For the second time in four years, I have failed myself. There are no words.

Questions

I understand that life is all about balance, but why does nothing ever happen the way we want it to? Why do we self-sabotage, why do we never learn from our mistakes, why do we let history repeat itself? Why is so much of our happiness dependent on our decisions when all decisions that we make are the wrong ones? If your 20s are about making mistakes, how do you suddenly stop at 29 and 11 months? At 30, how do you not keep making bad choices? Why does 27 feel so old? Why does everything feel like a personal attack right now? Where are all the happy people? Why does no one understand anything? How do I tell them that I will not survive this a second time?  

25 things you didn’t know about me (and probably don’t care to either)

1. I do not miss blogging as much as I thought I would. When I first stopped blogging regularly, I would sometimes find myself composing posts in my head while something worth writing was happening, but not anymore. 
2. But I miss my blog friends a lot. We’ve all more or less stopped blogging and it’s just not the same. I knew this could happen, of course, but I made the rookie mistake of thinking we were going to be different. 
3. I really wish I hadn’t stopped studying French.
4. I am crazy superstitious. I don’t cross the road immediately if a black cat crosses it, I spit three times if someone jinxes something – I am obsessed with jinxes – and I don’t drive over nimbu-mirchi on roads.
5. I cannot get off Twitter because of work, but I think Twitter influencers are pretentious and insufferable. No one talks like that in real life.
6. The basics of Bengali that I learned trying to impress my boyfriend at 18 come in handy now that 75% of my team is Bengali. 
7. I don’t know how to achieve this – given my profession – but I really want to delete Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from my phone. 
8. My family got our first dog when I was 6, and the second when I was 12. Both of them died of natural causes after several years with us, and now I cannot even imagine getting another one for the fear of going through that all over again.
9. I am one of those people who think therapy is magical and everyone should go to a therapist, but I’ve tried it twice – once at 16 and again at 26 – and I hated it both times. It did nothing for me. 
10. I regret not getting a masters in psychology. 
11. My best friend is still my best friend, but we barely talk.
12. I have been very lucky with my friendships – I got great friends out of school, college, and my first and second jobs, so now I’m worried that my quota of making new friends is full and I won’t be able to make any going forward. 
13. I have a crush on Cole Sprouse but it makes me feel weird because he’s two years younger. 
14. I do not like Goa trips. 
15. I have smoked up four times in my life and I enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would.
16. I still hate the taste of alcohol and cigarettes. 
17. I used to be very worried about burning bridges (I still am), but this quote makes me feel much better – “May the bridges I burn light the way.”
18. I also love the malaphor “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
19. I love books about sibling relationships. My favourites are both by Jandy Nelson – The Sky is Everywhere and I’ll Give You the Sun.
20. When I found out that Gillian Flynn wasn’t working on anything after Gone Girl, I promised myself I wouldn’t read her first – Sharp Objects – till she announces a new book. I am saving it for my rock bottom. 
21. I really, really hate Chinese food. And all my friends love it.
22. I am always surprised by how homesick I get even today, though it’s been seven years since I first moved out. 
23. This year marks a decade since I finished school and that makes me feel super fucking old. 
24. My family is from UP, but I grew up in Rajasthan. I am constantly surrounded by people who are so proud of their heritage and so entrenched in their culture, and I feel like I have no sense of it, despite being from two states that have so much of it. 
25. I am not a fan of dessert.

2016 tag

1. What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before?
Got a tattoo
Went paragliding

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No

5. What countries did you visit?
None

6. What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?
Discipline

7. What date from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory?
Nothing in particular

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting that tattoo, not chickening out of paragliding

9. What was your biggest failure?
Everything else

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not particularly

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tattoo

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
My brother’s

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Mine

14. Where did most of your money go?
Food

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Tattoo
My brother moving to Delhi

16. What song/album will always remind you of 2016?
Nothing in particular

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
1. Happier or sadder? Sadder
2. Thinner or fatter? Fatter
3. Richer or poorer? Poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Impulse control
Vacations

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Give in to temptation

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it at home, sleeping.

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Friends

22. Did you fall in love in 2016?
No

23. How many one night stands in this last year?
None

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
Veep
The Good Wife

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Yes

26. What was the best book(s) you read?
You by Caroline Kepnes

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Nothing in particular

28. What did you want and get?
Tattoo

29. What did you want and not get?
Everything else

30. What were your favourite films of this year?
I can’t remember. Dhoni? Dangal? Not sure.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
26. Took four of my closest friends out to lunch. Went to dinner with another friend.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Not gaining back the weight I lost in 2015

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?
Red lipstick saves the day

34. What kept you sane?
My brother. Books. TV

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
No one in particular

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The gender equality debate
Demonetisation

37. Who did you miss?
Home

38. Who was the best new person you met?
S, from work

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016.
Growing up is not optional.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?
Can’t remember anything immediately.

