I was so damn lonely in the last two years, and so have been my parents, especially my father. I feel that he has been slumping, mentally, in the last few years. I have seen him in his good times. He was strong, quick, sharp, confident… Now he is none of those, and he hasn’t been like that since the last few years. Considering how he is now, I often think about him and wonder how he could make himself up from nothing, how he managed his business for so many years so well.

This downfall is not entirely due to his age. He is young. He is not even fifty yet. This is not the age to start sliding down. Physically, yes, but mental capabilities should not degrade at this point. It’s just that he needed support in the last few years and I haven’t been available.

He took a backseat almost six years ago when I got admitted to TIFR and started earning. It wasn’t too much but it was enough for me to sustain myself and to send some money home. He could relax. He did not have to worry about earning to educate me anymore. Then he got concerned again when I decided to leave TIFR and I did not know what I wanted to do next. It worked out in the end, quite nicely, that I got a PhD position here. Now the salary was even better, so he laid back completely. Ever since then he has been relaxed in his life. He worked but as intensely as before. He started to wish for a different kind of life in which he could lean on me after bearing the weight himself for so many years. He was hoping for that but it wasn’t going to happen, he realised over time by talking to me. Then he was lost again. He did not know what to expect and he was too tired after years of hard work to keep pushing to find out.

I have also been playing around, trying to figure out the kind of a life I want. My wishes didn’t align with that of my parents. I changed my mind so many times. I left them on their own at times when they were hoping to lean on me. My family has been in this flux ever since I went to Mumbai, and it grew in intense over time in the last three years, until we (mostly me) started to empathise with each other last summer.

I went home last summer to grieve for my friend’s late mother, and it turned out to be a milestone in my relation with my parents. Like always, we fought, we argured, didn’t talk to each other for a day or two, but unlike previous times, it ended well. I loved my stay with them the whole time after our last argument. I did not want to come back to the Netherlands. This feeling was unprecedented. With that empathy in myself, now I see my family differently. And now that they are here and happy, I am seeing the same pattern in their behaviour that I saw last summer. They are happy. They are strong. I can see their strength grow over time if I spend more time with them. It’s not possible now, but it is something I will keep in mind before taking the next big step in my life.

Not just them, I am seeing a change in myself too now that I am close to them. I noticed the same pattern in myself too when I went home last summer. I have been unstable in the last three years. A lot of things happened at the same time. I grew distant from the only person I had to talk to. I moved to a different country. I went from being a carefree student to people’s colleague. I had issues here in personal and professional life. I could not go to anyone the way I needed to. There was no one I could call mine, not even my parents. I did not have a bond with them. I was lonely, so damn lonely. I was vulnerable. I needed support. I didn’t get it and last two years were very hard for me, more than I realised while living these years. Then things got better last summer, for me and for my parents.

Little thoughts like these shape our decisions. Okay, now I lost my train of thought. I will leave it here.

Oh, and by the way, congrats to myself for writing a hundred posts. I love this blog. I love this process. It’s the best hobby I ever picked up. I have had the desire to write since early age but I never knew the how, where, what of it. I guess this is how it was meant to be. One day I decided to make a website to talk about physics. Didn’t do it, kept the website, got lonely (and geeky), developed it into a blog, started writing, and realised I love it. I am fond of Sencilla too. Sencilla was the driving force in the beginning. The excitement to develop kept me going initially and then I got more into just expressing myself. Okay, enough for today. Bye bye…