Whole Lotta Love

so well, this post has been long due

In my last post i had shared about how 2015 was the year of health scare and some much needed wake up calls. And of course about meeting N :-)

if you are 30 & single, then most likely 3 things will happen to you- a) you will have become extremely cynical about love b) you will have become extremely desperate for love c) you will have become overtly cynical about love, while secretly pining for it. (disclaimer-exceptions applied)
with much embarrassment i confess that i belonged to the third group. oh how i frowned upon any idea of love, and yet that had been my most consistent prayer. if my thoughts on love were, well, confusing then my thoughts on marriage were the mother lode of it. to marry or not to marry was the big question! to add to the confusion, it wasnt really like i had hordes of suitors pursuing me. after meeting some suitors i swear i put off the idea of marriage to a great extent.

to cut a long story short, i met Nikhil at new year's eve in 2014. together we rung in the new year , without realizing that in that year we would end up getting hitched together. surprisingly marriage was the last thing on my mind when i met him- or even in the early few months of our courtship. it started with just having the comfort of reaching out to someone with even the most banal thought in mind. and just like that things were never the same again.
"love & marriage" are big words, seems like too much work- commitment, responsibility,passion, respect to name a few. a role u wld be signing up for- only to be paid in kind (mostly), and promotions in terms of motherhood, with the most sketchy profile and seriously long hours (including graveyard shifts), perks of having no life outside of it, literally & and a team member who comes as a collateral, with strict no exchange/return clause. No wonder its feared so much!
But the beauty of "love& marriage" lies in the basics of it (i realized that when i started sharing every stupid information with N), it lies in the comfort it brings with it- even in my current extremely F& U phase (fat and ugly), N makes me feel lovely. it lies in the promise of waking up every morning feeling loved. and before you know it, the cynicism you had so painstakingly nurtured abandons you, only to be replaced by the much despised mush.
did love "save my soul" clearly no (not sure if there was any saving required), but it definitely set me free (sorry for the cliche)

ps:- "love & marriage" to be read as love and/or marriage.

Not in the pink of health

Its been exactly one year since i was diagnosed with a serious illness last year. Around this time last year, on a chance visit to Mumbai, my mom was shocked to see the weight gain on me. I was so busy being a corporate slave that i did not know and could not exactly pinpoint when i had moved from a natural 50 kgs to a ballooning 55 kgs. I blamed it on unhealthy lifestyle, late work hours, too much stress and what have you. But pursuant as my mom is, she ensured that i atleast saw a general physician to get a view. initially i thought it was really silly, like what would i say the nature of my illness was- weight gain?! thats a malaise every single girl in the world suffers from. little did i know that that one casual visit to the doctor(casual from my side for sure) would lead to the discovery of an illness which i had not shown any symptoms of so far. doctors were surprised that i was walking around all fine, running no temperature etc.

The days of last February passed in a haze for me. Rushing to the hospital everyday, endless tests, CT Scans, endoscopy and the works, made me realize how small my life is, and yet how valuable. Evenmore jarring was the realization of how little had i cared for it. i remember having a very active life, hitting the gym regularly till 2012. so basically in just a span of 3 years i had neglected my body so much that it was struggling to cope up with my daily demands of it.

March 15th was when my diagnosis was completed and I was formally put on a nine month treatment. i requested for time off from work and decided to move back to Delhi to be closer home.

As the treatment progressed, i started gaining even more weight (which apparently was a very good sign as per my doctor!). aside from the weight gain i was also crippled with joint pains, particularly knee pains owing to which i was largely confined to the four walls of our Rajinder nagar flat. 

The physical discomfort was something i was learning to deal with, but the emotional discomfort was most scarring. Everytime i looked at myself in the mirror, i squirmed. I just knew that this wasnt me. But then,where as the real me? When did i begin to lose myself? the illness sure was a wakeup call for me.

Today, a year hence, while my medication is over, i m still reeling from the after effects of it (last i checked, i weighed 64 kgs). I cant seem to find the girl i used to be. i yearn to connect with her again, long to be in her skin again. but then i fear what if its not only a matter of weight gain/loss. what if i m just not that person anymore? Guess, only time will tell- but first, lemme lose some weight.