Hey everyone,
It’s a special day in the Khullar Relph household today. Sam and I are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. Well, we’re not really “celebrating,” since he’s working tonight and England is still in lockdown, but we’re certainly happy about the milestone. I had brownies for breakfast to mark the occasion.
When I was growing up in India, marriage was not something to look forward to. Marriage was a threat. As in, don’t abuse the freedoms we’re giving you or we will have no choice but to marry you off and take them away. I was independent, outspoken, and often getting into trouble, and therefore, marriage was a constant fear. I dreaded the day I would get married and be stripped of the limited freedoms I did have.
Like most girls of my generation and social class, I understood that marriage would be a lottery. If you were lucky, you’d get to have some say in your life. If you weren’t, you’d do what they told you to do. For the rest of your life.
I refused to buy a ticket. At substantial cost to my life, my career, my mental health, and my relationships, I walked away from everything and wanted no part in their game. I expected to be single for the rest of my life. I expected to become a pariah. I never expected to have a kid, pets, a family of my own.
Many years later, I met Sam. We fell in love, and well, here we are.
I haven’t thought about this for a long while, but I’ve been revisiting that time in my life a lot lately, for several weeks now. Maybe because I’m writing about parts of it. Maybe because I’ve been trying to heal from a lot of the stuff in my past and it keeps bringing up new memories. But maybe also because I’m doing something similar in my career right now. I’m letting go of things I know to do, but that keep me trapped, and opening up an unsure future that may lead to nothing.
It’s terrifying. It’s confronting. It doesn’t make much logical sense.
But when have my life or my choices ever made logical sense to anyone?
On our honeymoon, eleven years ago, Sam and I were having dinner at the hotel restaurant and a woman, looking to be in her late fifties, came over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, my husband and I were sitting there and we couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” she said. The couple joined us for dinner and told us they’d been married for over thirty years. They could tell from the way we were talking to each other, the woman said, that we would last.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Sometimes you just know,” she said, “but you don’t know why.”
Sometimes you just know. But you don’t know why.
That is always how I’ve approached my life and it about sums up the next steps for my career now.
I know I need to put my entire focus on books. I don’t know why.
I need to trust myself, know that the logical answer is not always the right one, and that the cage may be safe but it also keeps me locked away.
And anyway, I believe that I always make the right decisions and that no matter how things turn out, I’ll have had fun along the way.
I’ve always chosen adventure over safety.
So, even though it doesn’t make sense to de-prioritize a successful business and focus on the only thing that has never made me any kind of reliable income, here we go again.
Come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll see what to do. Or maybe you’ll learn what not to. Either way, I can promise we’ll have fun along the way.
I’ve been running for a long time when all I want to do is fly. So, here I am, standing at the edge once again, ready to fly or die trying. It’s now or never.
Watch me jump.
Cheers,
Natasha