A drunken snail....

                                        A drunken snail. That's what my life is. Already so slow, and to add to it, meandering randomly in every possible tangent. Then, it tries to get back on track; the destination seems to take forever to reach!

I feel like I'm in some snail race, I'm just a competitor, with my Life Snail on the track, and I can just watch and hope it goes on the road, fast. I didn't make the track, I didn't set the finish nor did I choose to start. Where am I? Hundreds of miles away, probably doing something else; probably grappling with my morbid thoughts that try ever hard to claw at my sub-conscious mind and the waking thoughts that fill the vast emptiness of my mind, in the cave left by the abandonment ( an deceit) of happiness.

                                        Every day I get up lazily, because I know the day will just  be boring, and the same thoughts and worries will make their way in again. Wait. They never leave me. They have nowhere else to go. When I'm awake I don't want to sleep, so that I don't miss a thing, and when I'm asleep, I never want to wake up, dreams are so much more involving, at least I can change them a bit. My sleep pattern is screwed, I'm an eternal insomniac, too excited about God know what(?) to sleep. The moment my eyes close, they flutter open. I try in vain to rest, and no matter how tired I am, my head can't stop thinking!! I wish there was silence from the noise in my head. It's like a constant cacophony, also, to complicate stuff, I can't follow their tune. 

                                        When I was in college, my only goal was to finish the degree. Now I've done that, and during the time of college I realized nothing was ever going to be enough for me. I'm so confused about my career, what the hell to do?? I don't have ANY goals now! What do I focus on?? There seems a hundred paths, each one can be promising, but all you need is that one ingredient that decides every success and every failure - chance. Which I never really had in my favour. I always seem to work thrice as hard as others to get the same things. But nobody sees that, they just think I'm a pushy snob. I can't help but be that way - or pretend to be. It keeps me going to finish stuff and achieve things without crumbling halfway. It's such a struggle to deal with perfectionism all the time. Perfectionism and depression.


                                        I have a clear idea of what I want now, but it's the starting push that's so difficult. There's just one door that leads to this path I've chosen, and I haven't made a key. I've done my Bachelors in Genetics, Microbiology and Chemistry. They're interesting paths, definitely something I'd like to work in, in the future. Most of the jobs in these fields are in research. Not my work preference. I can't o long tedious experiments that take years and years of hard work to bear fruit. Also if you're expecting something as rich as a mango, don't be fooled, only the destined ones get them, the rest have to do with peanuts. There isn't really much growth potential unless you're looking at academic/scientific gains here.


                                        But heck, I'm not like that. I can't live an ordinary life. My dreams have grown way beyond me. I am never content, I never was, nor am, and never will be. I have to admit, I'm very materialistic. Well, why not? It's these very materialistic things we can touch, and that makes it real. Everything else is just a lie. If Nature or God wasn't materialistic, we'd just be a bunch of thoughts running around, without form or shape, we wouldn't need this physical manifestation that makes us tangible. If we just had to live as souls, couldn't we just do that?? Why come here?? Like this?? For who? Or what?!


                                        So I am utterly convinced that Money DEFINITELY CAN buy a lot of happiness. It makes you feel safe, especially for people like me who have no one's affections to bank on. And even if I do, my honour and dignity won't allow it. It's pathetic to take help. It means you aren't capable of doing it. And if you can't, you sure as hell can't survive the rat race. Maybe you should be trodden, but humanists are keeping you alive as they've made it illegal to die. Since when was my life in other people's hands? They won't allow you to die, because they'll give you a worse than death life here, so that you can become a statistic.
Money is security. Money never leaves you if you care for it enough, unlike most other 'posessions' I know.


                                        So I want to make a switch to the Finance sector jobs, but thanks to this freaking rigid Indian education and employment system, I can't make a career switch so different. Switching jobs is so hard here, because I've seen first hand what kind of duds they think you are if you try to do another job than what you studied in. For example, Google hires only people from Communications and Commerce and Computer Science (and related). When I'd attended the interview, I went till the last stage and then the doubts they had placed were regarding my career switch (Since I am a Science student, I must be incapable of a different field) and also concerning my motives (Love the job/company or work for good remuneration and perks). So what?? EVERYONE works for money! Unless it's some volunteer thing! Tell me one person who will pour out his heart and soul when he is poor into a full time job that doesn't pay!


                                        I don't need to have a never ending pot of Gold, I'd be happy with just enough to fund my little cravings, such as travel and learning, rather than spending 2000$ on a pair of underwear or other shizzle like that.
I don't know why my Ambitions are so big. Summing them up : Get money, do volunteering and charity, change the society for better, acquisition of knowledge, nature conservation, write my name down in History. On a personal level, own a big estate or two in lovely and scenic areas with decent mansions filled with all things fine. I think it's because of my brain. It's the Brain's fault. I don't know why God gives such an intelligent brain to people who are destined to never get what the envisioned. Such a sadist, really, so we can mourn and be miserable our entire lives with the crushing weight of incompetence and self-loathing. If I just had a stupider brain, I wouldn't even be able to comprehend my current wishes and I'd probably be happy with an ordinary and mundane life. Actually if that's what I was destined to have, it should have sufficed with a spinal cord.


