Narcissist and the real victim

 It's not really clear why someone is a narcissist and why he(Generally speaking and is not gender specific) behaves the way he does.  A dysfunctional family has little hope to become an integrated unit when narcissists rule the scene -  the amount of chaos that they can organically create and be oblivious of their self destructive habits which sadly pulls everyone down as a family, as a unit together is the effect of such a personality disorder. This disorder is inherent within someone as in it can be genetic or it can be a coping behavior or a learned behavior from dysfunctional family environment and from the heads who run such families (with narcissistic tendencies) and so in turn becoming narcissists themselves. But no matter what be the reasons for one's display of  narcissistic qualities, it's fairly common to have a dormant amount of those qualities within each of us like seeking validation of our efforts and the lack of it in the form of emotional neglect that is the primary seed for narcissism, and acceptance of a person and making them feel secure for who they are and a lack of which triggers the narcissist to seek supply outside of him and not within him, and these are relatable as long as the way we let this frustration, this sadness out by means which don't emotionally or physically harm others. Exploring one's hobbies, journaling, talking with people who are not quick to judge you, and most importantly understanding the need to vent in healthy ways as human living is always going to be challenging in some form or the other are part of the parents' growing up stages alongside the kid/kids and mere expectations without practicalizing healthy habits in daily life would just deepen this grief of not being understood. 

It is crucial to understand here that by allowing the emotional wound to stay and which makes the afflicted more and more embittered, angry, reactive and insecure are just symptoms of this disease which when not treated as early as possible or in earlier stages of life like from childhood itself, could spiral down further to become a pain that looks for nurturing and enabling from outside to make the narcissist feel important or special for no particular reason but their inflated sense of self, which is enough reason for them to believe and expect an appropriate treatment or response from others to keep them happy, accepted and secure.

It is alright to have expectations but to project these expectations as universal truths which others surrounding the narcissist need to comply is quite another. Taking accountability for one's behaviour and actions is something that the narcissist seem to conveniently forget and any attempts to remind and bring them to acknowledge their lack of empathy for others feelings is usually a wasted effort (the reactions could be childish, explosive, revengeful and just unpredictable in short) as narcissists when they become hardened more and more by practice of getting things done through performed acts of graciousness and kindness and stage worthy display of love bombing and charm used on their victims to get them to comply through deceit, dishonesty and lack of scruples, are stuck almost forever in their own created whirlpools that they love to go round and round and mentally/physically exhaust others in the process. This whirlpool is a dense and dark place that just sucks the life out of innocent people who could be their near and dear ones, friends, colleagues and so on, who will become weary of the narcissist's intentions sooner or later - the darkness refers to a refusal to come to acknowledge their own truths about themselves and wanting those involved with them to live in the façade that they have built around themselves in so many layers to get what they want. 

This firm refusal to grow up can bend the will power of many a victim as they could walk into the world of a narcissist only to be blinded by all their attention but no true love can be felt from narcissists as they expect others to make them feel self love but do nothing to work on loving themselves by managing their habits, looks, diet and taking responsibility for their actions and so on. Failure to acknowledge this lack of balancing oneself cannot be thrust upon others by being just charming and attentive as long as it suits their needs and blame shifting and gaslighting people to make it seem like the rest of the world are at fault and that they are victims who are on the receiving end when it's quite the opposite.

So it's no coincidence that people who have adapted to living with a narcissist and who are blurred by weak or no boundaries fail to differentiate their own feelings from that of the narcissist as that's what they expertly do - keep the victims trapped in constant state of self doubt about their own state of mind and knowingly play that against them and keep them more and more vulnerable to mind fog and anxiety for not able to fit in with the mood(s) of the narcissist which is in short like learning to walk on egg shells and make their path all inclusive where the narcissist would want to take up all the space as the victim squirms and squeezes in for making more way for the narcissist to walk beside.

Goals are very important in this way as learning to live off the other and through them reach their individual goals is a narcissist's chosen path - no guilt, no shame, no regret for using the others as a ladder to reach to the top as they will glorify in their own sense of victory and sing their own praises for goals big or small - capitalizing on attention at any cost is something they will never let go of till the end. It's sad to see that their life is just what they want others to see and not a true reflection of who they truly are, in mind, in spirit, as they masterfully disguise their true motives under a noble skin.

I have been a victim of my mother's narcissistic emotional abuse and was shocked to grasp the fact that I had been her scapegoat all along in order for her to project her gaslighting of how traumatized she has been for my physical illness (just a migraine and nausea) and made me feel worse by ruminating aloud calling forth the rest of the family members and sharing her grief yet again for the millionth time that how sad she is again to see me mimic my (late) father's health condition in having migraines and that he too had one such migraine attack and nausea, vomiting, a low bp episode had ensued and was quickly admitted to the hospital and within few hours from there on he had passed away while she was pregnant  with me (3 months). She made my misery worse not because I was in physical pain but by making me feel guilty for reminding her about my father whom I had never seen, she just upped her receiving of sympathy from her brothers and their wives with whom we lived together and there was cast a tragic spell by enacting this sadness out in front of her family audience as I was made to be the scapegoat for having just a common migraine headache. But the truth behind the recurrence of repeat headaches is not owing to my father as she had conveniently grief smeared and made me a participant of her confusing emotions which seemed like concern on the superficial side but was just an opportunity for her to showcase her tragedy even after decades after my father's passing and that no amount of medicines and doctors shoved down my unsuspecting mind then could actually silence my chronic emotional stress that ate me up and made me feel completely disconnected from my own body - it was all hers to claim - her difficult pregnant phase bearing me, her difficult time during delivering the child (me), her frustration to see me so physically sensitive (my core sensitive and intuitive nature got blocked, thanks to her smeared beliefs on me), and projecting how concerned and worried a parent she is by sharing my headache episodes the next day at office with her office colleagues. 

