Coming home

I'm resuming this blog after a gap of three years. The reason for this break is that, shortly after returning from India, I began seeing a therapist. She advised me to stop writing at the time, as she believed it might hinder my healing process and make it harder for me to move on.

The days following my return from India were incredibly stressful. I found myself getting agitated over the smallest things. Even before I left India, I remember one incident clearly—my mom made a suggestion I didn’t agree with, and instead of just discussing it calmly, I ended up banging my head on the ground in frustration. That kind of emotional turmoil continued even after I came back. On Santhu’s advice, I decided to seek professional help to cope with what I was going through. I'm not sure if I should call it “trauma,” but looking back, I know for certain that I wasn’t in a normal emotional state.

Therapy turned out to be incredibly helpful. My therapist was a great listener—someone I could open up to about feelings I had bottled up for years, feelings I had never shared with my mother or even my wife. As I spoke, it felt like the stress was slowly being released from my body. It's strange how powerful simply being heard—without judgment—can be. That, I realized, is what therapists are trained to do: listen with empathy and without judgment.

Our sessions didn’t just focus on my father; we also explored the pain caused by a series of disappointments from friends and relatives. One example that still stands out was when my friend Siva called just 15 days after my father passed away—only to discuss his career. I was still deep in mourning and expected comfort from him, not a conversation I wasn’t ready for. Another moment was when Santhu went out to a kitty party with her friends. I felt hurt and abandoned—how could she go out and have fun when I was still grieving?

Therapy helped me reframe these situations. My therapist helped me understand that perhaps those around me didn’t know how I was feeling, largely because I never expressed it. This insight connected with something I had read in Buddhist teachings: that the root of suffering often lies in expectations. I realized I had placed unspoken expectations on my family and friends, and when they didn’t meet them, I felt hurt, which only deepened my depression.

After around ten therapy sessions, I slowly began to regain my balance and return to my routine. As the old saying goes, “Time heals all wounds,” and in my case, it couldn’t be more true.