Seven Months of Being Away
In the last couple of months, every post that I’ve written on this blog has started with an apology as to why I haven’t been writing. A sort of consolation to no one but myself that if I can give a valid reason, I can escape from the fact that writing is no longer the main focus of my life, that I don’t live through words any more and that my time is not mine to spare.
Already this post is weighing down on me. I don’t check my stats anymore. I don’t log in to read other bloggers’ posts. I just…don’t.
If there’s a valid explanation as to why this has happened, I will find out as I write. Maybe some things never change – I still need to write to understand, to draw semblance and to make sense.
May
May was the month of new beginnings. I can see in retrospect that a lot happened in May and I just coasted through it all. I didn’t stop to appreciate or be grateful. I was glad to have a routine. I started my first real job and got an office and a phone and a name plate. But then I needed more because I wasn’t satisfied.
June
June brought with it a whole new change and my beloved’s presence every day when I woke up. This domestic bliss came with a new wind and evened the odds in my life. I begin to thrive on my time at home with my person but I hated everything else I was expected to do outside of that. I found myself drowning under expectations of a job that back then I could see no way of getting better at. For the first time in my life, I felt like I took on something that I was going to fail at miserably and there was nothing I could do to succeed. Tears were spilled almost every other day. Arguments spewed because I couldn’t accept that I made the wrong choice after being forewarned. The only part of June that made me feel any sense of self worth was that I was making money now and I could afford things.
July
Come July I started doing what I do best when things don’t go my way, I run. I explored other avenues and tried to destroy every thing that I had built in the last couple of months. I decided to throw away things that were in my lap, that I had committed to, in order to find a workplace that didn’t drive me raven mad. July was a month of absolute indecision. I tried writing in July but abandoned it because nothing was close to normal and I had no time to reflect.
August
Fall came around and there seemed to be hope. I reached a point of comfort at my job that I didn’t think was attainable. The feeling of composure with my surroundings set in. I felt like I was going to be okay. Right around this time, my world began settling into a routine that try as I could I couldn’t shake. There was no way to sit down write. I watched a Drake Doremus movie I waited so long for, just so it would move me to write. I started and stopped. The resistance was too strong.
September
With September, came responsibility. It dawned on me that I am where I am and this is the best I could do with what I was given. September brought with it a sweeping calm that I needed. I could sleep at night. I could wake up and face the day. Things started to look up in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I was…happy. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that happiness does not stir me to write. I even stopped making feeble attempts to write. Nothing mattered, I was happy and I needed it to last.
October
That feeling of contentment carried forward into October. Nothing special happened in October – and that’s how I like it. My person and I began to follow a pattern that made a lot of sense. Our time together was now limited and therefore precious. We could discuss our days, bounce ideas off of each other, make dinner and relax. This was exactly how I envisioned our life. I couldn’t ask for more. A spell was cast on us and I couldn’t dare to break it. I also made my first big purchase in October and for the life of me I couldn’t justify it even though if you knew what it was you would say it was absolutely justified. I hate spending money.
November
November was a big highlight of this year. I traced my way back to my roots. While it was overwhelming and a tad bit nerve wracking at the same time, it was much needed. I have two lives and I have to make every effort to keep them parallel to each other. I realized that people love you regardless of how far you are from them or how little you’ve given to them in return or how feeble an attempt you’ve made to keep in contact. I was touched. It broke my heart to leave. I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn’t expecting any of those emotions at all. It took me a while to come back even though I was already here.
December
My favourite time of the year has rolled around and here I am, snuggled in an over-sized sweater, with my cup of coffee and snow that has half covered my windows. I hear the clock ticking and I must be on my way soon. I woke up today feeling like I did when the urge to write would make me drop everything else I had on hand. I forgot how I loved that feeling. December is keeping me on my toes – in a good way. We have a tree and our first ornament and I don’t know how life together gets any better than this. I really don’t.
The Year Is Coming To A Close
The year is coming to an end and I have things to say.
It’s not fair that any kind of real life advancements that I may have come at the expense of my blog. I would like to change that in the coming year because time and again I’ve valued how much of a catharsis this has been right here. Always.
I miss people more than I thought I would and what hurts is that I know not when I can see them again. I am constantly seeing through the new people I meet. They’re all the same. I’ve always met them before. I don’t think I’m an introvert but the lack of interesting people around me forces me to retreat and find comfort in my thoughts.
The year is ending and I’m coming full circle. Last year at this time I was on a very different high. I was getting Freshly Pressed and attention on this blog was at an all-time high. I was moving to a country I dreamed about living in every single day for the last two years. I was swept into a life I knew I wanted and everything about my existence up to this point paled in comparison.
I got everything I desired and it wasn’t enough for me.
I spent a big part of this year realizing that my inherent reluctance towards embracing happiness in the little ways it knocks at my door is not something I can do away with. It’ll go with me like an anchor around my foot. I know not under which ocean does the key to it lie and to be honest I’m not going to dive in order to find it. Especially because I don’t know how to swim.
It’s December and I like this month and there’s snow on my blog and there are shimmery lights in the populated parts of the city I live in and I am here and I feel loved.
The year is coming to a close and I’m feeling like a soft blanket has been wrapped around me and I’m safe and ready for the year to come.
Strange Things Are Happening
“Looking around, do you see ruins? That was to be expected. He who lives in the world of words does not get along with things.”
-Sergei Dovlatov
The strangest things are happening.
I sit down to write and it feels like I’m doing this for the first time. I’m not too perturbed; this has happened before.
I try to occupy little space because I know what it does to others when I want too much. I try to be me and then I try to be another me from another time and place. The back and forth, the trial and error, the near impunity of knowing I can choose and yet that I’m bound in ways I’ll never be able to unravel completely – it’s all so strange, you know.
I think I admitted to myself a while back – and it was the most difficult thing in the world – that my unhappiness is not cause of my circumstances, it’s not what others do to me, it’s not about what I don’t have and what I continue to pine for, it is in fact something that I can’t escape from. I’m unhappy with me.
So no matter where I go, no matter the continents I cross, the places I go to seek knowledge or the ones I choose to give my love – I will take this box of unhappiness with me. It fell the other day and it cracked and spilled my unhappiness everywhere. I could not make sense of it. I was there and my unhappiness took a form, it hovered all around me, it settled before me and made me see that what I said had nothing to do with anyone but me.
It’s strange you know, realizing that you have to keep something like that inside you at all times. That it can suddenly surface and throw off all your carefully crafted plans. That you are inherently sad and it can’t ever be changed.
I walk by myself in the cold every day. I feel the chill settle onto the corners of my mouth and the tip of my nose. Sometimes the wind blows my hair to curl around my neck, the stranglehold of it is never subdued by how ticklish it feels. I’m still more afraid than sensitive to it. I often look at my feet and I see the arches my lover adores very much. How is it that I never looked at them the same way?
The point is that happiness is – as people and books might have already told you – a matter of choice and that we all walk around with in-built sadness. The fear of it showing up unannounced at 3AM is what unnerves me. I know all too well that to be happy I have always paid a price. I keep the invoices tucked away in a dark drawer in the recesses of my brain, and it’s strange how sometimes they all decide to come along and collect their dues at the exact same time.
Sloppy Etymology 