My self confidence, feelings of safety in my own body, trusting my mind to make decisions for myself all went for a toss as this chronic emotional stress that I kept absorbing while ignoring my sensitivities to feel my life, my pain, my real experiences whatever they be as wanting to adapt into her nut shell version of her grief seeded in me was what I carried within me as if pregnant even after being born but with a load of emotional pain which I could not process was mine or hers even after ages while being burdened to be empathetic and sensitive for all that she materially did for me, and that her saying that over and over was a way to not make me forget that I owe and should always owe her my every breath not because I organically or deeply feel that I want to but because she expects so and has made her unconscious thoughts my programming for me to blindly follow and which I did painfully being oblivious to my life's unfolding. As my body kept giving me true signals as the body always does and specially under this long term unresolved emotional stress that manifested in the form of migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, menstrual problems, and cardiovascular disease, it has become more and more clear to me in these past few years and which is almost 4 decades neck deep into this kind of narcissistic emotional abuse, that physical pains had indeed kept me alive to feeling my life even if they had caused a lot of discomfort and chaos in my already burdened mind. It was as if a part of me I had willfully suspended just so that I can hang around in some vague vacuum of having a life but not able to get my head and heart around living it as I clearly could not see past the persistent mind fog that I had been wrapped up that just kept blocking my way for so long. And so the digestion issues persisted, heart issues too, till this date, and for wrongly shifting blame on my dead father for no apparent fault of his other than succumbing to a sudden cardiac arrest that he could not survive through, this low level depression that kept clinging to me like vedhal clings to vikram is how it feels to get past all this trauma for surviving a well disguised emotional abuse well scripted by my mother to make herself the martyr of being a widow and a single parent with a 'sick' child who was in fact normal as any other kid but grew in such chaotic emotional family environment that supported such emotional abusers with sympathy and enabled my mother to 'nurture' my sickness while reveling in all the self pity that she liked to be addicted to. This has been slow poison for me as I was way too empathetic and sensitive to absorb all that she said and how she said it and believed myself in this web of stories that she told herself as well as all of us as I had gotten stuck in this toxic relationship which will still live on until she is alive and in some form or the other, but with a bit of boundary setting wherever possible, I try to protect myself and feel safe in my body from within and not seek validation of wellness from doctors outside which is what I was programmed to by my mother.

The effects of her internalizing and passing on her bitterness, frustration and criticism is so real as I am able to see the truth for what she is that it pains me more for having been used by her as a lifeless scapegoat which was made lifeless by her emotional abuse, neglect and gaslighting episodes which affected me both physically and mentally and for the life that I still am left with I hope to let go this dormant sadness, anger, and forgive myself as well as forgive her for being so cold to my emotional conflicts, anxiety, and chronic stress. And I am glad that I am discovering all these layers of truth before her passing as these sharings will not feel dead when done after her departure. These realizations are bringing alive so many emotions that I had coped up with repression and numbing and that I have grieved for as well but human life is anyways consisting of suffering in some form or the other and has given me an important lesson that I don't need to sacrifice myself in order to adapt to suffering and just let go this deeply embedded programming to make way for exploring my life realizing my mind, my true feelings and pains and keep moving forward to liberate myself possibly to the fullest by my life's end.

What habits can you let go of?

What are some of the habits that you would want to let go of? 

I had some answers to this rise up in my mind and few of them being:

1. To let go overthinking and giving into imaginative fears and fantasies

2. To forgive oneself time and again for (the amount of prioritization of others and limiting one's idea of what life, living, exploring life, interests, likeable activities etc means to oneself and in short) seeking validation from others at the cost of self minimization.

3. For getting stuck overanalyzing in proving I am right in my mind and repressing my true feelings and opinions whenever I had to express and thus self invalidating as a result.

4. For believing the fears of my parent and caretakers and absorbing them as my emotional template.

5. To keep creating the need for emotional blocks (unconsciously) so that I keep getting stuck in analyzing them and not fully feeling and expressing and releasing them.

 6. To let go living in my mind and to focus on expanding consciousness and awareness (which is why I have been able to sum up all these in a list form) and just simply sit through meditations as much silently as possible without too much mind chatter.

To let go these old patterns and to be fluid with the flow of life means to release my fears in holding onto them as way of habit. Expecting great results with not so great habits is the truth of the matter and realizing all these truths about oneself is the start to recreating oneself slowly one day at a time.

Healing all these patterns without overanalyzing the stuck aspects of these habits is a start to being kind to oneself. 

Anyone can be a critic but mindful awareness, silence, and sensitivity to one's feelings, one's ways of being and habits, (no matter how redundant or toxic they may have become, but owning upto them) and releasing them to the universe and working towards healthy habits is self acceptance from a newer perspective.

The joy of being (true to) ourselves

 Being yourself is a lot easier when you have all the layers covering you and you feel you can safely hide in them. Being true to unraveling all the layers is being true to your vulnerability that made you want to hide in the first place and why. Maybe there is no straight answer why but hiding your pain, emotional (even if you are physically hurt, it's your emotions that take a lot longer to heal) mostly is to safeguard the authentic juice or essence of being oneself and stay away from acknowledging it. Numbing this acknowledgement or repressing becomes a habit owing to having to cope up with the emotional/physical abuse and not letting it out for fear of being perceived as weak. 

And so not feeling safe enough to be your natural self and even before understanding what that could be, the amount of trust we place on others opinions of us becomes our conditioning that we levy on ourselves as if we tune into proving to others from then on, even from childhood days, that others are right at the cost of feeling all messed up from inside - it's like suspending our belief in ourselves in order to enable their judgements, no matter how criticism oriented it could be or how emotionally immature or insensitive or toxic it could be, but just plainly second guessing ourselves over and over just to give the benefit of doubt because they are family and that they will not mean any harm or belittle, compare, guilt us for no real fault of ours, but they do, and make us silent empathizers by practice - by making us practice as we unconsciously start doing so from a very young age and start assuming that we will never be as good as they want us to be and so to hide this pain that it's better to be adjustable with limiting ourselves, absorbing their energies and mood swings completely and not have any room, any space within us that we can call is for ourselves and completely dishonor boundary setting for ourselves as that thought of setting boundaries doesn't even arise let alone express the need for it. The abuser's toxic becomes part of us as we take comfort in the darkness of such a misguided and lost reality - the reality that we are important as well and that our needs, wants, feelings and so on need to be prioritized and even if it happens later in later, it's still worth it because at least then we will know the real pain of not knowing ourselves enough and not being kind enough with ourselves as we individually deserve that irrespective of what others think.

The stories we tell ourselves just to make ourselves feel more accepted in the lives of others is the most emotional wounding that we continue to sustain and live with and not even feel the extent of numbness that has layered like moss on stagnant waters. 

And so to come out of this cave, this self imposed isolation owing to abandoning ourselves for the need of circumstances needs to be relooked into. Darkness can make us turn away as there's nothing much that we can discover in the absence of light, but continuing to deepen our search that we will find our true self lurking in the deep crevices of the cave is a flickering hope to hold onto. Broken we maybe upon finding pieces of our true selves scattered without a linear thread of meaning and purpose behind it, but it's the fractured pieces if we own up to and acknowledge their presence in us despite the brokenness, then we make way to return to our true self with total integrity. Because it's not the gaining what we have lost and how much we have lost ourselves that matters, it's the letting go what we cannot fix anymore or what we cannot control anymore, and simply accepting over and over until we learn to hear our own painful truths with courage and equally kindness that we are really worth all the time to self explore and go in this inner journey to reclaim the joy of being ourselves.

Focus on surrendering to God

 Focusing on lack in my life has been my primary focus and mental conditioning - by doing this I believed that I was good enough for my mother's care for me as she obsessed on taking care of me when I got sick physically, and not wanting to take responsibility for maintaining good physical health discipline which came with with a healthy mind backup and since my back up was based on lack, I just did a formality of self care while giving away all my power of self accountability and living life to my best possible levels into others hands (her hands more or less).

