Strokeversary: Musings on a difficult year
It has been a year since the day of my father's stroke. A year that feels like a lifetime. A lifetime of pain, worry and grief. As a habitual overthinker, I wonder, apart from being on this insane emotional roller-coaster, is there anything that I have learnt from all this? Anything I can say that might be remotely helpful to someone else navigating choppy waters? And that's how I ended up writing this. When something goes awry in a big way, it is natural to feel sad, worried or afraid. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is perfectly fine to feel these emotions. But what I think is completely avoidable is the struggles that come out of our ideas of fairness and how our lives should play out. For a long time, I have known that life is not fair. Consciously, I'd never even expected life to be fair to me. But I've spent many a day in misery because somehow, I still felt angry and betrayed and upset. For instance, I'd feel very triggered when I met relatives or f