I Was 22, Heartbroken, Homeless-ish, and Somehow Exactly Where I Needed to Be

At 22, I was heartbroken, in between jobs, fresh out of a live-in relationship, and doing that very glamorous early-20s thing where you pretend you’re ‘figuring life out’ but are actually one forgotten charger switch away from bursting into tears. 

Actually, two suitcases.

Because that was my life for a while. Two suitcases, a few boxes dumped at a friend’s place, a temporary apartment situation, one deeply confusing relationship, a job that felt like a social experiment, two freelance gigs, and one brain (cell) that would not stop asking: Why the hell do you keep making wrong choices?

You know that phase where life doesn’t gently transition? It just picks you up by the collar and says, ‘new chapter, bitch!’

Yeah. That.

I had just come out of a live-in relationship, and staying in the same city felt like it was killing my soul. If you’ve ever broken up with someone and had to exist roaming the same cafés, roads, grocery stores, and breathing the same air, you get it. The city starts feeling like a shared Google Drive you no longer have access to, but somehow still keep getting notifications from.

So I went back home.

Not in a dramatic ‘I’m healing in my childhood bedroom’ way. More in a ‘I cannot afford an apartment alone, and also I don’t know what I’m doing with my life’ way.

Which, honestly, is also cathartic. Just with more relatives asking, ‘Ab kya plan hai?’ [What is your plan now?]

I needed space. I needed to clear my head. I needed a job. I also needed to not spend metropolitan-city rent unless I was actually making metropolitan-city money. Very spiritual. Very practical. Very Indian daughter coded.

And then, within a month, I landed two jobs.

One was back in the same city I had just run away from. The other was in a different city.

Naturally, like a woman committed to character development and questionable plot twists, I chose the one in the same city.

I know. You can judge me.

But in my defence, both jobs were paying the same, and the other city was way more expensive. Romance may make you stupid, but rent makes you practical.

So I went back.

I started hunting for an apartment near my new office, and the area was… let’s just say it had the emotional texture of a bad decision. It felt like a huge step down. Not ‘quirky old neighbourhood’ down. More like ‘will I become a true crime headline?’ down.

There was one apartment I really liked, though. Better neighbourhood and a better chance of me not texting my friends, “if I go missing, start here.”

The only problem? It was far from this office and was going to be under renovation for the next month.

Anyway, because I still needed a roof and could not rely on just potential, I kept looking around the office area. And despite the general, bad-decision energy that made up the neighbourhood, I did find another place there. Just more immediate and only slightly shady. 

I was about to pay the token amount.

And then, because life has a flair for drama, I got a LinkedIn message.

From an editor.

At one of my favourite magazines. 

They were looking for someone like me.

Someone like me.

Do you understand what those three words can do to a 22-year-old girl with a dream, a breakup, and no stable address?

I didn’t pay the deposit. Obviously.

The selection process would take about a month for the magazine. So I did the sensible thing, which was also completely insane: I continued with the job I had, didn’t fully commit to an apartment, and waited to see if this dream opportunity would turn into something real.

Except now I had a new problem. Where was I supposed to live?

Who gives a 22-year-old an apartment for a month? Who trusts a girl with two suitcases, unresolved emotions, and hope that came in the form of a LinkedIn message?

Drumroll.

My ex enters.

Yes, that ex. God bless him (lol)

How he re-entered the picture is a story for another time, because that relationship had its own syllabus. For now, all you need to know is that he helped me find a temporary apartment for a month. 

The flat was his best friend’s investment in a far corner of the city, which was not ideal because I didn’t even like his friend, but desperate times do not care about your social preferences.

Seeking that help was killing me a little. My self-respect was standing in one corner with a clipboard, judging me. But I also couldn’t afford to self-respect my full-time accommodation plan. He was still the person I was most invested in, the one I could reach without guilt and he actually understood the mess I was in.

So I took the help. Not because it was uncomplicated, but because sometimes survival is not aesthetic.

So there I was.

Boxes at a friend’s place.

Two suitcases with me.

Temporary apartment.

New job.

Magazine assignment pending.

Relationship in the air.

Two freelance gigs on the side.

A nervous system running on vibes and Google Calendar.

AND THEN the job I had moved back for started showing its real face.

While it had a decent setup, a coffee machine, and some sense of freedom. Within days, they moved into a bare room with white walls, white desks, white lights, and the emotional warmth of a government waiting room. I had moved cities for this job, and suddenly I was sitting in a corner assigned by someone, trying to convince myself that this was character building.

