I Felt Like I Was Dying For 42 Years
Making up for lost time.
My current read is They Both Die at the End. It’s freaking fantastic. I won’t ruin the book but it leads to the question: what would you do on your last day alive?
It’s easy to get emotional while reading this book, but for me it’s in a different way. I feel like I was dying for most of my life.
Everything was supposed to be a cookie-cutter life, the way my parents and Muslim culture wanted it. I worked around it by being the rebellious black sheep. And by “rebellious black sheep”, I mean that I was a straight-A student who worked two jobs in highschool but didn’t want to conform to the Indian/Pakistani norm or my mother’s Nazi-like regime.
I ached to be free from their grip but I’m also hardcore when it comes to toughing things out and suffering for the greater good. And thus, I survived only on a superficial level so that I could graduate university and get the hell out of dodge.
The trick was to lead a double life. The outside world didn’t see the inner turmoil, especially when the root cause was the drama inside my parents’ house. I bemoaned about boys I liked and losing hoodies (that is legit something I did often), but I never divulged how suicidal I was or how I’ve learned the physical art of blocking when being attacked by a larger figure.
I thought moving as far away as possible would solve that but instead, I created yet another mental cage for myself by marrying someone who I tried dumping at three months because I didn’t even think he liked me. Heck, when he proposed I thought he was dumping me. The enormity of the red flags practically had an arena of bulls following them.
And so I remained miserable. Adding two kids to the mix, one with a chromosome disorder, and his long-distance commute that turned me into a single mother, I felt like each day was just one step closer to death.
Wake up. Do “life stuff”. Go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, on the superficial outside, I was just someone stressed who juggled two small, high-needs children. On the inside, the turmoil threatened to bubble over if I didn’t push it back down on the regular.
Over time, I lost the ability to be strong. I found myself hysterically bawling any moment that I was alone (like my drive to work) which let out just enough steam to stop the overflow but not empty the emotional kettle. I could feel myself getting weaker, being too tired to slap on a happy face while negotiating with myself to hang on another twelve years until both kids were adults.
Now that I’ve vowed to live a life of authenticity, which includes a pending divorce, I don’t cry anymore and I don’t feel like my only purpose in life is to eventually die.
As I’m reading They Both Die at the End, I think of how it feels like I’m finally living for the first time. My choices are my own. I’m being honest with those around me to reconcile what’s going on inside of me with the outside.
Looking back over the years before asking for a divorce, I feel so bad for The Old Me. Feeling a dull misery most of the time, intermixed with intense moments of deep pain, left me on autopilot.
I didn’t know it was possible to not feel that way. I had never experienced for any extended period what living in the present felt like or genuine excitement for the future.
My entire life was spent looking at the future with the same excitement one feels when receiving a credit card statement; nothing in the envelope will be good, it’ll suck when it’s time to handle it, and there’s no way to avoid it.
I can see those moments of agonizing pain like I’m watching a movie. On the floor, curled up with her fist covering her mouth, the lead character is silently crying so no one in the house hears her. I want to hug her. I want to tell her that it doesn’t have to be that way. That feeling excruciating pain daily is not the norm and it’s possible to be happy.
The lead character wouldn’t have understood what long-term happiness felt like. Nor would she have believed me, because she was so used to mentally torturing and berating herself for being a spoiled human who couldn’t recognize how fantastic her life was.
She would also have argued that she wasn’t deserving of happiness and then she would have mocked herself for sounding like a poster child for therapy.
It’s strange to look back at my life and feel like the Old Me was an entirely different person. We’re both sarcastic assholes fueled by generalized anxiety but when I think of the future, I’m giddy with excitement. Sure, there’ll be moments of hardship and I’m probably naïve to my upcoming challenges.
Maybe I am being naïve about the future. But for now, I’m reveling in this feeling of peace and happiness. I’m not going to let Future Me ruin this moment today.
