For most of my life, it’s my skin I’ve worried about. I’ve never been under the impression I was particularly good looking. And I have enough charm and intellect to get most people past it. My body, a true triumph of genetics, follows almost exactly my mother’s journey. Which is to say it looked great till about 35. Heck it even looked great a year into breastfeeding, back to its pre pregnancy 63 kgs. Then came 36. Anxiety. Parents aging. Super attached toddler. PMDD. Mom. Work. Spouse of a startup founder. The zero sum arguments of who did what because both of us are too tired and we remember 2 hours later it doesn’t matter. So within a year - a year - I gained 8 kgs. It’s more weight than I have even gained. I am heavier now than I have ever been. Even when I was pregnant. It’s crazy. I eat healthy. Not less, but healthy. Salads. Not too much red meat. Veggies. I enjoy life. Dinners. Play dates. Work events. I drink barely 1-2 drinks a week if that (I usually lose track of my drink after three first few sips and then don’t care enough to track it down). So what is it? Aging? The Zoloft? It’s hard to know. But I think the thing is to feel good and FIT and HEALTHY. So fuck it I will still go to yoga in my sports bra and leggings mommy paunch be damned. I did still run a 5k and will do so again in 5 weeks. I do still cycle after my son and roll around with him in the park uncaring if my shirt rides up. Does my body feel good to me? No. Do I love doing these hard physical things? YES. And that’s what bodies were made for. To live in. Will I lose weight? Maybe. Maybe not. Will I do all the amazing physical things my body allows me to do? YES. Because my son is watching and I want him to see how much his dad loves his mom, thinks she is beautiful and compliments her every time she dresses up. I want him to see how much his mom loves living her best physical life, lifting weights, lifting him, hike with him, running with him in the park, climbing on the monkey ladder with him, meeting him at the 5k finish line, irrespective of her weight.
My sister was here - and everything felt beautiful and right. She was departing that night. I had spent 5 beautiful slow days with her in Tahoe. 37 means slowing down. Accepting what my body, mind and heart need.
My body needs sun, sleep, protein, water. It does not care for alcohol anymore. It needs red meat but hates it. It does not care for nights out, loud music. But as it turns out, it craves dance and full body movement and I’ve been suppressing that need for years. Yoga and cardio and hiking are great but it’s not it. My allergies need vigilance. My wisdom teeth need vigilance. I have upgraded all my clothes to the next size up (much to the delight of my sister who inherited my lovely too-small athleisure & work wardrobe) and I could not care less. I love my skincare routine. I love that I just need eyeliner and balm, no matter the occasion. I have thrown out all my makeup, all my clothes that look fashionable but don’t feel like me. That’s what matters.
My mind needs space. So much space. Literal space. Spaces of time. Lightness. I spend hundreds (and lost hundreds) lightening the clutter in my home that never seems to end. The toys and appliances and hobbies keep coming in. I give up professional and personal development to just have empty spaces in my everyday. A slow lunch in the sun. A lazy dinner in the backyard. The ability to lounge in bed with my child. My mind also needs Zoloft, especially the week before my period when my PMDD and anxiety skyrockets and morphs into white rage and irritability, catalyzed by a child who adores me too much to leave me alone.
My heart is content and my soul is calm. And perhaps this is all that matters. I do not care for more friends, more money, more home, more car, more time. This life feels like it has sufficient space and time for me to experience everything I need to. I am grateful and blessed on my best days, and annoyed but aware of how privileged my annoyances are on my worst.
37 feels slow. In a good way. Time stretches, and sometimes I want to move to a more exciting job, more travel, more responsibility, more hobbies. But mostly, I enjoy the routine of everyday life, the ability to spend time with a smaller circle of loved ones, and the strength and wisdom to say no.
I have this giant sticky note on my bathroom wall.
Every Sunday I assign myself stars (one to five) for physical fitness, mental health, nutrition and sleep. What’s interesting is, I prioritize mental health over physical health and sleep over everything else. Nutrition tends to take a backseat, but luckily I am unlikely to overeat for long periods before my body really starts to crave clean nutrition. Doesn’t mean I don’t eat a lot when I’m sleep deprived, or mentally exhausted.
Is this self care?
I went to the therapist for 6 months this year, pressed pause a month ago. It was getting too stressful to “report” to her and I needed to work on practicing the tools she had already given me.
