One Single Day Was Playing On Loop And I Decided To Take My Life, Forward…

As if one single day was on loop for a year, everything visually was the same yet things changed within.

That one single announcement at 8 pm on 24th March 2020 changed everything. It felt as if someone pressed the pause button of a romantic comedy and didn’t return to play the rest of the movie to see its ending. Well, the romantic comedy that’s mentioned here is my life and even I do not know what was the ending of the movie that suddenly got paused because life post that hour of the night wasn’t the same.

Happily breaking all the resolutions that were made at the beginning of every year I managed to convince myself with another one, in the middle of 2020. That was to lose weight and eat healthily. Being a woman of 76 kgs I thought to myself if I was listening to myself while making that resolution and asking mom to not provide me with all the “Ghar ka Khana” that was her way of showing love every time I returned home. Had nothing to do so I started watching some videos of people sharing their transformation videos online and strangely I began the journey of becoming fit.

Being an Indian foody human, I dreaded the fact that I had to survive on soups and salads so made a diet plan of my own, that’s when I understood why nutritionists charge a bomb for the kind of work they do because giving food plans according to a particular body type is a tough task. Planning out what I have to eat I included every spice possible and every food that is easily available because I could not let my body forget that I had taste buds that need satisfaction of their own.

Everything seemed very exciting for about a month. The evening workouts, the tasty diet, the motivational videos all started showing results and slowly gave way to my determination. Then came the turning point. I had to make a choice and that came with a cost. Life came like a sudden bow and shook the “happy go lucky” human that I was. It was as if I was living a dual life, where physically I was on the journey of being fit, and mentally every cell of my brain wanted to give up.

I am not the kind of person who can stay indoors for a long time and in the situation I was in I had no choice but to hold onto myself. You know there are times when you are not doing fine and when you cry all your emotions out it feels as if you are crying your stomach out, I was in that mental condition then.

It felt as if I was living the same day over and over again, where nothing changed, and still, everything did. Mental Health wasn’t much of a concern to people then still something in me didn’t allow me to give up. The only time of the day I looked forward to was my workout time and that kept me going for the rest of 23 hours.

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I am very close to my father and one day I decided to talk to him. Do people talk about generation gaps? I am thankful we have that because the generation gap between my father and me pulled me out of my condition.
I am a writer and most of the time I prefer expressing my emotions in writing rather than talking it out. The life before the pandemic had taken my passion away from me and it was my father who motivated me to start writing again.

Believe me when I say this that when he asked me to pick up my pen and scribble whatever I feel like knowing that my mind was the most chaotic place then I thought he would never understand what I wanted to say. I even had a fight about it with him and then went back to my room picked a paper and a pen and wept my words out. I FELT FREE. It was like somebody pressed the play button of my life again and this time it wasn’t a movie but a TED talk I was giving myself.

I took up writing seriously, got published in a well-known women’s magazine twice in one year, became a blogger, did a lot of freelance works in writing, and realized that at times you need to slow down, catch your breath and let yourself break if the need be. At times what was created might have been appreciated for all the wrong reasons and what needs to be changed would need a self- realization.

A year later when I am penning this done, I am 56 kgs of weight, helping a lot of women of my age achieve their ideal healthy life through the knowledge that I have gained. So yeah, my pandemic experience gave me a new dimension after almost making me lose control of myself. It’s never too late to begin, only if you realize when things need to end.

Image Source: Jacob Verghese from Studio India, Canva Pro

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