A year ago, everything felt like it was falling apart. I did not know that my head and body could feel so many feelings. I felt like I was drowning, and there was no way out. I was barely eating food, I was drinking way too much, and very unlike me, I had no social energy. Everyday, I would wake up hoping the day was over. Today, things are a little different.
Like always, I found inspiration from the weirdest of places! This one post on Instagram from Grey’s anatomy where Amelia Shepherd cries and then stands in the “super-hero” pose – and successfully performs a complicated surgery. And I thought to myself, I should have something like that – my own version of the superhero pose. At that point, surviving every day was going to be a heroic act for me.
I am writing this one year after I started taking photos of myself smiling after absolutely breaking down crying. I did this because I felt a connection between my body and my emotions. Almost like I could control my thoughts and emotions physically, so smiling was me telling my brain that we needed to stop crying (for that moment). It was also a time when everyone decided that they wanted to post only happy pictures on social media, making people like me feel even worse about not having that happy life. Hence, the smiling and the photos!
All I want to say is that it is okay to cry! It is okay to express emotions and it is okay to cover them up and get on with the day. I spent the last year feeling bad, about the fact that I was feeling bad, and this is my way of telling myself and you that it really is okay to feel bad. At this point, I have a hundred photos of me crying (in the last year) over everything from a boy to the state of society, from ruining lunch to victimhood. The following photos are only 15 of them – a collection which I think is fairly representative of everything that was going on.
This was the first photo that started it. I cried for multiple hours that day. My little brother had just told me that I was never a big sister to him. Somewhere in the middle of the crying, I felt like I was never going to be able to stop. But I did.
I had guests over at the house that day, and usually I enjoy having people over and hosting! But I was exhausted. I could not hear a word that uncle was talking. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for, what I am assuming, was a suspiciously long time from their perspective.
I had a meeting in 10 minutes, an interview to decide if our team would get a grant to make a film on urban housing and livelihood inequality – and I, for my face! Was supposed to be the social scientist in the group and be able to explain the theoretical terms that we used in the proposal. I could not move from my bed. 2 minutes before the call I got up, put a chunni over my T-shirt, glasses so my puffy eyes were not visible and bottu, so they think I got dressed! I cried after the meeting. We got the grant, made the film and it turned out great!
This was in office – the office bathroom, to be exact! I cannot put in words how grateful I am for bathrooms! I came back from “field work.” People from multiple bastis in the city were being evacuated under the name of Musi river rejuvenation and flood control. My boss was calling up people to stop the evacuations and I was well, crying in the bathroom because I had not felt that helpless in life, ever!
Obviously, I was not going to try to get through this time by myself. I started therapy. In our second session, that day, he told me “We respond to the trauma we faced in life even though we are not aware of it.” This was his analysis of my life, and every bad relationship decision I took in life – he basically meant that the sexual violence I survived as a child was dictating everything I did in my life. I felt so out of control that day. Alone in a new house, I wondered if everything I did in life was because of that one man who abused me. Was there even a “me” in my life? Or was I just a walking talking childhood sexual abuse victim? I know now that that therapist was not good. That his analysis of my life was extremely reductive. But that day, all I could do was stop myself from having suicidal thoughts, drink butter milk, and sleep.
This was a hard one! It was a great day in office. We decorated the place for Christmas and played dandiya and had amazing biryani. I sat in the car after, and all I wanted to do was text him about my day, and I realized I could not. I was in the back seat of my chauffeur driven car and I cried silently so my driver doesn’t know.
Travelling was particularly hard; I still don’t know why! I cried in autos so many times! It was the alone space, I guess!
This was the first time I went on a date after him. I never actually “dated” him. It was not supposed to be a “relationship.” It was “casual.” And the idiot that I am, I fell in love with him – because he was absolutely one of the best human beings ever! In that whole mess, I lost a friend! For a year after he ended things, I waited, hoping he would want to be with me. I hoped that if I could somehow prove that I love him and I would not hurt him, that he would want to be with me. But a few days before this, my rat brain finally understood that it was never going to happen. That it was over. I am surprised I was able to put my eye liner between all the crying!
Most days I could hold off the crying until the end of the day. Nights were my absolute safe space. I could drink, and cry and no one would know.
This was in my friend’s room in Khammam. I went there to visit a few friends and I was alone for half a day. She woke up, made me coffee and breakfast, and went to college. I was so very grateful to have such a friend, that I cried. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?!
I was very good at reading situations, at understanding people and their intentions. I royally screwed up with him. I thought a casual relationship was changing into something serious. I understood his actions and even words all wrong. And now, I cannot trust my gut instinct anymore. This was the day I realized that I was now insecure about myself. I simply do not trust myself anymore. It was hard to accept that one thing in 25 years was going to make me insecure for probably the rest of my life. It is just something I need to learn to live with now, I guess.
This was possibly one of my only happy-crying photos. This was when VV called nanna – after he was released on bail. Hearing his voice made me so happy! I told him I was happy to hear his voice and he said, he was doing well, and he was happy to be back with family. I jumped around the house for a while and then broke down. This 80+ year old man, who was wrongly incarcerated by a fascist government, made to suffer without medical attention when he had COVID, wasn’t allowed to come back to his home, was saying that he was well and happy. What the heck right did I have to not be happy in my goddamn privileged, protected life?
It finally hit me that I was leaving Hyderabad. That I was running away, yet again but this time, from myself.
Coming to the US was supposed to be the end of it. But I went to IKEA that day and saw this lamp that he used to have in his room. I was with new friends who did not yet know me well enough to understand if I started crying in the middle of IKEA! So, I waited till we got home. And then I sat in the bathroom crying. I hid there till everything was quite and I could slip into my room without anyone seeing.
This is definitely one of the only times I cried in front of other people. A 21 year old "Feminist" American woman mocked me for not having a sense of style. And I could not help flashback to all the times in high school and college when I felt so insecure about my own body. I could not help but think about how women betray women everyday and how feminism and body positivity are just words for so many people! until I cried to a feminist man who told me my clothes did not make me who I am and came home to talk to two of the most amazing women I have had the good fortune of calling my roommates - and the world felt safer again.
I am happy to report today, one year after I started doing this, that I survived. I survived the sadness but also the guilt that came with being sad when I felt like I did not have the right to be sad. Big decisions, heartbreaks, publications, moving across the world, creating a new life, and so much more is happening right now but there is a weird kind of calm – the acceptance that sadness is a part my life, not the whole of it. And I am forever grateful to the people and the politics that got me here, to today.