Stepping on foreign land, seeing a new culture, people who look different to me and ones around, hearing a language I don’t get at all, was a dream of mine I never thought I’ll achieve. I was always told if you do well in studies you get a good job, good job means good money, good money meant travel abroad. I was horrible in school, low scores, failing so often, so in my head I was always going to be broke growing up.
A part of me wanted to refuse this thought, but the voices around me were so much louder that to a certain extent I made peace with this idea of broke. In my head, I’d be able to travel only in India at best if I was lucky. I consumed a lot of content from around the world, and not necessarily travel related, just general content shot all over and I just saved all of this knowledge I picked up in a corner of my brain. I traveled through my screen for a while.
School got over, Jr college too and both were equally terrible, but Psychology came into my life and turned everything upside down. I was finally interested in at least one subject, the human mind. In retrospect, more than the subject, more than studying the subject, you want to understand yourself through the subject because no one ever understood you. I noticed it’s the case with a lot of students who take psychology, a lot of them are just people who’ve never really been fully understood. I fell in love with psychology, that immediately reflected in the way I scored. First year – distinction, second – same, third – again distinction. It gave a loser like me some hope – that okay, I can take some space in this world, I can breath rightfully now, I can keep me head up and talk to people looking into their eyes because trust me my neck was starting to hurt hanging down. Sucking in the first 12 years in academics kills you inside, and fully. You have little to no confidence. After my first results in Bachelors, it felt like I finally sat down after standing up my whole life (an expression usually used to describe what smoking feels like, but we don’t condone that here).
I went ahead for my Master’s in Industrial Psychology and academically I was properly on track. I started wanting more from myself, from the world and I think that’s when the glimmer hope lit itself that okay maybe, I can make a decent life, at least one that’s way better than what I had imagined for myself. After 2 years of working, I got married and a year after marriage, we planned our first international trip to Bali.
The pessimist inside me, even after booking the flights and hotels still believed that no, for some reason this is going to get cancelled. Even when the date came to leave, in my head I kept thinking that the authorities are going to reject me at the airport and this trip will get cancelled, and I was preparing for how I’ll act brave and unbothered if that happens. My middle-class mind didn’t give me peace even after I sat in the plane because then I was thinking that as soon as I reached, they will find some issue in my passport and deport me back; they will not let me step outside the airport.
It’s only when I cleared immigration, picked up my bags, and stepped onto foreign soil, I found peace. The little boy in me finally smiled; I sighed in relief. At that moment, even if I died, it would’ve been okay because I just wanted to step into another country, and that was done.
I don’t take these trips for granted. It’s a privilege for me. I’m always a child at the airport, I’ll always be dressed decently, I can’t imagine doing it in shorts and slides; I’ve dreamed of traveling in a plane, of going abroad, I won’t achieve my dreams dressed so casually, I can’t. Everything still fascinates me like it did the very first time, the size of the airport, the duty-free shops, the size of the plane, the sharply dressed pilots and crew, the fact that I’m flying in the air so many feet above the ground, everything.
It’s 7 years I’ve been working and I think I did alright. Of course there are people my age who’ve done sooo much more, but there are also people who dream of a life like this, and I can’t take it for granted because I couldn’t even dream of this life, and now I live it.
So, if you’re in a position, where you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’m here to tell you that it’s there and it’s shinning bright for you. Yes, the light comes in way sooner for some, way easier for some; life is different for all of us, but yours is there too, it’s tough now, it’s tiring, and you are going to want to give up, sometimes too often, and all of that is okay, but keeping going at it, because the light is waiting to see you as well, it’s waiting to brace you, to free you of your troubles, and to give you the break you need.