Author: Bhumika Laller
So, on 7 November, I turned 28. I am 28 years old.
WOW! Writing this gives me such a different feeling; a sense of accomplishment, if I must say. However, in recent months, I have been dreading my 28 birthday. I feared losing another year; I was scared of seeing that 7 change to 8. I was not excited, not happy; I was not looking forward to it.
This feeling became so overwhelming that I began to doubt everything I did, and it quite quickly led me into an existential crisis. I questioned what I was doing with my life, why I felt like such a failure, and why I had not married and started a family like my peers, and the list kept growing. However, I also realized that feeling this way was not good for my mental health. Therefore, I decided I had to get to the root of my feelings and figure out why I felt this way.
So, I sat down and tried to have a deep, meaningful conversation with myself. I’d had plenty of birthdays before, so why did this one feel different? I asked myself why I was so scared. After some waiting, I started to get my answers. I was talking to my 15-year-old self. She reminded me that we had made big plans for our late 20s. We wanted to start our own business before we turned 28, we wanted to buy our first house before we turned 28, we wanted to retire our dad before we turned 28, and we wanted to get married by 28. We’re supposed to be on the fast track to motherhood right now, but 28 came and went, and we made no progress.
I listened to the list of dreams I weaved years ago and thought about how my reality was nowhere near it. I was still exploring options and struggling to make it big in my career. I live in a one-bedroom rented place, my dad is still not retired, and I don’t even have a partner, so forget about getting married or motherhood. Aha! There it was– the root cause of my anxiety and anguish. The timeline I had set for myself hadn’t worked out how I thought it would.
As I judged myself harshly for my present, cursed my past and questioned my future, my 15-year-old self reappeared again. In the middle of coaxing me, she urged me to look at the life I built for myself instead. It might be different from the dreams we saw, but it is still pretty cool!
She reminded me how we left our home and family, moved countries at 23 and dared to leave a comfortable environment and face the world alone. It reminded me how we struggled as an international student, but we did that with a smile and focused on improvement. We grabbed our first job in one of Canada’s largest banks, and when we did not see growth or fulfillment, we did not think twice about starting over.
We might not have been able to retire my father, but we assist him by sending money back home and paying our student debts. Maybe it is a one-bedroom place, but we made it home over the years.
The 15-year-old version of me also reminded me how I handled a medical diagnosis alone, with minimum support, during Covid-19 and worked hard towards becoming healthier and recovering. She reminded me that we no longer look in the mirror and cry and love looking at ourselves now. We learnt about self-love and self-acceptance, fought body shaming, and became strong advocates for it, too.
And I am still going on; I have yet to reach the finish line. I can always make new goals; I can always set new timelines. There is always time. My 15-year self told me that she was proud of the independent, kind and strong woman I am and how far I have come.
Even before I realized it, I felt less anxious and smiled again.
The more I decoded the situation, the more I realized how much pressure I put on myself during my 20s. I wanted to get everything done before I hit 30 as if life ends after that. If I think about it, it’s because I grew up in a typical South Asian community, where seeing an independent woman was rare. In not being able to see multiple possibilities for living, I picked the only erosion of being and living I witnessed.
However, after 28 years, I understand it while it might be “rare,” having the life I have is not that rare at all and that while I might not have some of the material items that I thought I might, I have a lot more and a whole lot of different.
And so, as I step into 28, I promise myself many new things.
As always, I will continue to set goals and dreams, but I will be less harsh on myself if I don’t accomplish them by the said time. I will constantly remind myself that life happens, the future is unpredictable, and I cannot control everything. I will also stop comparing my life to others because even though they are my peers, that doesn’t mean we have exact timelines for our lives. Their efforts and resources can differ significantly from mine, and it’s not fair for me to compare myself with them.
I am going to approach my coming years with open arms. I am grabbing new opportunities, lessons, and whatever comes my way. I have always believed in two ideologies; everything happens for a reason, and all will be good in the end. I will practice these beliefs more often to be more grounded and calmer.
Author bio & social tags:
Bhumika is an immigrant who moved to Canada 5 years back as an international student and finished her post-degree diploma in Business Administration from Langara College. She is working as a soft skills trainer and administrator.
Like a true communication aficionado, she cherishes building a community of like-minded individuals. Bhumika has been writing since she was 12 and realizes her true essence lies in writing and storytelling about topics that society labels taboo. She believes that if used with the right intentions, words have the power to heal every situation.
Based on her life experiences, she realizes that self-love in brown communities is an alien concept but also understands that it is the only way to move forward and hence can always be seen advocating self-love.
