In search of love....

The One, True Love,Soulmate, Twin Flame....I grew up searching for him. In my search for the love of my life, I lost a friend, found my best friend, lost a husband, got another one. The experiences I've had and the lessons I've learnt have been tremendous. I've been through "my first love", to my "wild affair". I swung like a pendulum gone crazy between wanting happiness and security. I confused true love with a whirl wind romance. As this new year began, I knew a significant and new chapter of my life has begun. I had to re-capsulate , what it was I learnt in the last phase. I came up with the deduction, all I've done so far is learn about love. I learnt what all love entailed. Giving love, receiving love, unconditional love, temporary relations yet lasting love, I learnt to recognise my soulmates. I feel the only thing I've done, all my life, thus far, is love.

According to a lot of attained people and Gurus, that's all a person is required to know and to learn, there is couplet in hindi written by Kabir that goes roughly like, you do not become a scholar /learned man by reading scriptures, it is the short word love and one that knows it, who is the scholar. I don't know yet, if I'm a scholar, even in love, but yes, choosing to walk this path, has been a big learning for me. One of the biggest lessons I learnt in this beautiful and enriching journey was, loving oneself. It sounds easier than it is. Every one thinks, they love themselves, yet , one of the most difficult thing to do is unconditionally accept and love your own self, exactly the way you are. Accept your body, your personality, your choices, your very being and to love your self unapologetically.

Think about it, everything, you say or do, in a relationship or simply around people, is aimed at pleasing another. The most difficult word for most of us is the smallest one " No". We feel guilty , if we wish to please our self. Be it during sex, before or after, the whole agenda is to get good ratings from our partner. In case a male fails to perform, he apologises profusely, rather than, focus on the fact that something is stressing him out. It is he who needs the attention at that point. Women, dress to please. They learn to hate their bodies or portions of it, because of some person in her life, who made her feel badly about it. When you're under the weather, or going out to dinner, our choice is the last. In such a scenario, most individuals forget, they are important, they deserve to love themselves. I learnt, the simple word No, is extremely empowering, especially when you're trying to re-discover your self love. Here , I need to clarify, self love is not the same thing as ego.

Self love is more about self acceptance and self forgiveness. Ego will need another blog. Self love requires you, to nurture yourself, your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well being, the same way you cater to the needs of others around you. You protect the feelings of others. You say yes, when you don't want to, you provide for others, do it for your self too.

I am not propagating selfishness, what I am saying is, you are important too. What you do for others, do for yourself too. You give space to others when they need it, give space to yourself too. You give gifts to others, buy gifts for your self too. If you're tired, sleep a few hours extra, un-apologetically.Make time for yourself, to pursue hobbies, or just to do up your nails. You dress to please your spouse, dress to please yourself too. I love my long hair. All my hair stylists, try to coax me into chopping up my hair and go for the latest trends. I firmly say no. I like my old fashioned, simple long hair.

Show respect to others, yet remember to respect yourself too. Yes , much happiness comes from giving, I know that, I've always been more of a giver than receiver, till recently, when I opened myself to receiving too. I began understanding the difference between being a door mat and being a giving person. Its alright to ask for what you want. Life is all about balance, so is the case with giving and receiving. You can only give, when you open your self to receiving too. Loving others and living for others makes life seem worthwhile, yet if you forget yourself down the road, there will never be any true happiness. There will be nothing that you will do for others that you will not resent. To love others freely and unconditionally, start with loving yourself, unconditionally too. After all, all good things like charity, begins from home.

Picking Up the Pieces.....

A failed relationship.....
The end of life, as you knew it....
A life, as a single, at a point when you thought, you'd sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labour....
An empty house, an empty bed, a shattered heart, a stormy mind....
A riot of emotions, a fear grips your heart....
Who do I turn to, who will understand, where do I go from here, where do I even begin....questions reign...

O boy!! Do I know these lines. Do I echo, what you're going through. DO you perhaps know someone, who is going through, the end of a relationship, which you thought was, good riddance to bad rubbish, but now your loved one is a wreck. Dare I offer solace, and say, things will get better. No, I can't. Things won't get better, not quickly enough, if you don't start to pick up the pieces. You're right, no one will understand, they may empathise, sympathise, or be plain callous and say get over it, move on....

I remember, when I left my husband, I was crushed. I rented a small place, in an undeveloped area (there weren't even street lights in the area that time, or proper roads). I had no money to buy any sort of furniture, not even a gas cylinder. For the first few months, i didn't even want to have any thing. I remember fighting with a friend ( a new one, who didn't know much of what I had gone through), since i couldn't afford furniture, he thought I should buy a shelf made of cane to keep some of my stuff. I couldn't explain to him, how frightened i was, to even own anything, lest that too be snatched away from me. I did not have any family members with me, to lend me emotional support or to help me back on track, i have never felt as unloved and unwanted on this planet earth, as I did those few years.I has taken up a job, on weekends I would visit my son. I honestly didn't know who to turn to. All I wanted was some emotional backing. I went through my divorce alone. i didn't have money to afford a lawyer, I ended up getting no alimony or anything. One of my ex-colleague, who was also going through a separation from his wife, accompanied me for the final hearing. I had to head back straight to meetings post that. I could barely sit still, as a famous director narrated his stories to me. I felt my back would collapse. Yet I continued to work, because i didn't want to be alone. I had no embrace waiting for me. No lap where I could unleash my tears. Yet I remember, dressing up beautifully that day. I wore a saree, wore my kaajal and lipstick. The first thing, I learnt then, one step at a time. My first step was, I will look good. Why? was I shallow and driven by vanity ? No, I was working from outside in. This was something I learnt from my theatre days. When you can't feel an emotion, act it out, till you internalise it. For example, if you smile long enough, the brain feels you're happy and the correct hormones activate, if you do it long enough.

