women – untitled atm

110b – back home

Welp. Back from an exhausting trip to Goa. Being away from home for 10 days can be a lot for me and it’s been a while since I’ve done that, though this time I didn’t feel that intense longing for home I generally do on the 7th or 8th day. So I suppose that’s pretty cool. I practiced riding a 2-wheeler— something I’ve been wanting to do since AGES. It was also fun to see how comfortable I’m sharing space with Y for a significantly long period of time (10 days is a lot for the both of us!), and I think it was quite decent!

I did get sick in the middle for around two days (had to get a rabies shot since a young doggo (accidentally) bit me and the shot causes fever as a side-effect), and since we were living in a bit of a “foresty” area, we even spotted a langur on one of the afternoons. “Spotted” is an understatement actually, it came into our balcony while we were in the living room— luckily, we saw it in time and managed to close the balcony door before it could come inside. So, in terms of “wildlife” the trip was lowkey adventurous lol. But apart from that things were mostly good!

This trip was also supposed to be a test trip because we’ve been considering moving to Goa in a couple months. Wrt that, I do have certain concerns: the weather (it was VERY humid and I imagine the monsoons won’t be easy either), safety (we definitely didn’t feel very safe walking out at night post 10pm), healthcare and other emergencies (there were no hospitals within a 3km radius of where we were staying, and even if there was one— you’re completely reliant on your own vehicle to get to a place).. yeah I suppose that’s it.

Overall though, we did enjoy our time quite a lot and 10 days went by pretty easily. I do love the relaxed atmosphere and culture of the place, people are mostly quite nice and friendly, and the living expenses would be lesser than that of a city like, say, Delhi or Bangalore. So, yeah, I suppose we’ll see.

I’m glad to be back, in some ways, but both Y and I are feeling very exhausted since our flight yesterday was delayed by 4 hours and we only got home around 4am. If 10 days away from home weren’t enough, that’ll do it.

Overall, not feeling too inclined to “do” too much, I think I’m back to my “let’s just make time for people and experiences” phase for a bit, I’m not sure if I have the energy and motivation to do things (creative or otherwise).

So yeah I suppose I’ll just rest and recover over the weekend and then see how to structure the coming week. Don’t really have a ton of time to settle into anything here though, since I’m traveling again from 13-23rd. So we’ll see we’ll see. Anyway, that’s it from me really I think.

Happy March, folks! xx

094b – hanging out

Sitting in a Doolally in Andheri in Mumbai and I’m determined to write a post today. I’d decided to travel for very personal reasons and even though I was content to be able to visit, I did keep an additional couple days on almost a whim of sorts. I thought I might meet people, go to the beach or do something fun, without planning too much for it. Also the tickets were much less expensive which was an important factor too.

I do feel like including a bit of randomness in life can be really lucrative, conducive, especially to creative work. Which is why I also feel that if I don’t get a post done I won’t feel like I made the most out of this “time” I had to kill.

Of course, if there were enough people to meet I would have been happy to spend my time with them too, but since it was short notice and somewhat last minute, I do have the evening to myself. I have a couple hours to kill before I can head to the airport and to be very honest, I feel like they might not be super easy to kill. But let’s see, we’ll see how that goes.

There are of course other “tasks” I can do but really don’t want to. Part of me wonders if I should have gone to a cafe instead of a bar. But cafes can be a bit too quiet actually. I’m not very sure. Maybe we do need “work places” that also serve alcoholic drinks. I know there’s probably a few out here but maybe not enough.

My time in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi has reinforced one thing for sure however— Mumbai definitely feels the safest and most “chill” (especially for me personally as a single queer woman) amongst the three. The other day I felt extremely unsafe and observed in Delhi, even at the airport, a place that’s supposed to be very busy and diverse.

As I start to feeling closer and more attached to the person I’m dating at the moment, I’m starting to feel warmer towards monogamous / monogamish structures again. I was thinking maybe I don’t feel jealousy and possessiveness for people lately but now I’m thinking maybe that’s not very true. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the last week and I’m feeling a lot of “new” feelings for this person since then. But I do, still, worry about the idea of attempting to “secure” our attachments. It feels quite risky. Addressing this feels good though. I hadn’t realised I was carrying this and it was weighing on me quite a bit. I do feel a lot of separation anxiety when we say goodbye or end calls and I just don’t know if that can ever be solved or if that will ever feel less painful. With separation anxiety, it’s never a lasting feeling, I know that things become okay once we spend a bit of time apart, like I get busy with my own thing, my own routines etc. But it is super difficult when actually separating. Maybe I look this up a little more and do some research on this. Maybe there’s a way to ensure that I won’t be co-dependent even if I’m in a monogamous relationship. This sounds tough to me but I DO feel that that’s my primary fear. Not that I won’t get to date other people etc but that I will lose my individuality. So maybe I think about this fear first instead of thinking about non-monogamy instead. Maybe detanglement and individuality and independence is what I care about a lot more than wanting to see other people. Maybe seeing other people is just one way of asserting that independence and choice, and wasn’t the aim all along. Let’s see. I’m going to sit with this for the next few weeks.

I’ve written this word vomit with only 80% focus (I also replied to a bunch of texts with 80% focus), but I think I’m good for now. Hope to write again soon, cheers folks! xx

053b – if I die, do not say I was reckless and stupid

The mind goes to dark places tonight. I’ve recently moved to an apartment by myself in South Delhi, India. Delhi is infamous for being a terribly unsafe city, especially for women. I’m experiencing a bunch of strong thoughts right now, ranging from actual worries about my literal safety to judgement around having made a potentially bad, stupid, not a very thought-out decision. I’m also a little angry with the people who I did rely on for a “second opinion” during my search, who didn’t voice out their concerns when they could have.

I’m trying to access stoicism, even though that’s tough to access when it comes to the worst-case scenarios around this kind of a problem: sexual assault, rape, a range of physical harm, murder. I don’t have reassurance to offer to myself.

So that’s the first part of the problem, but considering it is not the average-case scenario, only the worst-case scenario, I want to address the other part of the problem. Let’s say I have a couple weeks of bad-sleep-nights, and I come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a good decision.. is that so bad? I didn’t originally want to make a fear-based decision based on my past philosophy, but maybe it’s okay to arrive to the conclusion that in certain situations, making fear-based decisions is fine too. (Of course, it’s the more rational thing to do for a lot of people, but the reason I hadn’t wanted to do that until now is because I run more anxious about many things, and I didn’t want my anxiety to impact my life, not too much.)

—

Slept off eventually because I was tired enough to, so maybe I’ll continue this another time. I’m planning to have some backups in place though, more self-defence tools, and maybe some self-defence classes. Obviously, if anything major was to happen, this wouldn’t help much, but one can only hope.

Anyway, the daytime is quite nice, apart from it being extremely hot, and I don’t want to keep the air-conditioning on all the time. I don’t know, I have so many conflicting desires in life, not sure how to find a middle-ground with any of them.

I really love the house otherwise, like I can envision everything, once it’s all set up, I can imagine having a really nice stint here, socially, creatively, I think. And post August I think it also won’t be as hot anymore, so that’ll be quite nice. I need to go out for a walk today to explore the area a little bit, though I’m feeling a little lazy.

One realisation I had yesterday was that I’ve had a lot of exposure therapy wrt my anxiety etc in the last couple days, so it’s good to know that when I do need to do things that are non-negotiable, I’m able to do them. This is good for self-trust.

My third month in Delhi has ended, but really, my time here only begins now. Delhi, be good to me. 🙂 ❤