To let go this habit and to move away from the confines of others devised self care for me and to trust myself fully to exercise in strengthening self beliefs took a lot of effort and a lot of letting go of old loops of patterns of thinking which was so absorbed in focusing on my lack and limitations. I probably would have started on that habit wrongly assuming that by focusing overly on them and taking whatever help I got for fixing my physical health issues was somehow enough to justify self care. 

Fear got the better of me as letting go this focusing on lack was so much my second nature and to surrender this fear, and all the layers that make the fear or fears what it is was harder than just the lip service surrender to God that I would think and visualize about but had not quite gotten the feel of it.

So, is this another form of dependency on others and disguised in the name of God? The one thing that stands out in this form of surrender and not blind/numb dependency on others is the feeling of freedom that I feel and have all the awareness of my true feelings and emotions returning back to me through release of this fear of letting go and such limiting beliefs that had kept me imprisoned within myself. It feels as if I don't have to worry about what would happen in future because the feeling of being aligned to this freedom from past ruminating fears gives me more space to explore what I can really do without any limitations or lack thoughts holding me back.

I still have not figured out what to do but it does feel like a weight is lifted off my chest and that I don't have to feel like an emotional cripple who is bound to her own fears and now has found a way to come out of it through Lord Muruga's grace which helps me walk to Him with whatever strength that I have for the rest of my living days. I know there's a long way to go in terms of walking the faith each and every day but with His blessings this blessed life, my blessed life seems to have found a purpose  broadly speaking - to surrender all my worries and fears to him and to flow with ease no matter what be the waves of challenges. In His ocean of love, everything is fair and unconditional. 

I don't need to keep living my previous mental conditioning anymore and that's like a new lease of life. Because I grew so tired sustaining this adapting to limitations mindset that I had gotten away from my true self (which I am still getting to know) and from knowing Muruga from close quarters. To belong right back in my life navigation map feels like I can take control of my life and travel with awaareness ahead. With Lord Muruga by my side and within my heart, I don't quite feel so alone like I need to do all this life by myself. 

It's so crucial to get a support system, a family or family member of friends to get to trust you unconditionally and not out of sympathy or obligation, and this source of connect with my true self I draw on as I walk inwards into my inner journey with truth and courage and perseverance is the most validation that I can think of for myself, and this inner journey could not have been possible without Lord Muruga showing me the light wherever it might have been needed. 

And so surrendering to God/Lord Muruga is strengthening my inner ability to heal myself emotionally and physically taking one day at a time. It need not occur when you really need something to manifest but as a form of unearthing your core nature that has been buried under all the years of fears and worries. Therefore Muruga has helped me wake up to see all these truths and to embrace myself fully and kindly and to trust Him which I discovered through my inner journeying is much above trusting any other family member or friend. 

This path of broken expectations from myself, from my family members, friends have all come together to bind my surrender to Him not as a way to escape reality but to face reality accepting it for what it is and letting go expectations for people to be this and that and also including expecting a lot from myself which has gotten eased a bit.

Acknowledge your brokenness

I would feel lost a kid in the joint family crowd that I used to live in - it didn't feel like family but as crowd for lack of better words and people sticking it out together through sheer tolerance and adjustments, and they become our conditioning. While the younger people did that more, the elders got to live their emotional immaturity and to survive this without lashing out at elders felt more hypocritical and far from being honest. All this to just stick it out as one huge family with all the broken people coming together to live in it!!

I am thankful for this in a way because even if my emotional maturity bloomed late, but I got to learn the lesson that in order to be respected as elders you need to start young - you need to work on respecting yourself and not expect it from others - validation from others is not respect and neither is fearful obedience to elders...what's the use of such respect anyway? 

Self motivation became my gradual go to after I have given up waiting on my mother who didn't know how to read my repressed silence, my difficulties with expressing myself and just wanted to focus only on my physical/material upbringing. I wish I had gone to self motivation not because there was no other choice. And exercising that overly stressed me a lot and felt fake to want to appear as if nothing has happened beneath the cracked surface within. But I would rather seem alright than weak and just followed the ego as it made me feel better if not feeling true to myself. And this contradiction kept me limited to knowing what I truly connect to or what do I really desire and so on. 

Ego is not one's life energy but it's sad if one is driven by that more than real self love and self belief.

I can't make the past all alright but by realizing this that it was broken and it lacked the guidance and direction from an elder no matter whoever it is allows me to make peace with the imperfections of life - that life is full and complete in itself and it's what we make of it that adds meaning or pushes us to seek some sense of purpose to our life. 

That people are broken and they need a sense of family to make them feel wanted, respected and so on is an undeniable truth. It's this feeling of real family that I had wanted to belong to and not just the number of members who maybe present in a house. A feeling of being at home is when you are secure with yourself and with how many ever members there maybe with you also adds its charm. And to feel secure with yourself from an early age needs a bit of trust from those who are present in the family - that she is more than just a bunch of physical ailments and that she has a world and hope and feelings and voice of her own. 

I was like the fallen star that everyone in the house wished the best for but with an air of despair and I just kept falling quietly and crashed in my heart's darkness again and again. To rise self motivated was my pursuit for happiness and feeling so empty just accompanied me no matter what I achieved..in repressing my feelings habitually from childhood I just learnt to give up on myself as some sort of reflection of others projected on me and I was quite at the edge of the mountain time and again, as if someone's validation outside of me will keep my self belief alive. 

To feel like you are emotionally dead or dysfunctional is like committing suicide when you are still alive and people in your family hardly notice that - as long as you are physically moving around, that's enough for them. 

To experience numbness for a long time was not part of my agenda, but to become defensive about it added more pain, more numbness than what I could hold in my heart. It's this outburst of pain, of longing to be understood, to express authentically without any fear of consequences, of what others would think, of how they would judge me or validate me that makes my voice what it is - to hear what I am truly feeling and acknowledge it simply and quietly is the best form of self expression. 

I am feeling alive for the past few years now and to feel all this pain, all this numbness that I went through as if it was some sort of rite of passage to get out from all the self imposed walls and ignorance makes me feel more sad but grateful that I am blessed with this life to experience all this as part of my life and not an entire life gone in vain if I were to realize all this at a later stage.

Ego vs Self prioritization

 Inner journey and self prioritization are two important aspects of spiritual growth. It's a process to give permission to your spirit to be free to express itself no matter what the individual ego, illusion, and struggles through ignorance maybe. Fear of letting go all these is what makes one's surrender to a higher energy or God harder - the amount of pressure or stress that the old conditioning(s) can ruminate within the body and create layers of blocks that make focusing on one's reality a big effort is self negation, self harm in unconscious ways. 

Ego weighs heavily from within as if its importance needs to be felt no matter what be the changes in reality and demands to meet them from time to time. Surrendering to ego then becomes an easier option as if there's nothing better expected from us and so ego then gains control of one's life inching its manipulative ways through early mental conditioning and family culture. Whether when one is alone or within the presence of family or friends, ego needs to be present there too, almost all the time. 

