It scares me to be this transparent. It scares me when someone comes up to me to ask how am I holding up with my internship. Chills run down my spine if someone questions me about my social anxiety or anything they should not know. I am usually taken aback for a second or two, but then the epiphany dawns- I write a god-forsaken blog thinking that no one reads it. Apparently, people do (hey y’all, ssup?). 

Point being- I have constantly attempted to not get too personal on this blog, but given that I have already written about things that I wouldn’t talk of otherwise- here’s another article which will make you realize the sadness of my life and commiserate more with my plight so you end up getting sympathy ice cream for me. 

There is this weirdly bizarre thing that has been happening to me lately. I am 99.9% sure that it doesn’t happen with/to everyone. I am confused, exasperated and so annoyed by how much it is affecting me. I like to believe that it’s probably the people around me. But as my favorite line goes, the Nile isn’t just a river in Egypt, I have come to terms with the fact that it isn’t my environment, it’s me. I cannot always blame others.

Here are the few symptoms that I have been experiencing for the past 1 month or so: 

1) Rationality: 

I have always considered myself to be very logical and practical. What stuns me now is that my level of rationality has increased. Oddly enough, I have started to think and plan my days and not just ‘wing it’. This epiphany dawned on Tuesday when I went to the refrigerator at 1:30 am to get a bowl/ton of ice cream for myself. As I was about to walk away with the very large piece of heaven in my hand, I realized that I have an important meeting the next day and if I eat ice cream that late and then sleep in an air-conditioned room, I might fall sick. 

Preposterous! 

I was disgusted and sickened to the core by my own rationality as I was reasoning an excuse to not eat ice cream. That’s not the kind of person I raised myself to be.

2) Sincerity-  

Although some people call me a geek, I think that I am just very sincere towards my work/studies. But that attitude is now gradually blurring endlessly. Like this other day, I dumped my notes after attending a workshop because who needs them anyway? I have let a deadline or 2 or 10 whoosh past me. I have a backlog of work, but I am choosing to waste my time by writing a blog about it. 

3) Happiness:

I have been doing a lot of happy dance in my head lately. Weirdly enough, my former reasons for being sad are now the causes of my happiness. 

 For example, I now get ecstatic when: 

-A plan is cancelled so I don’t have to think of an excuse to escape it;

-I get a day off;

-I don’t have any human contact for 3 days or more;

-No one talks to me so I can safely chew on the small piece of cardamom that I had been devouring on for 3hours;

-I get to sleep for 8 hours straight without waking up because somehow my ears turn into that of a feline at night. I can hear the breathing of the person sleeping in the next room or a wolf howling in the woods or the sound of my dreams shattering and my willpower leaving my body.

4) Stealing:

Last week I caught myself using torrent to download a software. I no longer download movies or songs and that scares the living daylights out of me. Forget downloading, I don’t even want to watch any movies (ironically, my subject of study this semester requires me to watch about 40 movies in a month).

5) Talks:

My 12-year-old brother asked me to explain a math equation to him; usually that would have ended us in having a heated conversation about Timothy being the most amazing character in the Famous Five squad. This time it ended with me giving him a lecture on life, defeats, Olympics, talking fishes and how did the director hold his breath underwater when he was looking for Nemo, and Dory’s parents. I cried myself to sleep that night because I had transformed into my father for those 4 and a half hours.

6) Investments:

A lot of investments that I have been making recently are contradictory to my old ways. Like this other day I purchased 2 sets of book because it reminded me of my ‘young and free school days’. I then purchased another book because it’s an autobiography of a dying man and I ‘need spirituality’ in my life.

Given my concerns, I resorted to google to give a name to my condition.

Needless to say, I stopped after checking the result of the first symptom. 

I used my own increased rationality to think of a probable explanation to all this and I could not reach any conclusive end. 

Until last Friday. 

The 2nd of September, 2016. 

The day which marks the completion of 21 years of my existence on Planet Earth. 

All the drama, all the chaos suddenly made sense. All the useless brain activities coupled with baseless thoughts suggested the 4 words that I have been dreading since time immemorial. 

I AM GROWING UP. 

And boy oh boy, is this crazy or what?!