The quest to make sense of myself

If I was happy between my late 20s and my early 30s, I would now claim for myself an effervescence… Because I am more equipped to handle uncomfortable emotions, all that shapes my shadow self. Representation pic

In about two weeks I have a birthday coming up. The other night when it dawned on me that I would turn a year older, I found myself doing mental mathematics. I couldn't remember my age. Was I 36 or 37? Would I be turning 38 or 39? I figured it was somewhere in the pre-40 vicinity, because I would have known if it was a milestone birthday, surely. My uncertainty surprised me. Did it attest to the fact that my memory was already growing dim or that I have arrived at a point in my life where the exact number of years I have revolved around the sun feels insignificant? I have a sensation of being in my late 30s, and, unlike when I was in my late 20s, I find myself joyously unambitious in terms of my career.

It is such a relief to feel like this. To be able to discern the pressures that are external and those that stem from within. As I was turning 30, I had an immense consciousness about the dimensions within which I wanted to inhabit my life. I wanted to have at least one book published, to reassure myself that I could, indeed, consider myself to be an author. I was privileged to be offered this column space, against which I have articulated my journey over these eight or so years. I was happily unmarried, living independently in Delhi and following a professional path I had charted for myself. As I near my 40s, I realise I basically undid or unsettled myself. I left all my safety nests behind and decided to make a home in another continent, so far away from friends and family, from the rootedness of my own context. I am married and the mother of a 16-month-old. I relinquished a life when sleep was a given for one in which I am regularly in bed by 10.30 pm so that I can break even on the sleep front. I've never been healthier. I've also never been so isolated. I left behind a thriving social life to build a future by the countryside in a border region that is bilingual. What compelled me to relocate and rebuild after securing my base over a decade?

Lately, I've begun to broaden my understanding of myself as someone who is not afraid of taking risks. Because I've always been one of those people who think twice about hopping on a roller coaster ride, then closing my eyes the entire time until it's over and in the past, I generally framed myself as risk averse. Chasing thrills was never my thing. I preferred, instead, the security of the shore, knowing that my feet can be held by land. I nurse a sense of awe towards the unknown because it has the power to capsize and immerse you.

This year I am trying to make sense of the elements of my personality that have been continuous, that have held me through from the time I was little until now. I have spent so much time untangling my toxic traits, trying to pin down the moments when I am acting out of defensiveness, sieving through feelings and how they occur within the realm of my body. Sometimes I tend to perceive the second part of my 30s as a total breaking away from patriarchal conditioning; a constant questioning of behaviours that may spring from internalised misogyny. If I was happy between my late 20s and my early 30s, I would now claim for myself an effervescence… Because I am more equipped to handle uncomfortable emotions, all that shapes my shadow self. Where earlier my tendency was to cast off anything negative so I could inhabit a toxic equilibrium, now I more shamelessly caress the queasiness. If I feel resentment, I sit down with it to unearth why that may be instead of acting from that feeling.

Is this wisdom, I wonder. I think it's something beyond that because this journey of self-improvement goes beyond me. When I began to conceive about the kind of person I wanted our child to be - kind, forgiving, with a capacity for empathy towards themselves and others, imaginative, curious, generous, but not in a people-pleasing way, clear about their boundaries and assertive about their needs and wants without undertones of arrogance, capable of being independent, but also not afraid to be vulnerable and not apologetic about their fragility - I learned to accept that I had to model all of these behaviours, or else I would be a hypocrite. As I inch closer towards 40 and continue to do the work of de-conditioning myself from patriarchal proclivities, I am still working on being more selfish; part of my effort to undo my people-pleasing conditioning. I am learning to guard my interests and be more precious about my time, so that I do not allow anyone to take it for granted. This has been the greatest gift that motherhood has bequeathed me with; this fierce protectiveness I now feel for every second of ‘child-free' and child-care time.

In the end, I suppose, it doesn't matter how old one is turning but how well one is living.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.