A place for Vase and Berry

Ok, so I am starting off with the good today. My husband and I took a very long drive to visit my parents for just a few hours. It was nice to get to see them but also just to talk to my husband in the car. It has been interesting just having the two of us in the house again because we have started having better conversations I think.

I know that it can be really, really hard with your mom and that she pulls you down into the hole. You really are doing your best. Know that I am cheering you on from a distance. It sounds like a portion of your mom's anger was just her being really sick. People get so unreasonable when they aren't feeling well. 

It can be a little hard to figure out what to eat and how much and I am sure that impacted your energy levels. You will know better next time how much to eat. Continue to try to go to bed as early as you can. I know you are already doing this. Order of importance: sleep, homework, 7 Cups. Do them all but keep remembering that sleep is most vital.

Keep trying just like you are. Buy the clothes anyway. Yes, your mom's words hurt a lot and she has taught you lots of bad ways to think. But you are unlearning them right here. Keep proving her wrong. You can rebuild your self esteem without her and you can rethink things in terms of life not death. You are learning to worry less and overthink things less. She doesn't deserve to make you miserable.

You are slowly finding your way out of this and into a new direction. Your message last time proved this. There will be more ups and downs but your ups are starting to go a little higher.

Ok, so I will start again with the good (or at least the connected to my senses). Today I made a nice chickpea and avocado dish on some flatbread that was both pretty healthy and tasted good.

I am so sorry that you are struggling with sleep. It is part of what your brain is doing to process all the mental health stuff. But I would continue to try to get the sleep. What will happen over time as you brain feels more rested is that the nightmares will disappear. Right now it is highly stressed and trying to catch up on the sleep that you need. You will feel more rested soon if you can keep up with a better sleep plan. Maybe start from ensuring that you are getting 6 hours every night. Then you can experiment with expanding that. Just don't let yourself get less than 6. 

I am not having trouble with cups at the moment. When I have trouble I try to do a quick copy before I hit the post button and then I just keep pasting in smaller messages.

I am sorry that you had such trouble with your friend today. It is a little hard to tell exactly what happened from my end though so I can't tell how serious her error was.

I know in general that for my friends, I have to grant them tons of grace. None of them are perfect, even the ones that I greatly admire. So when I forgive them for something, it is just easier. Otherwise I end up turning the anger that I feel towards them against myself.

When someone asks a question like "do you think your benchmate was a mental person?", I would ask them to clarify. What do they mean by "mental person"? There are so many ways that you could define that. Now your friend might just dig herself a big hole of judging other people unnecessarily, but you will know where she stands. You can just define it differently than her.

page 9?! oh dear, how much have i been posting here lately?! how many posts have i not replied to? i guess i might just have to move on from wanting to reply to all of it. i'm so sorry. i don't feel good about not responding to you. i may still go back and respond to some things at some point, but not just now.

i'll just ensure that i reply every time starting now.

hmm i guess my friend's error wasn't too big after all.  i guess made to to be too big of a deal. or maybe it was a big deal because it shows her stupidity and lack of understanding for different cultures. it really did hurt me, offend me and made me feel awful. if you wanna know what happened, i told her that my parents and i had gone shopping on saturday, and i made a huge mistake in telling her that. she questioned me on what i bought. the truth is, i bought two sets of 'pyjamas', only one of which i intend to use at nightwear and the other one's for wearing at home during the day (yes, i often wear pyjamas during the day, but i have specific different sets for day and night, i don't sleep in the ones i wear during the day). and i bought a pair of pants to wear with a top i already have.

and of course i couldn't tell her that, because who buys a pant for an old top? that sounds crazy. so i lied and i just said "a pant and a top". and her reaction..... my god. she said, in such a mocking tone "wow, [my name]. you are a fashionista!" and i said "what? what's wrong with a pant and a top?" and she responds "this is what you're going to wear for your durga puja? whatever main even you'll have, you'll wear that?" i said "yeah. why?" and then came her pain point. "oh [my name] this is an indian event, you should were something more indian. i always wear a saree for everything, ganesh chaturthi, navratri, diwali, everything. if not a saree then at least something traditional."

fine, so i guess i'm not being "indian" anymore if i don't wear a saree or other traditional attire. and who on earth is she to tell me what i "should" wear? honestly, i haven't worn a saree in years. i don't have any sarees or a blouse to wear along with it. i used to wear children's sarees (not stiched saree though) when i was little. now if i wanna wear one, i must wear one of the regular dimensions and as being the short person i am, that'll be very uncomfortable. and sarees already are uncomfortable for people of today. and if i don't wear a saree i'm supposed to wear gahgra choli or something? that can be really heavy and uncomfortable clothing too. okay, now is salwar kameez traditional? i guess it kinda is, but i don't have any. it was our original plan to buy one, but then my mother decided that i don't really need one as i already have enough clothes to wear when i go out and that i need more stuff to wear at home, so we bought pyjamas instead.

