Earthquake - Little Boots

I can't really think of a title for this post, hence my using the title of the song that I'm listening to RIGHT NOW. It's quite an apt song though, as part of the chorus lyrics are: ' Every little earthquake/Every little heartbreak, going unheard/Every little landslide/Catch it in my hand, I won't say a word.' I feel like this MA year, I have just been sort of burnt-out and struggling greatly to manage any sort of original/independent thought.

Yet - o cruel irony! - I recently realised that I would actually quite like to become an English lecturer. Don't confuse that with 'feel I have the right to' or 'have absolutely decided to.' I need regular routine - going out of it seems to annihilate me. Despite it being a full 12 days since I handed in the two final MA essays remaining, I have struggled to get through The Discovery of India. There is an utter failure of time management happening. Ideally, I should be sailing through, pursuing the stacks of secondary reading that have waited patiently on my desk for two months. Yet spreading through the heart of everything like a stain, is fear. Fear has destroyed me for the last three weeks or so. Where am I going wrong in building friendships? What are my career prospects? Do I have any real skills?

I never thought I would write the following, but worrying about my professional future has kept me awake at night for quite a few nights recently. The sleep deprivation hastens the spread of the stain. Seeping through everything, is the incessant chorus of questions: where is the meat of my dissertation? When will that quiet faith that my supervisor has in me, apparently unshakeable, be realised?

I need to leave my parents' home, and yet historically this is a terrible time for people in my position. Young people like myself, jobless, nearing the end of full-time education with looming icebergs of debt that would freeze anyone to the core... This only reinforces all the oldest and most noxious fears that overwhelm and engulf, like carbon monoxide, until nothing else remains. The fears of failing, of proving them right - that would make me lose a lot, maybe even all, faith in the world. It's very hard to maintain hope and remain poised when you live a concealed life, frequently fearing personal attacks from your family. When they all form a consensus and you disagree, guess who's paying? Less than an hour ago, yet another moment which should have been trivial snowballed into farce. I feel that perhaps I need to stop responding to anything but the simplest of questions.

Foolishly, I voiced my objections to being repeatedly sworn at yesterday by my brother for having the temerity to - wait for it - be in the same room as him whilst he played Nintendo Wii! As far as I could tell, he wanted my seat (swivel chair) rather than the stool he was on. For that, he thrust his middle finger in my face, called me a bitch, told me 'get the fuck out' and similar, and feigned hitting me with his controller repeatedly.

Am I wrong to be upset about that? If I had been rude to him when I came in, it might perhaps have been warranted. I'm sure I told him to shut up, or get lost, and probably swore too, in response. My tone with him is automatically sharp - the product of my second-eldest sister's influence and the long and bitter history I have with him. Yet I think I had a right to be upset at being sworn at repeatedly for no apparent reason. He swore at me again today when I mentioned that I wanted to watch something at 9 p.m., 20 minutes beforehand. Hence my complaining to my mother. She was utterly shit as usual, making the usual empty promises ' 'When he's finished his exams, I won't take anything from him.' Right, great for you, mum - how does that make any difference to now? I got rather irritated at her, and also asked her not to embroil me in any further 'situations' with my father, something she's done a lot recently. Since I am studying Indian nationalism to some extent (Gandhi and Nehru), I am reading nationalist writings and my parents (my dad in particular) seem to feel the need to tell me what to think. I don't take very well to that, especially since I have read the very words of the people they claim to know better about. Unfortunately my parents, my dad especially, don't really do 'listening' or 'calm, rational engagement.' Yesterday I was dismissed as having 'fixed views' for having pointed out that there is no evidence to support certain conspiracy theories about 1984. The sheer fucking irony, the injustice of it, stung me. I could not stop myself muttering 'Fixed opinions, me? That's rich!' though I luckily wasn't heard as my dad continued in his burst of self-important defensiveness, just like a spoilt child.

