2019: A Complicated Tryst With Simplicity

And you look like a protagonist….you look like the person who wins in the end’

I was a little over 12 years old when I first read Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Although my teenage mind was far away from understanding the cataclysmic story of heartache and hope, the above quote got imprinted on the recesses of my psyche. With time, the memory of the book faded, but what remained, was the name ‘Eleanor’, which, too, was lost in the stairwell of time as I entered my prime years.

The year 2019 looked like a year from the pages of glorious history. Career-wise, I had chosen to take the road less travelled and made a few, insanely bold choices. Personal life-wise, everything around me was hanging by a thread. So, I’d agree with Dickens that it clearly was the best of times and the worst of times.

Time — for me was an enmeshed cobweb with the spider of reality approaching fast, while I twisted and turned in anxiety-ridden misery.

If you would’ve asked me a couple of years ago — what my best feature was, without missing a beat I would have said — I understand the complicated stuff better than the simple stuff.

Unfortunately, the first few, dark months of this year proved me wrong, as I was baffled by even the simplest of stuff. Simple things like the sharp tone of my alarm in the morning, crossing the road with my dog on his walk or choosing a dress to wear for the day, left me gasping for breath.

The pitch-black, cold hands of fear began to choke my optimism and my inability to express these dreadful thoughts left me with no way out. Friends and family tried to help, but I had ceased to be me. I wholeheartedly disliked this person I had become, I didn’t want to associate with her in any manner.

This disassociation made me seek out solace in my mother’s closet. I almost shunned my clothes and started wearing her clothes, just to feel that sense of calm and warmth.

While the tempest inside me raged, a new job lingered on the horizon, one which ‘me from a year ago’, would’ve loved. This came at the perfect time, as cliché as it sounds — I badly needed a win. My family shifted houses and I went back to staying in my childhood home.

And, then my friends as they say — the rest was history. Everything changed, gradually at first and then all at once. My address, my daily travel route, my colleagues, my work and slowly, yet steadily — me!

This time, the change was subconscious, I took my own time and it worked! Deeply riveting connections were made, lifelong mentors were found and befitting equals become much more than just that.

All of it culminated into a workplace, that helped me get back my wings, those wings that I had tried to chop off with a blunt knife. Some days, I was mad, frustrated and angry, but then there were days when I was jubilant, soaring with pride about everyone in life and at my workplace.

Then, I met Eleanor again, but this time she wasn’t in a book. She was in a song by the Beatles. She was Eleanor Rigby, but just like her namesake, she too was lonely and wanted to know where someone like her, and me, belonged.

I took an instant liking to this song, mainly because the song, just like the book doesn’t give you the conventional happy ending. It’s a complicated end, but for those who understand it and have lived through it, know and love its simplicity.

Both the Eleanors, in their own respective ways taught me to accept and love myself, even if I live in my dreams and watch everyone from behind a glass pane. They showed me how I really could be the protagonist who wins at the end of my story.

So, this was my 365 days-long complicated tryst with the simplicity! It helped me step onto the boardwalk of life and believe in it all over again!