I still wasn't much upto pampering myself, yet there were some days, just too much to bear alone. days like festivals and holidays. My " friend", on my request, that I need to feel part of a family, get a feeling of belonging, took me to his family. I tried to imagine, his mother , loves me. her daughter too had a failed marriage, I imagined, she is transferring that concern to me. In my head, I started to experience, what I wanted to experience. I knew no one understood, but I asked them in plain words for what I needed. there were nights i was petrified of being alone, I was tired of my inability to sleep, sleeping with the television on was giving me headaches, so I requested another friend of mine to sleep on my couch. Most nights I would wake up from nightmares, I would go and start weeping, I just couldn't move past. No one in my work place during those two years, knew what I was going through. It was just a couple of my friends. I stopped talking to my relatives, because I would end up telling them and this upset my parents.I knew I had to find joy again. I accepted friendship of everyone, I got in and out of affairs, I started living for momentary happiness. I felt like a stray dog, who lives on crumbs thrown my way.

One thing I didn't do, I did not give into self pity, even for a moment. I started living on lists. I made lists for every day. I felt good for every item I ticked of as done on my list. I started pampering everyone around me. I completely took the focus away from my self and my hurt and poured love into every big or small relationship i was forging. I started reading and painting again. I lived from hour to hour. I started thanking God, for every little grace in my life. I started observing beauty in everything around me. I laughed hard, every times i felt like bawling. I continued working from outside in....

I never lost hope. I figured out, the people who stayed with me during my darkest hours and those who abandoned me, I was grateful for that knowledge. I started praying for forgiveness for myself and my ex- husband. I started compiling memories of all the good things that had ever happened to me. I lived and re-lived only the good things in my head. I stopped paying attention to Nay Sayers ( read my blog : I'm not Sita...thank God) I read like my life depended on it. I went out of my way to de-clutter my mind, heart and life of every shred of negativity and replace it with positive thoughts about it.

I kept my faith alive, I will find love again, I deserve to be happy, I will have a family again. i never let go of that belief. I did not know affirmations then yet in my own ways, I was working with affirmations. I reminded my self everyday, how much love I had to offer, how caring a person I am. I kept journals to keep track of the learning's i was getting. I knew inside me, as long as I was needy, I would never find a complete relationship. I knew i would attract needy people to myself. I knew to receive love I had to give love. I understood, first I had to love myself, before another person would love me for who i am. I did all this without having read books, I would later read. I just thought, if I don't love myself, why should someone else? I felt, if I don't feel my living space is inviting why would another person feel welcome. As I spoke my thoughts to my new found friends, they told me of writers, who had similar thinking processes. I thought, it was some pop psychology and resisted. I went to astrologers to seek hope. I would tell them , I know what all is wrong with my life, don't tell me about that, tell me, when this phase will end. Tell me something I can look forward to. I opened my self to chances.

I understood one thing, my heart needed my brain to sort itself out. I allowed my brain to take over. If I love someone, and he doesn't love me, do I want to hang around that person. No!! If I feel lonely, what can I do, start going out!! If I'm frightened , how can I over come it? Fight it off, face it screamed my brain. My brain gave me answers. I still didn't know the hows , I started going deeper, if the brain had answers to my emotional problems, perhaps my heart held the answers to my brains query. For every query of my brain, I would then turn to my heart, what would make you really happy? being understood, the question back to my brain, how can I make someone understand, articulate...back and forth from my brain to my heart, like a ping pong ball, I would do this till I reached a solution that satisfied both my heart and mind. My intuition, gut and soul became my beacon. I stopped going against my gut instinct.

One thing, this whole ping-pong exercise revealed to me was, how much over the years, I had lost touch with my own self. I did not know what I liked any more. I made another list, took me many days to make it. A list of my favourite things. I started with the very basic, favourite colour, flower, food, shade of lipstick, clothes, books, music, movie, the list went on and on, I changed answers several times. That is how lost I was. I didn't even know what perfume I liked, or how I liked my eggs. Did I like coffee or hated it.... I wrote everything down. Empty hours after work, gave me a lot of time to reacquaint with myself. The next step, I started acting out on it. Trying out, the egg I thought I liked. I experimented with my wardrobe, my hair style and hair colour. I re-read my favourite books. Once I became surer about myself, my self esteem and confidence started coming back. This also ensured, I was no longer moping and a dark cloud lifted from my heart, My heart felt acknowledged again, so what if it was only me it was ME, I was important to my heart. My brain, felt confident, because, it felt sorted. it was no longer fogged up.

These were some of the basic steps that helped me to start picking up the pieces of my heart, of my life of my self. It was time consuming, it took a while.It was successful. I was separated in 2005, I got into a committed relationship and am now married and happy . It took me 5 years to make that transition. Today, since I'm sharing only the mechanics, a lot of other factors are not written about here. I just hope, some of these tips will help some of you out there. It will aide you , in making a plan for your self, a programme if you want, step by step programme to get your life back after a break up. The biggest tip, always remember, even if no one else loves you, one person does.. You!! you may not feel it yet, just remember it, try to feel it, fall in love with yourself again. The whole world will follow...