What a slow-moving year with many slow-moving moments. All the hardest things we moved through took the darndest time. I started the year anticipating changes. What I discovered was growth, a flourishing garden of opportunities, a voice to place myself in trustworthy positions, mastering the art of decision making (a work in progress), the time to sharpen my loyalties with myself and with my husband, good choices, smooth movement, and steady maturation.
I was quieter when the world froze still. I eagerly scuffled to work three times a week over six weeks when the planet seemed empty. I didn't move too much, nor too wildly, but I was thankful there was still a purpose for me. While folks were watering their plants and baking their bread and puzzles had sold out everywhere, I tried desperately and very quietly to hold hope in my previous apartment. The love/hate relationship I had cultivated over the past year was wearing painfully thin, and it no longer served the convenience it once sold me on, as it grew less and less cute by the minute. It was a very silent struggle, I didn't want to complain, I didn't want to think of how mine was tougher than others because it wasn't. But when I learned the roaches were making themselves comfortable, and this invisible sponge of tension began to expand taking up all the room inside, covering the smallest spears of the sun that would try to seep through each morning, and then almost tried to lock us out of our very own "home", it felt the best-timed decision to move forward and move quickly. Within two weeks it was over, and by the grace of God, we were somewhere better. And now I am more in love with home. I love the two hour total clean, I love the big, breezy and blue balcony I kiss goodnight every night, I love the air, the light and all the corners, and the cloudy grey wall behind the TV. My patience paid off well.
Work was tough, I cried some days about it and that is rare. There was one day I couldn't get out of bed. I ranted to my friends and we argued some, about what the right thing was to do and what right means to me and what right means to you. My gut told me life will go on for others, just as it did for me, and I did what I knew best (against my husband's advice) and I wrote a long and large letter. I felt free, and in the following week, the solution came like a quick clean slice. I look back and think about what I'd learned. Speak your mind if something isn't working, don't feel sorry for everyone, we all have the power to change, and things move as quickly as you do - so do something now rather than later.
Friends were distant, I was ok with it - always have been. But much later it felt weirder. I wanted them nearer to me, I wanted desperately to laugh and desperately to talk, to make up for all the silence months before. Some friends, namely one clashed with me the hardest. They found something they believe in, and at first, I encouraged it, but then it became all too confusing. I somehow became the opposition when I questioned the logic. Sometimes I do play devil's advocate, it makes for interesting conversation. I like to shift perspectives, I like to learn new things. But it became relentless and futile after some time. I didn't know which direction we were heading but it never seemed to end well. And then one day, only recently, I had a troubling experience at the police station to report a theft. It was a confronting ordeal. I left feeling positive I had just been bullied into thinking I had done something wrong, and my friend felt it was necessary to offer me the perspective that denied me my right to feel what I felt. And I was accused of being a victim, and I felt it was audacious, considering that's not a role I've ever felt comfortable playing. That one instance turned the tables, and now she is all-knowing and I am as dumb as they come. It inspired a lot of difficult conversations with different people about what we know and how we grew to know it. I learned very quickly what I already thought before but ignored; some people will not see you, and that's discouraging and disappointing, but I am okay to leave this year without the strength of that once blossoming relationship because I deserve to be seen at the very least. How else is love reciprocated?
But speaking of being seen, how hypocritical of me, for this year it seemed I stopped seeing myself. I had a minor surgery somewhere in the middle of this year and I remember feeling really outside myself during the entire time. It felt like I had to be someone different during this time so that I really didn't have to understand what was happening. I reached out to a new community of people thinking I could find myself floating somewhere among them and could retrieve the past me, but I didn't. For months I carried on strong but unfamiliar. I told my dear friend Shiffa that when this was all over and laid to rest perhaps I will remeet myself again, and fall in love with this new girl I had become, but all those months it felt I'd come dressed as someone else, and the previous me still hasn't shown up. I wonder where she went... I'd like to think this coming year I will get closer to finding her, not to try and jump back into her skin, but just to say hi. For a fleeting second, she came melting back one late night, and in her voice, and in her old way and words, she wrote a long painful and pointless letter. It was one heartbreaking second and then she vanished. She didn't stay long enough for me to inspect what she's been up to, but I resented her impertinent visit. I wish instead she had come to tell me something worthwhile, but it's so like her to dwell on old unuseful times. I recognised at that point that maybe the oldest me is the lowest of me. But that makes me really sad, so I'll let it pass without heavy thought. I tore the letter up and buried it deep in the trash, for I didn't want to cast any aged and expired spells. It felt very grown of me and I delighted in that for a few days after.
Do I feel older? Do I feel wiser, more established, more assured, more informed? In some ways, I feel less so, but I think that's a sign of growing wisdom; to realise how little we understand, and how much more there is left to know. I am hoping to slow it down next year, to simplify. I'd love to focus on work when work is there but to not work as much as I did today. I'd love to find new feet in new places, meet old books, eat in more and eat out less. I wish to amplify my newfound voice in other spaces, I want to care even deeper for everyone I care so much for already and think less of those I don't care for at all. I want to laugh more with my husband, tell a few jokes in Punjabi, wear more dresses, and save more money.
But until next time,
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