Home(less)
For everyone who left their parents' home
Exactly 2 days after turning 18, I left my hometown for college.
Yesterday I turned 35.
For the last 17 years, I have been perpetually homeless.
This is me, and welcome to my story.
Why did I leave home?
My parents worked super hard to give all four of us (me and my 3 elder sisters) the best education. But I was the first one to even go to an English medium school.
The school I changed to in 11th and 12th grade sold SRCC (the best college of India) as a metric of success.
While I could not make it to SRCC, I did manage to get out of my hometown.
It was difficult, I was clueless for one complete year, and my eating, studying, playing schedule went for a total toss.
That time I did not notice it, but never, even in those situations, I ever wanted to return home. Maybe the early signs of a future are always showing.
Why I stayed away from home
My reasons for moving out of home when I was 18 were (perhaps) to create my own identity, and give myself exposure the small town did not have.
My reasons for staying away from my parents’ home as a 35-year-old is because it feels better here. When something isn’t broken, it does not need fixing.
Also, around 6.10 pm one of those evenings when all you want to do is lie on the bed, but you must make your dinner to meet your 6.30 pm dinner criteria to stay fit and lean, when you get up and do that, it builds resilience in so many unfathomable ways.
What happens when you stay away from home
After more than a decade of staying away, you develop a zen-like attitude towards most things in life.
Because of panicking too often because of people who are not as nice to you as your family is, you eventually realise, nothing and absolutely nothing is worth losing your peace of mind.
If something goes too bad, you develop the self-confidence, network and resources to deal with it.
Also, you start seeing the side of life where you are trusted easily. Nowadays when a billionaire or a millionaire CEO changes their stance based on my suggestion for their book, sometimes I think to myself in my head, “Dude, wow. I have never ever tasted what having an opinion mattered feels like.”
The other side, the non-snazzy, the difficult side of being away from home
It is not easy to stay from home.
In the Covid lockdown when I was temporary there for over a year, I contemplated it for a bit to move my operating location to my hometown, but it just did not make sense for my long-term growth as an individual.
It is painful to see your father asking you often to quit everything and move to hometown. Deep down I know that he wants to make sure I make the best of his life when he is around. He also wants to make sure if something happens to him, I am around too, like the rest of his daughters.
The guilt of living away still is like a perfume I wear. It is a part of me.
But I know if I give in to this fear of death, I am also giving up my whole different life that I have here. Sometimes my lower self also believes that do I not matter for him even a bit, that my career is still like his stepchild and not a family?
There have been several times I have stood at the railway station of my hometown wondering if I could be a different, a better daughter that would make me living away from home a little okay, a little acceptable for them.
The common layer I see across these patterns is the love, the longing, the separation, and yet, helplessness.
I somehow want my family to believe I care. Deep down they know I do. But an ageing part of them wants its proof too.
Why is it impossible to go back “home” now?
Because I love being away from home. Isn’t love enough? To have created a small, invisible world of your own is an achievement, even if it does not make it to LinkedIn.
At home, you are being shepherded. For no one’s fault, but because there is a culture that is followed in every home. When the bedsheets would change. When you must put things to laundry. What should be there for dinner. Why I must adjust to the TV sound every day because I am the youngest. Why it feels as if you are almost attacking your family if you want a different, protein-rich meal every day, even though they are the most cooperative, nicest and non-fussy ones. (It’s me, I know bro.)
When you are a teen away from home for the first time, having these things back at home feels nice, even a privilege. When you are a grown up, it feels like you do not have a say on your own life in your own home, and you must follow the rules of the land.
I will never be able to experience what parents actually feel sending their kids away from them. But at least in my case my parents do have their 3 out of 4 daughters (75% progeny) near them. They are not completely alone. Call it my privilege to be able to get out, but is it wrong to do what you can with your privilege?
Home(less)
Taylor Swift was 20 when she wrote “You will always find your way home.”
Exactly ten years later, at the age of 30, she wrote, “I can go anywhere I want, anywhere I want, just not home.”
This is exactly what happens to anyone who leaves home as a late teen and contemplates on life in mid-30s.
The Success Tax you pay living away from home
I have had countless moments where I would have something really nice to tell, something good that happened in my life or career, and I would be jumping around and call up my family.
A lot of the times, almost invariably, they would say something that would diminish my achievement or joy or both. You must be careful of what you are getting into. We just want to warn you. We want you to make sure you have thought about this. They do not do that on purpose. They really want me to be aware. They want the best for me.
