November 2023, Sublet in Brooklyn, NY

I woke up to a dream of water pipes bursting. I checked my email from Blogspot notifying me that my untouched blogs were going to be permanently deleted. Blogs I had forgotten I had written or existed. They were from 2004. There weren’t many posts. I cringed at my writing and in my heart rolled my eyes at the title of the blog – “The Third Eye”. I was struck by a particular post. It reads like an 18 year old wrote it and I can’t get myself to share it without editing out some very cloying pieces. 

Life comes at you fast but only at the pace you choose. The beginning of 2023 felt like the last season of a dragged out series. I was living the life I had dreamed of and worked hard to bring to fruition – healthy (enough) and wealthy (enough) in NYC,  rich (enough) with friends and family I loved, plenty of avenues for fun, a job that was intellectually stimulating and I was passionate about and most importantly in line with what I had pinned down to my life’s purpose and my mission. I was, however, 37, single and childless. Wanting a loving and equal partner and a family as a byproduct of that was not just a personal desire, a societal expectation or evolutionary in-built, it was a deep knowing of its inevitability. One which I had both challenged and submitted to over the last decade with nothing to show for. I had tried to make it happen, let it happen, wait for it happen and also tried to let go of this desire. Yet I was discontent. And so much like the desperate writer of “the last season of a dragged out series” with too many characters, plot openings and seeking a triumphant and satisfying ending not just for the protagonist but also the audience, I decided to go all in. If nothing, to be able to tell myself that I gave it my all.

The wrinkle with saying “bring it” to life is that it comes at you fast. What followed over the course of 2023 can only be described as a chaotic spiral with me moving at the speed of light. The culmination of which was a breakdown at work in the form that I find most anxiety inducing – a writer’s block – henceforth referred to as The Great Breakdown. 

The Great Breakdown happened hours before I dreamt of pipes bursting and I discovered my prescient blog from 20 years back hoping “I don’t end up as a wreck”. The wreck revealed a pattern. I feared my thoughts and my emotions controlled me. In 2003, I failed all six subjects in the mock tests the school runs to prepare students to write critical 12th grade exams. I was a good student throughout school, in the top 5 of the class easily, even though I never truly gave a fuck about achieving or proving. The school principal had called my parents and told them she couldn’t allow me to write the 12th grade exams lest I bring shame to the school as a failure. My parents were shocked. Unable to tolerate their helplessness and truthfully out of pity, I pulled myself together and rewrote the exams and cleared my exams with distinction. I have often wondered what came over me to have failed all six subjects – it wasn’t out of rebellion or spite. All I can remember is that it felt like a daze and I have since feared losing control over myself like that. Leading up to The Great Beakdown, it felt like the familiar daze I had felt as a teen. For 20 years, I controlled myself until I couldn’t and it all came out as snot-filled emotion.