all i can say right now is that i just really hate her. she doesn't understand what the basic purpose of buying clothes is in my family. it is not for the main durga puja celebration to look fancy and take pictures to use as a whatsapp profile picture or something like it might be in her case. it just is a time to go buy something new and wear something new. in my family, it is among the only three times in a year for which we buy clothes (the other two and the bengali new year and birthdays). we just go and buy whatever we feel we need. if what we need is pyjamas, that's what we buy! it is not necessary that we must wear something traditional for the main puja. just that we need to wear something new. that's it. and she just wont understand. she cannot see anything beyond what exists in her family and her culture. and everything of hers is always in her opinion the best, of course.

okay, so that's what mainly happened. she also asked me what colour top and pant i bought and i said a green pant (which is true) and i lied "red" about the top because there is no new top i bought.

another thing about her that made me feel bad yesterday was her talking about what all exam prep she has done so far. and i haven't even started but of course i lied because i couldn't admit to not starting. she said she's done with physics, chemistry, biology, and political science, and working on history and geography. after that, i said "i'm working on english, french, and maths", specifically so as to ensure she couldn't ask me questions because she hasn't done those subjects yet. and to that she replied "oh my god, [my name], exams are just a week away, gentle reminder. and you haven't even started science and sst. go read the chapter, you'll understand how lengthy and complicated it is." definitely hurts to hear. specifically, the "gentle reminder". it's like she's mocking me.

and what i hate the most is that i need to constantly lie to her in order to just be with her. i'm sick of being such a liar. also, what is a friend if that's someone you need to lie so much to? arent friends supposed to be people who you can be honest with? i'm frankly more comfortable and honest with my mother than i am with this "friend" of mine. you are like a friend to me, she is not. from now on, i will always call her a "friend" in quotes, because she is not a friend.

she has also been acting so overexcited and happy lately, and i do not like it at all. she's so jumpy and it's annoying. as much as i want others to be happy, this "happiness" of hers hurts me. she is so much easier to deal with when she's not this crazy kind of happy. i don't think this is even happiness. also, whenever she is in this overexcited state, her stupidity kicks in like anything. she things she's looking smart, but she goes so overboard with her smartness that she comes across to everyone as stupid. i'm sorry i'm repeatedly calling her this, but i cant help it. i'm just sorry. also i must mention, all it takes to bring her down from that happiness is one negative remark from a teacher. it brings her feet back to the ground if you know what i mean.

anyway, that's enough venting. i'm so glad she didn't come to school today. i badly needed a break from her. school was quite good today without her and i somehow didn't feel lonely at all. i made the best of the fact that i was all alone. loved it. needed the break. and i did have some people who talked to me a bit during the day, people asking for help from me and i generally like that, so all good. i still had to spend an hour sending my "friend" today's notes, but it was better than dealing with her for almost 7 hours of a school day.

coming back to your message, i guess you're really good at forgiving people. can i ask you if you have a lot of friends? do you consider them to be real friends? do you actually want to be friends with them or do you just be for some complicated reasons?

because i, i definitely have very few friends. i do not consider this "friend" i wrote so much about to be a real friend. and i do not want to be friends with her but i don't have a choice. i need someone to send me notes when i miss school and she is that someone for me and that's the best someone i'll find, i guess.

"When someone asks a question like "do you think your benchmate was a mental person?", I would ask them to clarify. What do they mean by "mental person"? There are so many ways that you could define that." you're right, i should have asked her what how she would define a mental person, instead of saying "i don't know". people usually mean crazy or mad when calling someone mental, but then how do we define "mad" or "crazy"?

"Now your friend might just dig herself a big hole of judging other people unnecessarily, but you will know where she stands. You can just define it differently than her." true. i feel like she does "judge" people a lot. wait, what does it really mean to judge, again?

oh, well, i guess i've written a bit too much today. i needed to vent about yesterday, i'm sorry. today has been a mostly okay day though. i haven't done much homework and i guess i'm cupsing way too much by writing here. i'll go do some homework now and then try to do my cups work for this week before i take a break from that until my exams are over.

