Why am I here? Who is reading this? No one should be reading this. In any case, I'm not the same girl anymore so you may as well leave those expectations at the door. I don't have the same dreams. Life has caught on and how. I don't even know the woman I was, say, last year. Perhaps this is a sign of growth. Perhaps. 

Many things I prayed for came true in this time. I think I have managed to come home to myself; several delusions that made up my formative years have been parted with. Some parts of me have been left behind too, along with some people, who I believed, made me who I am. I am not the summation of the people I love/loved. I simply am. This knowledge is both scary and freeing. There is more peace - the real kind. 

There is no aching, burning love. There is love, however; and it resides in the books on my bedside shelf, in the morning breeze when I cycle, the hours watching HP over and over again, in Mary Oliver's words, in Nam's house, and in her heart. There's relief in knowing that my family survived the pandemic, that my friends are okay even if they are sad sometimes, that I am okay even if I am sad sometimes. That those who I once knew very well and don't know anymore are okay too. There is much to be grateful for. 

Fiction always helps. I need it now more than ever. Most people I know make small of it but we create fictions of our own lives to make it more digestible. Storytelling is a huge part of everyday conversation. 

The water cooler is humming beside me. Gurlging a slow watery song. Crying and peeing. The excitement of the day has abated. Daadi is snoring too. Papa, the lion, has retreated to his cave and my mother's slippers will softly slap the floor only one or two times more now. Last checks of the day. "Is the main door shut?" "Do you want anything?" I am sitting on my chair with my laptop looking very busy shaking my head to her. Time for my own self. Time to make sense of the day. Time to think for myself. It is as though I cannot hear my own voice in the day, when I am trying to accomodating voices of those around me. Trying to reason them. Make them sensible to me. But now is the time to listen to my own voice, however small.

"I feel this with you. I feel that for you."
"You feel what you feel and I understand. But I am not part of this, whatever it is that you are feeling."
"Who else but you are responsible for making me feel the way I feel!"
"No Babe. You merely use me as a prop to feel what you are feeling."

I don't want to get too used to you not being here. Sit by myself with a chair facing me and look at it now and then and think of what it would be like if you were here. I conjure a shadow. There is effort in making sure it never becomes bigger than you are, but I'm sorry because I fail often. I didn't intend for this to be your burden. I think you know and you think that's the boy I am in love with. Maybe the girl you wanted to kiss was never me in the first place either. Maybe it is the person you see in my words. I am fooling you too because I am not half as beautiful as I make her to be. 

No thought. No movement. No sound. Just being. Breathing. Now. This. Just as it is. 

Letting go of all that could not be. Letting in all that remains. All that stays. All that does not egg you on with bait. All that comes to settle in the palm of your hand tonight. All that is your due.  

 The weight of adulthood is upon everyone. Most of my friends get bogged down by it on a daily basis. I do too. I don't suffer in the same way because I have pulled myself out of the work rut and general comfort of material life. 
This fear of not doing enough, not being enough comes in inheritance. My father may not say it in so many words but I sense he sees himself as incomplete no matter where he stands. The disappointment trickles down to the both of us kids.  My parents seem to have given themselves up to a certain boredom where the mundane, everyday activities are the only way they can view time in motion.  In this lull of the mundane, all of us are not nearly enough. We shake things up a bit every now and then to make sure we are not machines yet but get back to the drone because we are so used to it. I have an aversion to this system, but also know that if I were not subject to this system I would have found aversion to some other system instead.