Individuation is a critical aspect to evolution but whether we survive as real humans or stay stuck in egoistic personality designs is the question. If it is the latter, then that pattern wants to stay embedded and suck the life energy into growing its maladaptive and shape shifting structures which unfortunately is what becomes of the creator given life - we keep creating more space for allowing ego to control our lives and become more and more blind to God within us while searching for God outside to fulfill this imbalance from within that we are responsible for. 

Being true to our ego is what we learn and relearn and letting go ego or releasing clamped emotional responses and mental conditionings becomes anti nature or it feels like something is shifting in us and we want to go back to feeling what we felt before letting go holding onto ego so much.

This anxiety, this self made stress is again a crucial stage in spiritual growth and is a slight maturation from the dense feeling of mind fog. This movement, this jangling of our nerves continues until we release all those fearful feelings and letting ourselves out from the darkness that we put ourselves into - it's a new birthing of sorts as baby steps, slowly and steadily, and picking oneself up over and over is the basic effort from our end. It's here that we need to open ourselves up and let out all the stuck stuff to God and truly surrender to the peace and calm of non thinking, non analyzing and just stay as a quiet observer as we become tools to God's handiwork when He takes over and when as humans we think we have tried our level best and simply give the power over to His grace and time through which he threads our life's knots out from the dark karmic holes. We don't become lifeless, instead we are reminded about our core energy and life purpose from every breath which gets woven through His design for our transformative lives. In essence we are both the damaged goods and also the recreated ones.

It's difficult to hear anything except our thoughts (we all know) but our thoughts don't run our lives but it's us who run behind our ceaseless, restless thoughts and feel drained out of energy. After all thoughts need energy to thrive within us and the more we feed them that, the more they colonize our awareness and consciousness. And what is awareness? It's a realization to be aware that we don't need so many thoughts to bridge our ideas with our reality and all those intermediary worries, anxieties to get our ideas or self expression out is just that - just simply anxiety and worry for not being our highest selves at a given time and personalizing this as my worry and my anxiety makes it egoistic and complicated and layered. 

We owe ourselves this much mindfulness that we become slowly aware of what we are thinking and why we think the way we think. The best part about this stage is that typical responses, typical emotional reactions from others don't get stuck on us anymore as this slight detachment from ego makes us loosen up even in the way we have perceived all these reactions all along and we begin to observe more deeply our own responses and ruminations and all the shelf life that we have given for so long.

Self forgiveness truly is a hard thing to do but it's much better than lack of self prioritization.

This calm after the storm is an empty space - something has gotten cleaned up from within and there feels no need to go back to reliving the hurts and anger and fear - this power to be free, to express my true voice from within is an acknowledgement of this state of life. I do feel tired but it was worth it as this insidious battle with myself within myself had to end some time. 

I don't know about new beginnings but it's better late than never and inner journeying is the way to enjoy this travel.

Goddess Bala - the heart of the inner child

Goddess Bala Tripurasundari is an embodiment of one's inner child. The deeper the emotional wounds coming from the inner child, the more harder it is for the person to grow up from within. Goddess Bala as she is fondly called by her devotees teaches one to go to these places in one's heart and open up the numbed feelings, neglected hurts, blocked up tears and nudges us playfully to release them and invites herself in going by how pure, how sincere is the seeker's heart to bear it all to allow her to wipe them clean. She strengthens the root in us, the root that makes the person who he/she is, and for that she needs the complete truth, even at the cost of feeling fully naked and really vulnerable like a child from deep within - no filters, no superficialities, just plain innocent truth is all she wants and to simply surrender without any doubts just like how a child instantly trusts his/her parent/caretaker to guide or take care when in fear, pain, or hurt.

It's this childlike trust that she connects to as she can easily see through the many layers that prevents one from admitting to one's flawed conditioning and unhealthy patterns of thinking and behaving that starts from quite an early stage of one's life. She begins from the start and when she does, she becomes a playmate, a reminder to not get bogged down by life's current situations and past dense emotional wounds and hurts, but to accept the present for what it is. Goddess Bala teaches you, if you allow her to, to actually grow up once again.

She is radiant divinity and endearing smile and purity clothed in beautiful clothes and adornments that befit a girl child. She is the deepest yearning come true for the childless, she is the gentle mother for an emotionally hurt inner child, and she is a joy to grow old with.

In a sense, Goddess Bala adopts us irrespective of whether we have a child or otherwise and is truly the 'Child is the father/mother of the man.'

Muruga - Motherhood Embodied Spirit

 Lord Muruga has been the mother in my life's making. He has been the silent witness and the invisible guide who makes me feel understood and protected whether in the midst of my family, friends or strangers. He is not just an external idea who clicks and then goes back in hiding in my mind's darkness but the reason for my existence and a second chance at staying alive and feeling life in an all new way.

There's so much to share but so little words to make up for his sea of compassion that has kept me afloat no matter what be the ups and downs of the tides of life. 

Where there was bitterness there is gratitude now and so what more can my heart want from this God who is all unconditional love and motherhood embodied in spirit? It's overwhelming sometimes to try to comprehend the depth of his care and support for all those who believe in Him..I do like to think that I am one of the lucky chosen ones to stay close to Him and be a speck of His creation on His feet. 

My yearning to want to belong somewhere, to feel cherished, accepted unconditionally and feel visible all got wiped out gently and eventually as Muruga's divine essence through His songs composed by great Tamizh poets, authors, and spoken by scholarly masters are so interwoven in what I see and hear and feel like a wide and open minded channel to house the Lord in His beautiful images that flash in my mind's eye and also shed light to find my way through the crevices of the caves that I sometimes get lost in. 

What you see is what you get - in mind and in your day to day life support - inexhaustible beauty, kindness, and a vigilant teacher who teaches through your life challenges and the wisdom you start to see and experience through every new challenge which then become a way to see His pattern of testing you and releasing you from the grip of your programmed fears from your past, negative habits, toxic dependencies as His Vel, His lance, pierces through all your layers of blocks that have kept you imprisoned and restless in the shadows of your subconscious mind.

He can see you just as you start seeing Him in all your trials and the means to the problem lies both in you and undoing you through you to lead you to your solutions end if you allow Him, choose Him to do so.

Enmeshment

Enmeshment is a soul sucking phenomenon where the essence of one person gets stuck on the conditioning of the others and hence the 'need' for sustaining this enmeshment as a way of being conditioned and being limited and assuming that that's the truth for oneself is what is called enmeshment - it's like one is nt clear on where one ends and where another person begins. It's a dangerously thin line of selfhood that one has weakly created or drawn only to be surrounded by the otherness of the other person who he/she is enmeshed with.

Self without an idea of the self is like contradicting oneself and living an abstract sense of life where things feel almost real but not quite so. 