Is this self care?
I took a melatonin to be able to sleep by 10 PM because my child decided once again that it is time to wake up at 5 AM.
Is this self care?
I will screen calls and messages from friends and family when I finally get time to myself or with my family that is uninterrupted. And I tell them this unapologetically when they call.
Is this self care?
I am writing to get all this out. That’s all I want. Is to get these thoughts out. To be empty. A shell that can be filled with whatever the moment needs of me tomorrow.
36 today. And introspective. An unexamined life is not worth living and all that, so here goes:
Stillness is harder than movement. There has been stillness by every yardstick I used to use - pandemic, physical fitness, outdoor time, mental health, following my passions, writing, travel, title, fiscal.
Physically aches and pains at every corner - mostly from carrying a child who loves his mama with not enough yoga to balance it out - nothing earth shattering for 36 I suppose but no bucket list hikes achieved either.
Emotionally I often feel deeply enriched & then completely depleted - this repeats 10x times in a day. Observing, soothing & regulating myself or my child multiple times a day will do that. Not to mention trying to do the same for others at work or in family. Marriage continues to be an incredibly powerful mirror for me to introspect. One I often don’t want to look into. One I am grateful for. Many hide their own reflection from their partners. I have nowhere to hide. It’s annoying. But mostly good.
Mentally my brain is still trying to assess what I’ve left behind and what value I bring at a new workplace with wildly different personalities & operating models than I have been used to for a decade. Resetting on what it means to operate from a place of being vs doing.
Spiritually it has felt so different than anything I’ve ever felt in that I have lost control and choice over which days and which direction my spiritual development will show up. But in a sense it’s liberating to not have to think about it - surrendering and letting the world teach you what it needs to at its pace vs yours is half the battle, no matter your faith.
The way we live our days is truly how we spend our lives. The last one year has been a testament to that. Here’s to many more.
Arvind ran as fast as he could, the dust getting in his eyes. There was a rhythm to it that had been comforting him for the last 10 minutes - his shoes would hit the unpaved road followed by his backpack thumping down on his shoulders, punctuated by his loud breath before the percussion repeated. Looking far into the distance of the straight barren path ahead, he could make out the silhouette of the bus stop against the glare of the sun. He missed the mogra bush coming up in his desperation and ran full speed into it, 4 feet of him hitting 3 feet of the bush, narrowly escaping the dried branches hitting and scraping his eyes. He thought he could feel his scraped knees bleeding - two lines of liquid seemed to be finding their way down his calf, but it was hard to say if it was sweat or blood and he didn’t have time to stop and find out.
He tried to do the math in his head. It was 920 AM. If he missed the bus, then ran back to the warden and had him write a telegram saying he was safe and would be on the next day’s bus, it wouldn’t be till dinner time that the postmaster would knock on his front door and give it to his mother. He was supposed to have reached home by lunch. She would be worried sick. He could imagine her in the kitchen, home after waiting fruitlessly at the bus stop for him, hands and sari sooty from changing the coals as she began to ready dinner for sisters and brothers, a subtly deeper frown than usual that no one but his middle sister would be able to discern. His middle sister had likely been enlisted into her evening chore of blending the dough for the evening rotis when she would notice. She would simultaneously try and calm her mother down (not openly of course, neither woman would admit to her worries, this all had to be done indirectly while maintaining the trademark smiling stoic demeanor that proved the family could handle anything) while worrying even more in her own head, with a tint of anger lining her feelings. Anger because just like him, she did not like to worry her parents. They had sacrificed so much, it was the least he could do, she would scold him. He could see her now, a slight turn in her expression when he entered the house 48 hours from now (the bus only ran every other day), a single line spoken while they were setting up the mattresses on the floor for the family post dinner, “Arvind, be more careful next time, you can’t miss the bus again - you wasted the ticket money, and you caused so much tension in the house - its not right.” He would not say anything, would not apologize, would give away no emotion of defiance or apology, but it would bother him for days as he tried to make up for it by being extra proactive doing chores for both his mother and his sister.
