Tag: Death

Family, Food For Thought, Inpsiration, Journal

Roiling Within

Sanjay Sabarwal
Photo by Mitch Lensink on Unsplash

From the social media pics, it looks like an amazing weekend. Yet within, emotional ache boils my senses. Each thought about what ifs, could’ve beens, should’ve beens. Roiling inside me over and over, grief, loss, loneliness, abandonment. Each moment turning into another and it makes me wonder for what. Yet the smiling pictures, the food, the drink, the smiles all shared to the public to show happiness, fun, light when within I choke in the darkness of sadness and hopelessness.

There are bright spots, small smiles, remembrances of the past, a time with a lot of emotional baggage, and where just got to be. A time before losing Ziba music, my father, my aunt, and others. A time when it felt that life would go on forever. So much shared laughter, fights, silly arguments, but fun. So much fun. Friends who befriended anyone that they met from me, and before long they had their relationships with them. Gratitude fills me to have people in my life who take time to get to know others. Who think its enough that I brought the person to their attention, and forms a friendship.

Thoughts and feelings all over the place, this monday. A beautiful weekend on pictures nothing more than pretence, illusion that I am living a happier life than I am. But there are moments, far and few between, there are moments, yet those brief moments don’t make it a happy life. Just a lived on.

Roiling within, I put these words out so others many no, no it wasn’t a good weekend, it just looked that way. Curated. Captioned. But not the full story. Not even close. I look back, and I wonder when regret and loss stop choking me, making me roil.  When will it go away? Or is it just a new reality where loss is part of life, and letting go of things that don’t serve you the new reality?

Food For Thought, Inpsiration

A Rough Day

Sanjay Sabarwal

Yesterday was not an easy day. It’s been over 8 months since Papa has been going, yet it still feels so raw. Mostly because I haven’t allowed myself to process my grief. It’s just easier to look at the unfairness of things, to be snippy at others at their “luck” of having dads still.

My selfishness knows no bounds when it comes to my emotions and thoughts. I buried myself in feeling sad and sorry for myself, yet it hit me as I hiked Hellman Trail yesterday that my father would have hated me this way. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who would try anything to make his loved ones smile. So not was I dishonoring his memory, I upset others with my crappy attitude.

Then a beautiful message from my wife hit me to my core, and I lived yesterday with a new sense of urgency: to not waste time and energy on things I cannot change. Then I also noticed how so many had reached out, and the most I could muster was a lame thank you. It is in times of need that I sometimes truly forget that I am never alone. I just make myself feel that way which only serves the selfish need inside me to dwell rather than take responsibility.

So each day will be a focus on less feeling sorry for myself, and then finding way to be in service to others. It’s what my father would have wanted.

Food For Thought, Inpsiration

Alone

Sanjay Sabarwal

I did a ton of walking and thinking this weekend. It hit me that while on Social Media it looks like I am having the time of my life, many do not see the struggle it is to get to those moments. The mini pep talks, the telling myself to get out of bed to get some sunshine, the engagement with others, the expression of daily gratitude for what I have. But none of it comes close to filling in the gaping hole of missing someone who is no longer here. A foundation that I counted on so thoroughly that it never occurred to me that one day it would be gone.

So daily, I get up, do what I need to keep my sanity, keep my thoughts and feelings about my loss to myself because it just seems easier that way. Yet, there is a growing pressure inside me as well that this cannot continue this way. Being alone this way for so long is a recipe for disaster yet my distaste of pity and being vulnerable so great that I’d rather say I am fine.

But there is light here. I am reaching goals that I didn’t think possible, and there is so much I want to get done. I honor him but getting to places he couldn’t and that is enough. I also know that seeking support needs to become a habit because it sucks to go at this alone, yet it is not easy. I hesitated posting this because it will sound whiny or a grab for attention, but really it’s for the ones who look like they live the ideal life, yet feel truly, utterly alone. This will pass. I know it will. I am a loving, giving and worthy leader!

Happy Monday!