Ennui

I completed a year of my second innings in Delhi on Thursday. I had a fairly demoralizing meeting with my boss that day, so I forgot. I don’t usually forget milestones. The next day, when they got a cake for me for completing a year at work, I realized, ‘oh.’ Oh, it’s been a year. The person who returned to Delhi was happy, confident, radiant, and thin. The person cutting this cake is sad, jaded, fading, and fat. How can a year make such a difference, people often wonder. I think if you stop trying, that makes all the difference. In 2015, I stopped trying to hold on to my dream job that had become a nightmare, so I rose from the dead. In 2016, I stopped trying to keep myself happy, so I became unrecognizable. I just wish someone would tell me why.

No one I know blogs often now, at least not the people because of whom I used to be so motivated to blog. I started blogging eight years ago, at 18. Then, it seemed like my life will always be worth writing about. Now, there’s hardly anything that makes sense on paper (or on the screen). But I still think about my (old) blog often. Why can’t I let go? Delete this shell of a blog and just give up entirely? Why is it so hard for me to shake off the past?

People around me are in the process of Figuring It Out. Most people I know are in the bracket of 25-30, so this is a pretty stressful time for all of us. And while I know everyone has issues, I can also see everyone sorting things out one by one. Someone just landed a dream job, someone just married their long-time lover, someone just had a baby and can barely stop smiling. I don’t even know what my dream job is, marriage is just something my parents obsess over, and I don’t even want to babysit. What does that say about me?

My ex got married last week. Can I call him my ex? I don’t know. My on and off boyfriend of five years. How else do I refer to him now? I thought five years entitled me to a phone call. Not a WhatsApp picture from one of our mutual contacts. I’m not going to lie. It stung. I’m not suddenly in love with him because he’s married now, but I am freaked out. We broke up in April and he married some girl in November. How does that work? And why is everyone placing so much importance on marriage?

This blog was supposed to be a new start, me shaking off all that baggage. But I’m never changing, am I? I think they call it ennui.

How long would you wait for someone you love?

I’ve stayed away from this blog for close to four months now, so I’m banking on no one reading this, which is why I’m trying to revive it with this very telling tag.

1. If your lover betrayed you what would your reaction be?
When I was 17, my then boyfriend did cheat on me. It took me a really long time to get over the incident, but not so much the person. I think that was when I internalized that I will be heavily penalized for all my mistakes, because I’d technically ‘stolen’ that boyfriend from another girl. It’s an old, complicated story.

2. If you could have one dream come true which one would it be?
To be able to write and novel and get it published. It needs to do decently well, too. If it’s forgotten or dismissed, I don’t know how I’d deal with that.

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?
At this point, probably my own.

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
Give half of it to my parents, and Eat Pray Love the shit out of the other half.

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?
No

6. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
Being loved. I sincerely hope that the phase of loving and pining is now behind me.

7. How long would you wait for someone you love?
Not very long

8. If the person you like is secretly attached, what would you do?
Get over him. I don’t do unavailable anymore.

9. If you could root for one social cause which one would it be?
Feminism

10. What takes you down the fastest?
Nostalgia and some of my old blog posts.

11. Where do you see yourself in 10 years' time?
Writing my second book and/or not whining about my job.

12. What's your fear?
That I will keep repeating the same mistakes.

13. What kind of person(s) do you think the person who tagged you is/are?
I tagged myself, so I guess... narcissistic?

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Single and rich

15. What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
Check my phone

16. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who would you pick?
I’d like to say I’ll pick the more sorted guy, but I think I’ll choose the more dramatic relationship. For reference, see the Derek-Meredith-Finn triangle from Grey’s.

17. Would you give all in a relationship?
I’m not a fan of giving all in any relationship, so no.

18. What's eating you now?
My seeming directionless career and my health issues.

19. Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
This is a dumb question.

20. Tag 6 people...
If you’re reading this and you want to take it up, please go for it. If not, I wouldn’t be surprised.

365

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure - measure a year?

Today, in the middle of the afternoon, while I was staring at my hall's curtains and trying to figure out how to get rid of the lizard hanging there, I realized that it's been a year. A year since I quit my last job. A year since the most melodramatic, humiliating, liberating month of my life culminated into freedom from a job that I loved for two years and hated for the next two.

Today, I'd like to say that I'm in a much better place, that I'm happier, healthier, and on my way to becoming even more happier and healthier. I'd like to say that, but I can't. I don't regret my decision one bit, even though sometimes I miss parts of it, now more so because I'm back in Delhi.

My new job is fine, not great, and sometimes downright intolerable. My new house is nice, but lonely, because everyone just keeps getting busier. I'm disappointing my parents more than ever, and I've failed at all the personal goals I set (and managed to meet last year) for myself.

If anything, instead of progressing, I feel like I'm degenerating into a horrible version of myself, something I vaguely recognize from 2013. This blog was supposed to be about a different version of me, but it's safe to say that that plan has been an epic failure. Does that mean that I can only be a decent, responsible, sane person when I'm not working and living with my parents? That is the question that haunts me.

Hitting that kind of rock bottom again will be the ultimate failure, and it's because of my anger about that, more than anything else, that I seem to be stuck in this rut.