An unexpected partnership
By: Pallavi Nath
Tags: Lifehacks, Life Lessons, Courage, Fatsopodcast, Fear

I remember when I was thinking about telling my husband that our marriage was no longer working for me and I wanted out.

I was beset by thoughts of the worst case scenarios — not just about not finding love again but also about having no financial or physical support for a while, or perhaps forever.

And yet here was my heart saying, “I can’t continue this way; this is no longer a good space for me.”

I was in Andretta at the time, spending three weeks at The Mirage, hoping the hills and the solitude and the distance from home would help me clear my mind. That particular afternoon, I was attempting to read Freedom from the Known by Jiddu Krishnamurti, for the fifth time. I always got stuck on Chapter 5, “Fear,” but, somehow, that time, I managed to finish it.

The chapter left me with an insight.

What if the fear never goes away? What if it’s always going to be there, and my action doesn’t begin once it’s conquered but while it’s there? What if the thing I need to do is what feels right for me, despite being petrified that this is a huge mistake?

And my answer was clear: it was the only way.

And so I did it.

I stepped out of the marriage and I moved on. Life continued; some of my fears did come true, and there were also many things that I did not expect would happen but that I have immense gratitude for. While I cannot, even today, after five years, say with conviction that the divorce was the best thing that happened to me, I do know that I am glad I no longer feel the way I did while married. To me, now, it was just a choice — and one I made given my reality at the time and the best version I could be, then.

It is clichéd, but courage really isn’t the absence of fear. It is doing what feels right while acknowledging that one is afraid. And sometimes being courageous works brilliantly; sometimes it’s a mistake and you’ve got to deal with the consequences and pick up the pieces. Now I don’t see how to live without courage and consequently how to live without the fear that comes with it. It’s just that, as you keep doing it, though it doesn’t become easier, it does become more of an “Ah, it’s that time in my life, again.”

You see, the one thing I have realised is that I cannot live in the confines of what society has prescribed for or expects from me. I am fat, forty, divorced, a woman working independently to earn her keep, and whatever life’s challenges have been - I am not beat, I am not subservient. I don’t know what being careful is all about — and I’m just not fucking compromising.

After this year especially, I am going to call out people in my life or people whose lives intersect with mine if I find them being irresponsible in their behaviour. Because I refuse to enable the shoddy treatment that people seem to think they can hand out. And the fears are many: how I will be seen, losing the support I could have, others judging me, not having a network, blah, blah, blah.

On the flip side, if I’m irresponsible, I will hold myself accountable and do what I need to, to make amends — again despite the fear of judgement, the fear of being seen as weak, the fear of disapproval, the fear of my apology being rejected even. Courage really goes both ways. And there just isn’t space in the world anymore for tolerating unkindness to each other.

I said in Season 2, episode 2, on fatphobia, that I now see fear as my burning desire to survive, live and thrive, turned outwards and focused at the not having of it. I’d like to extend that to saying that courage is my same desire to survive, live and thrive turned inwards and focused on doing what needs to be done.

I see courage and fear as just two sides of a coin, just an unexpected couple that has survived millennia, together.