It was with a shock that his thoughts jarred to a halt - he heard a loud rumble behind him. A quick turn around (while running, there was no time to stop) - it was the bus! He looked in the distance again at the bus stop - he was sure he wouldn’t be able to make it. He tried to run faster, frustrated that his legs were not longer. The bus passed him, then stopped at the stop. He screamed, “Ruko!” (“Stop!”). The bus paused, and for a minute he thought he had succeeded - the bus driver had heard him! But then he heard the bus engine start up again, and even as he continued running, he could feel hot tears well up in his eyes.
She couldn’t stop. The sound came from deep within, it was rage, anger, helplessness. The shower and the bathroom door meant he couldn’t hear it. But maybe he could. And maybe she wanted him to. Maybe she was crying so he would respond with the emotions he never gave her when she screamed, begged, cried to his face. Pity? Was that what she wanted? What was she doing in this hotel? Why had she flown herself and him from two different countries after 6 months of successfully staying away to visit 3000 stupid mounds made centuries ago? They hadn’t fought. He seemed the same. Smile, sex before the suitcases were put away, shower, hugs, happy, room service. Then, work. She thought it’d be different. She couldn’t tell if it was PMS or the dark hotel room. She played a game with herself. How long could she cry? Get it all out. It felt cathartic. What else did she have to do? He was never going to step away from that laptop. Maybe if she cried long enough, the length of her shower would alarm him even if the volume of her soul hadn’t.
It had been 20 min. She was getting a bit lightheaded. She got out. Sink. Nostalgic subconscious comfort rippled quietly through as she drank cold water straight from the tap. Not the way Americans did in TV, but the way you did back in India. Splashed
it on her face. Put on her top and leather jacket. The way he liked it. Casual and cute. Bit of edge. It’s what she thought of herself. Whether it was her own thought or his perception, she couldn’t tell anymore. She stepped out of the room, “be right back” she mumbled. “You ok?” She turned around turning her desperation into aloof resentment as she responded, “Yeah, why?” “Sure” Smiled, she hoped, just enough to show it wasn’t real. But he bought it, or at least, chose to. “Have fun hun, I just need to finish a few more things.” “No worries, 30 min? Then dinner” “Sounds good” She closed the door behind her and breathed in deep. Exhaled. Walk around the hotel lobby. Pulled herself together.
Right. Casual. Cute. Edge.
Back in we go. Dinner time.
Exhausted from the flight, work and sex, he had decided to put his laptop away and take a nap.
I wrote about skincare in your late 20s a whole 4 years ago. Then 2 years ago, I went through a successful but emotionally and physically draining round of Accutane. Now, in 2019, I’m looking down the barrel of the next 20 years, what my lifestyle, sun exposure, desire to spend time in front of the mirror is vs my other goals, and comparing that to the lifestyles and resulting skin of the women and men I’m related to - it all adds up fairly quickly to give me an idea of what I’m dealing with.
Luckily, though, one of the joys of aging is that I also know what I will want my skin to look and feel like. I want it to feel like it’s looked after - not because I want to look young, but because I put myself first. I want it to feel vibrant, but not synthetic. I want to age with all my wrinkles but with a big laugh, loving the teeth my braces told me not to, and with my laughter all the way through in the crows lines around my eyes offset by the shade of maroon lipstick I have grown to love.
With that in mind, here’s what my daily skin routine has evolved to in my early 30s (I’m skipping haircare, healthcare incl exercise and diet for another day) -
1. Cleanse morning and night. Makeup or sunscreen on face? Oil cleanser. Normal workday? Foam cleanser. Lots of outdoor time in the woods or sweaty game of tennis? Both (oil cleanser first). Morning is gentler, all I’m trying to get off is the sebum, especially on my jawline. So a Low pH gel cleanser - and I will even skip that on mellow weekends in favor of simple splashes of water.
2. Dry with a clean towel. I now keep about 10 white face towels in my bathroom drawer, and swap them out 1-2 times a week.
3. Moisturize within 60 seconds of wiping face with said towel. Spray with Avene (literally no other spray will work, I’ve tried Evian, Vichy, even a homemade rosewater lavender blend) then moisturize before the spray is dry on the skin - you want the moisturizer to lock in all that french spa mineral goodness. Hot day or want need to keep my skin a bit open as I sleep? Snail mucus gel (don’t knock it till you try it my friends). Normal morning? Essential oils based moisturizing cream. Cold wintery day, or nighttime? Blend 2 drops of rosehip into moisturizer in my hands before applying. Super cold or recovering from a week in snowy Yellowstone/scorching Yosemite? All three! Apply sunscreen atop this as needed.
