Leaving Home
Gayatri Joshi speaking at our first SAYHU Summer Institute launch in 2017
A long way from home, I sit in a stranger’s house hoping to feel some warmth and to be able to close my eyes. My eyes beg to be spared from this computer screen. But my mind attempts to articulate what very little sense it made of what my heart felt. I fell into darkness and felt like nothing could pull me out. All the grief, guilt, trauma, and shame held me hostage in my family home with no room to breathe and no words to speak. When it seemed like I found a path out, the path that led to more shame and the questioning of my own self-worth. I felt confused and angry. I felt like I didn’t know who I was and what I had become, besides the fact that I was able to identify myself as South Asian Woman.
A couple months back I was able flip my frown to a smile and be present in front of a crowd with a face. Nowadays, I avoided the crowd and it only seemed that despite who I was around I felt lonely. I chose to sit at home in hope to avoid to any type of socialization. I felt continually felt sadden as I seem to be lost focus of what I was doing with my life anymore. I began to take more time to sit with mind and body to listen to what they had to say and what I felt rather than explaining myself as I clearly had no words to describe what all I felt and wished to do.
A concerned voice called out not too long ago: “You are depressed,” she said. “What is wrong with you?” I turned my head in frustration only to realize that she was only speaking my thoughts out loud. I just could not find a way to make amends or escape.
I look for peace and serenity. I look to feel happy in the small things I once enjoyed. It seems though nothing will help at this point. I carry weight that cannot mean anything, since I am a child of parents who migrated, who sacrificed, who attempted to hold their values and beliefs very close themselves without realizing that I am only human. At the end of the day, I can only do so much before I burst into flames and drown in my own tears, before every part of my body begins to ache even more. I can’t seem to clearly identify what I want…
Guilt eats me up like water fills our body quenches our thirst.
It makes my heart heavy like someone placed a rock over it.
My energy is thrown, and my mind feel untuned with the rhythm of body…
this guilt which has followed me since childhood
this guilt that my body refused to embrace...
leaves behind aches pain
and scars which have no words.
it lies above me like a cloud waiting to drop
so my eyes fill with tears and my body begins to stiffen with fear....
you ask, “What fear?”
the fear of darkness where light cannot be found from miles away
as I feel that the glow and shine is beginning to fade
but only to realize that I am becoming a different woman.
I am in search of myself once again.
I want joy, I want to live without regret, I want an organic relationship, I want to smile without a reason, I want to be me. I aim to leave my family home with a clear mind and a happy soul. Though it might not entirely happen in just one weekend, a little progress will bring the hope that I lost within.
Gayatri Joshi is social worker employed by The Harris Center for Mental Health and Intellectual Development Disability as a Service Coordinator. She is second generation with parents who migrated from Gujarat, India and works on understanding her own dual identity of being born as an American, but raised as an Indian.