Food For Thought, Myself, Writing

Nanowrimo, Movember and Life

Sanjay Sabarwal

thSo I am now at 10,000 words, more than I have written in decades. I am also clean-shaven for Movember after a decade. It’s funny to me when I speak to other writers lately about the reasons why they cannot do Nanowrimo. From “I have to outline to no time”, I have heard it all. But recently a theme has come up. What if it’s no good?  What if it’s a waste of time. That’s the really big worry . It comes down what if I spend hours upon hours for 30 days and have nothing to show for it. Just 50,000 words of crap. My answer is simple. You won’t. If  Nothing else you will write something unique, different. Just let go. I am in the middle of a Novel, something I thought impossible a few years ago. I am 35 pages in, and I admit I am dying to edit, to delete, backspace some of the shit that spews out of me. I dawdle on Facebook and Twitter in the early morning, but I am writing. I am inching forward. 630am every morning so far, I am giving myself the permission to be a writer.  9am I call it quits, and then my day starts.

I hope to start Crossfit soon so I can begin prepping for Spartan, and I am nervous. Isn’t it a bit much to add that to my life. Also, trying to do Zen Habits where this months habit is to spend mindful time with loved ones. Give them at least 10 minutes without interruption.  And then there are some who have suffered horrific losses. One death. One fighting Cancer. It’s a strange and unpredictable world that teaches us that if not now, then when? Seize the day before it seizes you.

Myself

Transitions

Sanjay Sabarwal

Today, my niece turned 18.  She is the second to do so.  I also have a 21-year-old niece.  There is nothing like seeing others grow up to realize that you no longer can pretend to be young.  It’s really quite amazing to see someone grow up into an adult right in front of your eyes.  It’s also a surreal week as last week I witnessed the burial of a dear friends father.  Life. Death. Growth. That’s what we are surrounded by, yet we constantly get caught up in the mundane. We do not realize how lucky we are to have the ones we have in our lives.  We ignore that we are all beautiful souls who are just here temporarily and perhaps instead of really enjoying each others presence, we let the worry of money, work and conflict drive each day.

I realize that I am being preachy so perhaps I need to switch from We to I.  This is my daily journey. Each morning, I have been waking up and really trying to spend some time with myself. It’s as if I have become a stranger to myself. So many random thoughts swirling around, and I see that a majority of them are negative.  I see that I am creating so much negative energy, and so now I try to refocus. It has led me to know how lucky I am to have met my friend’s father one last time before he passed.  To be touched by the earth in my hands as I bid him farewell on his new journey, and to be blessed to have known him and his daughter.  I also could not be more proud of my friend’s husband, a new father and a relatively new son-in-law, who took care of the family as his own. It was truly inspiring to see him be there for them.

I am surrounded by love, pain, grief, anger, but most importantly inspiration. If I could just allow myself to see life as what it really is, I would be a better person for it. It is a continuous teacher, lover, and philosopher.  So today as I wish my niece a beautiful birthday, I also wish my dear friend and her family a beautiful day in memory of their luck in having uncle in their lives. I know I feel blessed with the people in my life.

Myself

2010

Sanjay Sabarwal
Description unavailable
Image by gynti_46 via Flickr

You weren’t a good friend, come to think of it you weren’t much of anything except a source of constant grief.  I am not sorry to see you go, in fact I would say I am glad but I am not going to even dignify that sentiment in relation to you.  But then I realize I have something you cannot take away which are my friends, my family and best of all my brand new wife, Preeti so perhaps I can begrudge you a bit of a farewell.  Except today is just another day, and that’s how I plan to spend it.  No parties, no celebrations just a night in with my beautiful Preeti, just the 2 of us lying next to each other, savoring the closeness and the love of all the ones dear to us in memory.

You weren’t easy to deal with.  From taking a dear family member, giving me a stroke to afflicting the love of my life with a life changing disease, I can definitely say you have made it a mission to be memorable except you are not.  I am not going to give you that power.  Instead, you get this tiny post almost 2 hours before you die in my memory.  You don’t exist, and if you plan to tell your friend 2011 to do the same, then it will get the same middle finger.

I am not bitter.  I am not angry.  I am just done.  I know what I have in my life, and guess what, I know I am rich in that.  Forget money, forget fame, forget the material things or the many meaningless promises I have made at other New Year Eve’s.  I have what I need and want.  Now all that’s left is for the rest of the year to recognize that they have  been reduced to numerical symbols, meaning nothing except for the passage of time.  If you thought you were going to beat me down, 2010, you were mistaken.

Hear me out 2011, you might want to stay on your best behavior before you, too become another torn out calendar.  You have been warned.

Also, 2010, FUCK YOU.

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