Note: This is an incomplete review of my 2023 through my mind’s lens. I’d call it “partial” because it was hard for my jittery mind, and I eventually succumed to my procrastination and unsteady mind at that time. So, it’s a partial look at my life in 2023.
[ Writing with Healing Ragas as a backdrop. ]
It’s a weird sentence to start with mid-way saying “…and that’s a wrap up”, but I don’t have any coherent thoughts to put out regarding what my life has been in accumulation for last decade, let alone hindsight 2023. I have been feeling so lonely, anxious, aloof and mostly disassociating since December 2023. And holding from one train of thoughts to another, I am not sure how to coherently put everything in this write-up/essay. My internal chaos – my anxiety attacks, mental health issues, indefiniteness of life, agency in career, love and everything in between – has been in direct conflict with the external ones – the outside world, my career, my long-term goals, friends, family and everything – dancing together in tandem. I can’t even explain what I have been feeling for so long, let alone define what really a Nish’s existence means.
This essay could be too long, too short, and probably just enough for each and everyone who reads it, but it’s a hodgepodge of emotions, rationalities, life, love, vague anxieties, existential angst and ultimately pondering why the fuck I exist. The feeling of “I wish I didn’t exist.” has been so strong in 2023 (more on to that later I guess).
Spotify’s Healing Ragas in the backdrop for too long now.
Time right now is 9:27 pm, January 2nd, 2024. My cat Nessa is seeking my attention; however, for tonight I think my internal demons are seeking my attention.
I)
It’s extraordinary that we exist in the improbable mesh of atoms and all we do is sit the whole day feeling lonely, anxious and sad because of how much childhood conditioning and trauma has been there, where we had to deal everything like a champ. Nobody knows it till there’s a total mental breakdown. You know like the analogy that life is like a night train, mostly dark, and occasionally you see street lamps, slow relapse of how moths hover of those lamps and that split seconds you realize that the train ride itself is a street lamp, moth being you as you are. This analogy seems a bit meta, thinking that you’re pondering about yourself pondering about the moth and you’re yourself a moth. For me, I find Franz Kafka’s waking up to becoming a bug metaphor so much relatable, that could truly test how much time the streams of life can give you with love and aloofness + misunderstanding.
On December 4th, 2022 I tweeted and it’s funny that the time is here and I don’t have anything to express except my mind feels so much “knotted” in 2023.
I can’t wait for the end of December so I can dread on the first week of Jan, review my life’s choices in recent 2 years, and maybe send one letter in my newsletter, feeling all lonely and anxious about how years have passed by just staring into the abyss…dreaded…
2023 has been full of ups and downs. I defended my master’s thesis, graduated from grad school, made myself open to dating after so many years, got ghosted by a lot of “dating app dates,” opened my worldview meeting new strangers (both in dating app and outside of that), traveled a lot alone, made myself confident for traveling, conversations with strangers felt so comforting, the Uber rides, the solo strolling in Las Vegas when the town was asleep, flew a lot, drove a lot, gained confidence in my independence, and finally fell in love with this beautiful soul, [[The Octopus Lady]].
Had ups and downs, realized my issues, understood them, reformulated some of them, understood myself more, became more situationally aware, learnt to love myself and in return realized how much capable I am in loving another human being who’s so much alike, yet different, unconditionally, and that how much caring I am by nature, empathetic, warmth in love and minor heartbreaks here and there, and still learning to love them no matter what situation they are in and how much love there is inside me for another soul, dancing an eternal dance, made me realize that what felt like 6 months felt like decade of knowing the person (I love her so much. I could tear up any instance tonight.).
And finally I adopted a kitten which I had been wanting to do for a long time and her name is Nessa (her adorable-nessa will kill me) and she’s making me realize that I am full of loving another creature so much unconditionally. Here lies this humongous human being who is playing with her, cuddling with her, feeding her, taking care of her nails, massaging her, and here lies a 9-months old kitten whose whole world is this human parent. Just thinking about her not being around in future tears me up every time. :(
Like I said I don’t have any coherent thoughts for this essay, so some sections sound like a big mess of words and thought-bomb that has been detonating in my mind-cave. I let it be for now.
II)
Every year has felt so much same yet different; every year has felt so much different yet same. As if I am the Sisyphus myself carrying the weights of my internal demons and external demigods, constantly rolling up the hill, just making to the top and realizing that the top was just another local maxima (maybe minima if inverted?) of struggle and absurdities, and there’s a whole hill range lying beside me.
Image: “Hill Climbing in Life”
Image: “Linear time perception” (Time, Life, and Values)
Life: Just random Hill Climbing here and there hoping everything works out eventually? Or just a set of mundane transitions from one sad state to another? Either way, suffering is here to stay. We think we’ve done enough in life, but then the hindsight-based attack vector to life itself feels like we haven’t done much, that we haven’t progressed much in different vividly dreamy aspects of life.
Maybe we’re just biased, in that maybe Peak-end Rule plays out where we only see that life is nothing but the greatest ups (maxima) and the greatest downs (minima) at different phases.
It seems like the only way to do justice about these states of life is to keep on longing, keep on yearning for something that we can’t really grab immediately. Or perhaps, it’s just a bug-on-a-wire sort of narrative where we fail to realize that life could be so much multi-dimensional, that there’s even a slightest possibility that we could see life through a multi-colored lens. It shouldn’t need to be all gray scales of highs and lows.
Of course, 2023 for me has been full of such multi-color transitions such as graduating from grad school and doing solo trip to many places which have reinforced me strongly on multitude of topics ranging from random stranger in a coffee shop to Uber drivers to just gazing at the clouds out of a plane and tearing up while reading When Breath Becomes Air.
It’s interesting how traveling reinforces our priors so much, that it opens us so many dimensions to the outside world which used to feel locked and dreamy. It gives a gentle nudge to our internal chaos and maybe it untangles some of many knots in our brain.
And I think loving another person unconditionally also has profoundly similar effect with our “self” and maybe our belief system.
Of course, there are infinite hills around us and any attempt at scaling one hill is futile. In the absurdity of it all, it’s not that we desire to be stuck in only a single hill. If cosmos gives us any chance, we could perhaps be happy in hopping around in many hills, to see how life behaves.
One moment we’re on this one hill at night, stargazing to the magnificence of the universe that make us feel the inconsequentialness of us, tearing up from vague anxieties and what nots. Another moment, we’re on this lying on a sunflower field, by ourself alone, and maybe listening to our favorite music, and again tearing up about how futile life is and yet we’re trying to exist.
And then, there are other multiple hills of being with someone we love, longing for them to be with us. Another hill where we think about our past and think that life would have been “nice” in another hill. Yet, another hill where we constantly get hit by Imposter Syndrome, of not being enough with our “self”.
One hill after another, a lot of hills. Random hills. And yet, here we are in this specific hill where lies our Mind-Cave and inside it carved are all the artifacts and primitive drawings of other hills, vaguely shadow dancing around. A combination of what ifs and what nots.
2023 felt like just another hill. Maybe some hills I tried to traverse and some I failed miserably. But still I tried and that’s what matters maybe.