On September 23rd, I turned 22. Am I happy? No. Not at all.
I want to be honest here. With myself, and with whoever ends up reading this. Maybe that's you, Mammy. If it is, please don't panic. Just read.
I Forgot How to Sleep
For four weeks straight, I haven't been able to sleep properly. Not the kind where you toss and turn for an extra hour. The kind where your body forgets how. You lie there at 2am, then 3am, then the birds start, and your mind just runs. About money. About weight. About where you thought you'd be by now versus where you actually are. About the people who aren't here anymore.
I'd just lie there scrolling through reels till my eyes burned. Or staring at the ceiling fan going round and round. Some nights at 3am, 4am, 5am I'd just get up and walk outside my hostel room. Up and down the corridor. No reason. Just because lying in bed felt worse. You start doing weird things when sleep leaves you. You order food at 3am because your body doesn't know if it's hungry or just tired. You eat a whole packet of biscuits and then feel sick about it. You tell yourself I'll fix this tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and you do the same thing again.
And when you can't sleep, everything else falls apart quietly. You eat rubbish. Not because you don't know better, you know better. I tried to fix it. Multiple times. I'd set alarms, put the phone away, drink water, tell myself tonight will be different. But it never was. The face bloats. The body doesn't feel like yours anymore. You look in the mirror and you don't recognise the person looking back. Not because of the weight, but because of the eyes. They look older than 22.
I'm still overweight. I know that. I've known that. My clothes don't fit the way they used to. I avoid mirrors when I can. But it's hard to care about your body when your mind won't even let you rest.
Dad Wasn't There to Wish Me
People wished me. Messages came in. "Happy birthday!" with cake emojis and heart emojis. I replied to all of them. Smiled at some. But the whole day, there was this one absence I couldn't stop feeling.
Dad.
I kept thinking about him. The kind of thinking where you're not even trying to, it just happens. You're brushing your teeth and suddenly you remember how he used to be the first one to wish you. Before anyone else. Before the sun even came up sometimes. You're staring at your phone and you realize there's one call that's never coming. You hear someone say "happy birthday, beta" in a movie or a reel and your chest just tightens. I scrolled past a video of some guy's father surprising him on his birthday and I had to put the phone down. I couldn't watch it. I physically could not watch it.
I kept remembering small things. The way he'd ask what I wanted to eat that day. The way he'd pretend he forgot and then do something small that showed he didn't. The way just him being in the room on my birthday made it feel like my birthday. Without that it's just a date. Just September 23rd. Just another day where people type "HBD" and move on.
Twenty two years old and I still don't know what to do with that feeling. I don't think you ever learn. You just carry it. Some days it's light enough to forget. Birthdays are not one of those days.
I missed him so badly it physically hurt. Like something was sitting on my ribs. Like he was right there but behind some wall I couldn't break through. So close and so apart at the same time. I couldn't explain it to anyone because what do you say? "I'm sad because my dad isn't here." People nod, they understand, but they don't feel it. They can't. And I don't blame them. But God, it's lonely.
That night I cried. Not the loud kind. The kind where your face just gets wet and you don't even realize it's happening until you feel it on your neck. I wiped it off and pretended it didn't happen. But it did. It keeps happening. On birthdays, on random Tuesday nights, in the middle of eating dinner. This feeling of being apart from someone who was supposed to be here for all of it.
That loneliness is what drove me to the bench, I think.
The Bench, the Smoke, the Silence
On the 22nd and 23rd, my birthday weekend, I smoked around 14 or 15 cigarettes across two days.
I don't know why. That's not true. I think I do know why. I just don't want to admit that I'm not handling things as well as I pretend to.
I haven't smoked in the past two and a half years. Not once. I've been staying away from home, in Bangalore, and I just never felt the need. But it's not like it was my first time ever. The funny thing is, my own dad taught me how to smoke. The very first cigarette I ever had was in front of him. He showed me how to hold it, how to light it, how to inhale without coughing. After that I never tried again. Not once. Until that day.
I'm not a cigarette person. I've never been. I have always hated anything that harms my body internally. Smoking, drinking, all of it. The only exception is junk food which I eat way too much of. But cigarettes? That was never me. That's what makes those two days so strange. It wasn't a habit coming back. It was something I don't even recognise in myself.
So when I sat on that bench and lit one, it wasn't some stranger's habit I was picking up. It was something my dad gave me. And maybe that's why it felt the way it did. Like I was sitting with him again. Even though I wasn't.
There was no peer pressure. Nobody offered. Nobody pushed. Nobody was even around. I bought a pack from one of those small shops where the guy doesn't even look at your face. Walked to this spot I know. An open place with a small marble bench tucked in the corner where no one really notices you. It was late. The kind of late where even the stray dogs have gone quiet. I sat there with the pack in my hand and I didn't even hesitate. I just opened it and lit one.