Enmeshment is not connectivity with oneself even though aspects of living like earning, nurturing oneself, taking care of family, building on learning and skills, networking with people are felt like they are done but by being disconnected with one's true essence and drawing on energy to facilitate all the above functions through the other and thereby staying enmeshed and not secure as it supposedly feels.

It is in other words practicing staying absorbed with oneself at the cost of not being aware of what it feels being authentic expressing, sharing, and demonstrating life in action in whatever way that be. Living away from oneself is not a great place to be and to expect that others understand and empathize this hollowness of oneself is attracting more misunderstanding than the opposite. 

So, self destructive is also owing to being enmeshed with another person in thought, belief, and even actions at the cost of minimizing one's boundaries, second guessing one's decision making, and getting anxious to take responsibility for oneself, and ultimately stay unconscious of who one is within one's body and mind which is numbing oneself in other words substantially.

 Dark energies are not from outside as much as one makes space for repressing oneself, second guessing one's decisions, feeling anxious and sad for not being able to express and create one's organic version of who he/she is from within. It's not acknowledging that the darkness exists and learning to get comfortable to lying to oneself that the unconsciousness of one's existence and living doesn't hurt one's feelings - in short it's losing one's personal integrity in order to be an ideal package in the eyes of others.

Where there is ignorance about knowing oneself and why they have blocked themselves from feeling hurt, and that's where the shadows outgrow the person's true purpose of living and that is to discover oneself in complete honesty and integrity. Ego can do only so much but depending a lot on it to make one feel secure, accepted, and understood is allowing for being insensitive to oneself and arrogant with others as ego just projects what you want to be but who you are not deep down and helps to fool oneself longer living the ego.

A Note to the Survivors/children of narcissistic parent(s)

People who feel they are entitled for respect because they have aged, or that they had suffered a lot in their past and hence feel deserving of others respect, and who blame others and not take self responsibility where it warrants are not only emotionally immature but are also narcissists.

For them, their self image is everything and they want that others respect and look upto that image they have in their mind or have projected it onto others minds through skillful interpretation of their emotions and feelings conveniently in order to retain their image. This in turn implies that they have to continue to retain a a sense of  victimhood or herohood wherever possible and not outgrow that as they need to keep people working for them in whatever way they are related to the narcissists.

Everything works and it works for the good of narcissists according to their life experiences. Be it poverty, health issues, relationship issues, they can manipulate it in such a way that they continue to remain the unsung heroes that they don't mind blowing their own trumpets or exaggerating their struggles just to carefully present it in such a way that it is all the others fault and conveniently dodge taking personal responsibility for anything regarding these situations.

And the sons and daughters who are the real victims of such 'heroes' who don't have a choice but to respect such parents for respect's sake as they are never loved for love's sake unconditionally as children. It's a tiring feeling to steer oneself clear from the heavy layers of image building for the children of narcissists as it's complicated to separate their own individual feelings from their parents as children get sucked or drawn into the parents image building activity from childhood, and children are impressionable at that. And even as they grow older they feel helpless some times or feel choiceless but to love their parents(as the parents don't outgrow their self image which they have preserved all along and expect their children to respect that image) and not bring upon any misunderstandings in their relationship with their parents for this reason.

The mirror can only reflect the truth as is but for a narcissist, the mirror of selfhood has their dramatic retelling and reliving of experiences and making others believe in this stuck reflection for years and years. Now, any ounce of criticism or a pointing at truth at their direction that things have not been so bad after all for instance would break this self image of 'victim herohood', and this they will not allow no matter to what great extent they can go to preserve their heroic tales and the standard way to react would be to make people feel guilty for bringing up the truth of their (the narcissist's) immaturity in the present times. 

Narcissists may have crossed many a mile in their lives but the fact that they use others to get to where they want to go and that does not exclude their children is the painful truth and the narcissist's journey in short. To go along in their journey is not a journey of self discovery for the children of narcissists but a journey of getting lost and to understand how far they have come away from themselves is like looking at a lost cause. But to personalize that lost cause by being mindful to it and setting up boundaries wherever possible and going deep within one's life to unravel the uniqueness of being an individual self is the best form of self care that becomes crucial for the survivors or children of narcissistic parents.

All is not lost yet and don't just lose your will to live to the fullest is my reaching out to the children of narcissistic parents. 

 

Mind Maintenance

 The body holds memories of trauma, physical or emotional. Mantras act as the interface for dissolving those painful memories that seem lie dormant in pockets in our bodies and the sounds that emerge from the seed mantras, whether you listen to them or chant, seem to awaken the pockets and stir them until they get clean and get restored as pure spaces in the body.

The constant bombarding of sounds from the seed mantras can uproot one's knots that interfere with the patterns of day to day living. For instance "Om Dum Durgayei Namaha" is an example of toxic repellent where dirt gets accumulated in the form of thoughts and festers the consciousness to get toxic. It's a slow poison, our toxic thoughts, and time to time detoxing like these beej mantras help unearth them from the dark crevices of our minds and bodies and make us feel clean from within.

Our minds become the seat of mindful channelizing and tuning with our reality, moment to moment as we feel driven and know where we are trying to go. It's like the mind becomes the vehicle by which we move with our lives from one point to the other or also get stuck and keep blaming the vehicle for not taking us faster and making what we desired for to happen. Vehicle maintenance is part of the journey and the journey of a lifetime needs all the more discipline and awareness to understand the signals that how fast are we speeding or how much we can slow down to keep the movement nevertheless going. In which direction we want to go and what is the point we are trying to reach can all be understood if we keep track clearly instead of going haywire in all the directions and not reach anywhere.

Therefore one's consciousness is the inner compass to rely on and maintenance upkeep of the mind is the way to do so.

Spirituality is Unconditional love

 Spirituality without self transformation is not true spirituality. The essence of the all knowing God who manifests as truth and sweeps one's mind off all the layers that are patterns conditioned by one's past is the all encompassing feeling of being protected from it and becoming embodying of His essence through mind and body. As the presence and inclusion and experiencing God is not an outside experience, it begins to resonate more and more  that He is within and that all changes happen from within. One's mind being vulnerable to outside influences, to interrupting thoughts, to distractions from surroundings, from technology, from one's family and so on would just be challenges that come and go but would not feel like they change you or deviate you from your alignment with God - that's the constant despite everyday life situations.

To come to this realization is so self fulfilling and complete by itself that all those situations, memories that made you get stuck to traumatic life experiences from past, differences in expectations from relationships and their disappointments and so on, health challenges, anxieties, worries about future, they all come together but do not have the grip to become cohesive or random knots that seem to block you from within to draw in the essence of your own true self. And so, to be cleaned, flushed, and energized by Muruga's (My life changing God) compassion, His will combined with my surrender to work on healing from within has been like being gifted with a second chance to start living my life all over again.