And then I would have been content. But Alas, the wrath of Destiny and Fate, and most importantly, luck; or is it just a combination of Destiny and Fate.


It's so frustrating to dream so big and see them all shatter. No matter how hard you try, life goes as fast as a horse sitting on it's rear. Oh So much friction...I don't have the threshold energy.


The World's policies are screwed. And from an Economic and Population Genetics and also Ecological view, the logarithmic multiplication of the population statistics is one of the root causes. Especially in India. Not helping are all the freaking corrupt policies and prejudiced rules.
I still can't freaking understand, how did our population grow so much?? It's a basic principle of Nature even in modern day Populations. The more the number in the herd, the bigger the fight for resources. If everyone's equally treated, each member gets a fair share, but if there is rampant prejudice and favouritism (environmental conditions), some members of the herd will eventually die. But here, it's much more complicated than just food. Our resources are much less visible : Education, Savings/ Finance, jobs...they're real nonetheless.


                                        As if this wasn't enough for me, here I am, wasting my time, cause I got plenty of it, with my Life snail already drunk now. I hope God wakes me up when it finishes this race.


PS. Self harm is comforting. More on that , later.
PPS. Who do we listen to? The ones who have brought up up and told you what you wanted since you were born? or the Heart who just grew a few years back?

My Favourite Place : Nothing your map can find, nothing you can even dream about, and it's real.

So all since January, I've fallen back into the Spiral I was in once, now it seems to carry on down. Almost as if the wells of the deep, dark pit I've slipped into, had walls coated in grease that made my fingers sore from clawing at them, but of no use.

The unending number of exams I've had to prepare and write for also piled this huge amount of College course-end anxiety, neurotic thoughts, fears and deep sense of foreboding. Every time I try to rise back up, I fall double the depth inwards. It's reached an event horizon of a black-hole of depression. You crumble under the sheer gravity of the weight of the morbid thoughts and feelings. Perhaps it collapses uncontrollably and never-still till it is wiped out of existence.

The stress is just like the weight of a mountain on an already crawling snail. Usually it is squashed, but sometimes even if it has that super power, it can only move slower than it ever did, the distance traveled being infinitesimal. The goal is ever far now.

Talking to my cousin has helped me a bit, because I adore him to pieces and while we were talking about how weird my thinking was from others', he told me that it wasn't the strangeness that made it so, but the novelty. Out-of-the-box.

And I told him about what I wrote in an essay for my Google interview (that got me selected in the first round  and I went on to the final one where they decided they didn't want campus recruits) for a topic given - "My Favourite Place". he said I should write one again sometime, and I got a little motivated to do so:

My Favourite Place

                     My favourite place is not even tangible, but it's real and visible. While the sights and physical manifestations of the World are easy to love, my favourite has to be The Human Mind.

                     'Is it a place?' you may ask. Well, it surely shares most characteristics with a tangible reality; we cannot go everywhere in it, only the Greatest minds have the capacity to venture deep and reach far distances.

Yes, it has distances. The vastness of each mind is distinctly independent of another's. They are never the same and each one has it's own cultures, values, morals, ideas and customs.

                     It is diverse. When two independent people meet, it is not the kind of meeting involving unfamiliarity, but as tie goes by, it is a meeting of thoughts; of who they are. It is the cafe of conversations, new encounters; fond memories are made here, leaving an unforgettable impression.

                     

As we travel through our lives and consciousness, we may reach new areas of our personality we never dreamed was living within us, all vastly different from the past.

                     We can travel and move around. We can even go back or go away. As we get acquainted with our conscience or spirit, we talk and do things there with them.

                     Yes, we can meet new ideas and people and have conversations. Oh, and the setting and travel partners are almost usually different every time!

                     It is a place of the unexpected. Just like luck, fate and destiny change, it does too. We never know what the future holds. It is dynamic and full of surprises!

                     Our thoughts and influences are not always good. They can be very ecstatic, mundane or cast us down the bottom of the deepest woes. The mind has the good, the bad and the ugly, just like our tangible lands.

Possibly the last thing, but not the least I can think of, is that we never know where we're going.

                     Don't you see it now? How real it is, and so close to us and yet so far from reach...maybe we just can't touch it because we are in the wrong place.

                     Everything we have as a people, as a sentient species, is the result of our lives in The Human Mind. Not so frequently, but ever so often, we have people who have traveled, met and brought back to this World what they have encountered in their minds- an emptiness full of meaning just waiting to be understood. Forgive the pun.

