Silent all these years...

Sometimes silence is a call for help. A display picture gone dark, a prolonged absence on social media, a refusal to engage in conversations, non-committal polite replies to messages. These are all ways of seeking attention. And they all work in the short term. 

But relationships are not, or should not be, about the short term. It took me a long time to understand this, and even now I need a reminder once in a while. But I'm getting there. 

I've learnt to ask for the things I want, for the love I want, for the friendship I want. And I've learnt that sometimes the answer will be no. And that's a good thing because hearing the occasional no makes the yeses so much more precious. Just like silence makes the next conversation more precious.

Grow old along with me...

I just realised, while scrolling through old WhatsApp messages on a sleepless stressed out night, that when the whole family was down last month, there were a few people who checked in on us nearly every day. Some were from work, for which I'm grateful, but a couple were just friends who have been around forever. I've been so lucky in my friends that I'm not surprised my luck didn't hold out in long-term full-time relationships. This should be v sad, but I just find it funny.

I'm going to be 40 in a couple of years. And I can't do relationships any more. I love the people that I love to bits, but I don't think I can live with someone else ever again. This should be a terrifying thought, but it's actually a relief. 

Sometimes I think that had I known this when I was 20, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to settle down with a happily ever after. But then I figure that this state of acceptance is actually the outcome of having been in a relationship that was intensely fulfilling and then turned absolutely toxic. And if I hadn't ever married or had kids, I would have had a great deal of regret.  So whatever happened, happened for the best.

On the general principle of no regrets, therefore, I'm kind of pleased with life at the moment. And it's indescribably pleasant to reach out on a difficult kind of day to a friend who will lend a shoulder without the burden of expectations. It's hard to tell what the future will be, but if I can grow old in friendship, then life would indeed be perfect. Here's hoping the best is yet to be.

If you do a good deed and no one knows, is it a good deed?

 Today the son came home and said he saved a baby kitten from being eaten. Further questioning revealed that the kitten was tiny and the hunters were the modern-day descendents of dinosaurs. (Well the son said chameleons, but I guarantee you that chameleons aren't found in our part of town. So the other kind of wall-huggers they must have been.) Information was volunteered on how cute the kitten was and how tiny, and the fact that the hunter was smaller than the prey was quickly countered by the statement that there were many hunters. But then further questioning revealed that the hunters weren't exactly attacking. They may not even, wait for it, have actually been there. The conversation at this point had me in hysterical fits of laughter so we didn't get much further into the details, but a quick summary of events is as follows.

There was a kitten. Verrah cute. This is confirmed.

The kitten was either stuck on a wall or in a wall and was mewling.

There were electric supplies nearby, in a locked room, which the kitten could have hurt itself on. 

There may or may not have been lizards prowling. They certainly weren't attacking the kitten at the moment.

The kitten, I repeat, was mewling.

And this is the most important line of all: The kitten was saved.

My eight-year-old sometimes makes very little sense. He has a tendency to repeat what his friends tell him, and not infrequently mixes up the chronology of events. And he absolutely falls apart when questioned. All of this is fine because he's still eight (or so I tell myself), but we work on it all the time. I tell him he must question everything and be kind to everyone. I figure these two mantras will see him through everything. I wish our generation had been taught as much. Then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with those who would rather hate blindly and who loose their cool completely when their prejudice is questioned.

A little less conversation

The one constant in all these years has been the need for conversation. What is it about words that can be such a turn on? I remember writing in another lifetime about cradling a phone and melting in the sound of a husky, deep voice. But sometimes it's not a voice, it's a voiceless text and suddenly I'm back, in my twenties, vulnerable and open to adventure. You only live once I'd say and lose myself in the moment. We can't get those moments back, we can't recreate them, and we can't let them go. But the last decade has taught me this: You don't have to let go of things. You have to make them a part of you and move on. And I've stuck to my oldest creed through it all: No regrets. Everything happens when the time is right. The good, we cherish; the bad, we learn from. And everything, just everything, passes.

The last of the thirties...

Some things are so momentous that they need to be documented. If only so that a decade later I can come back and remember how it felt and how important it was. I didn't write when the kids were born. I posted pictures on social media instead. And while I'm glad to have those reminders now that my ickle bologna loaves are no longer that small, I don't really remember what I thought. The only thing I recall saying when my son was born was that in a life full of incredible emotions and experiences (and at 29 I thought I'd seen it all and lived it all - hah!) having a baby was the single-most intense moment of happiness I had ever had. And amazingly, the next year, when the daughter was born, that feeling of amazement and wonder and excruiating joy had not diminished. 

It's not that things have been less momentous these past few years. If anything, with a universe turned upside down, there's been more to document, but the blog just hasn't seemed the place to do it. Perhaps, just perhaps, it's because I've finally reached a little bit of the zen state I've been seeking for so long.

Where am I now and how is it different from where I was before? Still parenting alone, for one, and grateful to be doing so. Grateful for the awesome twosome and even more so for being the only parent around them. Changed a job, and drove myself recklessly hard at work, mostly at the cost of health. But managed to avoid being unhappy.

I've realised one thing, fifteen years after I started writing this blog. Grief is inevitable. Grief is deep and overwhelming. But grief is not the same as unhappiness. Because grief is not an every day thing. I don't wake up every morning grieving the things I have lost or never had. I do it occasionally because it is good to remember the lows in order to appreciate the highs. But it is possible to wake up every morning deeply unhappy. To look for respite in work, in lethargy, in tears. That is toxic. That is abuse. And that is something I no longer have.

I don't have unhappiness in my life. I go from moments of anger, stress, exhaustion or unkindness to two pairs of warm little arms. Stick thin and with a tendancy to poke. But with so much love that nothing else matters. And that is why, unhappiness doesn't stand a chance. I've found that thing I was looking for all my younger days. A love that is unconditional. And that gives me such a centre of gravity that everything else just falls into place.