Trying not to abandon self

Dear reader,

hello! It has been a while since I wrote here and I have much to share. I see a small change in my interpersonal relationships and that’s what I want to write about. You are warned, this is long.

As a person who fears abandonment and rejection, I see how often I obsess about being the right person, doing and saying the right things and always being kind, compassionate and useful. It is extremely anxiety inducing and suffocating. You can never be right always because what’s right is ever changing and how much can you catch up on? So I sit around judging everyone. It is how my young brain learned to cope with rejection and hoped to find belonging. Does one find belonging with this method? Of course not and needless to say it is an extremely stressful and I can barely focus and people still leave.

induviduality

A post shared by Indu Lalitha Harikumar (@induviduality)

Last year, around this time, I decided I want to be less in my head and more in my body and started dancing. It wasn’t easy but I stuck with it. But that’s for my next newsletter. This year, I decided to do things that bring me joy. And as an anxious person, I like lists. It helps me focus. So I make daily lists on Pomodoro tracker, weekly list (made on Mondays that tells me things I’d like to accomplish, like work on book, finish research, start drawing, go climbing, go see art, be happy, sing, dance, cook 5 times this week) and a general wellness list which has mediation, reading, yoga, getting off the phone by 8 pm, turning off the internet, being in nature, etc.

induviduality

A post shared by Indu Lalitha Harikumar (@induviduality)

Once I started to do some of these joyous things especially in my clearly marked out ‘office time,’ a part of me would say that I was doing it wrong and I was not being productive and everything would be taken away from me. Like cooking lunch has been something that has needed a lot of working with. I have had to tell myself that to eat something that I crave and to cook it is not a waste of time. My mum has done it for years. And I enjoy cooking. I started by putting it on my Pomodoro, even though I am usually happy that I worked for 50 minutes, a part of me keeps saying that’s not real work. It is still a struggle but who doesn’t enjoy a good meal? I am starting to feel less guilty about making lunch.

Also, over the past few months, I have started to add ‘work with hands’ as a 50 minute Pomodoro activity that I do everyday. I love fabrics and embroidery and I completely lose track of time when I start working with it. New ideas keep coming to me and my mind calms down. This I don’t judge as a waste of time and here are some of the things I have made in the past few months.

Allowing myself the space to do things I love has helped me relax in a big way. Among the other things I do to relax is waking up and singing songs (learning lyrics something I enjoyed doing as a child), yoga, meditating, practicing dance (sometimes) and once a week I go walking in our green neighbourhood with my friend Shweta. As people who have always lived in the sub-suburbs where no one ever wanted to visit us and we have had to always travel an hour or more to meet most of our friends and do the cool things that their fancy neighbourhoods offered to finally being able to be joyful in our neighbourhood makes us feel like joy need not always involve so much labour. Our green neighbourhood brings us so much peace too.

Another thing I realized when I started to write my lists is that I love a lot of things and I enjoy doing multiple things and my attention span is short. So if my Pomodoro has just working on one book for the whole day, I will be back on the internet looking at who said what, who is doing what wrong, what did they wear, where did they buy it from, I should do that too, etc.

My brain needs various activities to stay excited and energised. So I don’t overwhelm myself by doing one activity all day. So there is research, drawing, writing emails, doing stuff with hands, finalising the podcast, meetings, etc that go into my Pomodoro. Not that I am diligent with all of them but enjoying some of them itself makes me feel this works for me. Otherwise I would be at my computer for hours and still feel I had done nothing.

And this self care has started to show up in my relationships too. I see that I am starting to stand up for myself. It is acutely scary and a lot of times I need validation but I somehow I find some courage. Like a week back, friend and I were to do a class together, something they initiated. When I showed up for the meeting they weren’t there, so I checked with them. They said they had forgotten and that they were sorry. Usually I would swallow my irritation and say, “that’s okay,” because I know they didn’t do it purposely. But I was angry and I said so. I knew this forgetting would make them upset and I still wondered if I should have added to their upset by stating that I was irritated.

My head started to tell me that I was being a bad person and being the bad person entails - abandonment. So I checked with another friend after an hour or so. And they said,

Haan. It is alright to feel this way. Like your anger and their upset can coexist.

Being honest meant that I didn’t have to resent them, I didn’t have to start making a story about how I am usually treated and how I am earnest and good and everyone takes advantage of me. The next day when we spoke, my friend said, that my irritation made them feel safer. They said had I said, “that’s okay,” they’d imagine me complaining about them to another friend. For me, it felt safe to have my irritation accepted without any consequences.

Another effect of doing stuff for myself has been that I realise I am done catering to people’s needs. It is time to shut down the Indu Catering Service I have been running all this while, which looked after everyone’s emotional needs at the cost of mine. Obviously causing me a lot of resentment.

I didn’t know it then but being available to solve people’s emotional problems was my way of having safety. If I do this for you, will you not abandon me.

But over time, I see that I am exhausted and don’t want safety that comes at my cost. I am seriously trying to find out who I am if I am not useful and who I am without my emotional labour. To be honest, there was a time I’d be upset when people I dated didn’t open up about their problems because I knew this was a great way for me to form a relationship. Now I want none of that especially if that’s the only way we can connect.

induviduality

A post shared by Indu Lalitha Harikumar (@induviduality)

All this has started showing up in my dating life too. I am finally standing up for myself and it is shitloads scary. I see my brain make up stories when someone doesn’t respond in time and then I must get into overdrive and tell them, I exist and I am amazing.

When my brain alerts me, I am still scared but less reactive. So I see I am not chasing people as much and also allow them to miss me and not be perennially available to them. I am still very worried that people I barely know but am beginning to like will leave me.

S, my friend told me, “think about if you actually want them around in the first place.”

It would mean nothing at this point but all roads lead to my fear that they will all leave and I will be alone. And when that happens, a part of me says I should unmatch them because the shame of holding onto someone who doesn't want you is so hurtful. And all this comes up when someone one I have been been having good conversations with doesn’t respond to a message for a day.

I didn’t unmatch andI got a message from them a few days later saying that they were feeling overwhelmed and had stayed away from the app and that they were extremely sorry about going off the radar. Usually I’d respond with me overindentifying with them feeling overwhelmed and not pay attention to my own fear, continue talking like everything is hunky dory. But this time, I didn’t say anything for a few days and went back with an, “oh, okay”. I saw that they were actually quite happy that I had resurfaced.

And this space I had given my fear made it okay for me to navigate other conversations without fearing that this person has come into my life to ruin my life and leave and I must do everything right so that they don’t. I am able to say, “hey I am being vulnerable here and I want some acknowledgement,” and this asking for accountability off a complete stranger who can throw you off the conversation with a swipe makes me feel very powerful.

It feels good to express myself, it feels like I can belong without abandoning myself. And it is something I am teaching myself everyday.

That’s it. Thank you for reading this and for the love.

I will end with a link to my buymeacoffee.

Warmly,
Indu