The Little Pot: The Life I Began to Shape

Boston: The Little Pot

The Little Pot: The Life I Began to Shape

I had just finished my PhD in December. Six years had passed in what felt like survival mode, and although I had finally reached the finish line, my body and mind were deeply exhausted. There had been so much to carry — academically, emotionally, mentally — that I didn’t realize how tired I truly was until everything became quiet.

Just before moving to Boston, I spent about two months living with my sister in the Bay Area during the transition. Those months were tiring in their own way. Somewhere during that time, after almost a month of living in San Francisco, I reached out to someone new — Jijo.

There had been a brief encounter before, only a few days, but something about him stayed with me. As we began talking again, I felt something I had never really experienced before. It felt as though he understood me — not just what I said, but the inner workings of my mind. It startled me. Until then, I had gone through life without anyone truly seeing that part of me. In many ways, I had been able to live in a kind of ignorance, never having to examine myself too deeply because no one had asked me to. Meeting him changed something. There was a quiet realization that perhaps another human being could really understand me.

I remember telling him that I wasn’t ready to date. It wasn’t because I didn’t like him. Quite the opposite. I liked him deeply, and perhaps that was exactly why I hesitated.

Looking back now, I wonder whether I was searching for permanence after the end of my PhD. Six years had come to an end, and suddenly everything familiar had disappeared. Maybe I wanted something that would stay. Maybe I was simply exhausted and longing for a place where I could rest.

There was another thought that I rarely admitted, even to myself. My sister was still in the Bay Area, and Jijo lived nearby. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I worried that if I stepped away, they might someday meet and perhaps even choose each other. It sounds irrational now, but at the time it felt real. More than anything, I felt I had met someone who genuinely understood me, and I wasn’t ready to let that possibility disappear. I also believed he deserved someone who would truly value him, and I wanted to be that person.

Our story began with affection, curiosity, hope — and many doubts.

Even today, I sometimes ask myself whether I started dating him because I was unconsciously looking for stability after my PhD, or whether there was something deeper that drew us together. I don’t think I know the answer yet. Perhaps I never will. Maybe the question itself is less important than the life we chose to build afterward.

Then I moved to Boston.

I rented a room in an apartment in downtown Boston. It had three bedrooms, and the other two were occupied by girls much younger than I was. My own room was simple — a new bed that I had bought, a new office chair that I had carefully assembled, a little fridge, an aloe vera plant and a study table left behind by the previous tenant. Before I arrived, she had walked me through the apartment on a video call, showing me every corner, and somehow, when I finally stepped inside, it already felt familiar. I knew where everything belonged.

A few days later I would begin my postdoctoral position, but before work truly started, I made a promise to myself.

My PhD years had been about surviving.

Boston would be about living differently.

One of the first things I bought was a meditation mat.

I also bought a few Buddhist prayer flags. They reminded me of a childhood trip with my parents, my brother, and my sister to Pelling and Gangtok. Even as a child, something about those prayer flags had quietly stayed with me. Around the same period of my life, through the Jay Shetty’s Genius community, I had first been introduced to meditation. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I remembered the feeling of stillness.

Standing at the beginning of a new chapter, I knew I had a great deal to heal. Meditation became the place where I turned inward.

In the corner of my bedroom, I created a small sanctuary. My meditation mat lay on the floor. A pair of weights rested nearby. Every morning I would wake up, meditate, stretch, and exercise before beginning the day. It was the middle of the COVID pandemic, and the outside world had become strangely quiet. That quietness gave me permission to look inward.

I walked through the streets and trails of Boston. I ran regularly. I took photographs of the city. Every day felt like I was gently rebuilding myself, one small habit at a time.

And through all of this, there was Jijo.

Soon after I settled into Boston, we spoke often. I would tell him about my new life, the places I had explored, the trails I had walked, and the routines I was creating. We had already admitted that we liked each other. More than that, there was a feeling that our lives were somehow meant to intersect — that there was something worth pursuing together.

Then one day, Jijo came to Boston.

That was how our story truly began.

