I have no idea what has become of me. When I was eight years
old, I had heard the news of Sushmita Sen adopting a baby girl. I was pretty
sure that when I’d be twenty-five, and definitely single, I’d adopt a baby girl
too. That was perhaps the very first dream of my life, the very first goal
before the idea of being an astronaut or every other fleeting career goal
occurred to me. Motherhood wasn’t the goal. The goal was to be successful enough
by twenty-five to be responsible for another life single-handedly;
and maybe, be an inspiration to some eight-year-old girl who hears about you.
Today, I am a twenty-four year-old who is one day old at
resigning from a short term job that she took up to feel financially
independent in a field related to the only two hardcore relationships in her
life – writing and literature. As much as the fear of commitment drives me away
from dating people on a long term basis, it also drove me away from jobs that included actual writing and
literature a few months ago. The result was that I found myself making an
impulsive decision to have a fling with the corporate world by editing school textbooks for a sum of money, if when saved,
can help me survive a few months on my own when I quit the job. Wait, was that a fling or prostitution?
On a Thursday afternoon, I am home after five months. I have
a word document open in front of me. I have a nagging feeling of not having
paid the rent. I ardently dislike owing anyone anything, and yet, I am in a
frozen state of being unable to check my bank account statement because I
haven’t been paid in last two and a half months. The financial independence,
and the procrastinated luxury and happiness that I dreamed of while growing up,
they never happened – given I never had a chance to receive salary on time. I
have not dated much, perhaps, not at all. But, I have listened to the stories
of all sort of relationships, and the only category the last five months fall
into is – toxic relationship.
Instead of celebrating a little sense of freedom that I felt
last night, here I am writing to calm down because I came home without any
paperwork yesterday and no information about financial settlement (call me skeptic,
but I don’t believe in words that aren’t put down on paper). I don’t know when
and how I became a person who clearly suffers from anxiety. I know that being
anxious doesn’t help. I know that there is nothing much to be anxious about.
Yet, I cannot calm down. Talking about the issue to people who cannot help,
doesn’t help me. So, I am trying to make the best out of this situation by
writing about it.
I feel funny. I had taken myself
up as a project to be someone who cannot be patronized into under-confidence,
self-doubt and guilt for doing the ‘right’ thing. Having achieved that, I find
myself with anxiety that people don’t understand. And, the last five months of
semi-corporate life has given me major running away goals at the mention of the
C-word. What cancer could never do, corporate successfully did. I always wanted
to work to pay my bills. I had assumed that money can be bait enough for
everything. And, it hurts me to admit that, even if money pays my bill, however
late, it’s not worth my mental health. Why would any company or its employees
want to take a spirited soul only to crush it, consciously or not? This was the
question that haunted me after the first month at work.
I took my sweet little time to convince myself that I needed
my spirit back more than I needed the money. So, not only my dream of being
powerful at 25 was crushed, but the belief that money buys happiness was also shattered. In fact, I'd rephrase my belief as – money buys happiness at the expense
of your father’s (or whoever supports you financially) mental health and well, a peaceful life so that you can read
those books that drive you to write things that have no monetary value
whatsoever.
So, here I am, emphasizing that I have twenty four years of
experience at life for people to stop looking at me as a kid. I am trying
to convince myself that if being twenty-four feels like a lot, there’s
absolutely no reason to add to it by compromising my mental health. I am hoping that my story doesn’t end at quitting a corporate job, because I really
want to move the ground to find the place where I’d know I belong – some place
where I am not invisible, where people see me for who I am and don’t make me
question my existence based on the assumptions they make for a twenty-four-year-old-woman-at-her-first-job-seen-as-a-girl-incapable-of-independent-thinking.
Because, more than ever before, I feel the dire need to be
seen.
Read also: Twenty Three and Adulting
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