                     All our achievements, our knowledge, our art, culture, ideologies...all of it was born in the Mind. It is the place where it all happens- creativity, brainstorming, debates, planning, anticipation, passion, innovation, improvization, research and most important of all, the birth and growth of Culture. It is the place where questions arise, answers are sought and present themselves, beauty is processed, philosophy is born, and where there is understanding and comprehension.

                     No matter where I go, I always want to live in my favourite place- The Human Mind, as it encompasses everything tangible, intangible, comprehensible, the incomprehensible and yet to be discovered.

Oh! How much Gold there is to be found! And because of my greed, I will always head to the place where I find the most prospects of Gold.

My first post in a blog 1/12/2010

Well, I've been depressed for quite a while. A long while, I should say.

My childhood has always been turbulent. I was a popular kid once, but still had a lot of hate because I was bold, successful and full of character all the way. I had no fear at all. Ever.

Now, at 22, I am still the same, except for the 'no fear at all' part. I would love to believe it, but Alas, it is not so. I fear. I fear a great deal two things. Two fears that will probably haunt me all life long. What are they? Well, they are pretty commonplace I suppose, but I have basis for these fears and they are - being all alone my entire life and beyond and two, not being able to make my place in this World and die unremembered.

It's December 1, 2010. I'm at home, writing my first blog, mainly for myself, after an hour of tearless crying. It is one of those days that I always seem to have when everything goes wrong and no amount of chocolate would fix unless the chocolate was poisoned.

It's been 5 years since my first attempt, and second, and third. I've been visiting the doctor for 5 years. Taking medication for 5 years. And what's he doing? Giving me freaking medicines that make me social and want to meet people. I tell him to stop it, I have no people to meet and it's killing me!! But no, my parents think it's absolutely necessary that I take this shitty medicine because it helps control the anger.

They don't like me 'yelling' (which is my normal decibel level of voice. I just happen to be 'blessed' with this really sharp and crystal clear voice that seems loud to normal people even if I talk like there's no air in my lungs).

I haven't been going to college for two months on and off that I skipped the medicine. And I went today and what do I get? Overconfident, married, middle-aged women pretending to be teachers yelling at me that they have tons of other work. I'm really mad at a particular teacher now. Her favourite line has to be the sarcastic "What maa? What do you people think? We have no other work, aah? We come to college only to teach you people?"

I mean, what the hell, she's taken up a job as a Goddamn teacher! She's HERE to teach us our subjects! Of course you have no other work!! Taking up two full time jobs is a crime by law!! And if that other job is  better than this why are you staying at this place, swallowing a vacancy and gulping our hard-earned money??

The second favourite line of hers : "What maa? You people are so busy that you can't write one simple assignment? What work do you people have? You people are just students, how can you be so busy?" I'm like yeah right, you have all the work in the world, and we are useless bums, born on the planet to listen to your incessant chiding that arises from possibly marital excitement (She's newly married)!! SO let me get this straight....students have no life. Students have no work. Students have nothing else to do than write assignments and study for her 3 tests a week. Students have no family needs. Students don't need to have entertainment (College is from 8 am to 5 pm bloody six days a week).

Prrr, let's leave that.

I just wish she could understand when I tell her I really can't write that much stuff in such short time, my meds give me a lot of tremor....sometimes my hand gets paralyzed if I use it too much in minute movements such as in writing.

As if that wasn't enough, my classmates and even a 'friend' started making fun of my valid reason. They don't know I take meds, so they thought it was a lame excuse - "Even we can say stuff like this Akhila, that I've broken my arm or leg and cannot write the impositions, you're not the only one...!"

Yes, so you've been freaking alone and friendless all your life, no one has ever called you at 12 am on New Years or on your birthday just to wish you, no one has ever given you a surprise party or present, no one has ever said "I love you" to you, and you have been alone all your life, misunderstood, hated for being so strong and ignored for all eternity because you just don't 'fit in'.

I have never had any of that. I miss so many great friendships in my life, my only solace being the penpals I write to who are more sincere than people around me. I feel like I don't exist here. No one wants to make friends with me, no one wants to hang out with me just because I'm different than they are.

That's another thing I don't know. Why don't I get along with people like a house on fire? I'm pretty friendly, I'm polite, I try to be kind, I give so many people a dozen second chances even after they let me down or betray me time and again. Everyone except me seems to be making best friends and finding true loves. 

Patience and forgiveness is breaking my heart a million times over. Even an animal should know not to poke its nose into a place where it hurts. Maybe I shouldn't forgive and hold all the grudges and be cautious of all people so I never fall again.

And yet I hope, I hope that I may someday find a true best friend who is willing to give their life for me!

Until then my heart will cry, tearless and unseen for times that I will never want after my passing. To leave this world seems so enticing, but that's another story.

Maybe its some bad karma I accumulated in my past life...being alone is the worst feeling in the world. The worst fear, and certainly the worst kind of motivation.