But if I look back now, I realize this story is not only about Boston, or about falling in love.

It is about a little pot.

That pot was my life.

I wanted to shape it slowly and carefully, protecting it while it was still fragile. I didn’t want anyone touching it — not my parents, not my sister, not anyone else. I wanted to discover who I was before the world told me who I should be. I imagined nurturing this tiny vessel until one day it became something larger, stronger, and more beautiful than anything I had known before.

I thought moving to Boston meant transplanting myself into a new city.

But transplanting isn’t as simple as moving.

You carry the roots with you.

And I was discovering that some of my roots were injured.

I already knew that imposter syndrome lived inside me. My PhD had left me questioning my abilities more than celebrating them. I hadn’t yet published the paper I had hoped would validate those years of work, and I quietly wondered whether I had really earned the title of scientist.

I had begun my postdoctoral position with a kind and supportive mentor. I was grateful for that. Yet even in those first months, I couldn’t picture the future I wanted. I worked hard, but I couldn’t see where the path was leading. It felt as though I had reached one mountain peak only to find myself standing in another valley, still searching for the direction that truly belonged to me.

As I look back now, I realize that a great deal happened to that little pot I had begun shaping in Boston.

Sometimes I wonder whether I managed to protect it at all.

Not long after my relationship with Jijo began, my family became deeply involved in my life. My mother and my sister had many questions, many opinions, and many concerns about the relationship. I experienced those conversations as unsettling rather than supportive. Instead of feeling that my confidence was growing, I felt my uncertainties growing. At a time when I was already vulnerable, I experienced their involvement as something that made me question myself even more.

I still find myself asking, What was happening then? Why did those interactions leave me feeling so fractured? I don’t know whether I will ever fully understand that period.

Today, we no longer speak. Sometimes I wonder whether the estrangement was inevitable, whether it should have happened earlier, or whether things could have unfolded differently. I don’t yet have answers. Perhaps this journal is not where I need to answer those questions. Perhaps it is simply where I acknowledge that they still exist.

I also recognize that I arrived in Boston already carrying doubts about myself.

I was thirty-one years old. I had not been in a relationship for a long time. Before Boston, there had been someone in Fargo who had briefly entered my life — a connection that left me emotionally shaken. I was still healing from that experience when I met Jijo.

Even after we began dating, I questioned my own judgment.

Can I trust myself to choose a partner?

Should I have spent more time healing before I let someone into my life?

Would I have been a more complete person if I had waited?

Those questions have followed me for years.

At the same time, another story was unfolding. From my perspective, Jijo and I were trying to build something quietly and carefully. Yet my family experienced our distance very differently. They felt that we had hidden our lives from them and pushed them away. My experience, however, was different. I often felt that interactions with them left me less confident, less understood, and less able to grow into the person I wanted to become. Whether those two stories can ever be reconciled, I do not know.

But now, in June 2026, I realize that I want to stop living inside those questions.

I want to return to the pot.

Because the pot was never really about Boston.

It was about becoming someone I could recognize.

I want to decorate that pot with beautiful colors again.

I want it to hold friendships that are intentional, relationships that nourish rather than drain me, and conversations that leave me inspired.

I want it to be filled with books that stretch my mind, dreams that demand courage, and actions that give those dreams shape.

I want my mornings to begin with meditation, movement, gratitude, and strength.

I want to nourish my body with food chosen with care.

I want fitness to be an act of self-respect.

I want to dress intentionally — not for approval, but because I enjoy expressing myself.

I want to walk into work every day with purpose, and I want to come home knowing I spent my day building something meaningful.

I want my evenings to reflect the life I want to create rather than the life that simply happens to me.

I want to choose how I spend my attention, because attention is how a life is built.

Perhaps the pot was never destroyed.

Perhaps it simply gathered dust, fingerprints, and cracks from too many hands trying to shape it before I had finished making it.

If that is true, then maybe my work now is not to build a new pot.

It is to gently clean the one that has been waiting for me all along.

And this time, I will shape it with my own hands.