of where we’ll end up living, and the like, but again, it was a if not now, then when moment. What a fantastic decision! The absolute best part of 2015. My cute little fuzzlickle!
Summary
So yes, it was an up and down year, but an extremely important year in my life! One of my favourites and most eventful! It helped me start 2016 on a massive high.
The Glob. 