4. Weekly deep clean & moisturize - Once every week (more like twice or thrice a month), super cleanse (oil cleanser > foam cleanser > exfoliating cream), super moisturize (spray > snail mucus > moisturizer + rosehip > sheet mask if I have time). With one added item - Vitamin C serum. This goes on right after the spray, and leave it for a minute before moving to moisturizer. I didn’t think it made a difference till I stopped. When I restarted, my husband noticed. Frankly, every time I use the snail mucus or Vit C the night before, he notices.
5. Change pillow covers religiously - and use a satin/silk one. For hot or humid climates, silk is best, but its hard to maintain. I use satin which can get a bit hot in the 2 weeks of heat we have here in California but at least I can throw it in the wash and not have to worry about it.
6. Stay low on milk, high on water, and have your multivitamins.
Makeup
Lips
Burts Bees unscented/unflavored for nighttime/in my purse/weekends.
For everyday, I have lip balms in nude, a peach, a red, a maroon and Fenty’s Gloss Bomb.
Fancy Meeting? Upgrade the lipstick - pick from a nude, a red, a maroon, all matte sheen and all by Lakme . I also have some cheap-ass Amazon lipliner for the red and maroon since they do tend to bleed esp in the heat. These Lakme eyeliner and lipsticks I got for my wedding and loved, so I just have the MIL buy me replacements every time she comes over.
Eyes
Lakme Eye-conic in black
Date night? Add Clinique’s Eyeshadow sticks in Purple and Latte. For all day conferences, add UrbanDecay eyeshadow primer underneath.
Face
If my skin is really playing up, or I’m feeling sick or hay fever-ish or jet lagged or sleep deprived (yes I have a traveling job can you tell?) I will throw on Clinique’s Even Better foundation. Honestly I haven’t used it all of 2019, which I’m quite proud of.
Skincare products I like right now
All available on Amazon, and barring the rosehip oil, none are pricey.
Cleanse
DHC Oil Cleanser - fav since I discovered it in Japan.
innisFree Volcanic Pore Foam Cleanser - this took me a long time to find, most cleansers have stuff in them that my face can feel clogging things up. I just never felt clean.
Corsx Low pH Good Morning Gel - Korean brand Corsx is my new fav. Easy on skin & wallet. I used their blackhead removal gel for a couple months till I realized the culprit was rosehip oil on my jawline.
Amway’s Kaolin Clay Exfoliating Mask - they keep changing the name and packaging on this thing, just look for Kaolin Clay in the ingredients
Moisturize
Avene Eau Thermale
LilyAna Face Moisturizer - an Amazon only best seller brand that I found when I wanted with lots of essential oils that didn’t have nasty ingredients
LilyAna Vitamin C Serum
Corsx Advanced 96 Snail Mucin Essence
trilogy Rosehip AntiOxidant+ oil
LaRoche-Posay Anthelios Non-Perfumed SPF50+
If I skin is especially dry (happens 2-3 times a year during winter), I will throw on manuka honey with crushed oats and a ripe banana/strawberry/yogurt
We were at an internal brainstorming workshop. It was a room we had used many times before, on the 20th floor of a massive building. Flip boards, markers, post it notes strewn about alongside half empty single serve coconut water boxes. I looked out fleetingly at one point between thoughts and saw a bunch of people draped in white on a corner of the street out of the corner of my eye. Hare Krishna people maybe? But before I could validate that with my brain, I was back in the room.
My best friend was with me. She worked with me. As did a few of my juniors from college. A few hours of constructive brainstorming passed. It was dark outside. We decided to break for the day. We all stepped up to the window to shoot the breeze for a while before heading home. That’s when we saw it. The entire street was crawling in white cloth and black metal with only wood paneling on the longer rifles for grayscale relief. The black metal merged with the tar on the road, making the shock of seeing it every few feet under the street light even more alarming. Swarms of them walked onward, a few siphoning off at the entrance of each building. Even as we watched on, a few entered through the main door on the ground floor of ours.
“We need to go to the roof”
“Are you insane? That’s the worst trap we can set for ourselves”
“The only other way is to take the fire exit stairs”
“That leads straight to the road though”
“Fuck. Are you sure?”
