Ladybug's field notes

I t is almost time to wrap the year! Although Instagram is offering a photo collage, have photos ever known the story as well as the words? For some may be yes! For me it's definitely a no! In 2022, the bright idea of making life a little more calm struck me and struck me hard! For years a dear friend had been suggesting me to create a physical distance from the people who clearly did not contribute to my mental peace, but I hesitated. It was too comfortable staying in the place I called mine. I stayed there for years. The familiarity was comforting even if not peaceful. In 2019, I almost thought of shifting to another locality after Gogol left for college, but decided against it as it was not really ticking the requirement of being physically far that way, and soon there was covid... In a nutshell,  finally  in 2022, I  started  claim ing  my calm. Well! Ahem! In instalments. .. I claimed  and reclaimed  my physical and mental boundary ​ this year​ .  ​Reclaimed because you need c

Although I so want to write about it, I really do not know what is a good starting point. Is it a good starting point to mention what I said to my therapist about my experience of 2020?  I said how it still scares me. I told a few days ago that I do not have the feeling of "Been there, done that". I do not have the feeling of "Bring it on! I have seen the worst and I am back!" No! I do not feel victorious. I do not feel like a phoenix. When you have an encounter with a wild animal and you are torn into pieces but you some how come out alive and take months/years to finally get back to living the rest of your life, do you think you now have seen it all and think, "Who cares if another tiger leaps at me from the next bush! I have seen it all!! I can get out of it alive again!!"? I doubt that. You probably are too thankful to be alive! You would do anything to avoid another incident like that.  Let me reiterate. Till now I never think, "I have come back

 As I was reading about leaving a toxic relationship with one's mother and it brought back so many dreaded memories of the time that I was trying to get out of non-functional at best and abusive at worst marriage. As I read through the article by a psychologist talking about a client and came to these lines:  "She: I will lose all my relatives one by one. Nobody understands I am victim of a toxic mother. They will believe my mother and that I left her when I became independent ." ... it brought back the memory of my ex-mother in law shouting at me over phone! "You are such an ungrateful wretch! You are selfish beyond any imagination. I must say that you can't think of anyone else but yourself. Just because you now earn more than him now, you want to leave him!" I stood holding the phone in shock! I always thought of her as a well educated woman who clearly saw I had much more empathy than her own son as she clearly prefered me over him to take care of her wh

 "Arre didi! It indeed happened like that. Neelam was asked to bring her 3 year old kid-brother to the adolescents' meeting. Her family gave her permission to come only on the condition that the brother will accompany. The boy fell in a drain on the way, Neelam had to go back home, get him cleaned and then come to the meeting again!" And everyone present had a hearty laugh remembering the incident! This can actually be material for stand-up comedians but in Rambakhs Kheda, near Lucknow, girls can only go out if their brothers accompany them. And these brothers can be as young as 3! All the assembled had a hearty laugh at the ridiculousness of the proposition that a yound child of 5 or so would protect the much older sister but so far it helped them get out of the homes, they were ready to bring the kid-brother along.  "How was the lockdown time?" Meena jumped to say how badly they fared with all family members in the same room for all the 24 hours and said, &quo

"You are a slut! Given a chance you will sleep with every man in the whole neighbourhood!"  "When will you die? Can you tell me when will you die? I can then be at peace for some time?"  "You are so ugly..it is so difficult for me to take you anywhere!"  "You will keep losing your jobs! You don't know how to talk to your own, no wonder you would not know how to talk to the world!"  "You will never become anything in life! I at times wonder if you are our own!" These are just some of the things that children from so called "normal" families have heard and that they vividly remember as adults. Not only that they remember but some of these are repeated when they clash with the larger world and face a challenge. Their families repeat these with a "I told you so..." put in for better effect. If you think of these sentences in isolation, without knowing who said these to whom, you would have asked the receiver of these

Being a mother of a teenager is a regular lesson in humility!  You are made to enter and re-enter the class as your teacher fears you may not have learnt the lesson well! A teenager can not take a chance on that! Especially if you have a teenager who thrives on sarcasm (like, mine).    Today is a good day to start writing about us because today is one of those days when I barged into his room as his online classes were on, and said (ahem, shouted!),"Do not give me that look! I do not care if your teacher can hear me. Actually pass on her phone number I want to tell her how badly you do your house work! And I want to understand what she thinks about her students failing in basic house work and getting high marks in class exams! How callous was it to run the washing machine with clothes sticking out of the front door?" The boy stayed put on his chair. Only the look changed from, "What are you doing here, Ma?" to "Uh uh! I got myself in trouble!&