Both my father and brother are spoilt children, and my mother simply encourages it (like so many Indian women!). Having drawn the parallel angrily, I refused to say anything more and retreated upstairs, coming down for the +1hr repeat. Good fucking God, halfway through I heard my mother and brother discussing me during an ad break. I burst into the kitchen as my brother reiterated a belief he has embraced (with 0 evidence) that I have somehow destroyed the family Internet. As usual, I wasn't being listened to and I returned to my programme. I hoped it was going to end there, only to receive, 10 minutes from the end, a deputation consisting of my brother working his best 'I'm contrite, me' face and my eldest sister radiating such a powerful wave of patronising pomposity, it was all I could do to keep my eyebrows under control.

Despite my making it clear in a variety of ways that I found the proceedings utterly contemptible, my sister was not to be deterred. I had to succumb, but there was a feeling of desperation of me, which came out both verbally and non-verbally. What exactly did they want from me? The black humorist within wryly noted the mounting, ill-concealed aggression in my sister's voice as she kept telling me that my brother was sorry and that it took genuine guts to come and apologise. 'Such guts that you had to lead him here like a cow on a lead?' I thought, but didn't say. My brother's not-so-concealed aggression also increased as I failed to be a good little girl and take my cues. I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to be doing, or what exactly they wanted from me, as the issue I was directly addressing - the Internet - was apparently not the issue at hand.

Having achieved the objective (which it would seem was wrenching the all-important acknowledgement of my brother's apology from me and making me feel like I was the one in the wrong), my brother mawkishly pronounced that 'I'm prepared to be your brother if you act like my sister.' Yet the mawkishness was tempered by the hint of something vastly more sinister - what the fuck does he mean by that? That I should act more like a regular girl (i.e. my mother and to some extent, my sisters) by treating him like the centre of the universe? He also swiftly regained his composure by admonishing me for talking about 'family issues' to my friends. He claimed that he didn't care if I talked about him to my friends, but that he kept family things within the family. This was of course a most inviting bandwagon for my sister to jump on - and she did. I said that of course I was going to talk about things that concerned me to my friends, and I didn't see why I shouldn't. The fact that I didn't see the problem with that was apparently indicative of my own problems (or somesuch), she claimed. Horror swam freely through me at this point; I provided whatever acquiescence was required of me, sat rigid as she kissed me and unwillingly kissed her cheek. I then feigned desperation to watch the rest of my programme, but the horror was rife in me.

Now, tone is everything. Had they asked me to refrain from badmouthing them to my friends, I might've reacted better. Yet the way they exchanged glances, the way they talked about 'keeping it in the family,' - 'They are outsiders and they will never be your family,' and the neat détournement of my contention that I have a right to talk about my own life to my friends - all that fills me with horror. Because (bad grammar!) it is not about them fearing for their reputations - it is about control. That refrain is an eternal one, one that I have heard ever since I became a 'problem.' Another sinister remark: when I declared that my brother's assertion that I somehow broke our Internet was not based on any sort of evidence, you know what my sister said? She looked at me and said 'What is this, a court? Listen to you - 'facts' and 'evidence'. You sound like a gori!' My brother, alert to the dog-whistle, then seized the opportune moment and furthered the charge of treason by mentioning that I speak to 'outsiders'.

It just all left me appalled. My sister's tone was oh-so-reasonable, as if we live in the sort of parallel household where I can actually assert my opinions and be listened to, and dissent can be organically resolved. Bullshit - bullshit was what it all was. I had at no point asked for an apology, much less an apology for the sake of an appearance of domestic peace; what I wanted was for my parents to DO THEIR FUCKING JOB and make my brother query whether it is normal to become so aggressive whilst playing Mario Kart, and whether it is acceptable to use that language full stop, let alone with your older sister. When the horror permeated through me, however, I felt a re-emergence of one of my few 'good' fears. This particular fear urges me to do what I can to stop myself being subsumed and taken over, to protect my awkward and inconvenient views in whatever manner possible. I knew then that I would have to write about this, and I know I have to write much more about these things, because people for the most part cannot and will not, give me succour.