My Year in Review
2021 really made me sit down and rethink my life.
The year started in grief.
My grandmother had passed, and I sat on my bed, in agony, for straight three months (I wrote about it below).
There wasn’t a time when I wouldn’t remember the pain from not being able to meet her. I remembered the coffee, the shawls she wore, and the peace of the house.
She was an emotionally intelligent, mentally strong woman that suffered so much. We had a bond that communicated beyond words.
After three months of pure pain, I suddenly realized one day that she wanted me to grow and transform. She wanted me to break cycles of patriarchy and misogyny.
She was there with me, trying to push me in the right direction.
My grandmother pushed me to understand my femininity.
I used to think being feminine was weak.
I didn’t understand its true power at all. After all, I kept meeting men, either the head of households or distant relatives that all behaved the same exact way — where they exemplified that women were submissive, should only take care of the kids, and if you believed in your potential — they were insecure.
Without a certain toughness, I didn’t want to behave like some small little girl that was too innocent for the world. Things would have gone south.
One day in April, I somehow woke up feeling beautiful. I admired myself in the mirror for the first time — and that’s a big deal considering I’ve dealt with body shaming and never thought of myself as attractive after juggling medical issues.
I’ve been working hard with my physical regimen and didn’t think that my neck had been looking better, and my skin was glowing.
Femininity is a true expression of ourselves — it’s a different energy.
The world made it weak, but it’s the energy of understanding, compassion, creativity, and spiritual expression.
Getting your nails done, and admiring it for hours, was a sign of being in love with life.
Taking care of your hair, and feeling how sexy and luscious it is, is unbeatable. It creates that desirable essence.
I transformed my wardrobe, making it sustainable and creating a uniform to work off of. I realized that I never invested in myself, due to so many heavy circumstances.
It wasn’t weak, you were loving yourself. You were changing your personal energy and inner warmth.
The youtube channel that transformed my thinking during the pandemic was The Feminine Fancy. She is one of the most articulate people out there and made me reassess my beliefs. I was proud to own my feminity seeing how she carries herself so gracefully. What a true gem.
After a while, I was really confused why I never came to terms with this — why I suppressed what should have been genuine. The world is cold, but our approach should be soft. I’m not sure what was the guiding force behind it, but I broke the mold of having that fear — of guarding myself by suppressing my true feminine self.
I ran after situationships that didn’t benefit me.
I have yet to meet a man that actually cared about who I was.
I ran after attention and validation, for months, and to be honest, it’s somewhat addicting. I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing, as we are interdependent human beings.
However, it got on my nerves after a while.
I can’t join the bandwagon and declare that “all men are trash.” It doesn’t seem practical, as I know that each gender has its fair share of issues.
I can however call out the problematic issues in our society that contribute to how men treat women in the dating world and why it’s so common.
There’s a lack of respect, a lot of selfishness, and a lot of “walking confusions.”
The first issue I faced, was how some men considered me needy for wanting a relationship or something serious.
They thought I was going to suffocate them and pressure them into being a couple. However, I never had intentions like that. If I liked them, and I thought they liked me, I would go ahead and say what’s on my mind. This yielded in being ghosted, being told that I was needy, or something along those lines.
There are conflicting issues with how women should be pursued, versus how women should pursue men.
As per how we’re hardwired, I don’t think we should pursue men. We should attract them. However, in the digital world, this becomes tricky. It’s more difficult to assess someone’s vibe, and it’s plain confusing. After talking to several men and women, my number one takeaway was that casual relationships don’t benefit women at all. Some men don’t realize it, but at some point it affects their outlook if they don’t assess their emotions in casual hookups.
I never realized how much my father affected me.
His energy, his way of putting me down since my childhood and never letting me grow, made me attract the same type of people. I still have a long way to go with this, but this core realization led me towards a downward spiral.
The downward spiral unleashed internal pain.
I don’t have answers for all the shit I’ve faced since my childhood.
I don't have answers for why the universe put me in the position to see psychological abuse, lack of social growth, mental illness of a parent, and intense negativity.
My family is broken in a strange way, and other brown families have taken advantage of it.
I never lived a normal childhood, I was “parentified” from an early age.
I realized that people called me “such and such’s father’s daughter,” but never “Nandini.”
From August to October, I felt numb inside. There was so much internal pain.
I still struggle with this, but my eyes have opened to some deep existential underpinnings.
I’m not who I thought I was.
I was basically lifting my head above water, trying to swim to shore.
A few people told me to keep going and keep swimming —however, I didn’t know what shore was. I couldn’t feel it.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel.
I had a rough time picking myself up every morning. I couldn’t sit in front of the computer without wanting to sleep all day. I told my mother at 1AM, I didn’t want to continue living. I cried and howled, yelling at God why was I here. I lacked self-confidence for the first time in my life.
Then I took a trip to North Carolina.
I stepped out of the house for domestic travel after 10 years.
Previously psychological and financial abuse prevented us from meeting relatives and traveling.
I won’t lie it’s also very expensive.
As they say, once you travel and come back home, you bring back a fresh perspective.
There’s nothing truer than that sentence.
We forget what we’re grateful for, and what we’re missing out on if we continuously stay at home.
When I got there, I expected North Carolina to be a bit more desolate, but the pace of life left me in shock.
The slow pace of living, makes it easier to find a better community that isn’t toxic. Several brown people told me that it was more chill to find a good community. I was stunned. It’s always been toxic in New York.
Somehow I couldn’t picture it otherwise.
A downside is that it’s also very easy to get bored.
It reminded me of a local town in New York but less exciting.
All the avenues were consistently in one pattern: corporate office, bougie restaurant, corporate office, small halal cart that mimics NYC, corporate office.
The city is in desperate need of small businesses and a new flair.
I felt the security and positivity of a home where the head woman of the household was community oriented.
Positivity, and keeping a strong approach with people management, really changes your surroundings.
I always saw a lack of that in my own household.
More importantly, a good chunk of Brown women I’ve come across, who were wives or sisters, they tended to lean on the side of insecurity, or having a lack of authority.
Here, that positive energy picked the right people.
They were likeminded, grounded, and knew what circumstances people can go through.
If someone needed food, or you knew they were going through difficult times, they would always step up to invite you or send something to your door.
That’s true interdependency.
Money is definitely at the center of everything, there are several shortcomings in how an instable career is perceived —what traditional path should be pursued.
However, when there is unity, and a sense of some sort of foundation, a woman can really change the outlook of future generations.
No one hid behind the fact that they couldn’t socialize, be there for each other, and have a good time.
My hopes for 2022:
I still have to make a lot of changes both internally and with how I approach things.
I’ve constantly felt like my life is stuck or blamed others for not moving forward.
After that trip, I’ve realized that positivity is not just a mindset, but definitely something that grows within you on a spiritual level.
You can read affirmations all you want, if you don’t feel it, you won’t believe it.
If you’re not with the right people, it won’t come to you.