The contention that “the world is a scary place and I must be aware” is right, just that when it continues to come up at the wrong time, it is a pattern.
So for the past 2-3 years it has come to a point where I have gotten several opportunities that are life changing. For a second even I could not believe this could happen to me.
And yet I have jumped by myself, alone, and been absolutely normal with my family over the call. Forget excitement, but they don’t even know what transpired.
It breaks my heart to see that back home no one is really happy of the positive changes that are happening in your life (not true for my parents, but true for extended family). For them, the only definition of you has shrunk down to “she lives away”, mints money, and let us forget she is a human.
Life has sadly taught me that people will flock for you when you are in pain, but to be truly happy for you when you are happy, that is the stuff of legends.
So, what can we do to make our family or anyone feel at home?
If you are unconvinced with a decision of theirs about their life, have conversations. Not opinions, not decisions, not judgements. Open conversations to understand. And please know that when we accept people for who they are even if we disagree with them, they will go any length to accept us for who we are. Every action has equal and opposite reaction. You cannot draw abundant acceptance in lieu of radical resistance.
For anyone we interact, regardless of family or friend or an acquaintance, you never know the battles they are fighting underneath that smile. There was an ad of depression with two faces, one was a straight face and the other was smiling. It was later told the person who was smiling was the one dealing with depression. So it helps to be a nice human being always, so that it becomes your ongoing nature.
The way to make someone do something was never by condemning their choices, but by loving them regardless. Love is there, but the condemnation sometimes is also a part of the parcel.
This is not an anti-family post
As a matter of fact, my mom was worried about me yesterday the whole day how I was alone on my birthday. For the very first time in eternity, my father sent me a text message yesterday for my birthday. It was early morning and I was in the spiritual class so he texted. We spoke too, an hour later, so chill :))
But this is about the fact that loving your parents and living with them are not complementary things.
You could love them and still carve out your identity.
The family doesn’t conspire to be wrong
I also understand that our family is human too. And almost every adult is a victim of generational trauma that has been passed on in the DNA. But when you become aware, it is up to you to break it or to become a victim to it.
Breaking it has serious repercussions, some of those you read in different shapes and forms throughout this note, but it is any day better than accepting the trauma as default.
When you know better, you should do better too.
What to do now, if you are someone who is feeling home(less) despite having a home?
There is a song from the movie Anjaana Anjaani that goes,
“Jab hoga, andhera, tab paaega dar mera…us dar pe, phir hogi teri subah…
Tu na jaane aas paas hai Khuda”
In Bhagwad Gita, God says to Arjun, “Depend on me completely.”
I have never felt the truth of these statements dwindle, ever.
I have experienced this over and over and over again in my life, that each time I call God to make a decision on my behalf or be with me or guide me, it has given an outcome that my human self could never contemplate.
I guess that is what keeps my parents at peace too, staying 500 kms away from me :)
Final words
2 weeks back, my elder sister had a minor accident while riding her scooter. Her vehicle was hit by a tempo traveller whose brakes had failed.
The way I got to know of this was when I called up my Mom around 9 in the morning, as I often do, and my father picked up. “Your Mom is massaging your sister, as she met with an accident.”
Whoa, a 43-year-old she having her mother next to her tending to her minor sprain.
Anyway, my sister and I cracked some jokes over the phone, and once I was certain that she wasn’t hurt too much, I hung up the phone and got back to work.
My mind then automatically took me to a chilly morning of Delhi in January 2024, when I woke up around 3 am unable to breathe. Neither with nose, nor with mouth. It was impossible to lie down. And when I would sit up, the only way to breathe was to open the mouth wide open.
I knew I needed immediate assistance.
But the independent person inside me would not want to wake up my landlord uncle and aunty (the nicest people ever) staying on the ground floor. I also have a few acquaintances in the same sector, but decided not to ping them.
Instead, I called up the ambulance of our nearby hospital, told them clearly that I can “walk and move so I don’t need ambulance per se” but because it was a breathing issue, I needed assistance. They were kind enough to send an ambulance anyway. The one I travelled in alone, along with the driver and 2 hospital staff.
For those wondering, I was nebulised and made to go back home in the latter half of the day.
There are a lot of people who know me directly, who are envious of the life I have here in Delhi away from home. They will never know the price I have had to pay.
Nishtha Gehija is a daily blogger on life and observations at nishtha dot blog, is an author of several books and ebooksa, and ghostwriter of books for CXOs.
Ciao.