I'm whatever the opposite of spiralling out of control is

 I've always lacked discipline. Sure, I'd never miss a day of school and I'd spiral into anxiety if I wasn't on ground for the assembly by 7.30 am, but that had more to do with escaping a toxic home and living with overly punctual grandparents. Nothing there to do with my scintillating personality. 

When I grew into an adult (read: turned 18) one of my first brushes with discipline was fixing my diet, and in the process also my PCOS. But that wasn't part of my personality either. It was the frugal lifestyle of hostel living which made chips, coke and cakes unaffordable. Inevitably, I went back to PG-cooked food (read: watery dal/sabzi and thick rotis). I began hating eating so much that in no time I was down from 80kg to 68kg. 

My personality really shone when I started earning enough to binge drink every Friday. I built the capacity of a tanker. No drink was off limits, no amount too little. Drunk? I wanted to be drunk-er. Drunk-er? Let's do DRUNKEST. Coming home past 1 am every weekend was the norm. 

And then I joined a gym to fix my lifestyle. So naturally, I bunked it half the week to escape to the nearest Barista or McD. When the weighing scale at the gym showed 67, I treated myself to pizza and I don't think I ever went back to the gym again. What iz an discipline?

Safe to say, I've had no control over my taste buds or lifestyle in general. 

And then my father-in-law fell sick with cancer. So I gave up my job. For how long? Who knows? Will my savings outlive me? Scared, but we'll cross when that bridge comes. For a while it seemed I had reason to take a break from work. So I slept at odd hours. Woke up, read something, watched something else, glued myself to the screen at all hours. Again, freefalling. No sense of control.

Eventually my father-in-law died. And there was still no option to back to work because I was pregnant. A week later even the baby died. What was the purpose of living any longer? Unprecedentedly, a lot of life suddenly happened. Or was a lot of it just taken away?

It felt like someone just turned the lights out in my airy, spacious home and locked us in. I slept through the day. Chewed on something to get physically better. Pretended to take care of myself. For what though? Who knows?

But last week the fog lifted. I stopped eating chips at midnight. That's no time to munch on chips! 

I stopped randomly pandering to my tastebuds and ordering food from Zomato. There's dinner at home! 

No post dinner Giani's icecream. Just because there's an app on your fingertips doesn't mean you'll eat anything, anytime!

That sudden urge to pick up the canvas and paint at midnight? Do that on the weekend! Respectable people sleep at this hour!

It's okay, I'll start work from 11 am. Why?! What's special about 11, start now!

 And so the opposite of spiralling has begun. What stage of grief is this? Is it over? Or is it lurking around the corner, ready to creep in when I'm looking away? Who knows?

I feel like I've stopped spiralling, I'm in control. But that hypothetical situation where I'm sitting in a hypothetical job interview and they ask me about my career break? Yeah, even hypothetically I break down when I tell them the truth. Maybe this grief is here to stay forever? Who knows?