“Dead sure. It hits the road next to the cafe, it’s how I get in everyday.”
“Fuck fuck fuck”
“We have to risk it”
I breathed in deep and nodded.
“Let’s go”
We all quietly opened the fire exit and left. It felt like an eternity before we hit the second floor. And then we realized - the stairs from the second floor to the road were entirely open to the street. And it has overhead lights. It would mean walking 50 odd feet with less than 6 feet between the pavement and us.
No one said anything. We stood paralyzed at the mouth of the stairwell, staring hopelessly at the street from the darkness, with the curve that took the stairs right and parallel to the street tempting us into the open.
Thursday, 8 PM. Buying a gift for my nephew from the Exploratorium Store (all the Toys R Us stores are all too far from anything sensible). My nephew turns 7 on Saturday. I met him on my first trip to San Francisco (and to the US), when he was 8 months old. I was single, living in Melbourne, and had proudly just bought my first car. Crazy.
Sheryl Sandberg famously said, “You didn’t successfully prioritize if it didn’t hurt a little bit.” As I (already!) hit snags in the new year letting go of old habits (Netflix vs gym), pet projects at work and people (I simply have to make peace with knowing fewer people deeply vs many people on the surface), this is already proving to be true. You have to execute on your new priorities fearlessly.
In the USA, Accutane is the go-to if antibiotics don’t work on your acne. I’ve been through the holy trinity of acne treatment four times now - at the ages of 15, 21, 25 and then again at 29 (the holy trinity, if you must know, consists of 2 months of antibiotics followed by a month of painfully visible drying flaking topical ointment, followed by a chemical peel to take the top layer of scarring off to reveal supposedly beautiful, but mostly raw, skin underneath). This is not counting the two traditional courses - Ayurvedic traditional treatment for 3 months in 2007 and Japanese treatment for 1 month in 2013. Accutane is a 3-12 month treatment, my derma prescribed a 6 month course of 60mg/day for me. Here’s a few things I learnt along the way:
Our bodies do so much more than we realize to keep us thriving. Accutane works by drying out all your oil glands. ALL. YOUR. OIL. GLANDS. The ones that grease your pelvis and knee caps (preventing them from creaking like an old woman’s), the ones that keep your eyes moist (so that every stray particle doesn’t make its way into your eyelid and turn into an infected stye), the ones that lubricate your nether regions during sexy times (and may give you your first UTI when said lubrication is lacking), the ones that keep your sinuses and nose lubricated (so that you don’t catch every flu and hay fever strain in the air), the ones that keep your face from burning to a crisp when in the sun (I have literally never bothered with sunscreen before this unless I was on the beach, and I’ve lived in Australia for 10 years), the ones that keep your digestive system smooth (yup, exactly), the ones that keep the hormones flowing nicely through your lymph nodes for happy feels (make sure your better half reads about this one). I am so much more aware and thankful to my body than I was before this. The whole “my body is a temple” thing makes sense.
Pro tip: Yoga and massage are the biggest favours you can do for your body (and your loved ones) when on Accutane. I also felt a huge difference in my energy levels and metabolism when I had ACV/honey with warm water in the morning.
Water is life. I kid you not, I went into PMS style mood swings when on the meds and not drinking enough water. That effect is likely felt even when you’re not on medication, only its so subtle we 21st century idiot automatons totally ignore it. But if my mood depended on water on Accutane, then my mood will definitely be enhanced by water when not on Accutane. Also helpful - eye drops, humidifier, lip ointment. Speaking of lip ointment, if you suffer from dry lips - exfoliate your lips with your toothbrush (an electric one works too), scrub all the skin off with a towel (yes, it hurts, and it looks like it may bleed, but that’s dead skin and it doesn’t need to stay on your lips), then apply lip ointment and/or lip balm. Let it sink in for 5 min. Now apply lipstick. Makes a MASSIVE difference. Dry lips also have the unexpected side effect of allowing color to bleed through the cracks outside the borders of the lips (realized this one during the wedding - don’t apply lipstick usually). Solution - lip liner. Trust me on this one.
Pro tip: Never moisturize dry skin, the cream just sits on top - even if you have dry skin. Spray with Avene or Evian first (hell, just splash your face with water and pat it dry) - or, better still, moisturize straight after a shower / face wash when skin surface is still a tad wet.
