B what u is,
not what u ain't.
Coz if u ain't what u is,
U is what u ain't.
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
A plea for help
Hope that 10 days into the new year still reflects the same wish frame. Got your message, and my mobile keypad decided to take on the attitude of the rest of my life.Frozen and screwed up. More of that later.
Apropos Nivea's chat with Sunita, her resume, the covering letter for it and the programme outline for a personality dev. prog she hopes to run for management students at XISS, Ranchi are attached.If you guys can help her get settled into a regular teaching assignment at Cal, Delhi, Pilani... it would ease some of the misery that she's going through on my count. She had hopes from her brother to join at Pilani, but .... He was impressed enough with the workshops she did there, but..... She feels that she may have rubbed Ratnakar, the Director there the wrong way when she gently interrupted his monologue, much to the relief of the teachers. Who knows whats going on there. When it comes to family it is often alternating between expectancy and despondency. Shes good. She deserves a whole lot better. So if you can do her a favor we'll all be eternally obliged.
Now to my story. Its actually a short story that becomes long in the telling. Aberrant behavior, infidelity fueled by the fact that I am bipolar. I was diagnosed as a bipolar manic depressive after my first episode in Dec. 1982. If you Google the disease you'll get about a million and a half pages. Any one of them will bring you up to speed on the symptoms and consequences. In our case, it was the libido overdrive facet. Lady luck hasn't been very kind in general, but during every manic episode I somehow found a willing and interested lady. The episodes are cyclical and in my case the cycle comes about every 3-4 years. I met Nivea when I was raving manic in Feb.83. I had just been through insulin coma therapy in Jaipur. A doc at Dr. Vyas's clinic advised my dad to get me out of there and go across to AIIMS. By then I was flying high and Nivea came into my life. Sure enough, it crashed. Had 8 ECTs at AIIMs and stabilised. Nivea saw me in all of that but I guess she was too optimistic about my future. (Realise that love is blind is more than just a cliche.) After all when I was manic I was going to study at Harvard and become God's gift to management. So we got married. Never took any regular medication. The stigma of psychiatry, not knowing whom to go to. Saraf is about the only guy whose seen me in it all. The 1985 episode involved a couple of her colleagues. That didn't get back to the hearth. The 1989-90 episode really dented the foundations of our marriage. She was carrying Sadhika and I was following my dick to a colleague in office. She wanted marriage and threatened disclosure to Nivea. So I thought it better to do so myself and try and salvage the marriage. We never really recovered from that. Resultant. Infidelity was the view whenever there was a woman friend. You may ask whether there isn't any self control. Frankly when one is manic it's the most fantastic state of mind. Everything is achievable. One really feels like top gun. It just sweeps you away like the helplessness and feelings of uselessness in depression.
I came into Ranchi in 2000 raving manic again Took a dive and the first real course of regular medication - Lithium carbonate, started there. Unfortunately, as one realised after the split, the dosage was on the lower side. Lithium is a mood stabiliser and helps compress the cycles. I ended up being hypo manic/depressive every winter. Alas another woman at Ranchi and domesticity became one slanging match with the venting knowing no limits.
Sadhika was going to the 12th and was a mute observer to her parents ripping each other to shreds. Come September 2006, I decided that she was better off with one parent. I worked out the finances and saw that resignation would leave a reasonable kitty. Thought I'd get VR, but they raised the age limit. Three of us sat down and talked about it. I told them that it was beyond salvage. I'd d offered divorce to Nivea in 1990 but she refused. I knew then that that episode of infidelity would haunt us always. And of course I continued to be a bull in the china shop. No excuses or legitimising my behavior, but I just couldn't help myself and get my act together. In the normal times in between episodes one was normal. Then again all this leaves one not knowing who one really is. Thanks to a Public Sector job, one got away with such aberrant behavior for 25 years. The routine of life stopped one from thinking too much about oneself, one's abilities and capabilities.
At the end of the day the split was the only way to stop Sadhika's psyche from being totally scarred. Only time will tell the effects on her. After I quit, I started introspecting about what to do. Over the next year I came to a realisation that I had no real usable skills. The core of my problem seems to me to be the total absence of an emotional framework. I don't have any feelings, no wants or desires. I know that this is difficult for a normal guy to accept and a lot of motivational therapy erupts. But then, that's how it is. For more than a year there was no contact with Nivea. Used to talk to Sadhika off and on. Come July last year I went across for Sadhika's admission to Delhi. That changed Nivea's perspective a bit and now we chat each other up daily. She was going bonkers with loneliness and perceived societal jibes. So I agreed to go down to Ranchi. Am leaving tomorrow and then together we go onward to Delhi for Sadhika's birthday. Back to Ramchi on 17/2 and I hope to get back to Kerala by the first week of April. That's the plan so far. Lets see.
What of the future. More of the same as the last two years or.... Lets see again.Try and settle her. We need at least one parent stable till Sadhika settles herself. The severance package provides enough interest to take care of Sadhika's education and stuff. My needs are hardly any and whenever Nivea needs something, I chip in. So there isn't too much financial stress.So that,s the story.. If you can, please do something for her.