What is gone is gone, but what remains is the unconditional love to God for all the good things that have happened, and for the not so good and unexpected things that have happened, and the learnings that they have given me is the ability to trust myself that I can keep the faith in Him no matter how life turns out in future - being present with Him as I write this is all that counts.

Discover your true courage

 What it takes to discover true courage is when you come face to face with your fears and are brave enough to share your vulnerabilities with others. Denial of one's vulnerability adds more and more stress to normalize being a human. 

For me frequent migraine headaches meant I was walking on egg shells with my body and the stress from a dysfunctional and crowded joint family meant walking on a landmine where anything happens anytime. It's like I can never be too careful with a highly sensitive system and owing to fight or flight in each of us, I chose to flee or disconnect with my body as pain sensitivity for a spectrum of my health issues(Migraine was one of them) was significant, and my quiet struggle to process with rising fears that ebbed with numbing the pains from time to time through allopathy, homoeopathy medicines mostly was the quiet before another raging health storm that upturned any sense of stability and relatedness to reality that I wanted to establish. I fought this feeling of helplessness but it didn't quite help. It just added more emotional numbing and was woken up from it through physical pain, discomfort and vice versa, as if one feeds another in turns.

I just leaned more and more on numbing myself and not through any substances but overthinking, fantasizing, daydreaming, and floating like disconnected from myself in a vacuum just kept me sustaining through any unforeseen episodes of health issues. I started to relate myself or be defined by my health problems as if my adapting to that would help me stay in survival mode and as I thrived on negative expectations, my highly sensitive intuitions were keyed to alert me before the actual pain episodes start as if proving to me that I was right after all about having to go through this issue for this day. 

Fear before incurring bouts of headache with an exhaustive episode of nausea, vomitings, dehydration left me with no energy to even feel hopeful for good health in the coming days as the next step or steps in the coming days would be to sidestep as much as I can to avoid getting caught in this knot that I seemed to not let go and kept getting wound up in it.

All this struggle to seem to do well in the intermittent time when there were no migraine attacks meant putting on a fake positive attitude and feeling so lonely and empty as if I was the only one in this planet going through this, and my world which I considered to be my family just went around and round me just observing, worrying, dominating, criticizing, unhealthily comparing me with my peers, my cousins, and when I got sick, with my late father (my mother would do that) and just letting me be with my overwhelmed inner world that was stretched and torn from all the overthinking and anxious to feel normal again pattern.

To get it that this is also called trauma and an unhealthy attachment to the way I had conditioned myself mentally owing to lack of support from my mother who is a single parent by the way and who I felt obligated to be good enough for all the money she put in for my medical costs as a working woman made me just want to remain conditionally visible to her - in the sense that she saw what she had wanted to see but never saw my struggle to keep up with this torturing cycle of migraines (I have other issues too but this stood out like a sore thumb) that made me want to stay buried in an unconscious land of make believe personality, confidence, expressing myself fearlessly and so on. 

My inner voice was afraid to speak up as fear ran through the entire length of my body next to blood. Fear had kept me from feeling my life, that there could be more to my life than just coping up with health issues. Not knowing how to process through my fears and not expressing that to anyone, and assuming that people would get me proved to be just a constant stretch of this pattern no matter how older I got. I just had got stuck and didn't know how to grow up despite this and beyond this, as change got identified with only physically and its problems thereof and to cope up accordingly. 

Childhood trauma needs to outgrow through one's age and unless those locked in fears, anxieties, and muffled tears, stifled sadness, and passive anger doesn't get released, until then I will remain a prisoner to my past. And in realizing this, releasing through tears, I have unlocked the way to let myself out by opening the door to looking at things from a different light. That courage is not absence of fears but acknowledging that circumstances no matter how uncertain, fearful, and overwhelming as they maybe can be changed if we choose to work through it, ask for support where it matters, and also accept that there's only so much that we can control. A shift towards a healthy attitude feels a new way to reconnect with my body, my feelings, and that attitude begins by being open to my life's possibilities and life experiences. While I can't undo all the stickiness with fears that I had gotten wound up in, but making this as an excuse to not live life fully is just not a way out. 

The way in to stay connected to my life are through prayers, meditations, journaling, mindful self talks, observing nature, taking long walks, feeling my feelings, sharing them with select few who get me, listening to soothing music, and taking relaxing warm baths are some of the few ways that I have learnt and applied to reconnecting to this new version of me. 

Fear does not bridge the gap between your outer reality and your likes or interests, it just widens it. Your belief in who you are and what you want to do with it needs your focus and attention to what gives you joy. Being mindful of your happiness no matter how small or big it is comes with your courage to own up to it. My acceptance that I allowed circumstances to define me and limit me is an eye opener and the real struggle sustained when I refused to let go those self limiting beliefs is bitter sweet but yet is part of my life experience.

So, my past does hold me captive still but becoming aware of it is discovering true courage to gradually let go and move towards clarity despite the chaos of mind voices.

Find your shore

We don't betray our parents if we love ourselves more

If not helped by them from childhood to love ourselves we grow within sore

Supporting them without enabling ourselves then feels like a chore

There's nothing wrong if we want to be heard more

That the vacuum of not loving ourselves is not some folklore

And their stories and struggles to raise us was beyond a point a bore

Suppressing your thoughts and hearing them out is not going to make them feel secure

In fact releasing them out from your chest through talking , writing and discovering your voice will make you feel good enough more and more

You are not betraying your parents trust by choosing self acceptance and self care

But will come back to them with enough life and strength to understand that your case is not rare

That there are many voices that are like deep waters but come to life when they find their shore.

Acceptance from within

 I grew up thinking that I wasn't separate from my mother and that my wellbeing was when she took control of my life, and boy, she did a hell of a job taking control!

I got so stuck on this idea that since she swallowed so much of self pity for doing the birthing under difficult and tragic circumstances by herself without my father by her side and utilizing her frustrations and emotional insecurities to secure emotional support for herself, I really believed that this would be enough for me to grow under - I too believed that in order to get stuff done, you need to sell yourself short so that others sympathy and their humanity could come in handy to make it possible for you. This minimized version of myself had to fit into my mother's stories that she told me over and over while I  told myself this story that I need  to adapt to limitations, and by that I mean adapting to myself with all my minimized, repressed sense of self. So, that's a story within a story.

It became a habit to look outside of myself for validation and since I never got that fully, I just learnt to survive in a big dysfunctional joint family just dodging people, their intimidating presence, ego centric cold wars, men shouting down their wives and so on and kept myself 'safe' by feeling like the other and that is to completely numb and repress my processing about the people in my family and live depending on my mother's decisions and her obsessions with 'fixing' my health taking me to doctors as soon as I complain of even pains that could be managed at home. My pain resistance and resilience was wrought with anxiety and deep seated mistrust on my willpower and self worth. That was the most prolonged pain that I didn't know I nurtured and just hosted that in my body, my thoughts, consciousness, and made me feel like an outsider to my life.

