Rising from the ashes: Measuring out my life with coffee spoons

I've really needed the catharsis of writing in the past three months, but this weekend has been the first instance where I've had the time and space to get to it. 

I had mentally labeled 2026 as a year full of hope and dreams. 2025 had the seemingly impossible goals - finishing my PhD, finding a job, my dad staying relatively healthy, and all these happened. And so, I let myself dream about 2026. This would be the year where all my PhD papers would get accepted. This would be the year where my dad would come to my convocation and finally smile after all the pain he's endured. This would be the year where I run my half marathon and cover a total distance of 5000km. This would be the year when, after 8 years of learning music, I would perform on stage and finish my level exam. This would be the year when I could finally take vacations without worrying about a million things.

And mind you, when I say "dream" I do not just mean imagining these things. I am talking about actually putting in the work it takes. For instance, this year, I have spent a dozen weekends refining my remaining papers. Despairing over rejection emails, and then finding the courage to work on the feedback and resubmit them. I have been training for my half marathon since the start of January, and I had barely missed a couple of weeks till May. Similarly, I planned on my dad visiting my house in May and made arrangements as a preparatory step to attending my convocation. 

And till May, everything went my way. I made progress in running and music, and worked on my papers diligently. And this was all outside my full time job. So yes, I had a very busy life. But it was full of stuff I wanted, and I loved it. I was so encouraged by my progress that I signed up for more of all this. I joined a structured running and strength training program. I also signed up for my music performance and exam and started practicing rigorously. My undergraduate and PhD alma maters invited me to give a talk and judge a competition, and I very happy accepted both invites for June and July. My dad visited us in the end of May, and we were all encouraged by this and saw it as a sign of progress. Everything was great.

Then came June, with a small cataract surgery scheduled for my mom. This was supposed to be just a small procedure, except that my dad got hospitalized in critical care a couple of days before. He was extremely unstable, and for a day, they were both in different hospitals which caused a lot of additional stress and running around for me. Then, I had to donate blood for my dad, and from there started my own health issues. Right after donating, I fainted. I was told that this was normal since I was donating for the first time. And a Hb check came out normal, so I was told I had nothing to worry, and that I may face a little tiredness in the next couple of weeks. 

There was a few days of very stressful hospital times, and then I tried to go back to my routine. But everything felt harder. I was exhausted all the time. Running felt insanely hard, lifting weights was even harder, and recovery seemed to take ages. I faced a lot of brain fog every morning, and panic attacks and anxiety started showing up too. One morning, on the metro ride to work, I had an intense bout of sweating and dizziness, and I had to ask someone for a seat to sit down. Even after I sat down, it did not get better and I had to actually get off the train and go home. This incident scared me a lot and made me feel vulnerable, and I felt my heartbeat quicken everytime I had to take public transport. I attributed all of this to the blood donation. By this time, my dad had got admitted a second time, and I was again caught in the hospital cycle of grief and worry that I didn't pay attention to my own health. I slogged through the days, sure that it would get better.

Suddenly, the very things I'd signed up to happily a month ago felt like a huge burden. I was unwilling to simply back out of them because my circumstances were different now, and so I pushed myself to the point of breakdown. I continued running and strength training, music practice, and showed up to the college commitments I'd made. My dad went through a third hospitalization in July where it became clear that he was seriously declining, and I juggled between a work, a paper deadline and chores. It left me completely drained, and I promised myself that I would take a break in July. Except that the logistics didn't work that way. I'd already taken off a few days at work for hospital stuff and sickness, and didn't want to take more time off. Weekends I thought, but those were busier than my weekdays. One weekend was convocation, another was my music performance, a third was a race, and a fourth was spent in hospital with my dad. I went through all of these events in a half dazed state. Why did I feel like a hollow shell with nothing left to give? I was supposed to be enjoying these, and I tried hard to feel happy, the way I was supposed to. But it did not work. It felt like I was watching someone else's life from behind a glass wall. Everything was muffled. 

My convocation especially. My dad was supposed to be here for this. He made it for four and a half years after the devastating stroke, only to miss this now? That felt like a cruel turn of fate, and I spent many days crying. We were told that my dad had maybe a few months left at best, and I felt the grief dragging me down again into a spiral of negative thoughts and gloom. There was no improvement in my physical state either, and movement became hard both physically and mentally. Finally, in the end of July, I sat down one day feeling completely spent. I decided to do yoga. After a 30 min practice, I was sobbing. But this crying was different from all the tears I had shed over the past couple of months. It was a moment of deep connection with my body and mind. That day, for the first time in that quarter, I felt a deep knowing that something was wrong with my body and the fatigue I was feeling had a concrete cause. It was not just the grief and stress and all the other things I had attributed it to. I signed up for a bunch of tests immediately, and found a couple of severe deficiencies. These explained all of my symptoms in the past couple of months. 

Now that I had concrete evidence that my body was struggling, I decided to pull the plug. I took a two month break from running and strength, and kept my workouts gentle so that my body could recover. I also started supplements. I restarted therapy. I cut back on all my extra commitments. I decided that I wouldn't run my half marathon in September. The only thing I had on my plate was work and my PhD papers, and whatever little music practice I could do. I thought I'd come out of the worst. 

Then came August, with a fourth hospitalization, where my dad had a cardiac incident. We were told he would almost certainly be gone in a day or two. I have been in anticipatory grief for so long now that I always thought this phase would feel easier. But it did not. It brought so much fear and turmoil and worry. I lost track of time, and the days were a blur. Work was intense too, and I struggled through this period. He somehow survived by a whisker, and was sent home yet again. That too brought a mixture of emotions I struggled with. I was relieved he lived to see another day, and at the same time I battled the worry that there would be more of these hospitalizations in the near future. After this, I lived in terror for a while. It had been months since I had a weekend off, but I felt like I couldn't take the break or go anywhere. What if something happened to him? What if he died while I was away?

Over the past month, I've spent most of my free time on long walks, yoga and meditation. My energy has been returning gradually, and the anxiety has gone away. I came to yet another realization. I couldn't put my life on hold in fear of what would happen. I really needed this break, and I would take it. I went ahead and applied for the visa, and booked tickets. I travel in two weeks, and I'm really looking forward to it. And this weekend, for the first time in four months, I did not open my laptop. I let myself simply be. It felt like balm to my frazzled soul, and I wanted more of this. 

I am still not as free as I would like to be. I have the music exam in October and a couple of things related to my papers. But I've stopped worrying about the big picture, and started focusing on little tasks I can make progress on. In another month, all of these will be done. Then I promise to give my body and mind the full and uninterrupted rest they totally deserve. 

This year is turning out very differently from what I had in mind, but such is life. I have definitely learnt a lot from this grueling quarter, and I have shifted my focus to being rather than doing. These external milestones and progress markers that we obsesss about so much can at times distort our perspective of what is truly meaningful in life. I've come to learn what whatever I can do in this moment is enough, and it need not meet some arbitrary standards set by me or someone else. I learnt it the hard way, by pushing myself to the point of burnout and breakdown, and I write this in the hope that it saves you that struggle. But there are different seasons in life, and maybe there is a season for hustle as there is a season for rest. I'm very grateful to my body and mind for supporting me through all of these seasons, and I will continue to look for ways to nourish and heal myself.