A commitment altogether to create a new entity.
As an Indian girl (newly married), moving away from home, leaving back everything you’ve known for 28 years for a place that is halfway across the globe; the commitment to create a successful marriage tipped the scale to it’s highest levels. Let me begin by saying that in my 28 years of life, not once I had to stay away from family more than a week. Our culture is very clear in these matters and staying with family (parents, siblings and their kids) is seen as a strength rather than a weakness as in the western cultures here in the U.S. Hence, for me the shift from India to the U.S. was a major one and yet a disturbing one. To clarify, it wasn’t disturbing because of my husband 😉 . Mr. R is an amazing soul who empathizes with me and I have been lucky enough to have found someone so supportive.
It became disturbing for me on a personal level; just the thoughts that go on in an idle person’s mind. Idle – again a huge step I had to take after my marriage. Back in India I worked as a professor at a college and kept myself busy with professional as well as social agendas. After moving to the U.S. my first difficulty was to become a house-wife as working under H4 visa was restricted. Going from being occupied 18 hours a day to just cooking all day drove me crazy; especially from the fear that I wouldn’t want to do this all my life. Also the fear on missing out – the famous FOMO, on the professional front. My second difficulty and by far the most disturbing one mentally turned out to be on the social front. I have friends from work, school, college, clubbing etc. in India but here finding someone with the same as well as a compatible wavelength was getting tougher. I encountered a lot of them with kids and they all had a pretty occupied schedule to let a new friend into their lives. The pathetic part was due to the 13+hours of time difference between both countries, I couldn’t stay in much contact with my friends back in India. Finding the right time to communicate with family and friends was challenging and thereby it reduced the number of times I spoke to them.
With these two challenges keeping me on high alert most of the times emotionally, an understanding partner made the journey a bit easy to survive. Mr. R kept pushing me to do stuff to challenge my brain with better activities. My hobbies are reading (no restrictions on the genre), collecting books (have about 131 books currently), writing (a vivid blogger) and of course dancing (makes me happy all the time). Sadly, after moving here, I had given up on all four because my mind was distracted in trying to adjust to the new environment it found itself on. Mr. R is a big time foodie or I’d rather say a food critic; hence I began accepting that right now I need to make the most of all the idle time I have. I started finding solace in cooking and reached out to my other hobbies simultaneously.
To elaborate, I started with 9 things to do:
I organized my time to prepare a schedule every night for the upcoming day.
I broke down my day into before cooking and after cooking to avoid spending all day in the kitchen.
Before cooking was simple; taking a bath and doing some gratitude affirmations.
The time when I’m cooking, I video call my parents everyday in India and we discuss about the day (as it’s night time then in India). I try at least one new dish every week either for lunch or some snack during tea.
Also I make sure to keep my mind occupied while I’m cooking, so I watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S. or listen to music, do some random dancing steps and cook.
I have Mr. R come home for lunch as office is very close-by, so lunch time is always pretty easily spent with good company.
Now comes the challenging part – trying not to doze off after a good lunch at home; so I joined a library which has girl’s book club every month. I keep myself occupied by reading in the afternoons. Sometimes maybe watch a movie or two 😉.
Evenings always start with a hot cup of Tea and my laptop out on the patio in the presence of the setting sun. It absolutely sets the mood to write everything that’s on your head and directly from the heart.
Finally, we (Mr. R and I) have made it a habit to hit the gym before dinner at least fives days a week.
So this is how I made peace with the new me that moved across oceans to set a life of her own. None of these were a solution to my two difficulties I mentioned earlier, but you know what? Now it seems less of a difficulty. I realized the key was keep yourself occupied. Definitely, this is just a short-term plan so that my mind stays healthy and happy and I get to concentrate on building a beautiful commitment named marriage. For the long-term, there are thoughts that I want to implement. So stay tuned with me, on my journey to recreate myself.
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