The real healing, if any, is to feel the pain, release it, let it go fully that I couldn't have gotten everything alright even if I had everything in my control, but the fact that I am giving myself enough rope and less of criticism is a shift in the right direction.

Acceptance of what was and being alive to what is is the best undoing that can happen for me and which when applied day after day is the best way to live growing to your potential and not living in the head in the overall process of discovering the joys of simple living. And simple living means to simply cope up when life isn't fair and be grateful when life is fair, and each of us truly gets what we each deserve whether we really like it or not.

So, all the fuss is only about non acceptance when no amount of coping up makes anything go away but just the fact that acceptance turns the tables around to help face all the blocks that have been brought on due to unrealistic expectations, and the narratives that were spun within your unconscious mind either due to dominating influences which you believed to be true as you just added layers of interpretations through your own thoughts and over time they hardened as your own beliefs. Your own beliefs which may not be good for you when believing in them longer than warranted from the said situations but when practiced like a habit they just spillover festering your consciousness and bringing them into their fold.

Forgetting is hard, forgiving, harder!

 I don't know how do I begin to forgive my mother?

The woman who I assumed is an all time mother that I could hang my dependencies on as a primary caregiver way back in my childhood was washing her dirty linen off living off my absorbing and observant nature, and my quiet while reliving her past and feeling that life is unfair, if things and specially her daughter doesn't live up to her expectations. And so I learnt to survive.

 Survive through her crack and pop criticisms that just was oozing self pity a minute and passive anger in another and confusing me as to who am I supposed to understand more. Oh yeah, I was supposed to understand way more than any child within 10 years could understand - the grief of losing her husband, i.e. my father to a sudden cardiac arrest while she was pregnant with me, and the grief of having to turn her life around and choosing to take my father's job but from the clerical level that was offered by the Government then, and wanting me to be the receiving end of her huge favor like feeling that she superimposed over me whenever possible, and wanted me to consider how lucky I am to have her as my mother. An exaggerated sense of entitlement would be an understatement. 

She lived under an acquired shell so to speak but since it had her choices written all over it, she survived quite well under the disguise of self pity, emotional bereavement whenever I went through headaches and nausea which was unfortunately similar to my father's health patterns while he was alive. She grieved how alone she was and how frustrating it was for her to take me to the doctors who she felt was the first resort to just fix me so that she can go back to her office going while I came home to her brothers and their wives and their children, my cousins, yes, and to this huge joint family that I just had to find a space to fit into. 

It became harder to do so since my emotional and physical belonging was with my mother and so I thought was the safe space as long as she takes control of my volatile health (nothing terminal but was very overwhelming for my sensitive nerves and naïve mind as I lacked health managing skills and discipline as a kid) and just made me feel guilty for being a pain to her every week or so that I complained of the repetitive migraines that was just an outlet from my body for being in pain for want of unconditional love and acceptance from her. Nothing could get her attention faster than my sickness in any small shape or form and she loved getting all the attention she got from her extended family of brothers with whom she and I lived. 

We two were supposed to be a family to one another as I was her only child but she refused to grow up emotionally as my physical issues too didn't seem to outgrow my age and I started to feel outside of my body, disconnected with myself while she continued with her criticisms and comparisons with my father, while making herself the center of my universe over and over and defining my world to revolve around her emotional insecurities that I took upon myself as my responsibility. And I was supposed to in a way as I had been provided with all material needs, and my way of repaying her better be with unquestionable loyalty and blind adherence to her breaking down on my boundaries which she was happily oblivious to. She was living all inclusive through me as if she could get to live longer by doing this or maybe make my longevity more when compared to my father. Either ways, it was just numbing and killing me from inside. 

Self sabotaging is a very insidious pattern of flawed beliefs that seem to ring true to an open trusting child and is often an unconscious receiving of fragile, narcissistic, and self absorbed seed energy from the parent or parents if both of them are alive. But this pattern of thinking like an all inclusive person and struggling to separate oneself from the other (Your parent here) even as you age (I am 42 now), your parent's thoughts, their choices made from convenience to define you, control you, mold you is just widening of this huge gap from within you. It's like losing a sense of clarity of where one's reality starts and where another's begins. And when this applies in your day to day living, it disempowers you as you cannot get comfortable in your shoes and walk your own path, be it in relating to your life, your relationships, your decision making to move away from this familiar pattern of enmeshment which is a sticky and stuck feeling. 

The gap of losing oneself to this pattern and not aware how deep and how far is it taking you away from your growing and learning about yourself as your emotions don't feel real for you owing to feeling used up to making your mother feel good about herself is rather invisible but painful when you start seeing it for what it is. 

To make peace with oneself  by starting all over again to discover the real joy of being alive for oneself and do so with true self love without any guilt, and relearn to take control of one's life, trust in one's physiology, one's mind and heart that it cannot work as per others expectations but has a life and rhythm of its own, and if the parent cannot let the child be for what's worth, then it's their loss. Their loss for not knowing the son or daughter for who they really are and not for who they are supposed to be. 

I am not a made to adjust to convenient choices package that can be praised for being like her mother in certain situations or like her father in some other, and wanting her validation for the real me, repressions, tears, helplessness, fear, overwhelm and all was just a waste of my time because they didn't mean anything to her.

I am not supposed to be in conflict for being in my skin and yet long term dissociation and numbing one's personal identity even if career, ambitions to an extent have helped me get a fix, but what is truly broken is the daughter's trust here for trusting her mother the most and to realize that mothers are not perfect after all is both a relief and also a bitter pill to acknowledge.

Not having a kid and being childless for over 15 years of my marriage with my best friend and my better half has nothing to do with my physical health but it just has 'rejection' written all within me as if I have mothered my emotional wounds so much that there is no space for a new creation, our creation to come to being. 

I have grieved for this earlier thinking it's all my fault and that I am not good enough to be a parent as much as I was not good enough to be the perfect child, perfect daughter despite all the material goodies being provided to me. To live in a survival mode is one thing but to live with shame and guilt is something that even all the ruminating, repressing is not going to make them go away.

I realize now that this emotional block is coming in my way to discovering my many life experiences ahead and that to let it go, I really need to let go being so enmeshed with my mother, in my thoughts and in my consciousness. And I got to honor myself by letting this enmeshment go before my mother's passing, and which will come when it comes, but I do wish to grieve for my being so unconscious to myself and my life and to feel love for my self which is happening through baby steps but without looking back for validation from her and thinking it's her love for me. Because love is love - it's simple, uncomplicated, and learning to forgive oneself from time to time. It's only then that I can forgive my mother.

True Wealth Starts from You

Confining myself to a preconceived set of notions and conditionings define me to playing a repressed person's role which is not really true to her life. It's like all the repressed emotions like anger, sadness, and so many unspoken emotions coupled with feelings of not being good enough for receiving love, acceptance, and trust has made me seek refuge in these bundled knots which have come to my awareness and have loosened their grip gradually over me. It's only that I am afraid to let them go completely as self love is something that I have just begun to grow into and getting impatient, criticizing myself, and expecting some superhuman results from me is something that comes in the way to rising above and meeting me half way through genuine love for myself. The miseries of the repressed emotions and feelings of inadequacy that kept me fake company and feeling stuck have been too much comfort to grow out of.