The first cigarette felt like nothing. The second one felt like relief. By the fifth one, I wasn't even tasting it anymore. I was just doing something with my hands so I didn't have to sit with the emptiness. Lighting one after the other. Watching the smoke go up and disappear into nothing. The ash falling on my jeans. I didn't brush it off. I didn't care. I wished I could disappear like that too. Just for a bit. Just for one night.
Somewhere around the eighth or ninth one, the tears came again. I didn't fight them this time. I just sat there on that cold bench, cigarette between my fingers, face wet, chest tight, and I let it happen. Smoking and crying at the same time. What a picture. If anyone had walked past they would've thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. Maybe that's what grief looks like when you've been holding it in for too long. It leaks out in the worst places at the worst times.
I promised Mammy I wouldn't do this. No smoking. No alcohol. And I meant it when I said it. I still mean it. But in those two days, something in me just broke a little. Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, tired way. Like the promise was still sitting in my chest, but my hands moved anyway. Like my body decided to grieve the only way it knew how. Badly.
I kept imagining what Dad would say if he saw me like that. Sitting on a bench in the corner, smoke in my hand, tears running down. He'd probably sit next to me. He probably wouldn't say anything for a while. And that would've been enough. Just him being there. Just not being so apart from him.
But he wasn't there. And the bench stayed cold.
Earning but Not Stable
I'm earning. Let me be clear about that. I'm not sitting idle. I'm doing multiple paid projects. Freelance work, different clients, different stacks. Some weeks I'm juggling three things at once. Replying to one client at midnight, pushing code for another at 2am, writing proposals for the next one in between. The work is there. I'm not lazy. I'm not wasting time.
But that one stable source of income? It's not.
There's a difference between earning and being financially stable, and I'm learning that difference the hard way. When every month is a negotiation. Will this project come through? Will they pay on time? What happens if the pipeline dries up? What if two clients ghost me in the same week? It has happened before. You deliver the work and then you wait. And the waiting eats you alive. You can't plan. You can't breathe easy. You can't tell Mammy "don't worry about money" with a straight face because even you're not sure about next month.
And it hits different when you don't have your father around. Because he was the safety net. Not just financially. Emotionally. He was the person who made you believe that even if things went wrong, it would be okay. Now things go wrong and you have to convince yourself it'll be okay. And some nights, sitting in bed at 4am with no sleep and no certainty, you're not very convincing.
The majority of my friends will have stable jobs by January. Campus placements, offer letters, the whole thing. They'll have a number that shows up in their account on the same date every month. They'll have PF and health insurance and a manager who sends them tasks. I won't. Not yet. I see their LinkedIn posts and I'm happy for them. Genuinely. But there's this quiet voice in the back of my head that says what about you? And I don't have a good answer yet.
But here's the thing I keep reminding myself. I have three months. Three months to prepare, to grind, to land something solid by January. The window isn't closed. It's narrow, but it's open. And Dad didn't raise someone who gives up at narrow windows.
Mammy, Just Read This
Don't panic. Please.
I'm not continuing the smoking. It happened. Two days, fourteen cigarettes, one marble bench, and a lot of staring at nothing. But it's not becoming a habit. I'm not spiralling. I'm not hiding a secret life from you.
I'm just a 22 year old who missed his father so much on his birthday that he didn't know what to do with himself. That's it. That's the whole story.
I broke the promise, and I'm sorry for that. Not because I got caught or because someone saw. Nobody saw. I'm sorry because I meant it when I made it, and I still mean it now, and the fact that I did it anyway is something I have to sit with.
And Mammy, if you're reading this, please don't ask me about it. I know you'll want to. I know you'll have questions. But I don't have the energy to discuss this. I really don't. The 14 cigarettes thing. I know it's my fault. I know. You don't have to tell me. I already sit with that every day. I just need you to read this and know that I'm aware of what I did and I'm not proud of it. That's it. Please.
You carry enough already, Mammy. You carry what Dad left behind, and you carry it without complaining. I see that. I see you. I don't say it enough, but I see everything you do. And I'm sorry I added to your worry. Even if you're only finding out now.
I'm trying. I promise I'm trying.
Three Months
I don't have a neat ending for this. I'm not going to wrap it up with "and that's when I decided to change my life" because I've said that before, and honestly, life doesn't work in movie montages.
What I do have is this.
Three months until January. That's real. That's workable. I know what I need to do. Sleep better, eat better, stop poisoning my body when things get heavy. The marble bench will still be there. I don't have to sit on it with a cigarette. Maybe next time I'll just sit there and talk to Dad in my head. That's probably what I should've done in the first place.
Twenty two doesn't feel like anything yet. Maybe it's not supposed to. Maybe twenty two is just the year you sit in the mess, look at it clearly, and start cleaning it up. Not all at once, but one thing at a time.
I'm not okay right now. But I'm not gone either.
Dad, if you're watching. I'm sorry about the cigarettes. I'll do better. I'll make you proud. Just give me a little time.
Written at 22, missing someone who should've been here.