But the space was only the trailer. The real problem was the culture. I had joined to write, but suddenly I was handling client communication, something  I hadn’t signed up for, while being micromanaged for exactly how I was doing it. Every message, line, and piece of research felt watched.

And then there was the office politics. ‘Let’s take a walk’ never meant fresh air. It meant someone was about to brief me on who to avoid, how to say no to a colleague, and how I, as the junior-most person there, should manage boundaries grown adults had failed to set for themselves.

It felt less like a workplace and more like high school with invoices.

To top it up,  my appointment letter came with a salary lower than what had been promised. And if they couldn’t communicate the salary correctly on paper, how was I supposed to trust the magical three-month hike they had sold me?

There were some perks, though.

I made a great friend there, who was also being professionally tortured like me. There is nothing like trauma bonding in a corporate office.

But the setup? The workflow? The toxicity? The fake promises about hikes? The way juniors were used as pawns?

It was, and I say this with editorial restraint, FUCKED UP.

I was trying to act like this was all part of a plan. It wasn’t.

It was a pickle.

Actually, not even a pickle. It was the entire achaar jar falling off the shelf.

 

And through all of this, my brain’s (last cell) was doing what anxious brains do best: turning every inconvenience into a full-blown investigation.

Should I have stayed home? Should I have chosen the other city? 

Should I have made the relationship work? Should I have taken the apartment?

Should I have thought more carefully? Oh shit, I have not been eating healthy!

Should I have become a person who makes better decisions and drinks more water?

But somewhere in the middle of all this, one Sindhi saying kept coming back to me:

“Na waqt kha pehro, na naseeb kha zyada, kehke kuch milan do aahe, na milando.” [to be in prominent pull quotes, with audio reciting this]

What it simply meant was that everything in life will come at its own time. And what is not meant for you will never arrive, despite you holding on to it tightly. 

This phrase was simple at its best, annoying when anxious and useful when your life is held together by suitcase zips.

Because the saying is not about doing nothing. It’s not asking you to sit down because destiny will Swiggy your dream life to you.

 It’s not an excuse to become passive or careless or spiritually lazy. It’s about understanding the difference between effort and obsession.

Effort is sending the assignment.

Obsession is refreshing your inbox every seven minutes and deciding your entire future is over because no one replied by 4:12 PM.

Effort is looking for apartments.

Obsession is deciding that one bad neighbourhood means you’ve ruined your life forever.

Effort is applying for jobs.

Obsession is mentally punishing yourself for every decision that didn’t immediately turn into a Pinterest board.

Well, I kept doing what I had to do, and slowly, things shifted.

That saying showed me the way, one I badly needed at the time: surrender, but not in a helpless way. More like, ‘Do your part properly. Then stop trying to control your entire Universe with anxiety.’

Slowly, things shifted.

The apartment I had liked earlier? Far better neighbourhood, under renovation! Ring a bell? It became available. 

Because, of course, the month I spent floating around in chaos was the same month it needed to come together.

I put up an ad on Facebook groups for a roommate.

I found a good one. We moved in together.

We stayed together for a good run and she turned out to be an amazing person.

I quit the shitty job and found another job just two kilometres away. Two kilometres. After all the drama, life handed me a commute that was basically a warm apology.

I also continued with my freelance gigs. AND THRIVED 

And slowly, I stopped feeling like my life was a badly edited draft.

Now, looking back, it’s easy to make it sound neat. Like everything happened for a reason. Like the chaos had a clean little moral hiding inside it the whole time.

But when it was all happening to me,  it felt unstable, chaotic and embarrassing… As if everyone got a well-stitched rulebook, while I got a PDF forwarded multiple times, that too, with missing pages. 

At 22, I didn’t know the job I moved back from wouldn’t be the best for me, or perhaps that the apartment I almost gave up on would become my home. I didn’t know the temporary mess was buying me time to land somewhere softer.

That is where the Sindhi saying lands for me. Not as blind faith, but just as a humble reminder that all I can do is my part. Things take their own time, and sometimes what we wish for never occurs because it was never supposed to stay. 

But as a reminder that I can do everything in my power and still not control the final shape of things.

I can apply.

I can move.

I can leave.

I can try.

I can make the call.

I can send the email.

I can pack the suitcase.

These few months weren’t about giving up on effort, but learning when effort has done its job and anxiety has started doing overtime.

Irritatingly, the elders were right. Timing really does have its own plan.