oh oh i have to say this, i asked my mother for her phone a while ago because i needed it for something. she told me to take it and when i opened it, she had something open on youtube. a video titled "Understanding Suicide Behavior for Parents". and i'm left wondering what on earth is going on my mother's mind. she hadn't watched the entire video, it was paused like 3 minutes in, but yeah. i, out of curiosity, searched it up and watched it (on the laptop, of course not on her phone). and i found it here in case you wanna know. i wonder what my mother will think after watching the whole thing, and i wonder why she started watching this in the first place. but i'm just sharing, okay? i beg you, please don't tell me to tell anything to my mother. the funny thing is, she might watch all those videos but it doesn't reflect in how she really acts. for example, the other day she was trying to teach me how to let go of stuff like anger, probably based off something she saw online. but when she herself gets angry, why doesn't she do those techniques that she tries to teach me?

by the way, i've been trying to find some good moments lately and it's helping me a fair bit. i just realised that thinking of them makes every day feel a tiny bit different, instead of every day feeling like the same. thank you for encouraging me to do this and for sharing always sharing your good moments. i hope you had one yesterday too, even if you didn't mention it. i've been quite okay today and have had some good moments. like when i realised my friend was absent (she often comes late to i needed to wait before i could tell that she's not coming today). also, feeling good about cleaning up my room and showering quickly after school today.

just a random idea popped into my mind, how would it be if i made a separate thread or something only to share good moments? because somehow when i come here i often start venting a lot, and forgetting about the good. and sometimes i may not have a lot of time to reply but feeling i should share a good moment....

So, I may not get to all of this in the next half hour, but I will try. My good point today was my new class that I started teaching tonight. It is a short, one hour group support class for students who aren't feeling comfortable yet at college. I have never taught it by myself and I am not an expert so I was nervous about how to get the students to like the idea of the class and start being kind to one another. They seemed like a good group and one of the students brought up a great point at the end. I had asked them to describe a "perfect day". She said her perfect day would be one without physical pain (it looks like she struggles a great deal with physical issues and is fed by a nose tube). She said that she knew though that her perfect day would never exist. She would always have pain. But she looks for ways to be realistic about it and live with the pain and work through it. That's a little like depression sometimes.

You are right at being miffed at your friend for not letting you wear what you want to wear. No one should judge another person's clothing choices unless they are going around naked in my opinion. Judgment is simply deciding things are good or bad without knowing any of the story behind why that person made that decision (to wear those clothes or whatever). You have to ask someone and not presume that your way is the best way or the only way.  The world would be so much better if we stopped judging one another. Her harsh words are indeed a reason that other people wouldn't like her. No one likes to be judged. People do it because ultimately they are insecure about themselves and feel like putting down others somehow makes them better. It doesn't.

But I don't think you need to hate her, just her stupid way of viewing clothing and dressing up to impress other people. When you hate the action and the opinion rather than the person herself, it makes it a little easier on you. I usually feel sorry for someone like your friend because they are just acting on the surface level of appearances. They may never dig any deeper and realize where happiness comes from - not worrying about the judgments of other people. 

She did the same exact thing in talking to you about what you are studying. Ignore her because she wants to put herself on a higher pedestal than you. You can be annoyed but when you ignore her (while saying to yourself that she is being stupid) then you preserve your self esteem.

I like your analysis of her - she is getting particularly insecure and looking happy, but it is only at the expense of other people. You are "friends" really only when she is out of this mood of making herself feel big by belittling you. If it gets bad then you step away for a few days. She will probably notice and maybe even ask why. Tell her point blank with examples - "judging my clothing and how I study aren't kind". One simple statement to get her thinking. Then maybe you will have to lie to her less.

Maybe some of those other people who approached you today because your "friend" wasn't around might end up being better friends. My guess is that they don't like her judging, superior attitude either. You never need huge amounts of friends. Just a few work fine. I don't have huge amounts of friends that I am close with (probably maybe 3-4) but that is enough. Even those people I don't always see all that often.

You are allowed to vent a bit. That is fine for here. Looks like I am not going to get to your final three paragraphs. I will do so tomorrow night.

Ok, so I will try to get to those last few paragraphs tonight. First of all, my good moment today. It was probably the pea and potato samosas that we had for dinner. They were a quick frozen meal which normally we don't have but I had limited time today. However, they were surprisingly good. It is always nice when a food is unexpected like that.

Don't worry. I am not going to ask that you go to your mom with anything. But, I do think her watching that video (or looking it up) is rather interesting in suggesting what she is actually feeling. She would have to be really blind to not see what is going on with you on some days and be worried about it. She is quite involved in herself and her own problems, but you two talk a good deal and she can't completely ignore your pain. So she has at least a vague inkling that something is wrong. I will admit that I can only see positives in that. You are right that she will probably continue to react poorly and hurt your feelings. But she could also attempt to limit the amount that she does that. Even just a little bit would be helpful to you. You don't even have to have a conversation about it. She would just be minimally kinder because she sort of knows that you aren't in the best shape right now. Will she forget to be kind? Yes, most likely. She does indeed have anger management issues herself. But if you get out of even a few moments of her saying the wrong thing then that's good.