Setting oneself free seems so hard and yet gravitating to one's miseries so easy as if there is going to be a never ending supply of time for me. We are all bound by only so much time and yet spend a big part of our lives wishing life were different in our past and maybe we could be in a better space today. 

Feeling like we are in a good space is just momentary and it only is a matter of time before we quickly disguise into our old selves and try to be present for today. Either the mind is out of sync or the body. and it's only through some regular day to day jobs, whether they pay us money or otherwise, that we get a feel of being connected both body and mind in the routines that we play out, almost on autopilot. Again the question arises that do we perform our everyday jobs/duties in a numb frame of mind or are we even aware of what we are doing and how well?

When numbing ourselves becomes foremost conditioning of our minds as if the various situations that life throws at us is just to make ourselves adaptable to numbness and through it feel nothing, and which ironically is the result that we set ourselves up for but want to be alive and aware and joyous when feeling and being part of the result manifestation, no matter how small or big the work. How we feel about ourselves and how that translates into the way we perform our jobs determines our attitude for life. 

There is no set pattern to life although our biological ageing seems to give a feeling that there needs to be one - emotional maturing and growth in material gains. How far do we come becoming a success or already a success is governed by what exactly we do and not who we are from within (sadly).

How do we get to a state of mind where we feel we have earned the blessings that we still have in our lives and can we explain logically how much lucky we are when compared to many others? It's hard to actually explain our life's blessings but how far we come materially is the singled out coin that shines in the heap of our blessings - it can be quantified - the more the shine, the more credit points it seems to add to life! But who we are from inside out is the quality that adds to what you earn, your blessings, opportunities, jobs, material gains and all, or all the shine would just be superficially coated and fade quickly.

Recognizing that we are the true wealth and respecting who we are, our uniqueness, abilities, flaws, scars, tears and a lot more is the real self appraisal that we grow to earn as we age through our fluctuating times begins by acknowledging that what we want starts from who we are. And doing what we like, if we are lucky, is just growing to our fullest potential. We don't always get to do the jobs we like but that does not give us the license to like ourselves any lesser. 

The pattern then becomes who you are, who you are becoming and that automatically reflects on what you do. The more that you stay connected to who you are in essence, the more you enjoy the work that you can grow to learn and perform and gain the self confidence to cocreate your life's choices and what best works for you and which ones deplete your energy and time.

 

 

Raise a toast to your humble tea!

 Sometimes just having a cup of cardamom infused tea is all that is needed to let the stress off steam. (There's many other tea spices and masalas that enhance tea's flavour but cardamom is a subtle and lovely mood lifter for me:) ) Tea with few biscuits is like self acceptance on a plate - it's in those moments of smelling the tea and sipping the warmth that envelops you for just a few moments to stay in your zone that is actually the comfort that we seek to rest into. So, tea and that too the non watery ones and the ones with the right amount of milk and thickness and water to bring to boil the tea leaves/powder which is all there is to tea making, to give us a cupful of fresh perspective from a relaxed sense of taking our minds off what is consuming us and to just be there for ourselves just as we are, in whichever situation we are, is the highpoint of the humble tea.

Tea consumes our stress for those few moments you can say and not the other way round!! To just give in to these small moments of times from our mind numbing everyday schedule is one's own quality (tea) time and what better way to be with oneself than by having a cupful of aromatic tea to just blend with our senses and make sense of it in our own mindful ways.

Ta drinking for the sake of tea drinking is one thing and tea with oily, fried snacks is another. Tea undoubtedly adds taste to the samosas, pakoras, bajjis and more, but as a standalone treat when consumed just for tea's sake! 

We need our times of solitude to take our attention away from our problems which again keeps brewing in our minds similar to a bitter tea that has lost all taste and life, and it's my takeaway that don't keep thinking through problems - talk to your friends, parents, or anyone trustworthy (let out your steam) and get yourself off your ruminations(it's like stirring through broken milk that won't hold anything under heat) and don't make them a blending habit with your everyday life and plans. It's the aftertaste of bitterness on one's tongue or in one's life that makes it so not worth it.

Here's raising a toast to the universal tea that ties people together through tiredness and refreshment, through solitude and tea parties with friends, through worries and deadlines, and project victories, tea stays with you to make sense of all the highs and lows of your life. 

To F.R.I.E.N.D.S with love😊

 Phoebe Buffay from F.R.I.E.N.D.S is such a wonderful human who is weird and honest and so beautiful to look at and has some of the best costumes and hairstyles that are so becoming of her - just free spirited and true to her whole personality. I can't imagine Lisa Kudrow to be any less than the Phoebe she plays on FRIENDS. 

I have always wanted to be like Phoebe or have a friend who is like her, but in reality in my life there's no such character.

FRIENDS, to me, back in the late '90s and early 2000's was like a rite of passage to help me transition from teenage into early adulthood and growing up in a closed minded environment did not make it any easier to want to understand my sexuality without just the female biology that stood staring back at me in the mirror. 

My cousin and I managed to sneak into a storage room that had an old portable TV and switched on star world channel promptly at 8 PM and laughed our heads out. She(Meena) and I had healthy discussions over why she thinks Rachel goes way over line and Joey is just a plain naïve guy who just got lured by her charms, and that Joey was just too vulnerable without Chandler by his side. We agreed to disagree but came to some kind of concurrence that this was just a serial while eating our dinner, and just went about our college stuff and again came back to blacklisting Rachel for another of her drama queen sagas the next day☺

FRIENDS became so much a part of our consciousness and our patterns of thinking that if we inadvertently do something dumb and funny we would call ourselves "Duh.. I am being a Joey!," or shoot sarcastic wise cracks at others at home slyly and feel like a Chandler all the way!

They became a part of us and especially for Meena and me as we were the same age almost and giggled a lot when we got together at the stupid jokes we played on each other and spoke in hushed tones while joking about others at home. I had the assurance that if not finding a Phoebe in the outside world, I have a "Chandler like" Meena at home😊

I guess it's over 2 decades since Meena and I sat down together to watch FRIENDS and relive our silly giggly moments, but I am glad that I still have her as one of my close sisters and friends. Binge watching FRIENDS on Netflix is not the same without Meena but I am glad that despite the awkwardness, hardships, ups and downs that my growing up was full of but FRIENDS just let me be and made my problems feel smaller.

There are many other fun, heartwarming stories, serials that we have all grown up with and each has a place of their own in our hearts, in our lives. The joy of growing up as I may dare say now is that FRIENDS continues to feel the same and that I have not lost my humor no matter how unexpected the blows in my life. Here's to more such fun reliving down memory lane💗