A Very Long Post

Hello my pretties. (Plural because now I have conclusive proof that there are more than two of you out there. Evelyn Anandam, Nisreen, Mehj, Deena, and my fraaands in New Zealand, you make my heart smile.)

It’s been a while, no? For some time, it was on purpose. See for me, writing is all about feelings and I was quite fed up of all the feelings of the past few months. So I decided, with my ridiculously finite wisdom, that I was going to quit writing for a while and start focusing on something more “outward” like photography or cooking.

Therefore, in the past month, I baked exactly one batch of brownies and took a grand total of two photographs. Here is the one I am less ashamed of.

(It looked better on my phone.)

I took a month-long vacation last month. To explore the world, find my life’s calling, you know, to eat, pray and love. Oh, who am I kidding? I spent all of last month sleeping, eating junk, wasting time on 9gag.com, and watching every episode of 30 Rock known to man.

It was glorious.

I also used that month to think. And I thought about a lot of things.

I thought about change.

• About how I went from having a lot of free time to having no free time to having a lot of free time.
• About how I went from being super-brave to Courage the Cowardly Dog. I was the official lizard exterminator of the family. In fact, it was one of the first “Most Important Conversations” that Rajeev and I had while we were still dating. I asked him “Rajeev, do you promise to protect me from all worm-like creatures?” and he said “I do”. And then he asked me,” Sheryll, do you promise to protect me from all lizard-like reptiles?” and I said “I do”. (No wonder we were so chilled out during our wedding ceremony. We had already exchanged the vows that mattered.) These days, even my ringtone scares me.
• About how, for one full glorious year, my entire life revolved around doing my best impression of Martha Stewart. I was cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. I look back now and think “Who IS that person??”
• About how ridiculously short my hair is now. I went to the hairdressers the other day to get my hair trimmed. Once I got there, I decided to throw caution to the wind and get a brand new hairstyle. I wanted a slightly longish pixie cut, but my hairdresser, Peter, wanted me to get a bob. So we compromised and did it his way. I now look like Maria Von Trapp if she was a 1920’s flapper.

I thought about life and death.

Well, mostly death. I remember that the one thing my family was totally freaked out by was the possibility that I may continue to internalize all my feelings and then one day, do something drastic and irreversible. I get it. I can understand why they would think that. And truth be told, I’d understand if someone else in a similar situation would have done that. But I don’t think I would. For at least two very important reasons:

1. I’m a total wuss. Really. I don’t even eat chili bajjis. Forget that. I did not even eat green peppers till I was almost 20 years old. Why? Because they looked like giant green chilies and I was afraid they they’d be too spicy and burn my mouth. (Somewhere out there, the god of Telugu cuisine is weeping.)
2. I know it’s not “proper” considering my circumstances, but I just can’t help but be curious and excited about what the future has in store for me. Think about it. It can only get better, right? It’s like something I said to my mom the other day. That the best thing about this world is that no matter what you do or how much power you have, a day will only have 24 hours. And no matter how long that day feels like, it will get over. And a new day will begin. And it will go on and on until the sun burns out.

I thought about God.

God and I have been having a bit of a complicated relationship these days. Do I think God could have healed Rajeev? Without a doubt. Am I angry that God did not? More than you can imagine. Do I think that God did not heal him on purpose? Yes.

But that’s the thing you see. I do believe that God let this happen on purpose. And my logic dictates that to do something on purpose, you need to first have a reason. And that is what gives me hope. Sure, right now, no reason is going to be good enough. But who knows what the future holds. I know that my atheist friends will have a ton of things to say about all this, but I have to say that the one thing that keeps me going is my faith in a supernatural being who made me. For a purpose. A faith that there is a heaven, that there is someone out there who can see the big picture. It makes me believe that extraordinary lives are made of extraordinary events- whether it is extraordinary happiness or extraordinary sadness. I’m thankful that I got to have both.

I know my life is not going to be normal and ordinary. And of course, I’d pick having a normal, ordinary life building a happy home with Rajeev over having an extraordinary life any second of any day. But I can’t do that. I may not have THAT option but I DO have two other options. I can choose to spend the rest of my life wallowing in sadness and think about what could have been and how “unlucky” I am to not have that. Or I can choose to take what I have, do something with it, and be extraordinary.

I'm going to choose extraordinary... after I have this cookie.