I feel extremely alienated from my parents. More like, they’re aliens to me.

Hi folks. It’s been a while since I have written a piece here, and to be candid, I have missed writing here. I’m unsure if I was missed, but that is beside the point. You don’t post for 3 days, and you become irrelevant, and I haven’t really posted a write-up for almost 30 days (plus). I am irrelevant.

Again, my irrelevance doesn’t matter. What matters is- are you going to care about what I am going to write about today? Well, let’s give it a shot.

Recently, I have been on an off-road, or let’s call it a new landscape of sorts. A risky one indeed. I am an author and not a rich one. I save up pennies for cigarettes and cup noodles and in the last three years, I haven’t spent more than 3000 INR on my clothes. I live off my old ‘dad’ clothes that are tearing apart, and here I am still writing and publishing and publishing and writing. I am aware that it will always be a never-ending circle, and I don’t even want to pretend to be a successful, hardworking maniac. I am just a hardworking maniac minus the money.

I am not rich, neither am I the poorest. I am somewhere in the middle just hanging in there. I have stripped myself off naked (intellectually) in front of my family and then my audience. My audience has its mood swings but my parents, have had the liberty to make me feel oddly alienated. I almost feel like I don’t even know them anymore. They’re some alien-like creatures who are feeding off my sadness and failures (that’s my feeling). My feeling might not be very right though since they are possibly worried about me, and they have always been concerned about how I take the worst possible decisions and never listen out to them.

As Elizabath Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) says, “We are all put onto this planet for a specific job- like my job was to write, it was always about writing and no force could stop me from doing that as the daemons (greek for demon/god) spoke for me and instilled the force of energy into me to keep writing. I didn’t know how to do anything else. And why should artists like us be forced into doing something that we absolutely despise”

This is from a Ted Talk by Gilbert and I have paraphrased it slightly to cut it down into a nutshell. You can check out the entire Ted Talk here. What I like about this specific talk is that she knows what she is saying. Honestly, even if she were to speak gibberish on that platform, people would have been listening to her quite intently. Now, that is what I call a force to reckon with. Someone who reeks of brilliance and is also intellectual, well-educated, and well-read. And, let us not forget how established she made herself to be.

It’s strange how I look up to her, but at the same time, I envy her aura. However, does that mean, I would start hating on an established writer like Elizabeth Gilbert? Well, forget Gilbert, I have written poetry that has dissed Virginia Woolf. Now, does that mean I have never looked up to her? I have looked up to each of these writers, always, and that is why I even mention them in my work. I am aware of the fact that I am not an established writer. I understand that I don’t stand much chance (yet) amidst these authors. However, it could still be easy to envy me. And I am not talking about- “hey! I look upto you and that is why I envy you.” It is not the healthy kind of envy. I have seen real people growing distant from me. When my book got republished by a traditional publisher, I swear I got congratulatory messages only from strangers and ‘some’ friends/acquaintances.

The isolation is inevitable for any artist. However, I never expected my parents to behave the way they did. The setting was extremely manipulative. It has always been because of my writing that I have been able to set my record straight. I can fill up my life gaps when I am writing. Currently, my life gap is my family. And, they are not helping much in filling out this gap. They don’t realize, that the more they resist, the more my writing will take charge and fuel an unfound energy towards them. And, they won’t like it. They will hate me when they see the printed copies before them.

I am setting myself out to “not be like my parents”. I am setting myself out “to unlearn a multitude of toxic patterns I grew up with”. I am setting myself out “to do something that I know I am capable of doing”. And, that includes writing and a lot more. My eyes are full of dreams and my brain is intelligent and observant. How harsh would I be to myself if I never used it?

Again, my parents think it is everything to earn fast money. And, I am bowing down to someone and licking off my fiancé’s feet in order to get money. Also, the tag of a “gold digger” has been heavily attached to me. I wish they understood how many jobs I have said ‘no’ to in order to set myself out for something that I am deeply affectionately passionate about.

And,

I am tired. I am tired of feeling like a failure every day. I am tired of the emotional manipulation. I am tired of being called a “difficult child”. I am tired of being tagged as someone who is cleverly “using someone”. I am tired of not feeling seen. I am tired.