My break from people

I noticed that my previous post did not garner nearly as many views or comments as my otherwise personal, venting, bare-it-all, vulnerable ones do. So does that mean that those are the only kinds people like reading about? Because they relate to them or because it’s a voyeuristic universe? I can’t tell. All I know is that I avoided the blog for a while for precisely this reason—I didn’t want to write vulnerable, whiny posts. I don’t like whiny people, so why would people tolerate my whiny-ness? Clearly, I was wrong.

I’ve been on a break from people lately. Well, to be fair, I’m slowly slipping back into the game, but for at least for two weeks back there, I stayed away from most people. Apart from of course my colleagues, who I see at work. Can’t give up my job—would never do it; it’s what keeps me going. For those 10-12 hours a day, I forget it all.

The reason I decided to take a break from people is simply because all of a sudden, for the last few months, my life had become shrouded with negativity. Nothing in my personal life was going right. I know I sound dramatic. But when you’re as tiny as I am, all of it can be overwhelming. My biggest strengths, my friends, were falling apart all around me. We call each other family, and suddenly all I could see was that this family was disintegrating before my eyes. The matters of the heart were not getting better. I was losing people closest to me—either temporarily or permanently, I couldn’t tell. After a point, I stopped blaming the universe and world for all that was going wrong, and decided to look inward. It had to be something to do with me, right? I mean, I could no longer connect with people I had known for 20 years, some for eight years, and some I had been intimately connected with for four years. What the hell was going on? My solution—work till I drop, go straight home and numb my senses (insert what you like here).

Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, this seemed to work. For those two weeks that I decided not to see people, not only did I feel lighter, as I had no expectations, and hence could not feel disappointed, but certain people who had dropped out of my life, miraculously reappeared—some for a moment, some maybe for good. Although I said I didn’t want to see people, I ended up spending time with those I really cared about, and some time spent on my own in introspection or with my favourite—a ton of books.

During this time, the only kind of articles that kept popping up on my newsfeed, etc., were on love, friendship, the importance of forgiveness, etc. Very unsettling. Of course, I read them all. They didn’t help much because the oscillation only continued stronger—one of those giant pirate ship rides that give you butterflies in your tummy.

I am slowly getting back ‘into it’ so as to speak, but I’m not there yet. And I don’t know whether and when I want to be ‘there’. Doesn’t it just sound cooler that I have no time from my hectic job to socialise or to think about my broken heart, etc? I think so.