To Freedom!

The dumbest decision I ever made was to marry someone I knew for a short while, and the even dumber decision was sticking to that life for almost 7 years.

I tried it all to make it work. Talking doesn’t always help, neither does therapy or counseling. It was the greatest feeling when I left, when I walked out of my marriage. I had already found a humble house for rent. Took the day off from work, spent a few hours to box the necessary things (of mine) and by evening I had left the big, beautiful house where I had the ugliest memories of my adult life.

It was pure joy to live alone, to be in charge of everything,  most importantly to live where no one to strangulate me or punch me in my face.

Freedom!

The downside of it though, of living alone…A to Z of the household responsibilities need to be carried out by me. In a way it is fun, but sometimes it is such a pain in the ass. Going to work every day so that bills can be paid, paying the bills (itself is a task indeed ), making meals, getting things to make meals, but the most irritating task of all is to fix what is broken. And things always break – it’s either the fan or the blender or the door. There is always a new errand to run. You know how I see it? It is like God feels bad for all the regular problems I have and gives me a new problem once in a while to solve, to make life more interesting. 
It sucks, but I would never trade this life for what I had before.

Family : Now and Then.

I grew up in a family of eleven - my parents (both of them), my dad’s brother, his wife and their three children, and my two sisters, and our grandma! It was a complete madhouse most of the times. Everything was a battle, to get the remote, even to get a chair to sit in. Those days an average household had just 3 or 4 chairs.  You gotta be loud you gotta be fierce or you get lost in the crowd.

Family type started to change then, from a joint or extended family ( with dad’s sibling/s’ family, and with grand parents) to neutral family. Now, along with the type, the number too has changed so drastically low. Single parent with one child. My generation is witness to this huge transformation- Me from growing up in a family of 11 to possess a precious family of 2 including myself.

Sometimes it breaks my heart to see how our value system lost its luster. I don’t blame the increasing  divorce rate alone for this change. We are after money and we relocate without thinking about the family we leave behind for that. There’s also no point in reminiscing or blaming it on some reason.

Even if it is a big family, even if you live with your both the parents or grandparents…with the work set up we all leave in the morning and come back late in the evening. We spend just few hours with our loved ones. That is sad.

Solution: Quality time and variety of experiences!

My 12 year old daughter and I spend the morning hour to get ready to leave for school and work. It is the busiest time of the day for us, yelling and running are basically the routine. And in the evening we spend may be 3 or 4 hours before her bedtime. I compensate the lack of family members and the lack of our together time by spending quality time with her. Sitting on the balcony, looking at the stars while listening to our favorite songs with our choice of drinks in hand and candles all around us- a perfect example of a quality time with her! (of course we fight too over the songs ilayaraja vs something loud and dumb)

For no fault of hers she has no dad and I have to take the extra mile to fill the void. At least I have to try.

A few months back we took a long ride to Madurai from Coimbatore with her riding pillion. It was a strenuous 5 hour ride because of the snacks breaks and the pee breaks, but a new experience. That’s the ‘variety’ I meant earlier. 

With quality/variety we can compensate the missing hours, or even missing relationships.