My dichotomy… my essence
Whenever incidents like the Kolkata RGKar ones happen, we are shaken to the core and we begin to question everything around us. The biggest being, who am I? What is my essence as a woman in her mid-40s?
My essence in the tapestry of my middle-aged life weaves strength and grace. As I meander the travails of transiting through the autumn of life, I am faced with a myriad of issues pertaining to my health, finances, profession and, of course my family! When faced with the curveballs life throws in my direction I have learnt to welcome them with a smile. My resilience is an unyielding flame dancing strong… braving the winds of adversity, a testament to the above fact.
As a paediatric professional, I face challenges everyday as we traipse through a plethora of issues. But my specially-abled angels in clinic, have taught me the biggest lesson in life… never to give up and here I am.
Within me is the young goody-two-shoes girl who always toed the line her upbringing etched for her. I am grateful to my school teachers who honed my skills and my headstrong mother who was always the sturdy oak that opted to be uprooted in the chaotic storms of life rather than bend. Being emotional gives me a heightened sense of empathy, a vital requirement in my line of work and also a main ingredient as I strive to be a better human.
My soft inner facet fosters an openness to communication with everyone that facilitates the formation of numerous connections and friendships. I refrain from concealing my emotions.
I have been an overachiever and an all-rounder as a student and that continued for years later. Unfortunately, my self-expectations snowballed into alleviated personal standards for myself. This soon metamorphosed into a palpable undercurrent of anxiety and before I knew I was battling anxiety attacks with the slightest of triggers. Despite my profession and being in the penumbra of understanding mental health, I couldn’t handle it all. It reached a pinnacle when as a new mother, overwhelmed and exhausted, I grappled with an unsettling impulse to throw my week-old firstborn out of the window….
It was then I understood the reality called ‘post-partum depression.’ and that it exists, not just in books. The underlying currents of high emotional fragility turned a catalyst for accepting my imperfections, beginning the first step…
I began to approach life with greater passion, a zeal that was untouched. As I multitasked as a person with multiple roles at home and as a professional, I was able to handle it all with a little counselling and family support. I could bring energy and enthusiasm to my pursuits.
As the years passed, I settled into a rhythm but an intangible void remained. My creative streak yearned to be unleashed and paint my life’s walls with hues of imagination and optimism. Being an avid reader, I longed to be the creator of the character that I lived in the narrative. I longed to be the orchestrator of the tribulations of an imaginary character by breathing life into it. In short, I wanted my imagination to run amok….
That’s what led me to writing. Penning down emotions made me seek refuge in an imaginary world where I wielded the beacon to travel through the labyrinth of emotions. It brought me out of a dark zone. I soon began my episodic stories and my reader base increased. Almost all the readers composed of women in the age range of 20 to 70! The dynamic interaction with women from different walks of life helped me gain profound insight into their lives.
I wrote tinges of erotica as I played around with language and soon my readers were hooked to it. Eventually, I emerged as a hurricane, defying the challenges that came my way in this literary pursuit. My readership increased and I recognised and accepted the alternate facet of my personality… the other side of this coin called “I”
In the initial days of dabbling in the genre, I often thought of adopting an alias… given the limited understanding of navigating the bleary line between literary erotica as an explicit narrative vs erotica as an art.
But I realised I was unleashing my emotions and creativity for catharsis so I didn’t want to conceal myself behind the veil of a pseudonym. My stories gained popularity and my readers… almost all women began to wait for the chapters.
It all seemed alright for over a year but soon few men in my circle of authors and friends came to know about the genre I often dabbled with. While most of them were appreciative, in sporadic cases where they seemed to cross the line, I politely ghosted them or in extreme cases blocked them. However, they were all strangers in the virtual world and I barely knew them even on social media, which is a façade anyway.
One day, however a close acquaintance crossed the boundaries of decency when in the garb of a drunk stupor, passed derogatory remarks on the content in question, getting obscenely personal. He became outright explicit in expressing his fantasies and that was uncalled for. I felt reduced to a mere object of his warped desires. It seemed the years-old friendship was a fluke. Everything upright he stood for seemed like this huge façade beneath the garb of virtue.
Very recently someone ventured into the realm of personal commentary on my timeline. There was a presumptuous assertion that personal attacks or scathingly piercing comments came with the territory. I had the ‘audacity’ to write about something so blasphemous that deserved a whiplash….
All this, just because I wrote erotica? What gives anyone the right to demean an individual because of the creative choices the individual makes? I strongly believe the essence of artistic expression lies in its diversity where the creator can explore boundaries catering to her sensibilities and passions.
After all, true creativity lies in transcending above preconceived notions, doesn’t it?
So just like a coin gains value from both its sides, the complex symphony of my duality forms a harmonious whole… that’s me. Ultimately, it’s the amalgamation of the two sides that bring out the depth and richness of one’s character.
©Priya Nayak-Gole
