Careful

If there is one word that defines my state of mind since a long long time, it would be ‘careful’. That’s what I am these days. All the time. All day. All night. Whether at work or at home. I am careful. It feels as if I am walking on a glass world around me with everything so fragile that one wrong move on my part and it would all just come crashing down. And then, I wouldn’t have anything to pick up from the ashes. The shards would hurt me hard but I wouldn’t have any place to go because those shards were my world. The one I just shattered with my own incompetence.

The planets revolve around their sun on an invisible orbit. They don’t change their route. They can’t I guess. I feel stuck like them. On that invisible orbit around me. Any wrong path I take, any diversion, any digression and I will tilt the whole balance of the universe against my favour, leading only to destruction. Which means that I tread carefully, very carefully. In everything I do. In everything I say. Everything done is measured. Everything said is to be weighed. In a monologue with myself. The consequences of saying and not saying discussed. The repercussions of things done and not done analyzed. And all this weighing, this measurement, this carefulness is burdensome. So much so that it has started affecting my health, my well-being.  

When at home, I fear doing things that aren’t done in a way they are done. At work, I feel out of place. Last year, I did the mistake of making changes in my personal and professional life at the same time. And I think I have been ‘careful’ since then.  

I was never this ‘careful’. In fact, I was somebody who believed in disruption. Not in a destructive way, in a fruitful productive way. I read somewhere that disruption leads to growth. I used to be someone like that. Someone who believed in doing things their way. Someone who didn’t need to follow the norms. Not anymore though. Now, I am careful. Careful of everything. Careful with everything.