Comfort and Familiarity.

A cup of chai for comfort? Or familiarity?

This past week, I have been trying to walk the line of comfort and familiarity. The line feels blurry, hazy, cloudy.

Are you one of those people who likes their chai just so? For me, it’s a tin box of Assam tea I reach for while sleep is still clinging to me, rinse out my bright yellow morning-tea mug, the sound of my kettle bubbling away while wakefulness tries to get its tendrils across my brain gently. It’s a dash of milk, and two little spoons of brown sugar. The milk is lactose-free (skeptical if it really is, or is it just placebo effect?) and there is no real belief that the brown sugar is any better than the white. But, this little routine is familiar.

And over the last week, I put my mind and body outside of this familiarity as I spent some time on the road with part of my family, and found myself in unfamiliar places. A sweet little Airbnb, in coastal Karnataka, with a nice sit-out and two little kittens scratching at the glass doors to be let in. And I woke up in this unfamiliar bed, padded to a kitchen that was nice but unfamiliar. And found that I missed my yellow mug, my blue kettle, my gray-green tea tin with its little green spoon, my little milk carton and brown sugar. But I carried instant tea. For starters I will never stop at the wonder of what is simply available to me in the name of convenience in this world. Add hot water, and I now have tea? Why, thank you! The “tea” is barely a hint of masala or tea for that matter, but it’s a hot beverage that feels tea adjacent, and with the sun trying to find its way through a canopy and dancing around and sparkling its way to me while I sit on a swing and sip on this steaming hot beverage, while I listen to bird song?

Comfort.

The hand I have been dealt with is a brain that thrives on pattern recognition. And when I can recognise it, it chooses to interpret it as safety. It’s taken a lot of work to look at this mostly hot water with a hint of tea as comfort and not a slight to my very being that I do not have my exact cup of tea with me. A therapist once told me I have a very high “discomfort intolerance”. The therapist and I parted ways, but this has stayed with me. So much of what was told to me, about me, didn’t sit well. But this? It landed, and dug deep. There may have been a point where I would have painstakingly packed a bit of my tea leaves in a little ziploc, and my brown sugar in another one, and also packed my carton of lactose-free milk. But maybe, growth is picking up a pack of instant tea instead.

My familiarity does give me comfort. My tea sits on the same blue coaster my sister gave me, in the same spot on my floor cushion, while I write in my journals (yes, plural) in the same order every day. But the real test has been in finding comfort in the unfamiliar. Trying to untangle the threads of familiar and comfortable feels like untangling these two threads from 3 balls of wool that a cat has gone to town with while unsupervised. I want to throw my hands up in frustration and say no, I want my routine, I want what’s familiar, give me my comfort in this specific way. But there is something to be said for the part of my brain that is stubborn and okay sitting with. I hate discomfort, but I also love order so I will sit and patiently untangle these threads until I have neatly ordered wool by the end. So now I have learned to sit with the discomfort and untangle the threads of what is causing the discomfort.

I notice the steel glass, and how the curve at the top is just like my yellow mug that makes taking a sip feel good. The tea is light, and I like my tea light and without too much milk. There’s no added sugar and it doesn’t taste as saccharine as white sugar. The sunlight filtering to me is just like when my upturned face meets the morning sun at home. The bird song feels different, and I want to discern with excitement all the new notes I’m hearing. And the spark of joy in my chest when I hear the call of the greater coucal (officially my favourite bird, please never wonder if I am an old lady, I am one), and just like home, I can hear it but not see it. And just like home, I expectantly search for the rust red wings gliding by and say “I hear you even if I can’t see you”.

Somewhere down the line, the hope is that newness feels comfortable. One day, I hope that seeking the unfamiliar feels comfortable.