Tag Archives: Love

The Sabbatical Ends

Three degrees, fourteen internships, two broken knees and sex change later here I am contemplating, thousands of kilometers away from what I am supposed to be calling “home”, do I have all that I once wanted? I ghost write during the day and write for myself at ghostly hours. Struggling to balance bills, academics, jobs, loneliness, transitioning and recovery, I don’t even remember how last three years went by, and by the looks of it, it looks like a couple more years are going to fizzle out this way. I pity myself for carrying the hunger to fit the last three years in this one post, I don’t hate the feeling I just pity it. Twenty five years of carrying shame can do that to anyone I suppose. But worst of all, there is part of me that feels like I am failing in every aspect of my life. Be it career, relationships or love.

I was supposed to get married to Adarsh, have my family alongside as I transitioned, have more present friends and pursue a career in academia, at least begin a PhD. None of that happened. Well I have a couple of friends who try their best to be present, but for my emotional appetite, they just seem to fall short just like my parents did. Fear of seeming ungrateful stops me from blaming or complaining but yeah I am not satisfied with my personal life, the part where it includes others. I am glad I have a job where I get to write instead of loosing my fingerprints away entering data onto an excel sheet.

My relationship with myself has never been this good in the 27 years of my existence, I am not the little kid who got bullied a lot, anymore. She is healing! And boy is she healing so well! I think what saddens me is that the possibility of this healing at a distance from my loved ones. Will they ever come around? Do I want them to come around anymore, I know I don’t need them to? I am able to meet my own needs now, especially emotionally. Maybe this is why I am at a place to acknowledge my dissatisfaction with the relationships in my life. But what do I do with this acknowledgment? I don’t know, I just wish I could write for myself instead of writing for some rich brat.

It is isolating on the worst days and solitude on the best ones. Sadly there is no in between. I crave for them. How stable that would feel? Less turmoil, lesser a mess, and maybe a bit less of myself too. Why is it that I am too much for most people around me? I have to measure and pour, like I used to in the chemistry lab in high school. I miss studying science. But even then every now and then uninvited intruders come in to take away what they feel is theirs, leaving behind bruises, scars and acid burn marks that are invisible to the patriarch’s eyes. Afterall, that’s why I stopped talking to my father. His audacity to say that all I confided in him and my mother was a creation of my illusion just like my womanhood, and that the butcher next door didn’t harass me neither did my mother’s cousin groom me for 7 years under the pretense of fixing my transness. Then of course the exorcism was there, I will leave that for another day. For now I need to rest.

Amidst all this chaos if I have learnt something, then it is this, to take it easy. To take life gently. Just like I did with this post, I wanted to begin from the day and point of the incident where my knee broke for the second time, but I refrained as it made my heart uneasy. Why should I write with an uneasy heart for a world full heartless readers? They may be incompetent to care for me, but I will care for myself. I will look after myself. So I will choose easier beginnings and softer endings as I know I deserve them.

– Cynthia Linwoods

Prologue

This is neither a start nor an end. But, since I am telling you my story from this juncture, let it be the prologue. The prologue to my past and my present. Here there is no room for the future because I am done planning the uncertainty. Yet, you and I both know that we will continue to do so. The stories I tell from now on, are parts of mine and that of others. By others I mean, those whom my life’s course has affected and who have affected mine. This is not a place to blame, neither is it one to reason. It’s a narrative; a narrative of personal multitudes and hearsays. I don’t know if I am being brave by sharing my version of the truth. Or if I am being a coward doing it all under the cloak of a pen name, if not absolute then for partial discretion.

There is hope, I won’t deny that, or else why would I try to document? I chose to narrate so that you would simply listen. I tried talking, conversing, debating, and even quarrelling and arguing at times. Yet none of them seems to work. So, I will narrate my story of being born in Kerala and then growing up anywhere but Kerala, carrying the burden of cultural shock, shame, and pride. My story of being a girl and growing into a woman while occupying a body that was assigned male at birth. My story of dealing with casteism at home, even though I seldom found casteist oppressors outside. My story of growing up in defence campuses and yet feeling defenceless. And then transitioning into civilian life. Along with all these stories of mine, there will be those of people with whom I felt closely associated. Even though our struggles were poles apart, I could see some universal similarities in them. Or maybe I was simply coping by seeing what I wanted to see so that I felt like I belonged.

– Cynthia Linwoods.