Ciao.
Krishna.
Apropos Nivea's chat with Sunita, her resume, the covering letter for it and the programme outline for a personality dev. prog she hopes to run for management students at XISS, Ranchi are attached.If you guys can help her get settled into a regular teaching assignment at Cal, Delhi, Pilani... it would ease some of the misery that she's going through on my count. She had hopes from her brother to join at Pilani, but .... He was impressed enough with the workshops she did there, but..... She feels that she may have rubbed Ratnakar, the Director there the wrong way when she gently interrupted his monologue, much to the relief of the teachers. Who knows whats going on there. When it comes to family it is often alternating between expectancy and despondency. Shes good. She deserves a whole lot better. So if you can do her a favor we'll all be eternally obliged.
Now to my story. Its actually a short story that becomes long in the telling. Aberrant behavior, infidelity fueled by the fact that I am bipolar. I was diagnosed as a bipolar manic depressive after my first episode in Dec. 1982. If you Google the disease you'll get about a million and a half pages. Any one of them will bring you up to speed on the symptoms and consequences. In our case, it was the libido overdrive facet. Lady luck hasn't been very kind in general, but during every manic episode I somehow found a willing and interested lady. The episodes are cyclical and in my case the cycle comes about every 3-4 years. I met Nivea when I was raving manic in Feb.83. I had just been through insulin coma therapy in Jaipur. A doc at Dr. Vyas's clinic advised my dad to get me out of there and go across to AIIMS. By then I was flying high and Nivea came into my life. Sure enough, it crashed. Had 8 ECTs at AIIMs and stabilised. Nivea saw me in all of that but I guess she was too optimistic about my future. (Realise that love is blind is more than just a cliche.) After all when I was manic I was going to study at Harvard and become God's gift to management. So we got married. Never took any regular medication. The stigma of psychiatry, not knowing whom to go to. Saraf is about the only guy whose seen me in it all. The 1985 episode involved a couple of her colleagues. That didn't get back to the hearth. The 1989-90 episode really dented the foundations of our marriage. She was carrying Sadhika and I was following my dick to a colleague in office. She wanted marriage and threatened disclosure to Nivea. So I thought it better to do so myself and try and salvage the marriage. We never really recovered from that. Resultant. Infidelity was the view whenever there was a woman friend. You may ask whether there isn't any self control. Frankly when one is manic it's the most fantastic state of mind. Everything is achievable. One really feels like top gun. It just sweeps you away like the helplessness and feelings of uselessness in depression.
I came into Ranchi in 2000 raving manic again Took a dive and the first real course of regular medication - Lithium carbonate, started there. Unfortunately, as one realised after the split, the dosage was on the lower side. Lithium is a mood stabiliser and helps compress the cycles. I ended up being hypo manic/depressive every winter. Alas another woman at Ranchi and domesticity became one slanging match with the venting knowing no limits.
Sadhika was going to the 12th and was a mute observer to her parents ripping each other to shreds. Come September 2006, I decided that she was better off with one parent. I worked out the finances and saw that resignation would leave a reasonable kitty. Thought I'd get VR, but they raised the age limit. Three of us sat down and talked about it. I told them that it was beyond salvage. I'd d offered divorce to Nivea in 1990 but she refused. I knew then that that episode of infidelity would haunt us always. And of course I continued to be a bull in the china shop. No excuses or legitimising my behavior, but I just couldn't help myself and get my act together. In the normal times in between episodes one was normal. Then again all this leaves one not knowing who one really is. Thanks to a Public Sector job, one got away with such aberrant behavior for 25 years. The routine of life stopped one from thinking too much about oneself, one's abilities and capabilities.
At the end of the day the split was the only way to stop Sadhika's psyche from being totally scarred. Only time will tell the effects on her. After I quit, I started introspecting about what to do. Over the next year I came to a realisation that I had no real usable skills. The core of my problem seems to me to be the total absence of an emotional framework. I don't have any feelings, no wants or desires. I know that this is difficult for a normal guy to accept and a lot of motivational therapy erupts. But then, that's how it is. For more than a year there was no contact with Nivea. Used to talk to Sadhika off and on. Come July last year I went across for Sadhika's admission to Delhi. That changed Nivea's perspective a bit and now we chat each other up daily. She was going bonkers with loneliness and perceived societal jibes. So I agreed to go down to Ranchi. Am leaving tomorrow and then together we go onward to Delhi for Sadhika's birthday. Back to Ramchi on 17/2 and I hope to get back to Kerala by the first week of April. That's the plan so far. Lets see.
What of the future. More of the same as the last two years or.... Lets see again.Try and settle her. We need at least one parent stable till Sadhika settles herself. The severance package provides enough interest to take care of Sadhika's education and stuff. My needs are hardly any and whenever Nivea needs something, I chip in. So there isn't too much financial stress.So that,s the story.. If you can, please do something for her.
Ciao.
Krishna.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)