My life as on today

Trying to articulate my feelings has always been an enigma. Between what is said and left unsaid lies a huge gap that I find myself unable to address. Till date, I have wondered how some people can figure out precisely what they want from their life. I have not been able to answer this question, I don’t think I even know what I want in this instant. My dependency on substances ranging from pornography, masturbation, tobacco, alcohol and weed has only contributed to this problem. These substances/activities allowed me an easy escape from the situation at hand and gave me the “dopamine” fix that would distract me from the decision at hand. What was even more disappointing is that as my dependency on these things has increased, I would look to them even when faced with regular decisions, leave aside “tough” ones.

I have recently turned 29 (1 month ago, to be precise), gotten dumped have no idea of what I want to do with my “life” aside from continuing the trajectory that paves the way as a function of following the path of least resistance. I have put on the weight that I had lost, have more grey hair than I would consider normal for even a 35-year-old and wonder whether this is what depression feels like. My attitude towards people over the years had turned extremely dismissive and its almost as if I was running away from any scenario wherein my frail confidence felt challenged. I always hear people talking about facing their challenges head-on and achieving their dreams, I would dismiss those things as just some motivational monologue written by someone who is trying to hide their misery. I would address my insecurities by telling myself, “surely there’s something wrong going on in their life, else why would they advertise their success in this manner.”

As my relationship was getting older, I started to think that it will continue in perpetuity, that the bond between us has been forged to the extent that it will continue and doesn’t require further love and care. I now realize just how wrong this assumption was, I was slowly losing my life partner, and honestly, I started to tell myself that she was being difficult unreasonable or just moody. Anything that she would highlight, would be processed as her throwing a tantrum. As I write this, I feel a lump in my throat, and I hope that I may cry and let it out, but tears still evade me. When we spoke on a few occasions since then, she would simply say that she doesn’t believe me anymore, and how can I fault her for that? I had been such a let-down, to have taken her for granted and had lost the love of my life as a consequence.

There was so much negativity pent up inside me, that I was spewing bitterness at pretty much every opportunity I got. My motivation to do anything had hit an all-time low. I am using the past tense, as I honestly hope to bury and rid myself of who I was. After the break-up came anger, and after the anger came frustration. Once these emotions had run their course, all that was left was a lonely person that could only see one bad decision after another. I would try to tell myself, “surely, not all of it could have been bad, I mean there were some good times.” Unfortunately, they were so few and far between that I honestly don’t know if I can, vouch for my thoughts with any amount of sincerity.

I wanted to cry, I even googled it, but couldn’t. See, I haven’t been able to cry for a few years now. I have lost members of my family this year, but I still couldn’t get myself to cry. I guess my mechanism for handling tough situations had always been to abuse one substance or another. It’s been 2 weeks since that time, but I still haven’t managed to cry. One resolve that I took at that point was to abandon my crutch. I removed alcohol, weed, pornography and masturbation (unfortunately, there have been two occasions that I relapsed) from my life that day onwards. I am still smoking, however, but plan to kick the habit shortly. Another decision I made was to incorporate some healthy habits. Borrowing from one of the books I had read in the recent past, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, I decided to replace my bad habits with some “good” habits. He suggests that all habits can be broken up into three parts, the cue, routine and reward. In my case, any uncomfortable situation was the cue, my substance abuse was the routine, and the consequent dopamine release provided the reward. While it would be okay to chase dopamine, but my routine and the way it had become embedded in my life was overstimulating the reward, making the dopamine release feel like nothing more than a state of normalcy. I thought about the situation in this way, that smooth highway I had been coasting on over the past few years was a highway of self-destruction, one whose gradient was increasing day by day. The only way to get out of this eventuality was to hit the brakes, turn the car around and speed away as fast as possible.

In addition to my existential crisis, another time-bomb was imploding, quite literally it was the “TIME-BOMB”. I was fast approaching 30, had no clue with what to make of myself, not even an inkling of a trajectory, had just lost a partner for over seven years and didn’t know if I was ever going to meet anyone with whom I could fall in love. Things were piling up, and there was no release valve. So I did what I always did, I looked for a distraction. Except for this time, I had ruled out going back to my trusted aids. I looked for habits/distractions that would offer me at least a semblance of self-improvement.

The internet, my one true aide in my moments of crisis came to the rescue. There’s something so comforting about being able to look for answers when no one is judging you for asking stupid questions. Scrolling through my long list of bookmarks that had never been opened, I saw an article about speed reading. The article promised to double my reading speed in 15 minutes. 15 minutes?! I must give this a try, I thought. I picked up a book at random, and it just so happened to be, “An Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramhansa Yogananda. In my effort to hone my newfound skill of reading doubly fast (this technique works!), I lapped up the book. It was such a wonderful read and gave me so much to think about that I started to believe that I could save myself yet. I went through a few binge sessions of self-help, motivational videos on Youtube before I reached on another gem! This time, a video that redefined procrastination for me. The lady in the video argued that Procrastination is not a lack of habits, rather procrastination IS a habit! She suggests a simple technique, which is that whenever we set out to work on something we feel the list of pending tasks piling in front of us. This is the procrastination habit setting up its cue, now how you wish to address the routine is entirely in your control. She suggests to count down from 10 and immediately start on whatever task it is that you’re currently working on. This is what I have been working on for the last 15 days.

Fifteen days may not seem like much, but here’s where I’ve got till now: I have still not consumed any substance aside from the cigarettes that I mentioned earlier, I am now waking up on time every single day (mind you, I haven’t been able to do this consistently over the past five years), I exercise daily, and have even gone as far as to create a weekly time-table. I last attempted a time-table more than a decade ago. Now I know that these might seem trivial achievements to many, but for me, it is a personal achievement. Maybe, there will come a day when she might speak to me, and I might be able to show her that my feelings for her had never been untrue, that I was reforming myself to become the person that could give her the love that she had always deserved.

I am penning all of this down as I do not have many people with whom I can share this with in person. Moreover, many would dismiss this or judge me for how I lived my past. Honestly, what I am trying to do is to course-correct and reorient myself towards a (hopefully) better future. This is an attempt to project my thoughts into words, as I want to share my story even at the risk of no-one wanting to read it.