The person who invented mirrors knew that people needed the shock therapy of truth, daily.
You never stop growing. Never stop marveling at how little you knew last year or ten years ago. I wonder if it's just me or everyone feels this way sometimes. Like I'm so different now than I was a few years ago, if I went back in a time machine, I wouldn't recognize myself. Who was that stranger? Why did she think the things she did and do all that was done?
I wrote a post, years ago about loving silently, about the agony of caring for someone who didn't know or seem to care. One of my commenters remarked that perhaps someone felt that way about me. I scoffed, so supremely arrogant in my ability to read people, so confident in my own sensitivity.
I spoke to someone I knew years ago. I had a dim idea that he was a 'nice guy' who was generally nice to everyone and so also, to me. I also realized, equally vaguely that we were friends for awhile and then we weren't. There wasn't a fight, a grand parting of ways but I realize now that that's not everyone's style. Some doors shut very gently and it's years before you realize who walked out of them.
He was in love with me. That thought should send me into a thrill of delight. After all, it is terribly flattering and comforting, knowing that someone gave you that precious emotion. But it doesn't. It makes me uneasy, restless. It's not that I treated him badly. It's that I was so caught up in trying to get my life to go on plan, protecting myself from anyone or anything that could derail it, that I never realized what was right in front of my eyes, every single day for months.
I always thought of myself as a good listener, but it seems I must not be. I listen, when it's someone and something and in a way that I'd like to hear. But real listening is unfiltered, nonjudgmental, unencumbered by ego, isn't it? He let me know enough of times. Not in wild, flourishy strokes which may have been my delusional idea of love at the time (well, perhaps even till very recently). But in quieter but definitive ways. The message seeped in occasionally but since it didn't fit my plan, I found a way to not make it be by focusing on what I thought of as his indifference and commitment-phobia. I don't even know if he was commitment-phobic but should that have mattered? Knowing someone cares for you, even if it may not amount to marriage, is not the worst realization in the world. And I might have treated him more gently. I really should have.
I'm so determined, so focussed, so driven by what I want. The world tells me that's a good thing and rewards me with achievement at most times. But I'm only now realizing what I've given up all the time I've been doing this. I don't know how many people or situations or things I've missed simply because they got in the way. I have no idea how many emotions, dreams and gentle words I've run over in hobnailed boots because I was chasing something else on the horizon.
I told him how sorry I was but he just smiled and said it was okay, that he had enjoyed knowing me. Really, I asked him, I'm so bossy and compulsive, must have been even worse back then. He smiled, ever so gently and said, no I never thought so. Then he asked me if I remembered the walks we used to go on. Who was I back then, who was that girl and what made people fall so much in love with her?
Realizing you were wrong, that you're as capable of cruelty is an uncomfortable realization. But it's not unbearable. Perhaps that's growing up. I also always imagined that growing older was like a race, where you ran to a definitive finish line and then there was no more left to run. Turns out, there'll always be further to go on this and I don't have to do it all running. Stopping to look around might be a good thing for me to do.
This is to slowing down. To the poetry of beautiful walks and the excruciating gentleness of people who preserved the memories I was too busy to remember. And to the richness of life, always learning, ever growing.
Another Reverb10 prompt that I'm not really feeling. Maybe there are just too many of them crammed into a month and too similar to each other. It's boring to keep writing about the same thing in different words.
It has been a year (and more) of learning. I don't mean that in an 'every minute we live, we learn' way. It's actually like I enrolled in the School of Life, taking Remedial lessons for having missed out on all the great stuff in the past decade.
The learning comes not from experiences, but from reflecting on them. And things continue to happen at such a rapidfire rate, I'm still making sense of them. What I feel I've 'learnt' now comes from stuff that happened months, even years ago.
I've learnt that the person I was a decade ago was a much better one than the woman I worked so hard to turn into in these past ten years. Stronger, nicer, warmer, more alive and definitely better. I've learnt that that girl hasn't vanished completely. Most of all, I've learnt that I can't go back to being seventeen and neither can I realistically wipe out the 10-odd years that came after. But I'm learning that I can build a new me with the best of both people since they both were, essentially me. The joy and wonder and warmth of the teenage me with the confidence and stability and independence of the adult me. I guess all the lessons I'm learning have to do with that larger idea.
How I'm choosing to apply it is to not be apologetic or sorry about who I am. There's stuff I do and think and feel that isn't cool or convenient or mature or expected. It doesn't 'fit' with my image. But those make me, me, much more than the approval and admiration of everyone else. I'm choosing to hold on to my phobias, my fears, my unique idiosyncrasies even if everyone else in the world thinks they belong in the last century. They're mine to nurture or work through at will.
Another Reverb 10 prompt that made me think and think and come up with an answer I feel is less than satisfactory. But then again, I think the purpose of this exercise is to engage in such questions and be surprised by what comes forth.
I first thought these should be the happiest moments and that gave me enough of grief (!) since there have been a wonderous number of them, especially in the second half of the year. But I realized I need to stop feeling guilty about that. Okay, so that's the touchy-feely Chicken-Soupy bit of it out of the way.
As I started to type out this post, it also occurred to me to wonder whether happy moments are the only ones in which I feel alive. Undoubtedly the first six months of the year were shrouded largely in gloom. I felt like everything was slipping away, not just out of control but out of reach – health, family, friendship, career, creativity. Every single thing that mattered to me was vanishing into a black hole. I felt like I was being stripped away, layer by painful layer and what would be left of me in the end?
This was among the first things I talked to the boy about. He found it difficult to imagine having a crisis of identity of the sort I was describing but he was wise enough to conclude that it indicated our differences not my problems.
I don't quite know if I felt alive in those moments. Actually it felt more like what I had thought of as my life was just flaking off, chipping off, peeling off in ugly, painful ways, the ugliest, most painful sensation being the fact that they came off so easily. I think this poem from my past captures the feeling perfectly. That time was about one person leading a crowd of others. This time, it was true of every single emotion, way of being, person and relationship. A winding down, a closing out, an approaching full stop.
And then there was life. Just as it is hard for me to understand completely what happened in my head in the first six months, it's equally difficult to sort out what's been happening since then.
Mornings are usually my favorite time of the day. I've stayed awake through nights often and the subtle start of each day is always one that lifts my spirits. It's still an odd feeling, sometimes having to go to sleep right after that. But the glory of the moment hasn't been lost.
Then there are specific moments when I'm swimming, a more recent occurance. I usually swim a number of laps, going one way freestyle or breast stroke. At the other side, I'm usually out of breath so I flip onto my back and float back, my legs gently pedalling and my arms loosely drifting along the sides of my body. The sky is usually a pale greyish-brown, the colour of ash as it falls off burning paper. I often see crows flying in V-formation overhead. I can't hear the usual sounds overground, of voices, car horns and daily life. But I can hear splashing, bubbles floating by as other swimmers splash past, muffled sounds which is what water does to voices. And it feels like the water washes away the confusions and strains overlaying my thought process. Then the top of the club building comes into sight, which is when I know I'm nearing the edge of the pool and need to be careful not to bump my head. And as I touch the side and drift up to vertical place, I am ready to turn around and swim another breath-challenging lap. Or walk out of the pool into whatever waits for me next.