Hey USA - 1920 called and it wants its women’s rights back. Seriously, how has the country that boasts of the highest social gender equality got this far while treating women like teenagers when it comes to decisions about their own bodies? As a man, I go to my dermatologist once a month, she makes sure the meds aren’t making me suicidal (they are known to), and I get a month’s prescription. As a woman, I need to prove that I subscribe to 2 forms of eligible birth control (I now have an IUD, which in the long run has proven to be a good decision), sign physically and virtually some crazy “pledge” that I understand that getting pregnant is fatal for the fetus when on this medication. If that’s not enough, I have to study and give what is essentially a sex ed test online every month with questions like “I can get pregnant even when using a condom - true or false”, go to a pathology lab on an 8 hour fast and get 3 vials of blood and a urine test done, get an appt with the dermatologist once the results are out (she only is in the clinic twice a month), get the prescription refilled - all within 6 calendar days. If I fail, I have to start all over again. Seriously? I get that abortion is a hot topic for you politically opinionated folks (read: everyone in this country), but for fuck’s sake, keep your politics outside of my bedroom and my medicine cabinet.
Pro tip: Don’t have your kids in the USA if you have the option. I can’t even imagine explaining this to my imaginary 13 year old daughter.
A good skin routine will get you everywhere. I did not appreciate this when I had acne, because frankly no matter how diligent I was, my sister who never takes her makeup off and constantly skips showers and exfoliation always has better skin than me. But now that my skin is half decent, I can see the difference between a night when I exfoliated and moisturized before getting 8 hours of shuteye vs when I took my clothes off and fell asleep on the covers. While I’m here, one more thing - your skin has patches, and your skin has seasons. Everything except my jawline can handle oil as a moisturizer, in fact my cheeks crave it. So I exfoliate only on my jawline, and oil only my forehead and cheeks. And for the first time in my life, I am actually interested in make up, because I don’t have a “why bother, you can see my acne and besides I’ll just break out if I use makeup anyway” attitude.
Pro tip: We subconsciously perceive someone as more upbeat, lively and attractive when they have white, bright eyes - something I came to appreciate only when mine were constantly itchy and red. So, if you want to look fresh, apply some anti redness lubricating eye drops, only then put on your eyeliner.
Your partner better like you - a lot. When I started this treatment, I had just moved in with my now husband. We were 6 months into a relationship and into a new city. I was studying part time, working full time and our family was going through a particularly gnarly emotional period for unrelated reasons. I was scared shitless that this would break me and my boyfriend down. My question to him for weeks literally was, “Are you sure our relationship can take this?” He never wavered in his response - via words or action in the months following. I couldn’t handle bootcamps at the gym because of the pain, or confessional calls from my friends seeking comfort because of my own emotional rollercoasters,and I needed far more sleep and mental rest than I ever have. I was angry with myself all the time. He was the one who repeatedly asked me to be patient with myself - eventually he got through to me. During this time, he quietly took on more than his fair share of the housework and the relationship - definitely more than either one of us would ever verbally give him credit for, anyway.
Pro tip (credit to husband for this one): Don’t get too caught up with the concept of equality in your relationship on a week to week basis. There will be days - maybe even weeks or months - when one of you carries way more than the other. As long as it evens out in the long run, and no one feels taken advantage of, and you’re both happy, its fine.
Living one day at a time is underrated. I went through some pretty insane milestones - including getting married - while on this medication. There were days where I felt overwhelmed - which is not something I’m used to. Many weekdays in the first 3 months I was fighting a brain fog till 2 in the afternoon - it still plagues me sometimes (I have about 30 days of treatment to go). And then there were those few really, really, dark days where I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning - I’m pretty sure I was in borderline clinical depression for a while there. Don’t even get me started on the period pain when Accutane + a newly installed IUD decide to combine forces. Never have I popped so many Advils. Looking back though, I would not have changed anything - I got to wear the clothes I wanted, felt and looked like my best self on my wedding - and most importantly, going through this gave me faith in myself and in my relationship with my husband that we could handle anything.
Haven’t logged in 15 months. Insane. Yes. So let’s begin with something easy. I was tagged by @le-red-queen Dec 3 LAST year.
