During the last couple of months, I’ve recognized within myself a need to explain myself, to talk about the reason for my blog, the reason why I resort to writing up such lengthy posts every week. In a couple more months I’m looking at a few changes to the regular posts, an upgrade of sorts. I’m on the verge of completing a year and thought it’s time to take it forward to the next step. But first, why am I here?

One of the things that I’ve realized about myself over the last year is that I (almost always) have an opinion. It doesn’t have to be a contradictory thought or hold a tricky place in conversation, it doesn’t have to be a thought-provoking discussion, I would still have an opinion on it. It would nevertheless provoke me. My next Instagram handle could even be ‘the opinion auntie’ if this keeps up (and if no one else has already taken that). I could just imagine the field day therapists could have with this one paragraph in this post. Lol.

But that wasn’t my intention when I started. That’s just something that seems to have happened.

What I did want though, was to have a voice. A voice that is heard. I have come to notice of late too that I don’t have a terrible voice. And yet, it gets drowned out amidst all the noise around. My voice isn’t terrible to listen to, but it’s not loud enough to be heard.

I have friends and family who would deny this. They would say that I barely shut up to let anyone else speak. And sometimes I fear that is very true.

But this is also true. There was a time when I was the listener. There was a time when I spoke. There was a time when I spoke only obviously insignificant things (as per I), and everyone was happy about it because I had nothing important to say. Sometimes I chose this for me and sometimes it chose me. And there were times when I spoke, and it didn’t sit well with the crowd (maybe the more on point statements?).

On the outside, it never looked like much. A conversation was had. Accusations were thrown. Voices were raised. And then there was silence.

On the inside though, the noise never died down. The accusations never stopped. The conversation never ended. It just went on and on and on till I felt like there would be no reprieve.

I craved balance. I still do – a safe space (how ironic that I turned to the most public place there is to do this – the internet) to air my thoughts as well as find and connect with like-minded people, to let others like me find a safe space as well to feel heard and less alone in this extremely isolating experience called “life”.

Let’s get a little personal – my mom is a very social human being. She connects with almost everyone she’s around almost instantly. She makes friends easily and her contact list is endless. Me on the other hand, her spawn, is exactly the opposite. I’ve always wondered why. I know for a fact that I’m not adopted, and she is my birth mother, and yet our personalities are so contradictory.

Very recently I tried one of her tactics to see how I’d feel about it. I forced myself into a situation which would have been mundane to her but to me was quite the opposite and it went down terribly. No one was harmed (physically) in the making of that situation.

Here is what happened. I got in a cab one day and the driver turned out to be a native of the place I am from – Kerala, India. I have heard so much about cab rides and experiences that have been shared. I imagined what my mom would have done in the said scenario. I would have naturally preferred the awkward silence through the course of the ride but I’ve been told that that’s weird so I thought to myself, why not and so initiated a conversation to see where it would take me. It led me to being snubbed. That taught me a lesson in listening (to the cynic within me).

Right at the get go, the driver asked me if I was not a native of Kerala because of my accent. I explained to him that I was, but I grew up outside and lived abroad most of my life and I barely communicated with anyone from there for quite a while and I haven’t been back home in a couple of years as well. Hence the accent and awkwardness. He replied that if I lived in a place that barely had Indians, let alone Keralites, this is what would happen. If I had lived in a different locality, I would be exposed to more of our culture. And that was that! From there continued our drive in the before mentioned awkward silence that I would have appreciated a bit more if I had initiated it.

The moral of the story – I did get my story. But I failed to make the kind of connection my mom would have in that given situation. She may have even turned that conversation around honestly.

What does that make me then, you may ask? A socially awkward human being that struggles with social anxiety to top off everything else that I have going on for me, thank you very much! And I am not attempting that again, unless I need to be entertained, by my own stupidity.

So, back to my reason for the blog. I don’t want to influence. That is a tough task. It is so demanding. But what I do want, is connection.

Moving to Bahrain has been an isolating experience. At an age where I should already have made a bunch of friends and family, I have had to start all over leaving everyone I know and am comfortable with behind. And that is hard.

Being a woman, who doesn’t have an active social life that comes with working outside of home, is very isolating. Living in conditions where there are barely any opportunities to meet anyone new, being a full-time stay at home mom, is restrictive.

If you also consider the difficulties of communicating with other adults in a social setting while also ensuring the safety of your children who are hell bent on risking their lives every chance they get or allow you to breathe a whiff of air that doesn’t hold an unreasonably lengthy request of theirs, is also something worth adding to the limitations without even including social anxiety to the mix.

And I know that this isn’t just me. There are so many like me out there living this way because we don’t know how else to do it, because we can’t do it any other way, or because we are just plain scared of the big bad wolf.

As women who sacrifice, we deserve to feel loved, by ourselves and by others. There is no harm in wanting to connect. This need to connect with people has been frowned upon so much so that a person who fails to hide it is termed as needy. A lot of times women who sit down to have a chat are said to be having a “gossip”. It does not have to be the case.

We have learned that human beings are social animals. Why did we not also learn that being that way was wrong, if it was?

Terms like brainstorming, teamwork, team building, therapy, company, etc would not exist if it weren’t so that people work better when we are together.

Sometimes, just a quick little chat with a good friend can be so therapeutic.

And me, I enjoy my alone time. But I also enjoy the time I spend with friends and family, the genuine connections I make.

The struggle is real. The world is a hard place to go everything alone. Yes, you can do it all on your own but if you can do it with someone, then why not?

Why not have a hand to hold when you’re feeling low? Why not have a shoulder to lean on when you’re tired? Why not find a reason to laugh a little when all you want to do is cry? Why not learn to love when you just want to hate? Like they say, two heads are better than one, it is always better to have another, to not be alone when you don’t need to be.

Surviving the noise out there is hard. Sometimes it gets too loud when all you want is some quiet. I see the contradiction. But quiet does not always equate alone.

So, this is surviving the noise for you – the explanation of the reason.

I hope this reaches you well.

Love always,