15. homegoing

...and reflections

Ooof, today is so strange. I am one week away from my biggest trip of the year and if I must write today, this is what we will talk about.

Next week, I will be in India, in Kolkata, in my childhood home, with my parents. I always believed in my anxious heart that going home would be peaceful and calming. But it never is.

Days before the trip, all of my insecurities raise their ugly little heads in the back of my own head and make me feel like someone else, a version of myself I had left behind in 2020. It’s like I have grown but the people around me didn’t get that memo. They still expect me to be who I was four years back – in my late twenties, single, a little depressed, unsure of myself and open to their unsolicited opinions. Essentially, a child.

But I am knocking on the door to thirty-one, an almost adult, happy for the most part of my existence, anxiety in control and with my own (sometimes very strong) opinions.

With one week to go for the trip, I am bracing myself for the comments on my skin, on my weight, on the clothes I wear and on my life choices. I am steeling myself against the judgment, formulating responses to the “kind” advice and practising the close-mouthed smile that you need to keep on speed dial for all those situations when talking back will fracture relationships, hurt feelings and spawn further gossip.

At the same time, an anxious joy blooms in my heart.

I am craving the touch of my mother, the hugs from my father that seem endless, that are bone-crushing and mingled with so much love and longing that nothing else can ever match up to them. I am brimming with joy to see my parents, my uncles and aunts – all of them a little older, a few more greys in their hair, the lines on their faces, the tell-tale sag of their arms and the slight stoop of their backs, now more pronounced.

I will see my grandma, her Parkinson’s more severe – her fingers that just won’t stop shaking. I will hold her very hands that used to rub lemon juice and sugar on my bony, teenage fingers in an attempt to lighten my skin (it never did).

Now, I can hold her so tight that her whole body fits in the circumference of my arms, shrunk by age and illness. She will still look at me and tell me I have lost weight (she said this even when I was at my heaviest), that she’s sure I don’t eat enough. My brain will tell me to hold her closer, for longer, listen to her laboured breathing for just a little more because the next time I am there, she might not be around anymore.

I will see my grandpa, well over ninety, smiling the most angelic smile with his missing teeth, not hearing a word unless I shout it out loud, sitting in front of the TV, volume on full, with layers on him even when it’s thirty degrees outside. He too fits in the circumference of my adult arms. I will hold him as close as I can without crushing his ageing bones. I talk to him now as if I am talking to a child, and he will ask me about my studies even when I haven’t been in a classroom for over two years.

Going home is facing a lot of realities.

Going home is understanding that my family isn’t perfect. Going home is working through all the learnings I imbibed over the years in therapy. Going home is giving my loved ones the leeway to cross some boundaries sometimes and exercising self-control to not lose my own mind.

Going home is also accepting that by taking this self-imposed exile, I escaped the responsibility that comes with my family ageing in front of me. Going home is living that guilt, understanding that I am human and rejoicing in the fact that I am at least privileged enough to have a home I can return to at will.

Until next time finding gratitude in the simple things,

Sanj🫨