To kill a mocking bird. It’s going to sound really stupid, but I was protected enough that I did not see race growing up in the military, much less understand it, till I read this book when I was 14. As is commonplace for that age, I worshipped my father for his principles, so the Atticus Finch angle was a natural draw as well.
Franny & Zooey. I have lost count of the number of times I have read this book. I couldn’t tell you why I liked this book more than Salinger’s other works. But I did. I connected to Franny at the time - how she felt so disconnected from the world - and from her boyfriend.
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. Nothing draws me more than the despondency of Americana apparently. I do think reading these early on made me somewhat stoic about the existential angst that was to burst into my late teens and early 20s, and still pops its head up between work meetings and dry-cleaning.
Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs. I won’t even try and defend this one. It is what it is.
Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl’s psychotherapy cred coupled with an unimaginably horrific 7 year holocaust imprisonment makes for some gritty reading.
My Feudal Lord. The autobiography of the ex-wife of a powerful Pakistani politician tells you why mainstream tumblr feminism knows nothing of the choked voices that drown in rich and poor households alike in some eastern societies. I ended up writing a letter to her. This book shook me, and took me on my journey into understanding feminism and a woman’s given and taken place in society. We live in a messed up world.
Being Mortal. Modern medicine accounts for longevity, not for quality. And it favors the rich. A world renowned Indian-American neurosurgeon explores the broken chasm between caretaking customs of old, drawing on his knowledge of Indian customs and his research of other cultures, and contrasts them with the cold paper shoving infrastructure of new that leaves most lonely and poverty stricken in their twilight years - and tries to find a future that could bridge the two.
The Prophet. Kahlil Gibran addresses every topic from love and marriage to war and death with evocative precise prose. A worthy competitor to the Bhagavad Gita.
The Outsiders. “Nothing gold can stay.” The Buddha would agree.
The Fountainhead. I may not agree with it now in my 30s, but when I read it, it was so drastically different from everything else I had ever consumed, that it stayed with me for a long long time.
Someone said this to me once. I don’t get it. I also don’t get why the gentlemen behind the counter keep asking me what flavour of water I would like. Or why I moved here when every woman I’ve met here tells me she hates the dating scene and the casual attitude men have towards dating. I didn’t expect that. At all. The men are angry. The women are angry. But they all looking fucking fabulous. All the time. Accidental awesomeness is apparently all the rage.
Tokyo was about intentional impeccability and San Francisco is about accidental awesome. I’m protecting myself without realizing it. I have been for a while. No flat mate. No sex. I’m scared this city will rob me of something. Happiness. Contentment. The desire to be authentic. The ability to connect with a person without worrying they will discard it. There is a hardcore and harsh practicality to daily life here that I haven’t experienced even in the most third world of countries. People are afraid to connect because it might mean they will get too vulnerable and be taken advantage of, that they might lose sight of their other goals. Or maybe I’m just angry and upset and lonely and homesick. I have no home so my homesickness feels completely aimless. I’m longing for something the world cannot give me. I’m ready to let someone come into my life but of course suddenly there ain’t anyone knocking. The moment I lock the door, there will be 3. I don’t get it at all. Between Stanford, a new work ethic and San Francisco, I just want to lock the door and play the victim. I’m angry with myself for not handling this move better emotionally. I’ve never been such a mess. Why is this move so different? I’m angry with all the men I’ve loved for not wanting me more. I’m angry that my parents feel so disconnected from me and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I’m angry that my sister is having to let them deal with their disappointment with my “single status” every time she wants to excitedly discuss her wedding. I’m just tired. Of feeling. Of change. Of taking it day by day. But that’s really all one can do. That’s really my only defense.
So how do I feel? Overwhelmed by emotion. By tasks. By the months ahead of me. Grateful. So very grateful. Whatever I am doing to the universe to cause the universe to do this to me, I better figure it out so I can do more of it. Because wow, its amazing what will happen if you let go of a little control.
I am trying to break down to get this out of me and not break down because.. well, I don’t know why. What am I grieving? I might just be in denial. I refuse to say goodbye to anyone properly. It will hit me. And the universe will take care of me, and allow me to have the strength and the support to do the next big thing.
I can’t wait for the next 12 months. A whole new world. #Disney
[onlinecatharsis] @onlinecatharsis - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
