Thank you, 2016. Hello 2017
It has been two months into 2017 and I already feel the surge of a new spirit to take charge of my life and make it into one that I have always dreamed of living. But almost two months and a week into the New Year, I have something to do—to record my gratitude and chaos that I felt at the start of the New Year.
In this post, I will talk about the personal growth that 2016 has helped me achieve. It was one hell of a roller-coaster year. I had too many dreams and hope build on it, but it was the year that tested my patience, determinant and skills. I don’t know if I am talented enough to be a writer, but through these six years of penning down despite my fears, taunts and fights (internal and external), it definitely has become a skill that I can bank upon anywhere.
Regarding my dream of being a professional writer, the first blow came through in the name of my final year research paper that I had no idea to write about. Critics who had always been of my ambiguous style of writing grew stronger and the worst blow was when your parent told you, “I just don’t find the lucid flow in your writing style. It feels obnoxious, forced and complex. Its better you give up. You’re trying just too hard.”
It was the most difficult to digest, especially when my guide and my uncle who came forth to be my savior too chirped in their opinions along the same lines. I just wanted to be over it and it all happened exactly during that time when I was struggling very hard emotionally and looking for a way to wake up from it all. But nothing seems to be working my way and what followed it were just a series of actions and decisions that only made me regret more for not fighting back and trying what I always wanted to do in life.
I let them to all brainwash me that I wasn’t cut for literature or literary career. I was better off in the administration and business career path as I always exhibited traits of leadership right from a very young age. I let them to let me fall in the trap that everyone falls to, getting a MBA admission in the hope of getting a job, a stable career unlike my literary career where I had next to zero hoping of surviving and making it big.
I had given up on writing and vowed never to pick my pen back again, but fate had other plans for me. I landed miraculously on an opportunity to co-author with other writers from around India to write an anthology of nano-tales. Like every other time, my impulsive self wanted me to just give it a try and Viola, I was in for a journey that I treasured for a lifetime. Not just that today my department knows me as the unofficial report writer where I write reports on almost every seminar, workshop or program that happens in my department.
2016 taught me many things, one of it being is to face my faces and digest rejection right at the face. You know when you choose to look fear right at the eye, it shrinks into nothing but an exaggerated idea of possible failure. It taught me sometimes life has its own course and everything happens for a reason. Just trust it and flow with the flow. The reward you get later on is magnificent. You get an opportunity to be loved, showcase your talent and make life your own, just the way you had dreamed it to be!
Everything has its own time-limit and follows its pace. You neither need to push or pull it, just follow the flow, make friends, love, live, laugh and have fun. Thinking and being cautious is cool, but just don’t overdo it. Sometimes just trust the pace of life and take everything that comes along as an experience to cherish for a lifetime.
I am at a stage of life where I don’t even know what I have and don't have! Where I am ready to ask everyone I have in life questions like, “Are you a Mirage of mine? Were they right to say that marriage is a Mirage? Or how should I put it that this life and world is itself a farce and Mirage(Maya, as they'd say).” Still, slowing I am learning to trust it all and follow with the flow.
There are times where I feel like people guilt-trip me for wanting a life me want to live, they make me feel like it's your mistake to even want what I want. Despite it all, is it worth the fight and worth the living? You give up everything, sit down silently put on a plastic smile and hide those tears, all to make them happy. Is it all really worth it? I question such question every day.
Then I go on to marvel at how people miraculously expect that the New Year will magically turn their lives around. Things will just get all right that day, but isn't it all a farce? It’s just another day, just another sunrise and sunset. Nothing can change your life, unless you want to, you work forward to. I don't know about you, but I am tired of plastic smiles, fake pleasantries and hiding the tears in the name of being polite. I am done with it all!
Thus, today, I choose to unlearn all that this society taught me to exist and survive. I choose to live, not to survive. I choose to express myself as freely as I can. If you can't keep up with me and my ambitious way, I am ready to let you go. But trust me, I will no longer cling on to you and do anything to please you.
To all those that wants to bind me on the name of love, I am sorry, you're gonna be hurt by the real me because this year, I won't succumb to you! This year, I have learnt to spread my wings and fly high.
Dear 2016, you indeed did teach me a lot, but your successor 2017, is going to see me emerge as a successfully living person. I promise you to make the best of the scars that you gave me and the ones I created. I don't know if I will ever heal, but I will never give up on life. That's all, I know! So, 2017, you better grab my hands, we are in for a real venture of a lifetime— one that can make or break me. Let's see what all we can do together.
With love,
Anuradha S
(Even the name is a borrowed one and not real! Let's make an identity of our own and make a stamp on this world, one that none can forget. Whether the World remembers or not, I will make sure that it be one that you'll truly remember!)