You could try to set up a separate thread for good things, but I know for me it is easier to just say to myself each time that before I start typing, I have no choice to start with something good that is really specific. I would love to vent, but I can only vent if I am positive first. Sometimes that puts my entire day in a slightly better light.

Speaking of venting, it was a very long day for me. Way too many meetings, readings and classes so I am pretty exhausted. I was at work 7:30 am-5 pm Monday, 7:30 am-6:30 pm Tuesday, 7:30 am -5 pm today, and I will be there 7:30 am-9 pm tomorrow for a lecture. I may not quite make it on to 7 Cups tomorrow night... But it is a great book called How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. It details her really rough childhood with a very abusive (like hitting and nearly killing her in addition to calling her worthless) father and how she is able to escape with poetry and education.

I am having tons of trouble posting right now, so I am hoping that all of my message goes through. It said the 7 Cups website was down last night, it was down several times when I tried during the day today, and this tab opened tonight, but when I went to open a second one so I could both see your message and answer, it said it was down again. Hopefully this goes through. I am trying to keep in touch.

Ok, so my good moment today... It was probably the nap that I got this afternoon for half an hour. It was nice to just let my body fully relax for a few minutes and to not have to go to work today.

Yes, that 13.5 hours was long, but most days aren't like that. I did have a little dinner there at a reception for the author. She was actually really good so overall I enjoyed the evening. But my schedule for the rest of the semester has three later nights per week (Monday - Wednesday) so that is going to be a bit tougher. But those are just until 5 or 6:30 pm. But Wednesday will also add in choir rehearsal from 7:00 until 8:30 pm after leaving work at 5. I put way too much in my schedule this time. But I have gotten everything done on time so far. As is true with you, I do much better if I don't look down at the pile of stuff, but just do it slowly but surely.

I am glad that you had a pretty good day in spite of the economics teacher's comments. Some people just don't understand and they won't unless it happens in their family. I am glad that it is decriminalized now in India too. But I do think that India (and most of the world) could do a much better job in supporting people and normalize caring for you mental health. The idea is to limit suicide as much as possible and criminalizing it won't do that. Putting lots of money towards mental health efforts and getting more trained professionals is the way to do that. But we don't even do a good job of that in my country either. However, in both cases it is getting better.

As far as you being healthy, I think that you are clearly doing better than you were a few weeks ago. But are you talking about physically healthy or mentally healthy? Physically it is hard for me to tell from here how much walking and exercise that you do. I know that I don't do enough myself. I have learned the hard way that physical and mental health are related closely to one another. So now I exercise more. 

My good moment today was ants. Yes, I know, nothing exciting there. But we took a short stroll at a local park this morning. It was really disappointing until near the end. There were almost no birds, lots of trash, and you could loudly hear the highway. But then my husband spotted several different kinds of ants. We were able to find three totally different kinds in just a few minutes. It is kind of cool to think about how many different kinds of bugs there are.

Each day my leaving time can be quite different based upon when classes end that day. Normally last semester I had only two late days (5:00, 6:30). This semester there will be a third day every week. But I will adapt. The other days could be as early as 2 pm. I will be fine.

It sounds like you are talking about both physically and mentally healthy. I guess all of that starts with sleep. I know that I sound a bit like a broken record on that front, but I just read an article today that said if teens got more sleep much of our mental health crisis would be solved. But that is much easier said than done. I am currently reading a book called "Rest is Resistance" for a teaching group that I am part of where we focus on caring for ourselves and each other. It basically said that we need to spend our whole lives constantly working towards getting more rest. The capitalistic world doesn't want us to do that, but we need to in order to have healthy souls. So I took a short half hour nap today. We will see if I sleep tonight. But rest is also getting outside and looking at ants. Or doing some of the exercise in private that you are doing.

We should very clearly connect mental health and physical health, but most people do not do that. In regards to your economics teacher, what I did when I read your story yesterday was try to put myself in her shoes and speculate about why she might have made that comment. I came up with an interesting possibility - what if she knew someone who had attempted suicide recently and succeeded? Such a moment is really devastating for any family or friends. They feel such horrible guilt for not stopping the person. For some families touched by suicide, the psychological damage is devastating. I can see someone trying really hard to convince all of their own students that the path leading to death is not one to take. It hurts so many people. So she thought scaring your class would be a better option. That is not a good option at all, but that may have been her thought process.